It seems to be the flavour of the month. The hunter being hunted; policemen getting arrested; doctors catching swine flu; and now, market researchers being researched.
It’s been a torrid and troublesome time for market researchers. Too many of their ilk is being forced to face up to their goof ups. Two significant developments these last few weeks have brought the researchers into spotlight. And not for good reasons either.
The first one pertains to radio listenership data in the recently published Indian Readership Survey (IRS). Big 92.7 FM has been shown doing well in cities like Ahmedabad, Jabalpur and Jaipur. Good news to BIG FM you think. Only problem is, Big FM doesn’t even operate in these markets! Even an illiterate lunatic, half drunk and dazed, woken in the middle of the night would tell you something is amiss here.
And you are talking IRS – that’s the largest continuous readership research study in the world with an annual sample size exceeding 2.5 lakh respondents!
A giant goof up to say the least.
The second pertains to another reputed research company - A.C. Nielson - one of the world’s largest retail audit firms. If you didn’t know much about them, this is what they have to say about themselves: We offer an integrated suite of market information gathered from a wide range of sources, advanced information management tools, sophisticated analytical systems and methodologies to help our clients find the best paths to growth.
Their monthly reports, covering tons of categories, spell out what every marketer wishes to know: who buys, what is bought, when it is bought, how much is bought, where it is bought and much more.
What seems to be the problem? Nielson’s clients are increasingly disillusioned by the numbers reported. The sales figures stated by Nielson don’t tally with the sales figures the companies have notched up in the marketplace. If Nielson can’t project my company sales properly, how can I expect them to project others’, they argue. Valid, one has to agree.
And some of them have even stopped subscribing to these expensive Nielson reports. You are not talking any Johnny-come-lately but the big and the best of Indian marketing - Dabur, Godrej and I gather, even Hindustan Unilever.
Nielson, after denying these allegations, have finally promised to look into the issue and sort things out. And so has IRS.
Researchers are being forced to do some serious soul searching!
3 comments:
Great finding Sir !
I being a research analyst had noticed similar things at work too. A common issue is that a majority problem is that they tend to rely more on applications such as SPSS, Choices etc while estimating and forecasting data.
These softwares execute results taking a combination of key elements such as segmentation based on geography, socio-class etc.
So in most cases at the end of testing different combinations, many researchers forget to take into consideration basic issues like market presence, share of the market by volume and value etc...
Sir, Very Good Topic to be discussed... I would like to add on few more points which I grabbed out of my experience as a Market Researcher... At the macro level of this particular industry, most of the brands rely on the data mined or harvested or generated by Big Research names... The Research companies by and large rely on the field executives who work in the field to capture the data... and these executives are not fully trained and they are mostly not professionals... I have seen many of the field executives carries out minimum 5 to 8 different projects at a time assigned by different research agencies and they know all the tricks how to do the best and authenticated fudging... No research organisations do have a strong internal team for data collection which is supposed to be the core activity of research... Moreover research managers work on project deadlines and they give a minimum of 30% guarantee to their clients on data quality... and when it comes to Nielsen, they are "Fudging Mammoths"... They prepare the research contract in such a way that the clients cannot interrupt in the research process (for quality checks or even for research progress) till the time they give the final presentation... I have seen big number of people just doing data manipulation work from the already executed projects in Nielsen's office. With regard to IMRB, out of the overloaded project pressure they push the field executives to take as many projects and also help them to collect the data in the easiest way but they are good pay masters... I have even seen some big brands deploy some small but professional research agencies for their key projects since they can give them a good quality work... Some kind of innovative technology oriented research tools would bring best quality by making the market stake holders to record the data by their own or by automatic pattern bypassing the third person (data collection executive)in this process... the research seeking brands do have to demand the agencies on these grounds...
Happy New Year 2010.
Portugal
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