Archive for December, 2009

Is it Steve Schwartz of Microsoft? Is he really our problem or is he reflecting a problem that is being forced on him? The Gorilla may not be the guy who writes the checks to us. Schwartz may be our ally in a strange way.

The Gorilla may be the inside division chief with a building filled with expensive engineers that puts out the products that might be shaped by our research in the first place. The results of our research has to be sold to that guy and if he can punch a hole in it then he can put off re-tooling his staff for another year.

We don’t know how the conversations go but we would love to be a fly in the room. Certainly if Steve Schwartz is selling the wares of his research division he has to get buy in from the folks who drive the projects themselves. If a non research VP can say it loud enough in front of a higher level decision maker then we can forget not just the project under discussion but a suite of work that might have come our way.

Perhaps we should look at the actions of Steve Schwartz as in our best interest. We may not like his decision to use True Sample but we should understand what drives him. The buyers of research are only as credible as we make them. If we provide convincing ammunition to those who would prefer that Market Research go away; then we have fed the Gorilla that haunts us and it will stop us. Schwartz and colleagues may appear to be our problem, but maybe not the Gorilla we thought them to be. He has a credibility problem that is feeding his own Gorillas.

It is time to deal with the online quality issue. Let’s hope it is not too late.

Online research has had a honeymoon driven by low price and rapid turn around.  It has grown exponentially, not just because of its convenience and price, but due to the inherent belief by those who buy our intellectual product that we can be trusted.  If we continue to throw caution to the wind we can expect to lose those relationships that drive our business.

When Microsoft announced in October of 2009, at the IIR, that they would only use sample that had been vetted by MarketTools quality program, True Sample™, there was a message so loud that it is a miracle that we didn’t hear it.

We were present at the “Road to the Client Congress” put on by Bob Lederer in 2008.  It was there that four giants subjected themselves as panel members to an online panel community that was seemingly deaf to their plaintiff statements that there was a quality crisis.  It seemed remarkable to us then and astonishing to us now that the industry refuses to listen to some of its largest clients as they complain about online quality.

If you were to listen to the pulse of the industry the quality crisis is just about over.  The various efforts have had their day.  We have done our best and we can go back to sleep now.  After all, the end users are not willing to pay for quality, they require questionnaires that are awkward and long; which are the real problem anyway and online research is here to stay.

You have got to be kidding!  When Microsoft takes measures into its own hands and picks a quality control company to clean up sample, then we had best take notice.  We have just surrendered our professional credentials.  Within moments   P & G threw its hat into the ring and joined Microsoft in its foray into quality.  There has been no stampede but the patient is gored.

Beware complacency!  It took guts for Steve Schwartz and Reed Cundiff of Microsoft to make this move.  He may fail but we may never recover.  Wake up!  If market research is to be at the corporate decision making table, where we must be to survive, we must clean up our own problems and not allow the clients to step in on our behalf.

Stan Sthanunathan of Coca Cola made it clear that if you want to play in the internet survey game, sample frame quality is not optional, it is the very least we should be doing; as he put it “Its table stakes.”  We agree, the chaos that can be caused by an aberrant online sample frame makes the need for quality standards the least we can do.

When we say “the least we can do,” we mean it.   The deeper we delve into the online sampling frames that are out there the more problems that we uncover.   We no longer have a feeling of comfort.  We are fearful that the trust relationship between the users of research and the providers of research is in jeapordy.   To us this is a crisis in the here and now.

End users will eventually drive the market research ship aground.  We had best listen to Sthanunathan carefully, as his tone is not that of someone likely to tolerate fools for long.  His view is that we can be replaced if we can’t pull it together.  He spoke poignantly of a day when a giant like Google would look at our industry and turn its mighty guns our way.  They are hungry for profit centers and who knows, they might turn their 300mm daily transactions into a data base that prices us out of existence.  It is not hard to conceive of Google looking at our wayward ship and deciding they can do it better.  The only thing that protects us is that they can’t seem to get their own business model together.  But we would be fools to ignore Stan at his point.