Market Research Newness

Virgin Research!



By Harish Bijoor






Market Research is too important a subject to be left to the Market Research people. A statement enough to get me on the hit list of many an MR man, woman and child in the great Indian marketplace for Market Research!

There is for sure a case to involve the “all and sundry” in the process of understanding the process. A need for a thorough overhaul of sorts. A thorough shake-up of the traditional paradigm. Market Research in India has remained somnolent for far too long. Too static. Too traditional. And too bound by the manual of marketing research, carved in stone.

The times have changed. People, habits, usages, mind-sets, culture, icons, marketing men and women, markets, consumers, non-consumers, retailers, wholesalers, intermediaries of other kinds, and literally every constituent in the marketing chain of events has changed. Nothing indeed is the way it was. Why then must MR be the way it was? Time to change. Time for a radical kick-up of the tried and tested ways!


Sample-based research, Intrusive research, the omni-present Questionnaire, the Omniscient Focus group and the Omnipotent Dipstick of every hue and variety, are testimonies of the life gone by.

But all of a sudden, the nifty marketer is jolted. Much of what he saw and read in those bound MR reports are not happening the way they were meant to. Micro tests are not predicting properly, Usage and Attitude trends tapped in the traditional way aren’t working, and life in the fast lane of Marketing is getting unpredictable, despite the back-up of reams and reams of consumer insight, gathered the painstaking way.

The 2X2 matrices, the trend lines, those very impressive nuts and bolts are just not impressive enough. Time to sit up and think why.

The consumer seems to live and breathe a more dynamic mind, mood and language than the one represented in well-crafted PowerPoint presentations made off high-end laptops!

All that apart, I make out a case on the methodology of market research itself. I make a strong case to say that briefing a market researcher on the product and its consumption patterns, the target segment, the demographics to check and stuff of this kind itself is a technique that is passé. Let us floss over this process completely.

A brief is meant to be really brief. When you market research your way through a category of a Lux or a laxative in the market, investigate with the eye and mind of a newborn child. Investigate a category not based on the bias of a brief. Probe not deeper into the category by reading up all that is available on the category. Probe into a territory of research as a newborn. Probe with the eagerness and undiluted enthusiasm of a child on the prowl. Virgin research! Shall we call it that?

An approach such as this is needed to jolt the complacent from their cocoons of contentment. Market Research is getting too easy. Is it getting quite like the territory of the Consultant? The guy who picks the mind of this and that to arrive at a theory that is but a poll of executive opinion? Can market research afford to be just that?

How many can really stand up and say that the bias of the client does not find its way into the end-diagnostics that are presented by a whole host of MR practitioners across the country? If you want to challenge this, the best way is Virgin research. Just take a three line brief from the client. Read less of the written stuff. Read less of the syndicated material on the category you investigate. Surf the Net even less to get this view and that opinion.

Go forth into the market knowing nothing that can cloud the insight you will gain from the market. Make your methodology that much more open-ended, that much more explorative, and that much more reliable. Base it less on the bias of the category and the bias of the client.

Be prepared as well to present to the client findings that might just not jell with the sophistry of category understanding, which is the prerogative of the client. Be prepared to feign ignorance of the basics that the client assumes you must know. This is no longer an embarrassment. The true-blue client will see this as strength, in times to come.

But give the client that much more of understanding. Understanding that does not necessarily toe the line of expectation. Instead, understanding and consumer insight that is that much more pure and unaffected. Understanding that may well nigh be complementary to what the client already has.

Is this how market research of the future will be done?

I hope so. Hope so! Hope so! Hope so!


The author is CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com