New capabilities are emerging that promise to remake the landscape of what research is and does. What’s less clear is how these changes enable marketers to better achieve their goals. 

The Upside

Some of the biggest potential growth areas include:

1. More data: measurement of more consumer behaviors

2. More control: predictability of consumers’ response to marketing initiatives

3. More depth: understanding how consumers’ minds work

Some of the behaviors that we take for granted today didn’t exist 10 years ago, for the most part. For example, Web search, digital media, e-commerce, and social media have become important to understanding consumers. Measuring behavior related to these activities ranks high on the marketing researcher’s priority list. The list is still expanding, thanks to new technologies, especially mobile. More new behaviors are, in principle, measurable, such as checking in with your social network from each new location. 

Even behaviors that are not new can be more comprehensively measured. More points of interaction between a consumer and a brand are amenable to measurement, such as bank customers’ visits to tellers, ATMs or bank websites, or their interactions with call centers and interactive advertising. Since the new behaviors are electronically captured, the opportunity to use the information for marketing analysis is abundant. More variables and more granular measurement should lead to more predictive power, especially anticipating consumer response to marketing actions. This, in turn, should lead to better decisions about what marketing actions to take and how to allocate valuable resources.

Questions:

1. How can researchers determine what consumers want in the future? Simply ask them?

2. Do you see any privacy issues in this material? If so, what are they?