Research Innovation: If the Shoe Fits
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Thu, Feb 25, 2010
At the CASRO Panel Conference, Kim Dedeker, chair of Kantar Americas, gave the opening keynote address, "Why Consumer Research Quality Matters - Past and Present". As this was her first presentation to CASRO since leaving Procter & Gamble after 29 years, she shared her personal story.
I've changed my shoes from the client side to the supplier side. I started at P&G at the age of 20 in the Insights Group, with the intent to leave and become a lawyer or do some other graduate work. Instead, I found the learning curve of market research to be so steep and challenging that there was never any reason to leave. I was in a great company, one that invested in training, exposed me to different parts of the world and to the science of research.
After 30 years with P&G, I felt the need for a different challenge. Kantar happened to call at the right time. So I feel fortunate to have client experience, and now I am stepping into these shoes on the supplier side. It is really hard to understand the other point of view if you haven't worn both pairs of shoes.
Kim expects the shape of research spending to change dramatically. Today, little client spending is on "Innovate & Co-create", 80-90% is on "Evaluate" and the remaining spending is on "Sense & Respond," to see how products are doing in the market. In the past, too much market-research innovation went "into the two tails". In the future, companies will spend more on Innovate, more on Sense & Respond, taking that spending from Evaluation. "Companies are trying to get a lot more money into the innovation cycle: what are the big ideas and how do we take advantage of them?" The Sense & Respond category, also known as "Launch & Leverage," has the potential to teach as much about products as is typically learnt in Evaluation.
Kim said, "Manufacturers are in this to support business decisions. We, as suppliers, have to balance between sound science and the innovation that gets us to where we need to be in the long term. Reliability is a key challenge. Clients ask questions about the science. What does reliability mean? What rigor is required? A perfectly reliable system is one that produces identical output each time if the same inputs are introduced to the systems repeatedly. When I look at how we've done business in the past, it requires a big investment in dollars and people to make the changes. ‘Survey research as we know it will be dead in 2012' is one of those comments that I will always be known for. It is very clear that we need to think about MR in the future; survey research as we knew it has already died. The consumer is a very different person than they were before, connecting with the world in new ways."
In Kim's eyes, why does quality matter? "Our business is centered on data collection, insight generation and strategic influence. Our clients invest in consumer and market research in order to manage the risk inherent in business decisions. Garbage in, garbage out. It's not so much about surveys, but is there a good rate of return for investments in market research?" That's why quality matters.