Editorial: Pop Science Books

Reg Baker in his inevitable style posted a wonderfully forthright blog piece (click here to read) bemoaning the industries taste in books, pointing out that a great majority of the books in the list of nominees for the books that had the most transformative impact on market research were Popular Science and highlighted how unscientific some of these types of books are, championing potentially totally bogus theories that have not been subjected to proper scientific scrutiny. 

Now I can total understand his emotional reaction to this. I have exactly the same response when I go into health food shops and see all homoeopathic remedies on the shelf and am horrified that they can get away with their often totally bogus healing claims that have not been subjected to any rigorous medical trials.

But I have a few points on this that I thought I would share:

1. Books are not apples:  and in most cases not in the class of homoeopathic style remedies, one or two bad ones do not rot the whole crop.  Whilst there are some very bad pop science books, there are also some really brilliant ones that help, as Tom Ewing has pointed out, eloquently digest and explain often very complex subject matter in a clear and understandable way. To draw over riding conclusions about pop science books on the bases of analysis of parts of the sample is in itself is bad science.

2. We can learn things from all types of books:  I think reading pop science books is as important as reading more serious business books and as is in fact being open to read anything from any source. To be closed to one genre of books is like gathering research from an unbiased sample.   I am a believer in the wisdom of the crowd and any business book bogus or not that says reaches the New York Times best seller bogus or not, I would want to read almost on principal to find out what thoughts and ideas people find so interesting.  Its not to say you cannot read these with a critical mind.  What is more just because something is packaged up as a light read does not make it a bad thing.  It like a classical musician dismissing all pop music as rubbish and not listening to it - they would be missing some great tunes and conceptual musical ideas.

3. MR is a branch of pop science:  We in Market research are all actually in business of conducting "popular science".  Market Research is in theory a branch of science but very rarely do we adhere to the rigorous standards that scientist need to adhere to where conducting proper scientific research.  Who for example has ever conducted a double blind trial as part of a market research experiment? Next to nobody.  Who puts up all their raw data from their experiments up for peer review? Next to nobody.  Have I ever read an MR paper that would stand up to a rigorous scientific review?  Well yes, but not the vast majority and (certainly not any of the ones I have written I am afraid!).  

4. This type of debate is important:  So it is easy to take a pop at what Reg has written. But I would seriously encourage Reg to keep writing these types of posts. Without Reg Baker the MR industry would be woefully short of serious internal detractors and we need them.  Despite what we think, that we are all firing pops at each other in the MR industry,  very few people actually have the courage to stand up and hold something to account which is essentially what Reg is trying to do here.   

5. Science and commerce play by totally different rules: The reason is we are operating in a commercial environment where the market decides on whether something is right on wrong true or false not science.  We are all out peddling snake oil on one level or another and the once that can do it most successfully are hailed as kings.  Be it a company putting water in a bottle and selling it as a remedy or Apple packing up a few computer chips in nice wrapping and selling them for a lot more than their inherent value all commerce is a form of "deception of the truth", selling something for more than its inherent value or actual worth. As market researchers we are often called upon to work out what truths and falsehoods we can get away with, what deceptions will fly.  So for our industry to be respected we have to ensure we do try to re-enforce the types of standards that Reg Baker with every fiber of his being is trying to espouse.  

What Reg Baker is simply asking us to be is more scientific in our approach which I hail. 

What is the next big thing?

I asked the panel of judges of the my research transformation awards, who were made up of industry thought leaders and innovators from across the global market research industry, to make their prediction of what they thought would be transforming market research in the future. There were some very interesting and intelligent thoughts and so I thought I would share these predictions with you:

• Consumers waking up to the value of their own data.

• The economy ... the last recession seems to have been one of the drivers of the current wave of innovation in research (as well as in marcomms); I suspect that a new economic crisis so soon after the last one will lead to a lot of client insecurity and expect less rather than more interest in experimentation

• Leveraging social media profiles and the open social graph to understand respondents as well as online advertisers understand site visitors.

• Big data; the convergence of multiple data streams from diverse sources (research, crm, social media, etc..) and analyzed using Bayesian or other techniques to predict behavior

• I strongly believe in the potential of ethnographic research - offline or online. Using mobile technology is only one of a number of avenues worth pursuing. Unfortunately, only mobile ethnography featured among the innovations discussed in the survey.

• Behavioural Economics and what Daniel Kahneman refers to as 'System 1 thinking' are going to be central to the next generation of research approaches. They fundamentally shift our understanding of behaviour and how we make decisions, and challenge research orthodoxies. They provide a framework for approaches that better understand and predict behaviour, and provide a higher purpose for research games. Games are going to be big when people have worked out what to do with them. For me, creating research games that can replicate moods, mindsets and hot-states will ensure that we get closer to how people really think, feel, behave and decide in context.

• It's the mindset.....The mindset change that "Research" is everywhere. Everyone does it and therefore it is not the bastion of 'traditional researchers'. Once that is clear, there will be a lot more openness, innovation and Change. The next thing to watch out for is the Blinkers-off mode from new-gen researchers - straddling most of the techniques we discussed in the survey!

• Although it's been mentioned throughout the survey, research communities and co-creation are indicative of the hyper-connected world we live in. By increasing the engagement between companies, researchers and consumers directly we empower the consumer. Providing them with a tangible connection between themselves and businesses that look to serve them. Not only does this provide exceptional results when applied correctly it also has the power to break down barriers between researchers and respondents and in a self-regulating industry were trust is paramount this can only be good thing. In the future the direct connections between researchers, respondents and businesses will only continue to grow.

• Mobile Social Media Research

• I think the future of MR is a transformation of client side research departments into facilitators of 24/7 interaction between companies and their audiences. Technology, especially social media technology, will have a key part to play in this.

• Big Data is the biggest opportunity and threat to the MR industry the next years.

• The day that brands prototype in real/near real-time. Performance->Feedback->Revision->Performance->Feedback->Revision->...

• The realization and acknowledgement that the random probability sample is dead (note, not impossible to achieve but unfeasible both in terms of timing and costs). 2. Mobile. 3. Pay for performance.

• Community panels

• Digital marketing research will become a subset of marketing. it is the only way the sums add up. the old marketing versus MR split is dead in the digital world

• I've been reading a lot about Identity Economics, how our identities and the norms we expect to see within these identities shape consumption patterns.  Brand communication can influence our identities and therefore our consumption.  I'd like to explore how we can adapt some of the research techniques used in sociological identity studies within communications research.

• Client pricing revolution!  (Some) clients, especially those with MROCs, have already figured out that the historical service-model can, and should be disrupted.  Market Research companies must deliver consulting value, and be prepared to separate their operational costs (eg Sample, Programming/Hosting) from their consulting fees.

• The merging and mixing of methodologies

• "Global migration to mobile devices as the way people organize their communications, their activities, AND (as mobile payments systems evolve) the way they organize their financial lives, suggests that mobile devices will become the primary channel for many forms of MR in the future.

• I am eager to see our industry deal with this evolution above and beyond the work done to date where mobile devices are used primarily as ""data collection"" devices.  I am eager to see our best MR minds use mobile devices the way real people use them -- to share not just information but also experiences and emotions."

• Payment by results.

• I think that, over time, CMOs will start to realize that their organizations should talk less and listen more.  They'll decide (finally) to increase the proportion of their marketing budgets devoted to research, and that will change their growth trajectories.

• Predictive techniques that can shorten the length of surveys

• Facebook!

• I think the type of interactive things you can do with mobile phones and tablet are set to transform market research.  e.g. sitting and watching the TV and giving live feedback, voting on your feet about the products you like as you go around a supermarket.

• I think we are at the infancy of text analytics people are going to get smarter and smarter at this.

The Winners of The Research Transformation award

These are the result of the Research Transformations awards which I was asked to organise for a special session at the NewMR Festival.   These awards were initiated to celebrate the things that have had (or are having!) the most transformative impact on market research.  The awards have been judged by an esteemed panel of 30 leading research innovators and thought leaders from across the industry.  The full list of judges is published below and I would like to thank them all for their time and active contributions to these awards.

This is the judging survey and if you would like to CAST YOUR OWN VOTES on these awards please do,  and I hope to be able to publishing the results of this open vote in the future, it may be interesting to compare the open vote with those of the judging panel:
http://qsurvey.gmisurveys.com/dc/index.html?p=jwoYlg

The big ideas that are transforming how we think about market research
The first award is for the big ideas that are transforming how we think about market research. Over the few years a number of major ideas and theme have emerged that have shaped the way we think.

1. Listening rather than asking
The emergence of social media has opened up a whole new viewpoint on how to conduct research moving away from asking questions to listening to what people are saying.  What is has spawned a whole new  industry monitoring and measuring and analysing what we are saying when we are not asked questions by market researcher.  Listening is becoming more important than asking.

2. The hidden decision making process of our brain 

We are slowly learning more and more about how our brains work and we are finding out that the way we decide things and make decisions is a lot more complicated that we think and a lot of it happens outside of our consciousness.  This thought is really transforming how many market researchers think about conducting research, no longer can we rely on simply asking questions we have look further.
3. Information can be beautiful 

We in the market research agency can be labelled by the outside world an boring numbers people but the arrival of inforgraphics onto the scene and new story telling technique have started to make our industry a whole lot more sexy!

This is the full list of nominations.... 

Wisdom of the crowds: Discovering that groups can make intelligent decisions

Information can be beautiful: The idea that data can be sexy, and there are a lot more creative ways of presenting data than a bar chart

The hidden decision making process of our brain: Leaning that our concious mind is not always in control of our decisions

Herd thinking: Understanding the power of social influence

Co-creation: We can work together to create things

Gamification: Using gaming techniques to get respondents to think more effectively

Listening rather than asking: The idea of gaining incite from the mass of communicaton happening on the internet and using observation and means of conducting research

Big data: The emerging opportunity to consolidate information from all sources of sources to undertake super analysis

Thin slicing: The idea that you can generate a lot more incite than you think from very small data sources

The communitisation of market research: We are all sharing a lot more ideas & information with things like twitter, linkedin and blogs and this is "superscalling" our industry

General research techniques & methodologies that are transforming how we conduct market research
The second award is for the specific techniques and methodologies that have had a transformative impact on market research.  I asked the judges not to pick out specifically the ones that had had most impact but pick out the methodologies and techniques that resonated most with them personally

.1. Research communities

Citation: MROC communities have been the real success story for market research over recent years, spawning a raft of successful new business and re-engineered how many businesses are interacting with their customers
2.Co-creation
Citation: This technique has married marketers and consumer together to revolutionise product development
3. Gamification
Citation: An idea that has set the industry alight with the realms of possibilities it offers to not just gather data but to communicate with consumers and clients alike.

This full list of nominations....
Text analytics

Infographics

Mobile phone research
Co-creation

Conjoint analysis

Gamification

Predictive markets trading

Real time research

Virtual shopping

Research communities

Social media monitoring

Behavioral economics

Neuro-research

Online qualitative research

Implicit association research

Eye tracking

Online dial testing

Location based research

Mobile ethnography
Conquest sofa technique

Facial emotion recognition

Observational research

  

Books that have had a transformative impact on Market research
These are the books that our judging panels felt have had the most transformative impact on how we think about market research

1. Information is Beautiful
Citation: David McCandless’s book is a must have addition to any market researchers coffee table! The book that made data sexy

2. The Wisdom of the Crowds
Citation: James Surowiecki’s book is one of the most cited books in Market research a wonderful validation of what we all hoped to be believe that collectively we are smarter than we think.

3. How we decide
Citation: Jonah Lehrer’s book delves into the hidden decision making process of the brain, a must read for would be behavioural scientists

This is the short list of books compiled largely from a linkedIn discussion I set in place earlier this year.

Information is beautiful, David McCandless

Reality os Broken, Jane McGonnigal

Herd, Mark Earls

How we Decide, Jonah Lehrer

Where good ideas come from, Steven Johnson

The wisdom of the crowd, James Surowiecki

The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini

Art & Science of Interpreting Market Research Evidence, Smith and Fletcher

Being Wrong, Adventures in the Margin of Error, Kathryn Schulz

Consumer.ology,  Philip Graves

Black Swan,The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Resonate, Nancy Duarte

Communication

Innovation in any field is strongly linked to the quality of cross communication and the ways of communicating ideas about market research have proliferated in recent years with the advent of the internet. Here is a list of nominations of research organisations, publications and new communication channels that are transforming how we think about market research.

Research organisations
Winner:  ESOMAR
Citation: A truly global market research organisation which unites the world of market research

The nominees:

ESOMAR
WARC

The Market Research Society

The ARF

Research & Results
CASRO
QRCA

GOR
MRA 

AMA


Publications
Winner:  Research Magazine
Citation: It has its fingers on the pulse of market research ! Covering both the stories and the people behind market research and its successful blend of online and offline communication.

The nominees:

International Journal of Market Research

Quirk

Admap

Research Magazine

New media communication channels
Winner:  Twitter
Citation: Emerging as the No.1 platform for the transfer of news and ideas across the Market Research community
Runner up: The blogging community
Citation: Market research bloggers are really driving forward the market research agenda.

The nominees:

Twitter
The general blogging communities

Greenbook Blog
LinkedIn
NextGenMR
Facebook
Festival of New MR!

Finally here are some more specialist categories that I have grouped together

Data analysis
Winner: Big Data


The nominees:
Big data

Conjoint analysis

Text analytics

Semantic analysis

Discourse analysis

Respondent self analysis

Data presentation
The winner: story telling

The nominees:

Wordle

Dashboarding

Story telling

Infographics

Mobile phone based research
The winner: Location based research

The nominees:
Location based research

Mobile ethnography

Me research

Interactive experiences

Organizational
Winners: The younger generation of MR firms 

Citation: The last decade has seen the rapid growth of a number of new MR first which have really transformed and shaken up the market research industry

 The nominees:Off shoring

Existing leading MR firms

The younger generation of MR firms

New entrants from outside traditional MR

Client side market research teams

The panelist providers

Qual Techniques
Winners: Hybrid quali-quant techniques

Citation: The lines between qual and quant are rapidly blurring and techniques that blend the two are very much seen as the future.

  The nominees:
Online focus groups

Hybrid quali-quant techniques

Webcam interviews

Online offline techniques

Focus group game play techniques

NLP inspired techniques

Software
The Winner: Confirmit
Citation: Its flexibility and depth of features it has become the most widely adopted platform for designing online surveys in the MR industry

The nominees:

Confirmit

SPSS

Survey Monkey

Snap

Survey Gizmo

Sawtooth

Etabs

Market Tools

Qstreaming

Technology enabled methodologies

The Winner: Facial emotion recognition
Citation: Anyone who has seen this in action cannot be failed to be impressed with its potential as a market research tool

The nominees:  Virtual shopping

Implicit association research

Eye tracking

Online dial testing

Facial emotion recognition

Click testing/heat mapping

Ways of gathering data

The winner: Social media sourcing
Citation: Who would bet against social media becoming a primary channel for accessing audiences for market research?

Runner up: Intelligent Sample merging

Citation: Mix sample sources are going to be ever more important in the future and technology that can intelligently merge sample will have a critical role to play

 

The nominees:  

Research communities

Social media monitoring

Instant polling

Traditional panels

Social media sourcing

River sampling

Micro sampling

Observational techniques

Intelligent sample merging

The panel of judges:

Leonard Murphy: Greenbook blog

Sue York: NewMR

Alex Johnson: Kantar Operations

Jo Rigby: Omnicom Media Group

Sven Arn: H,T,P Concepts

Reg Baker: Market Strategies

Pravin Shekar: Krea

Bernie Malinoff: Element 54

Deborah Sleep: Engage Research

Peter Mouncey: IJMR

Edward Kasabov: Bath University

Brian Tarran: Research Magazine

Jeffrey Hennings: Affinnova

Mark Uttley: ex Sony Music

Sean Copeland: Environics Research

Wim van Slooten: MOA Netherlands

Mike Cooke: GFK

Orlando Wood: Brainjuicer Labs

Tiama Hanson-Drury: GMI
Martin Oxley: BuzzBack

Sabine Stork: ThinkTank

Surinder Siama: ResearchTalk.co.uk

Tom De Ruyck: InSites Consulting

Betsy Leichliter: Leichliter Associates

Kathryn Korostoff: Research Rockstar

Mitch Eggers: GMI 

Roxana Strohmenger: Forrester

Mario Menti: twitterfeed.com

Dan Kvistbo:  Norstat

Ole Andresen : Confirmit

Adam Warner: RW Connect

Diane Hessan: Communispace