Top Trends of the Decade: Looking Back
As an industry driven by data and information, market research and public opinion polling has seen dramatic changes in the last ten years and will no doubt change quickly and in big ways during the next ten.
Looking back, here are what we consider to be the five biggest changes that shaped current challenges faced by market research and opinion polling:
- Online data collection using sample panels became the dominant mode of surveying, displacing a huge industry in telephone surveying. Plus there has been a dramatic decline in households owning landlines, which makes the ideal of probability sampling extremely difficult to achieve.
- Survey technology made data collection easy and cheap which means that a lot of market research became a commodity, resulting in industry consolidation and need to find new ways of adding value.
- An explosion of too many surveys, which are everywhere, powered by simple tools like Survey Monkey. Along with this there has been a dramatic decline in response rates, bringing the issue of quality to the fore like never before.
- Statistical and mathematical expertise grew in demand. There is so much data and information, and it is so easy to get. But who knows what to do with it all?
- “Audience-ready” reports became more valuable. Newspapers laid off staff and market research departments downsized, demanding a level of professional involvement to ensure that research reports are easy to read, interpret, and ready to deliver to the audiences who need them most.
One product of these five trends is Versta Research’s focus on high-level expertise and academic brainpower so that you get smart, creative, and flexible market research. Another is the skill and commitment we have in helping you communicate research to managers, clients, reporters, and the audiences you need to reach.
In our next post we’ll highlight what we predict will be the five biggest trends that will shape market research challenges in the decade to come.
—Joe Hopper, Ph.D.
