Three Trends That Will Define Market Research in 2021

2020 was a year full of challenges for the market research industry. However, despite global lockdowns and restrictions, the sector has embraced technology and advanced its methods for audience insight gathering. Necessity, in this instance, really has been the mother of invention.

Unsurprisingly, technology will continue to be at the forefront of the industry’s evolution in 2021, with AI and machine learning taking center stage when it comes to the ways we conduct, monitor, and analyze consumer sentiment. Access to these types of technologies will be particularly important as many organizations look to realign costs and spending in times of a looming economic downturn.

Continued reliance on technology will also shape the methodology used by researchers to gain a deeper insight into their consumers and target audiences. Insight and data capture via video are likely to give consumers an easier and more intuitive way of providing honest feedback and reviews of products and services.

Below we talk about some of the major trends we predict will positively define the market research industry in 2021:

Video-first will continue to thrive (even if things get back to normal)

COVID-19 forced businesses out of offices and into homeworking environments. We’ve become accustomed to the flexible working lifestyle which technology enables. In fact, the desire to hold onto this shift in work-life balance will no doubt continue in 2021.

As a result of a change in habits, the market research industry will have to continue to adapt to people’s new and preferred way of working. In the third quarter of 2020 alone, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 50.81 percent of global website traffic. We can expect to see increased use of mobile-friendly and app-based surveys, which will arguably become shorter and more accessible for on-the-go and flexible users.

With remote working at a record high in 2020, Zoom saw 1.7m users at its peak. We can expect that the benefits of video-led research in terms of ‘any-time, anywhere’ will continue to not only help further diversify research samples but also open up a whole new world of opportunity for market researchers in terms of results and the types of projects that can be undertaken.

Put simply, video research is here to stay.

A boom in automation and AI adoption… if you can crack its potential

The volume of data available will continue to expand even further in 2021, creating a growing desire for organizations to have access to affordable and user-friendly platforms that can handle a variety of different data sets in high volumes.

Businesses are increasingly looking to take their research function in-house. The goal of these teams is to process and analyze vast quantities of primary research that will enable them to make informed decisions about their products and offerings. In order to do this, they need to get a handle on how to implement automation and AI to help them be more efficient at their jobs.

What will set great companies apart from the good ones in 2021 and beyond? Only some will work smart and adopt automation and AI to analyze volumes of market research data.

Agility – as a result of digitization

As the digitization of market research continues, researchers themselves will be required to think on their feet and adapt to new changes in technology. March 2020 forced a global shift in the way we go about research that most were not ready for—but have subsequently prospered from—as part of our new approach which shows no signs of slowing down. What’s more, its fully expected that even newer ways of working in an agile way will continue to unfold, as 2021 gets underway.

The benefits of being able to conduct and analyze market research remotely, stretch far beyond the ability to continue to work during a pandemic. The technology available and the ability to be able to reach research samples anywhere, at any time, enables organizations to access people with more accurate and diverse opinions, and increase engagement and loyalty. They can also engage with people in environments that are most comfortable to them – leading to much more natural and authentic responses as a result.

Future-focused research teams are using this period of uncertainty wisely, with many investing in the tools and platforms they need to do more with less. 2021 will certainly be the year where technology fundamentally starts to positively re-shape the sector–providing it with the tools to unlock greater levels and depth of insight.

This is something that we at Medallia LivingLens are focused on – providing market research teams with access to a rich video intelligence platform that allows them to unlock the true insight and data from within people’s stories.

To find out more about how Medallia LivingLens can help shape your market research strategy in 2021, sign up for a free 30-day trial here.