A better way to use market research

Marketers love studies that show their products in a good light. So they commission a lot of them.  Nearly half of global market research spending comes from just three major client types: pharmaceutical companies (17%), media and entertainment groups (16%), and consumer goods producers (15%).

I’ve worked with scientists and marketers. The fundamental difference between a scientist doing research and a marketer doing research is the scientist is looking to prove their hypothesis wrong. And if they cannot succeed, their hypothesis is likely to be true.

Whereas a marketer is looking to prove their hypothesis right, so any piece of confirming evidence is leaped upon and shouted from the rooftops.

I’ve been there. You are desperate as a marketer to have evidence that your product is the bomb. You commission research to gain that evidence.  If you’ve run a robust survey and the evidence backs up what you want to claim, boom! You’re off to the races.

But here’s where it gets tricky. If your evidence is a bit of a mixed bag, the inclination is to look for the areas where it supports your story and then tell everyone only about those bits (plus you need to do something with your study to justify the spend on the research).

By leaving out the bits that are not rousing cheerleaders for your product you’re not lying (you just quietly ignore the fact you haven’t presented the full picture). Because it would be career suicide to publish negative feedback (and everyone else does this anyway!).

This behaviour keeps marketers in jobs and research companies in business, but ultimately it erodes trust in market research. I don’t see an easy solution as the system incentivises this outcome.

A better approach is to see market research as a business improvement tool, not as a promotional tool. Do the research, listen to the results, and then act on them. Repeat. If you keep at it and do it well then your customers will do your marketing for you. This will be far more effective and much longer lasting than a self-funded survey that tells your audience what you want them to hear.

Good qualitative insights are successful companies' superpowers. And don’t wait until you have the budget to do the research. This is how you get the budget!