“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply.” (Stephen Covey)
According to the top researching brass at the world’s biggest research buyer, they expect surveys to get a drastic downfall in their importance by the year 2020. They believe social media to be the reason why.
These statements were made by Joan Lewis, who is a global consumer and market knowledge officer at Procter & Gamble Co. The company is involved in having $350 million in annual market-research outlays. Joan Lewis made these statements after a panel discussion on the topic "How Market Research Must Change" at the Advertising, Research Foundation's Re-Think 2011 conference in New York.
She further stated that it is high time that the industry stops living in the dream that one particular method of survey research will be the main solution to anything. They need to be systematically agnostic.
During the panel, she also said that not only social media listening is replacing the traditional survey researching but it also is making it harder to adapt to the ever-changing behavior and expectations of the consumer.
She held the perspective that when people realize that they can be a part of two-way engagement and are able to interact with the companies directly, they would not want to be involved in the structured research anymore because in this way the consumer sees the possibility to voice his opinions to the company in a rather direct way.
Joan said that most of the people in the research industry have been lured in by the belief that representation is the main factor around which research revolves. She did not discount the importance of representation, however she did present the notion that you don’t necessarily need representation for learning.
A similar view was stated by Joe Tripodi who is an Executive Vice President- Chief Marketing and Commercial officer at the Coca Cola Company. He shared the view that he wanted people to utilize social media, however he shared his opinion that social media hasn’t yet reached the desired level of sophistication which is required to conduct proper research.
When asked about the game plan that Procter & Gamble Co. had in mind, Joan said that they will carry on survey research for the next couple of years, even though she believes that it will be less significant to research.
She also went on to say that, lowering of the significance does not in any way mean that P&G will lower its standards in research and survey conduction. She said that many people take the idea of a changing field and use it as an excuse for poor performance and negligence.
Mr. Tripodi however was highly enthusiastic about this new model and wanted to hire research firms for value-based compensations. While sharing his enthusiasm, he said that he would be willing to pay extra money to research firms if they deliver the game changing insight.
Meanwhile, it must be noted that the revenue and attendance for ARF has increased by up to 30% as the conference celebrates its 75thAnniversary.
“Social media is like a snowball rolling down the hill. It’s picking up speed. Five years from now it’s going to be the standard.” (Jeff Antaya)
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