November 6, 2017. Today on RBDR:
Marketing Research versus Marketing.The distinction is undetected by government agencies and, even worse, consumers as a group do not understand it. At the same time, consumers don’t seem to like what they see from the most visible MR to which they are exposed, polling.
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Bob, as someone who has been in the MR Industry for over 40 years and seen many public relations campaigns to explain Marketing Research both to the general public and consumers, I am not sanguine that this will ever happen. The reason: The problem, “Dear Brutus” is that MR firms are their own worst enemies. So much survey research is just “junk”; badly worded surveys, inaccurate samples, producing biased super-fast crap that many clients demand, the confusion with Political polls that are usually done badly or for fund-raising purposes (“Frugging”), and polls that are done for selling products (“Sugging”), etc. The litany of research sins is vast and deep, and not only don’t improve, but have been made worse with online, cell-phone, and panel surveys. Also, the surveys produced by many media companies are designed to get headlines, rather than find truth, and often push a particular political or cultural point-of-view. In short, the MR industry and business as we have known it is almost dead: The patient barely has a pulse! Unfortunately, even the well-meaning trade associations like AAPOR, and CASRO proved worthless – due to a lack of money and will power – to enforce their self-advocated standards.
One simple first step: Stop calling it “marketing” research. It’s “market” research.This has the added advantage of clarifying for practitioners that the research we do is not just to inform the marketing function. It’s bigger than that. It’s strategic, not just tactical. But let’s not imagine that something with “insight” in the title will help. It just confuses the person in the street even more..