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Research Roundup: Crossroads and a Crossword

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The most retweeted stories on the #MRX Twitter community this week look at market research at a crossroads:

• Research 'must take charge of business data in 2011' – Robert Bain of Research magazine discusses a new Forrester report, “Predictions 2011: What Will Happen in Market Research”: “Technology will help research teams ‘to build a central knowledge house’, integrating and analysing data from across the business, including results of ‘DIY’ research. Enterprise feedback management and knowledge management systems ‘will be essential in the future to fully develop a rich and cohesive 360-degree view of the customer’… change will not happen without people taking the initiative, warns Reineke Reitsma, and research professionals need to have an internal marketing plan ready to state their case for becoming the central clearing house for data, ensuring checks on sample, methodology, and data analysis for DIY studies done by other departments.” If research doesn’t take charge of customer data, other departments will. See Reineke’s post on the new research, Trends That Will Shape Market Research In 2011: Organization, Technology, And Social.
• The Most Important Marketing Research Tool For 2011 and Beyond – Dan Womack politely disagrees with Reineke and all of the rest of us who have made projections about MR next year. He knows what the most important tool will be. (Go read it!)
• Marketers using social media for PR, not insight, says HBR survey – Brian Tarran of Research writes, “Market research and customer insight, CRM and customer service teams are trailing behind marketing, communications and even IT departments when it comes to setting social media strategies within companies, according to a Harvard Business Review (HBR) study.” Half of the 2100 companies surveyed are ‘speaking’ on social media channels, but only are a quarter are ‘listening’; social media is more likely to be used for promotion than for generating insights.
• Wharton Study Shines New Light on Online vs. Offline Word of Mouth – Ed Keller, author of The Influentials, points out, “The theory (and practice) that underlies social media research (SMR) is that monitoring, organizing, and analyzing what consumers are saying in social media provides a rich data set for understanding important issues, themes, unmet needs, and so forth without the need for surveys… One of the big, unanswered questions, however, is how representative is the data that comes from SMR? … 90% of brand-related word of mouth takes place offline, not online.” He relates research from Wharton School that shows that the distribution of online vs. offline word of mouth is very different, with online WOM being disproportionately about entertainment, cars and technology.
• Market Research Holiday Wishes – To help you celebrate the holidays, Kathryn Korostoff offers you a market-research crossword puzzle.

Again, don’t take my word for what folks are discussing on Twitter: check it out.