Top 10 Reasons You Need an MROC in 2011
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Thu, Jan 06, 2011
If you don't currently have a Market Research Online Community, and you are not thinking of building an MROC this year, you should be. Here's my updated Top 10 reasons why.
- Compress the traditional feedback cycle. In 2011, you don't have the time or the resources to use the traditional feedback cycle. You need to streamline your market research with online communities, so that you can continuously act on the voice of the customer.
- Launch better products and services. According to Tamara Barber of Forrester, one of the key MROC trends is that organizations are engaging communities earlier in the business-planning process. In fact, community research is becoming a formal part of the process for new product development: MROCs are helping facilitate the launch of many successful products and services. Communities change the innovation process.
- Communities aren’t just for “brand fans”. As Diane Hessan of Communispace explained in her NewMR presentation, The 8 Myths about Successful Research Communities, communities of noncustomers and of occasional users of your products can generate powerful insights for your business.
- Conduct a thousand research projects. Business is moving faster than ever, and online communities enable you to conduct more projects than you can imagine, to help inform your speed-of-light business decisions. In three years, the ABC Studio Advisory Panel has fielded literally a thousand projects. That's a thousand points of light illuminating the path forward for its business.
- Communities support many qualitative research methods. Jane Mount of DRI, in a panel discussion at the 2010 CASRO Panel Conference, said, “Social forces make it easier to engage [participants] in communities. Communities are becoming a depository for different methods – we can do a lot of it in one place, with a lot of flexibility.” Communities become research hubs.
- Get more qualitative feedback for less investment. Brad Bortner of Forrester said it best in his independent white paper, Will Web 2.0 Transform Market Research?: “Market research online communities (MROCs) will shock the qualitative market research world. They provide cheaper, faster, and newer types of insights that today's traditional qualitative research modes, such as focus groups, don't currently provide.” Such savings are why Ned Winsborough said, “We have a mandate at General Mills to move as much of our qualitative research online as possible in the coming months and years.”
- Provide comprehensive quantitative feedback. Integrate online communities with panel management or enterprise feedback management, and you can conduct projectable, representative surveys that help you size the problems and opportunities uncovered by your qualitative research.
- Help your staff internalize and distribute feedback. According to the Vovici CE IQ study, companies with the most loyal customers periodically share VOC (Voice of the Customer) information with employees across the organization, ensuring widespread understanding of the customer's point of view. Online communities provide a great means to achieve this, fostering greater employee-customer engagement.
- Sustainable competitive advantage comes from the changes you make. Community members will participate in your new online community because they want your organization to serve them better. You will engage employees in the community so that they can be customer ambassadors. Short term, you'll develop an infrastructure that will enable you to rapidly implement new ideas. Long term, you'll develop a culture centered on customer-driven innovation and co-creation.
- Engage your customers in a community while there is still time. Face it, each of us only has so much time to spend on community and research initiatives from the organizations we do business with. As Gartner analyst Kathy Harris said at her CRM Summit presentation on innovation, "If you don't engage your customers in innovation, someone else will."
Build an MROC in 2011, and your organization will be stronger and more successful in 2011, 2012, and beyond.