Marketing studies in the do-it-yourself era

Posted by Thomas Naude-Filonnière, on August 5, 2016

In recent years, the culture of “makers” has been developing, those individuals who want to do it themselves by taking advantage of the possibilities offered by new technologies such as 3D printing or robotics. Quantitative studies are also affected by this trend: just like individuals, marketing professionals, helped by the arrival of numerous online tools (and motivated by declining budgets) have become “makers”, doing more and more by themselves, rather than having them done.

Creating and distributing an online questionnaire has now become simple. In recent years, tools have multiplied and have especially improved so much that they exceed professional software in some respects. Solutions like Typeform have freed themselves from the traditional codes of the market research questionnaire to focus on ergonomics and user experience. Result: a questionnaire that is very engaging for the respondent, which makes you want and allows for high return rates.

The tool is not everything: the levers for the reliability of a study

However, the tool is not everything. While it is now easy to carry out market research with these solutions, nothing guarantees the reliability of the results obtained. And this reliability involves two major levers:

• A high-quality, well-structured questionnaire that is free of bias
• A representative sample of the target

The first point to be addressed is that of sampling: who to interview? If the study focuses on an identified population — such as current customers, website visitors, or members of a Facebook community — then things are simple: these people are contacted directly by email or by publishing the link to the questionnaire. However, numerous studies will focus on a wider target: all French people, consumers of a product category, people under 25, car owners... There, the risks of leading to unreliable results increase considerably. It is tempting to publish the survey on a Facebook group dealing with the subject or by sending it to loved ones, but do these individuals represent all the profiles present in the target? And if they are close people, will they be really objective in their responses?

The other major point concerns the questionnaire itself. The formulation and organization of a questionnaire will affect the responses collected. The way in which a question is written and the vocabulary used will impact the answers that will be given. For reliable results, it is obviously crucial to have questions that are as neutral and clear as possible. In the same way, the order of the questions will have a major impact on the answers. The same question asked at the beginning and at the end of the questionnaire — after having explored the subject in detail — may obtain very different results.

Reconnecting marketing research to today's world

Traditional research institutes are a solution to avoid these pitfalls and ensure the reliability of your study. You still need to have the time, faced with deadlines that often last several months, and above all, you need to have the means to do so. Especially since the processes of large institutes, sometimes involving 8 to 10 people, can be “oversized” when it comes to managing small studies.

Market research must be reinventing itself to support this do-it-yourself trend, while ensuring the quality of the studies and the reliability of their results. The council, which guarantees this quality, must remain present during the key stages, especially before the study. It must also, in part, be dematerialized and integrated into the user experience to guide them in their choices. The objective? To be able to carry out a quality study, simply, without being a study professional. At the same time, studies must become more agile and rely on automation to reconnect to a world where real time has become the norm. It is by combining simplicity, responsiveness and advice during key stages that tomorrow's studies will be built.

This article was originally published on Professional marketing.