I once watched a six-week research project become irrelevant in week three. The client’s competitor launched something that changed everything, but we were locked into our methodology, grinding through a survey that was already answering yesterday’s questions.
How can market research provide better insight for its clients? Part of the answer could lie in simple research. By simple I don’t mean simplistic, dumbed down, quick or even dirty. By simple I mean clear, accessible, focused.
Rather than trying to cover off every research objective in one large project, lets do research in baby steps, into simple mini-projects, with each step providing just enough “insight” to make a difference for whoever it’s being conducted for.
An explanation
This isn’t true of every project, but too many play out something like this: a six-week timeline, a handful of objectives from a research brief, those objectives translated into a herd of hypotheses, and a researcher attempting to test them all at once in a single, long, complex survey. By which point both researchers and participants are positively catatonic with joy. There are a few problems with this approach (beyond the arguments against bad survey design and poor treatment of participants):
You’re tied to a single method for the duration. No matter what happens externally, you’re stuck. Say you’re halfway through a project and the company you’re working for starts leaking millions of gallons of oil into the sea. You’d like to tweak your research to take this into account. But you can’t. You’re a supertanker—six weeks of momentum behind you, and turning the wheel does almost nothing.
By trying to do too much in one go, the issues, objectives, hypotheses are confused. Which leads to unfocused conclusions which no one can act upon. Research is only effective if people understand it, even if you’ve conducted the most exquisite piece of research in the history of the world ever. It’s all going to fall apart if people switch off because you’ve tried to explain too much at once.
You can get round these issues by adopting a approach which breaks a research project down into smaller related projects. Each of these projects are setup, conducted & analysed independently but in context:
By working with a series of small projects we have more opportunities to tweak our approach based on external changes or learnings from the previous projects.
Using small projects frees us from the shackles of using the same methodology or approach all the way through. One project could be a survey, the next a qualitative task, the next buzz research. - Each project is focused on finding out just enough to make a difference, as such it is easier to communicate and develop actions from.
Both researcher, client (and even participant) can get feedback more quickly. There’s a feeling that you’re always progressing.
Old idea new application
Modularising projects into smaller parts isn’t new, project management techniques like SCRUM use this sort of approach all the time. And there was a recent article in The Psychologist which argues for minimally sufficient research in psychology, which is pretty much what I’m saying here. It’s just that these sorts of approaches haven’t been used in market research, because until recently the technology hasn’t been available to make it easy enough and therefore cheap enough to not have to bundle all of our objectives together into large projects.
More on money
The big problem with this approach is that it could end up being expensive; if you approach this philosophy in a traditional manner you’re going to incur the costs associated with setup and bureaucracy with every single step you take. However the internet changes things. It’s a lot quicker and easier to set up projects, things can be copied & tweaked rapidly. Cheap readily available tools like SurveyGizmo/Monkey are already available. There may be some costs associated in recruiting participants to take part on more than one occasion, but this is negligible, especially if you spend some time understanding what motivates people to take part in your research.
It’s already happening
This approach of breaking research projects into smaller steps and tweaking the research as you go is already happening. This is how well run MROC’s (Market Research Online Communities) run. A traditional adhoc brief is far too big to be researched on a community all in one go. So the brief is divided into smaller steps each of which seek to complete one of the objectives. The following objectives are covered off in the days which follow. Because the MROC is already setup, you already have access to participants and a range of different qualitative & quantitative research tools to conduct each of the steps with.
Ain’t no silver bullet
This approach isn’t suitable for every project, person, or organisation. But if you’ve ever watched a research project become irrelevant before it was finished, or struggled to communicate findings because you tried to explain too much at once, it might be worth trying. Break off one small piece, answer one question well, and see what happens next.