Big Data Is Changing Market Research Career Paths (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hey friends, Katherine here from Research Rockstar. Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting at the Joint Insights Association Chapter Conference in New York City. It was a joint conference for the Philadelphia, Greater New York City, and New England chapters. And today what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you an excerpt from my presentation for those of you who weren't able to attend live. Now, I confess I was planning on doing the entire presentation and even a little bit more today here live on YouTube, but based on feedback that I've received from people due to the length, it's been suggested to me that I should break this into two parts. So I'm going to do one part today and one part next week. So I'll do the first part. Well, here we go. So the title of my talk was The Big Data Tidal Wave is Creating New Career Paths for Market Research and Insights Professionals. Are you ready? The reason why I wanted this title so badly and was something that I really worked on was because there's a different session title that I see at a lot of national conferences. So whatever market research conferences you attend, and there are certainly no shortage of them these days, at just about any national conference you'll have a session that's titled something to the effect of is big data putting market research out of business? Well, what do you think? Is big data putting market research out of business? It's the wrong question. It's totally irrelevant. It's not a question of whether or not big data is putting market research out of business and thus impacting our career paths. The question is, is the market research profession evolving to meet the needs of increasingly data-driven organizations? Big data is just part of what happens when corporations decide they want to be customer-centric and data-driven. Big data in itself is not a threat. What is a threat is if the market research profession doesn't evolve to thrive in organizations that are increasingly data-fluent and data-agnostic. That is, they use many data sources and many different data methodologies. So let's take a few minutes to talk about some of the issues and how they actually are going to have an impact on the career paths available to us who are in professional market research. Well, one of the things we have to understand is that, again, big data isn't just happening because it's cool or it's new or it's novel. The truth is that big data is just what's happening because organizations are pursuing data-centric marketing. So as more organizations are doing agile marketing, direct-to-consumer marketing, things like programmatic ad buying and personalization, these are all very current strategic marketing initiatives that either use or generate enormous amounts of data. These are the things that are happening at a strategic level in marketing organizations today. So if you haven't heard of some of these things, I definitely encourage you to read a couple articles on each one. And there are other issues too, but these are the four that I most commonly see in organizations today that really are driving their use of big data, whether it's as acquiring big data in order to do these things or they end up basically generating their own big data because they're doing these things. So again, it's important context because if we're trying to understand how our careers are going to change, we need to think at a higher level about how organizations are using all kinds of data that relate to their customers and markets. I don't want to overly focus just on the traditional market research data because that's just one piece of the pie these days. Related to the fact that businesses are pursuing marketing strategies that either generate or require use of big data and highly scalable data sources is that they have access to so many data sources these days. So here's four high-level categories of data that businesses routinely have access to these days. First of all, they have access to passive data, right? Internet of things, sensor data, think about your Nest thermometer in a consumer's house or geospatial or other types of location data, right? There are a lot of devices that provide that sort of data. There are a lot of ways we capture that kind of data. So for different companies, different brands, they have access to passive data. And this can be a wonderful thing. It's continuous. You're not asking people to self-report. And depending on what kind of passive data they're using, it can be generating enormous volumes of data. Then of course there's transactional data. And this is data that comes from your customer relationship management or CRM software. It could be data that's getting extracted from customer emails. It could be data from a loyalty program. For example, there are large grocery chains that not only have loyalty programs, but really do a beautiful job of leveraging all of that data so they can spot trends. You know, what are people actually buying? What are they buying more of? What are they buying less of? What kinds of coupon offers or discounts are generating the most sales activity? Enormous amounts of data that are being leveraged so that grocery chains and other organizations that have loyalty card data, again, they're generating and using their own big data basically. Of course, companies that sell online have access to e-commerce data. And of course, there's a lot of financial profiling data out there about consumers, not just in the United States, but in many, many countries around the world. Of course, there's also market research data. Market research data is still part of the mix, right? So organizations still do surveys and focus groups and ethnographies and increasingly cool things like mobile ethnography and other kinds of scalable online qualitative research. There's also home scanner panels, that sort of thing if you're in consumer goods. And then of course another big category is online behavioral data. Online behavioral data is things that come from like digital ad tracking, social network activity, cookie and pixel tracking. And if you have ever had an ad follow you all over the internet, that's called remarketing, right? And that takes advantage of these things. So these are four high-level sources of data that organizations have access to. So it's not that big data is killing market research, it's that the data pie is really growing. Organizations have access to so much data these days and conventional market research data going out and collecting primary data through either qualitative or quantitative methods is in many cases still part of the mix, but the pie has grown. And so it's just the context of where we're playing, right? Where we're playing, where we're working. And as market researchers we're increasingly playing in a playground that includes a lot of other things going on. The good news is that a lot of this does create opportunities. So let's talk about what some of the opportunities are. But before we talk about specific ones, I want to ask you a question. I want you to think about, you know, in terms of your own career. If you think about in your own career, does it feel to you like big data is actually having an impact on your career? I suspect that for most of you there's been a little bit of fear and uncertainty. And I've had this conversation with many people, many students at Research Rockstar about the perception or the concern that because organizations are putting so much budget into big data that it's going to hurt the market research budget. But what I want to emphasize is this bigger data pie, it's really ultimately a good thing. It means that organizations, that people in leadership in the C-suite are more data driven and customer centric than ever before. They want to use data. We don't have to convince them to use data. What we need to work on though, is the fact that they are, we want them to use the right data for the right business needs. But big data is not killing your career path, it's just that certain things are adjusting because of the issue that we're part of a bigger pie. So let's look at a little bit of evidence about how that has an impact on our career opportunities. Here's an example of job posting that I just pulled offline, pulled from an online resource, excuse me, just a few short days ago. And in this case, it's a public job posting from Adobe. And I want you to guess the job title. So Adobe is looking for somebody to join the team. The role will conduct customer and market research, which will drive strategic product and service development across Adobe's digital imaging businesses. Candidates must have experience conducting customer research at all stages of product development, including customer discovery and segmentation, developing and executing research, leveraging qualitative and quantitative methods, analyze and contrast market and customer behavior, and then develop and present strategic, clear, and relevant insights. So what do you think? What do you think the job title for that might be? Well, the job title? User Research and Innovation Specialist. Now I know that might come as a shock. It sounded like it was going to be a market research job, right? But here's part of the thing about market research being part of a bigger pie. Sometimes our job titles are changing, and sometimes the groups within an organization, the actual functional teams, departments, and groups that use what we would consider market research methodologies, are not necessarily market research departments anymore. So market research methodologies can be, in this case, used by somebody who works in a user research function, or an innovation function. So it's still taking advantage of many of the skills that you have as a professional market researcher, but the job title may not actually have market research in the title. Let's take a look at another one. In this case, we have a job title for somebody who will be responsible for helping to lead strategic discovery work, including ethnographic research studies on important parts of the customer experience. This company is seeking a talented person to drive strategic projects that deliver valuable voice-of-the-customer insight to enable the continuous creation and delivery of exceptional customer experiences. This person will be responsible for leading strategic discovery work, including ethnographic research... This individual will create CX, best practice benchmarks, and conduct key metric comparisons across industry competitors... What do we think? What's the job title? Well, we saw a few references to ethnographic research. That feels like market research. Voice-of-the-customer insights? Well, that is slam-dunk, a conventional market research category of work. Qualitative deep dives? Sounds like market research to me. Now, I know I've already kind of given away the answer here a bit, but it's not a market research job. It's a senior manager customer experience. So this is another case that really reflects how job titles are changing and how market research is often now part of a bigger pie. So in this case, this is a CX job. Now, in some organizations, CX does report to market research. In some organizations, they're peer organizations that both report to, say, a CMO or a VP of marketing. But there are definitely a lot of organizations where the CX organization has a completely different reporting structure than market research. Now, I know what you're thinking. How can a team and a role that's clearly doing market research be reporting in elsewhere? Because it's not about the data itself, it's about the application. So organizations that have CX departments and CX functions, these functions sometimes are outside of the marketing function. They may not be somebody that reports directly to a CMO type of line of command, if you will. So that's another great example of really how things are changing. But let's take a look at something that might feel a little more comfortable. Senior manager of consumer insights. Now, there's a job title a lot of market research and insights professionals like, right? So the title consumer insights has become increasingly common in recent years. But let's take a look at what this company is looking for. This is a job ad that was posted just recently from Smuckers. And they are looking for some really interesting things for their senior manager of consumer insights. They want somebody with deep knowledge of primary marketing research methodologies and techniques. Okay, that sounds good. Solid experience in syndicated data and analytics. Well, that's pretty common if you're in the CPG space, which obviously Smuckers is in. So when you're dealing with things where you want point of sale data and retail data, then you're going to want somebody who knows syndicated data sources. A strategic mindset and ability to effectively communicate actionable insights. Clearly something we always strive to do. But here's a couple of things that are really important. Ability to integrate multiple data sources to develop comprehensive analyses. And this is increasingly something along these lines is increasingly something that I see in job postings related to market research and insights, where the employer, the person who's looking to hire you, really wants people who are data agnostic. And by data agnostic, I mean, I don't mean that you don't that you don't really care about data, but they're agnostic about the source of the data and the type of data that you're working with. You want the best data and you're not hung up on making sure that every possible need is served by, say, surveys or focus groups. That you're somebody who can work with multiple types of data sources, including primary and syndicated and increasingly big data. So it's a really strong recurring theme and job ads for people with market research and consumer insights is that the employers really want people who are comfortable working with multiple types of data and not strictly surveys and focus groups. Let me just show one other thing, one other example before I conclude today. Here's another job opening that was just posted in the last few days from American Standard and obviously a really big well-known brand. And here they're looking for a senior manager of market research and business analytics. I increasingly see job titles that combine research, insights, and analytics. And I do think that that is somewhat of a reflection of not only that more organizations have more data sources, but again that they want to break down the silos between those data sources. They want people who are in research and insights to be able to work with a lot of different types of data. And in some cases, guess what? It does skew to the quantitative. Now there's clearly great opportunities for market researchers who are more from the qualitative side. I see a lot of interest in ethnography and deep dive, you know, really trying to understand the consumer types of studies. But I don't think anybody can honestly say that at this point in the market research profession that there isn't a bent towards quantitative skills. There is, but that just because there's a slight bias towards quantitative research doesn't mean that there are no jobs for qualitative researchers. But what I do say, what I would say is I do think that there's more quantitative opportunities than qualitative opportunities, but the clients and organizations that value qualitative research really value it a lot. So yes, there's a bias towards quant, but it doesn't mean that qual is going away. That's clearly not the case. In this particular job ad though, there are a couple things I really want to point out. Here we see that one of the requirements for the senior manager of market research and business analytics is to partner with IT to establish an analytics platform and drive data warehousing and data harmonization efforts required to support holistic analytics strategy. Now I know that's a bit of a mouthful, but the point is is that American Standard and many other employers expect people who work in market research and insights to increasingly intersect with IT because IT is responsible for the big databases, right? So in a lot of organizations that's true. And so they expect us to be able to work collaboratively with IT and other functional area specialists to make sure that whatever the data source is, that we have it, we know what it is, we know where the various data points are that we have about customer attitudes and behaviors are collected and stored, and that we can integrate that to really meet the business's needs. So again, big data is not killing market research, it's not killing our career paths, but our career paths are changing. And a couple of the big themes about our career paths changing have to do with one, job titles are increasingly fragmented, so don't just look for job titles that have market research in them because you'll find yourself increasingly limited. And two, you want to make sure that you can really speak to employers and future employers about your ability to work with multiple data sources and to be able to work on cross-functional teams and collaborative teams where you will intersect with people who have other areas of data specialty. Now for some professional market researchers, that may mean a little training is going to be in line or specifically seeking out opportunities to develop these skills with your current employer. You know, volunteering for cross-functional teams that may be creating different projects that do rely on integrating multiple data sources. But if you are somebody who's in the market research profession and you're really looking to future-proof your career, this is one of the things to be thinking about. Do you want to be somebody who is going to be able to apply for the positions, the increasing number of positions, that do require the ability to work with multiple data sources, including data sources and types that may be newer for people in the market research profession. So thank you for for joining me today. Again, that was sort of a little bit of a part one to a two-parter because again I was told not to go too long. So so hopefully that wasn't too painfully long for you folks. If you have questions, please post them. I really appreciate it. You can post them here on YouTube. You can also post questions to me on on Twitter at Research Rocks. If you have any questions, do let me know. And next week I'm going to continue the conversation. We'll do a little bit of a part two. Thanks everybody and have a great day.