“The great thing about big data is that it helps us answer so many questions about our consumers and shoppers”. I heard this line (almost word for word) twice in the last two weeks, and it struck me as an interesting theme that at once helps describe what is right, and so wrong, with the current obsession with big data. Yes, big data enables marketers to answer all sorts of questions. Huge numbers of questions in fact. Arguably in these data rich days anyone can answer questions. What separates great marketing from average is therefore not the ability to answer questions, but rather the ability to ask the right questions. So whether a marketer or working for a market research agency – how do you decide which questions to ask – the market research challenge is, where to focus?
There was a time when data was s
carce for most marketers (and I guess it still is for many). When I first started marketing in developing markets one of the hardest things to get used to was the fact that the usual ‘comfort blanket’ of familiar data sources was missing. Often, we had nothing. We would use government statistics to estimate the market size, and that was about as far as things went. Often we were entering into new markets, had millions of questions, but because we had little data, we knew that answering those questions would be time consuming and expensive. We had to be discerning, and learn, from our experience, which questions would be most valuable to answer.
Fast forward a few (!) years and data is everywhere. Reports fill hard drives, presentations regurgitate data with an alarming frequency. But how much of this information is useful? How much insightful? How much is leading to significant shifts in the activities of companies, and therefore having the potential to drive significant value? In a world of data ubiquity, value comes less in the ability to answer questions; arguably anyone can achieve that. Rather, asking the right market research questions (and then, of course answering them) is where real value is created.
What would be most valuable to know from this market research?
When we are working on a research project, we brainstorm out all of the possible questions that we might want to answer. The list is huge, covering all aspects of understanding consumers and shoppers. They cover behavior, motivations, barriers and attitudes. It’s fun, energetic, but ultimately low value. The value is created when we work on which questions we are going to focus on. By the way, that doesn’t mean we are going to ignore the others – many of them will be answered in the course of the research anyway – but the key to great research is the ability to focus on the really high value questions.
So how do we decide which questions are most valuable?
Dig for more market research questions
At this stage we do dig in deep to understand all of the assumptions behind each potential question. Each suggestion, idea or question can often hide other assumptions or questions. For example: a question “will putting the product on a gondola increase sales” hides a number of different points assumptions or questions. Firstly that shoppers maybe don’t visit the home shelf. That impulse sales are a big opportunity. That a gondola drives impulse. Or that impulse sales might drive additional consumption. Understanding which of these our market research should answer first is key.
This process creates even more questions, but within them we often find much higher value questions than the ones we started with.
Ask the “what” and the “why”
There are lots of questions, often starting with where, how, who. Behind each of these is often a “what” and a “why” question. I don’t have any statistics behind this, but my feeling is that more often than not, answering why questions, and what questions, are typically more valuable than any other type of questions.
Convert the questions and ideas to hypotheses
This is the magic in this process. Without getting into the statistical benefits of expressing everything as hypotheses (this isn’t a statistics blog!) converting ideas or questions into hypotheses has a major benefit. A hypothesis is a statement, which can be proved or disproved. This simple step makes the whole focusing process so much simpler, because it makes it a lot easier to consider the potential actions that you might take as a result of answering the hypothesis. Don’t ask me why – it just seems to work. Trust me!
Consider the potential action that answering this question might lead to
Answering a question adds no value, beyond extending our knowledge. It is the actions we would take that will ultimately create value. Asking “what would we do with this information” is the best way of understanding the value of the answer to a question.
Consider how difficult or expensive that action might be, too
The other benefit of consider potential actions, is to understand how easy or difficult it might be to act on the answer to this question. And, how expensive that might be, both to implement, but also to research in the first place.
Prioritize high value, low cost, easy to implement questions
Armed with this information we can now prioritize: focusing our research on questions which are most likely to deliver a great result.
The more you want to know, the more generic the market research findings will be
In any research study, the more ground that is covered, the less it is possible to cover that ground in depth. Marketers, data providers and research companies: you will add the most value to your customer or employer by focusing on the highest value questions. Need to know a little more about setting up market research projects? Check out this free e-book. It focuses on shopper research, but covers a lot of ground which would be useful for any research project.
