Of all the professional groups that get marketed and sold to within the day-to-day business world, it’s logical to assume that marketers are possibly the savviest customers of all.
For marketers already live and breathe marketing strategy and techniques, and know only too well that “unique selling propositions” and “points of difference” can be completely artificial, contrived, or otherwise ineffectual. It is now the stuff of Marketing 101 to ensure one’s products or services don’t become commodities; that they appear unique; and that they add value above and beyond their competitors. Whether or not these differences are significant can be a moot point – that customers’ perceptions are their reality is often cited as the cause of both marketing success and failure.
So spare a thought for market research companies who have to sell their services to marketers and their colleagues. Although most market research companies now recognize the need to promote close partnerships with clients, there remains the need to differentiate a research company’s promises from the usual mantra of fantastic account management, deep insights and self-appointed experts. What points of difference are there to convince potential clients that their companies really do add significant value?
Proprietary Research Techniques
In a word (or three), the answer is “proprietary research techniques”. These are the trademarked techniques that market research companies routinely use to differentiate themselves and to promise the added value that will hopefully put them ahead of their competitors in an increasingly competitive industry. There’s no shortage of such techniques either – some research companies offer over twenty proprietary research techniques.
These can be as focused as Research International’s “Shopper Action”, designed to help “develop, design, and manage in-store layouts and merchandising strategies”; or as broad as the NeedScope model developed by Focus Research to “systematically integrate emotion into brand planning”. That the latter has now been used over 2000 times in 65 countries by TNS demonstrates the lucrative returns to be gained if a model is successful.
The company with perhaps the largest range of branded techniques is AC Nielsen, and NZ Managing Director Steve Mitchell admits that an emphasis on proprietary research techniques is “a natural response to the long-term erosion in the value perception of ‘standard’ market research, reflected in relatively low margins at the industry level. Proprietary research techniques are a constructive way of demonstrating added value and a valid approach to charge fees that reflect additional value.”
Mitchell’s theme of “added value” is echoed by most others in the industry – the superlatives range from “proven approaches based on best practice” (Michael Lucas, TNS Conversa); to the benefits of “ongoing R&D investment and validation” (Roz Calder, Focus Research / Needscope International).
But what does this hyperbole really mean for the client who is being offered a solution or research design incorporating a proprietary research technique? Putting aside the claims of individual techniques, the advantages make compelling reading:
- the ability to conduct benchmarking and similar comparisons with other studies, markets or norms databases;
- the basis in sound academic principles or a theoretical base that many techniques have;
- the security of knowing that such techniques have usually been tested, validated and verified;
- the applicability of many such models across markets, which has clear advantages for global clients;
- the intellectual R&D resources that are often applied to maintain the techniques’ improvements;
- the special focus that many techniques have, which enables them to deliver a good fit for the market being studied;
- the availability of case studies;
- the ease of repeating the research or replicating that conducted elsewhere.
Of note is that the above list is largely the same whether one speaks to researchers or to clients. But in speaking to some major research buyers it also becomes clear that there exist some other reasons for selecting or retaining techniques. These other reasons reflect the more political factors at play when the research is used within the client organization.
For example, consider one of
- The effort involved in getting a given research measure understood, accepted, and used by a wide of internal clients is often underestimated by research companies. Therefore clients may opt to stay with a research measure despite a more attractive alternative;
- That many research managers resort to developing their own hybrid measures to ensure continuity between research suppliers;
- The simplicity of a technique’s interpretation is too often overlooked, yet very important to improve internal acceptance and usage.
But what of the disadvantages? Interestingly, the researchers and clients alike share a lot of common ground when discussing potential pitfalls. For some, the premium pricing can be of questionable value, and Dave Mansfield of Research International raises the scenario of a perfectly good technique being removed from the portfolio of a research company (and thus its clients) simply through a buy-out.
For others, there is a concern that companies which reply too much on a given technique (whether they’re buying or providing the research) can find themselves out-paced. Tim Grafton of UMR recognises that companies may be locked into techniques that become outmoded, and Duncan Stuart, Market Research Society Fellow and Director of Kudos Organisational Dynamics, states eloquently that “A USP can be a curse for non-innovative companies. Once an approach is challenged or superseded, then the research company can be stuck with an Edsel on their hands”.
That the client buying the research would also have an Edsel wasn’t mentioned by Stuart, but this does relate to one concern posed by Marketing Magazine, which was the degree to which clients may feel ‘locked in’ when using a proprietary research technique, especially for an ongoing research programme. Surely if the prospect of changing ones’ research supplier means losing a particular technique’s key measures, then buyers may be reticent to adopt a particular technique, or reluctant to switch from that already being used?
Rob Cooke, currently GM of Gruden and previously Head of Planning at TBWA\Whybin, agrees this can be an issue – “Portability becomes a consideration to clients if the technique is linked to licensing issues and subsequently un-repeatable by other research companies”.
But other buyers we spoke to disagreed. Hudson Smales, Customer Insight and Innovation Manager at Air New
And as to our anonymous research buyer, he could be right to hide his identity from the local research industry when he states that “frankly if you lined up all the models that purport to measure something, there’d be a lot of overlap. So to ensure you’ve got a constant measure you can develop your own hybrid measure that’s custom-built for your own industry and your own internal needs. That, you’ll always have access to”. Mitchell has similar sentiments: “Truly unique approaches are relatively rare so various techniques should be comparable to some degree”.
Of course, if it can be afforded, the transition from one technique to another can be smoothed by running both the old and new models in parallel for a time, a somewhat obvious approach to the problem of switching techniques, if a more expensive one.
Keeping it Simple or Being Simplistic?
As to what constitutes a valuable model that is worth holding onto or switching to, one aspect seldom mentioned by researchers but of clear importance to clients was the simplicity of the outputs. Too complicated, and they won’t be used. Smales again: “Researchers often complain they can’t get into the boardroom, and to me it’s obvious, when they do get in there they talk a lot of techniques that Execs have never heard of and can’t grasp immediately, so they don’t get invited back.”
Synovate’s Matt Benson was the only one from the research side to cite the importance of simplicity; “Our approaches are sophisticated, they have some of the best marketing minds working on them, but they have to allow us to distil simple implications from highly complex scenarios – simplicity is the real benefit”.
That the selection of a proprietary research technique isn’t always due to a rational examination of its benefits was also critiqued by Kudos’s Stuart. He says that for some clients, the attraction of a proprietary research technique may largely be the comfort and security of using a technique that many others have used. As with the old refrain, “no-one ever got fired for choosing IBM”, Stuart notes that some buyers can be largely attracted by the “false comfort of thinking that a system is totally proven and therefore somehow relevant to their particular needs in the
Stuart goes onto to say that “proprietary systems breed lazy researchers who know how to trot out the same box and present the same charts – but can’t think creatively. Too many systems…have dumbed down the evolution of market research as a profession”.
That viewpoint reflects poorly on the researchers and buyers alike – are researchers this lazy, and are their clients really taking the soft option of the ‘tried and true’?
Some support for this could be found amongst those we spoke to. UMR’s Grafton says that proprietary research techniques can lead to “a lack of innovation or development…all models have a theoretical base and run on a set of assumptions that can change over time. There is a requirement to keep models current and to continually revisit and update the underlying parameters”.
From the client side, this complacency is recognized to exist, and is exhibited by research companies that promote their proprietary research techniques rather than really questioning what is best for the client. This is clearly the biggest problem that buyers have with proprietary research techniques. Telecom’s Kennedy-Casas and Cox again: “Agencies can become complacent about improving their research models, pushing models without understanding whether their solution is really going to help the customer”.
Air
Fortunately for the future of researcher-client relations in
With the research industry exhibiting such a unified abhorrence of unthinkingly using “off the shelf” techniques, one might question why some clients feel that the inappropriate promotion of some techniques still occurs. Perhaps researchers aren’t as lily-white as they like to appear? But as Smales says, it’s simply business – “Researchers sell the techniques their company has bought into, and if they didn’t push their techniques I might question their belief in them. But they’re not necessarily the best solution…so it’s up to the client to challenge the supplier if they feel it’s not appropriate for the project”
As with all sales, it seems like a textbook case of ‘buyer beware’, summarized by Stuart thus: “There are really two issues here. Is the proprietary system delivering genuine insight and value? If it is then pay the money. Issue two: are there alternatives that cost less and deliver just as much insight. If there are, then shop around”.
But almost as one voice,
This is perhaps summarised best by Cooke, when he states “unless you have the combination of ‘researcher with integrity’ and ‘client with brains’, true research quality and results are unlikely to occur no matter what technique is used”.
Ironically, it seems that having developed so many proprietary research techniques to differentiate themselves, these techniques have become so commonplace that the research companies have come full circle, once again promoting their people as their biggest asset.
A Whip-Round of the Main Techniques
Brand loyalty is one of the big issues facing marketers today. What are some of the loyalty-focused proprietary research techniques available to them? A quick trawl through these companies’ websites what they say about themselves…
Conversion Model, offered by Research Solutions and TNS Conversa
The Conversion Model is the world's leading measure of commitment. It measures the strength of the relationship between customers and products or services. It is a psychological measure, not a behavioural one. It is based on the recognition that commitment underpins loyalty, but that the two are not one and the same.
Brand Value Creator, offered by Synovate.
Measure the current strength of your brand and identify the factors inhibiting its growth. Synovate's Brand Value Creator combines attitudinal equity with barrier effects to create a more holistic brand measurement system.
Equity Engine, offered by Research International.
Equity EngineTM provides a comprehensive measure of brand equity, together with a precise evaluation of what drives equity in a specific category. You can assess your brand’s current strength, to plan the actions needed to improve or protect it, and monitor its progress over time.
NeedScope, offered by TNS Conversa and Focus Research
The NeedScope System helps marketers build powerful brands by systematically integrating emotion into brand planning and new product development. NeedScope is based on the belief that emotion is the ultimate driver of all human behaviour, so the heart of the technique is the NeedScope archetypal model of universal human emotions.
Winning Brands Brand Equity Model
The ACNielsen | Winning Brands Brand Equity Model measures brand equity for all brands in a category and shows what the drivers of brand equity are in that category, and their relative importance. Together with information about brand performance on the drivers and knowledge of the brand and market, the model is used to set an appropriate strategy to maximise brand equity and profitability.
BrandTrak, offered by the National Research Bureau
NRB’s BrandTrak™ is designed for companies who wish to keep a close eye on how their brands are being perceived and received by consumers.