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Research Roundup: Challenges Reshaping Research

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Here are five of the most retweeted stories of the 736 links shared this week on the #MRX Twitter community:

• Stop Using NPS But Please Save the Question! – Richard Evensen, a senior analyst with Forrester, comes down hard against the Net Promoter Score: “it feels like selling snake oil”. He questions the science behind the metric and promises upcoming Forrester research to “fix the formula”; he says willingness to recommend measures perceived value rather than intention or actual action. The comments to the post are heated and interesting.
• Lenny Murphy on the Bumpy Future of Market Research – Lenny Murphy, editor in chief of the Greenbook Blog, writes a guest post for Frankie Johnson’s Research Arts blog, outlining the five stressors that he sees reshaping the research industry: new competition, changing client demands, “consumer 2.0” attitudes, technology shifts and economic pressure. As a result of these stressors, he postulates a future model of research and a transitional model that many firms are already moving to. This is a must-read post for anyone who thinks strategically about the research industry.
• Industry study finds weakening confidence in value of MR – James Verrinder, writing for Research, recaps the 9th edition of the GreenBook® Research Industry Trends Report [pdf] (organized and edited by Lenny Murphy). He focuses on Bob Walker’s finding that 45% of respondents believe research is less valued than it used to be by clients, up dramatically from 25% six months earlier. In a follow-on piece, Crisis of confidence?, James gets reaction from five chief executives of MR firms, along with a comment from Richard Evensen. (For my own focus on one small part of the study, see Trading off Speed and Quality.)
• Four Challenges Market Research Faces Today – Tony Zambito, of Goal Centric, outlines four very different challenges than those seen by Lenny: the shift from “who and what” to “how and why”; the proliferation of data sources, tools and analyses; the lack of relevancy of many “insights”; and the lack of representativeness of consumers comprising the “silent majority” of the social media age.
• The Devil In The Details: Qualitative Recruitment Screeners – Victoria Gamble of WorkInProgress recaps a presentation she’s given on how to develop recruitment screeners for qualitative research projects.

Still not sure about this whole Twitter thing? Victoria just finished a great introduction to Twitter, which will help you get started.