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January 26, 2004 - Strategy Magazine
Special Report: Market Research

Screwed by market research?
How to work with qualitative researchers and get what you want

by Sara Minogue
page 15

One good thing about the anonymity of the Internet is that it makes it easier for people to admit they've been screwed. At least, that's what 26 out of 51 respondents did when they answered "yes" to an online poll at Strategymag.com that asked the question, "Have you ever been seriously misinformed by a market research 'expert'?"

The youth marketing, cool-hunting, trend-watching fad seems to have peaked (and crashed) with the dot-com era, but with the advent of online research panels, hucksters - sometimes with good intentions - continue to innovate.

"It's like spam," says Scott Megginson curtly. The manager of consumer insights for Toronto-based Pepsi QTG Canada says he is flooded with unsolicited offers, year-round. "Long past your planning you start getting calls from people with a new service or a new teen survey or trend survey or new online methodologies with panels.... Some of the stuff you see online is frightening."

And often the people who seem like bona fide researchers with real experts in the field are offering a lot less than they advertise.

Max Lenderman, president of Montreal-based youth marketing company Gearwerx, describes an experience he had while working for a pharmacy and foodstuffs company.

"We came in and got presented a 90-page deck from a youth research company that went through all these consumer attitudes, pie charts and everything. The clients were sitting there nodding as though they were getting all this data. At the end I asked how many people they had interviewed and it was 13. They were presenting it like it was a larger slice of the consumer pie."

Start-up research companies are not always bad news. "Having people out there pushing the limits can inspire people to take a look at the traditional methods and maybe revamp them a bit," says Michele Erskine, VP at Toronto's Solutions Research Group Consultants. "When it gets bad is when what is promised or what [the research is] purported to do is blown way out of proportion. Often that has less to do with the people offering it up and more to do with the hopes of the people buying it."

And there's the rub. How do marketers, eager to come up with the best information, the freshest insight, or the coolest new trend, avoid the bad seeds?

Check the company

"The first thing I do is grab the PMRS book," says Megginson, referring to the Professional Marketing Research Society, of which he is a board member, and which is dedicated to setting and maintaining professional standards for its 1,800 members across the country. Membership implies adherence to a standard code of conduct guiding the profession.

PMRS also recently launched an accreditation program, the Certified Marketing Research Professional designation, and is now working to accredit longstanding industry players as well as graduates of a new nine-course program, which crowned its first recipients last fall.

"I hate to say it, but marketers often get the research they deserve," says Irma Zandl, president of New York-based The Zandl Group, a four-star trend-watching research company since the mid-'80s. "When I do even a modicum of follow-up on the methodologies of [unscrupulous research companies], it's apparent that it's all smoke and mirrors. For example, if a small company tells you they have 20,000 online trendsetter panelists and that they provide each one with a digital camera, you have to ask yourself whether they could really afford to spend over a million dollars outfitting panelists with cameras."

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