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Future-Proof And Thrive With Market Research During Uncertain Times

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We're living in a time when many businesses are experiencing significant losses, and leaders are looking for solutions to ensure long-term viability. One potential answer? Market research.

I spoke with Rick Kelly, chief strategy officer at Fuel Cycle, to understand how market research has been an underutilized tool for companies looking for long-term financial and brand-suited viability.

Gary Drenik: Layoffs have hit multiple sectors, including researchers at companies. Reductions in the workforce are often seen as short-term solutions for current instability. In what ways can internal research be used to address internal challenges to instability?

Rick Kelly: The only sustainable method to increase stability in employee relations is for management teams to measure and act on employee insights. In other words, the same practices applied by market researchers to study customer needs ought to be adapted for employees. The intent is to act on employee insights to design incentive packages, cultures, and working environments that produce positive benefits to the business.

At Fuel Cycle, we see increased interest and adoption of employee insights communities. While employee research is not new, management teams have found that outdated models of once- or twice-a-year employee surveys are no longer sufficient to drive employee engagement. Instead, avant-garde leaders are transitioning to agile employee research. These leaders embrace frequent employee feedback and iterative approaches to building incentives and cultures that drive positive results.

There are tangible benefits to acting on employee insights. Companies with engaged employees tend to grow faster and stronger profitability than companies with less engaged employees, according to Dr. Paul Turner of Leeds University. They also tend to have longer employee tenure and better customer experiences than industry peers.

Drenik: During this period of economic uncertainty, many leaders are adjusting spending across their operations. How should research spending be addressed when adjustments have to be made?

Kelly: We’re absolutely entering an environment where businesses need to be conscious of their spending and resource allocation. According to a recent Prosper Insights & Analytics survey, Gen-Z spending is expected to be relatively stable, but 41.9% of Boomers (who hold the largest share of wealth in the US) are increasingly prioritizing shopping for products on sale.

The marginal effort of conducting research has to decline. This means the time and expense of research has to come down for insights to be utilized. This means process standardization and embracing insights technology solutions is critical.

Drenik: From the height of the pandemic to the current rate of inflation, spending habits of consumers have shifted massively in the past 3 years. What are the best strategies for businesses and their research teams to adapt to the shifting consumer behavior?

Kelly: Traditional insights processes don’t return information fast enough to match the pace of change. In many cases, they’re unnecessarily expensive, laden with consulting and human labor costs that can largely be automated. Because of this time and expense, it means that businesses risk making blind decisions rather than confident decisions that come with constant connection to their key audiences. Automated workflows deliver a more comprehensive, current, and actionable view of customer needs than traditional processes can.

In addition, technology adoption improves decision making with multiple sources of data. Combining existing behavioral data with insights data (like surveys and focus groups) gives business a comprehensive view of shifts in preferences, seamlessly rooted in real-world data. This is a big shift in research practices, which have traditionally not connected behavioral and survey data to produce insights.

Drenik: Research can help businesses make more data-driven decisions. However, the market research industry has a reputation for being slower and more programmatic. How can businesses elevate their research teams to be more dynamic to current consumer interest?

Kelly: Market research should not be confined to a specialized team. Distributing research responsibilities across departments empowers all members of an organization to conduct their research, analyze results, and make data-driven decisions, rather than relying solely on market research teams. Avant-garde insights organizations work to empower their stakeholders in brand, marketing, finance, customer support, and product with access to solutions that allow them to instigate and analyze research projects.

Democratizing data access promotes collaboration and innovation, leading to actionable research that enables near-real-time decision-making in alignment with customer preferences.

Drenik: What are the biggest challenges facing market researchers in 2023? Will these challenges continue beyond this current period of volatility?

Kelly: There is ever-growing pressure to stay ahead of customer preferences. In a rapidly shifting world, preferences are evolving faster than ever before. Insights teams cannot rely on traditional techniques to generate insights that move at the pace of modern business. A shift has to happen for them to remain relevant and successful.

Our current period of volatility is a reflection of greater volatility overall. If we look back at the past 30 years, there’s never really been a time where the world sat still. Between economic volatility, deglobalization, advancements in AI, and other, unforeseen changes, I think researchers will continue to be pressed to deliver insights at a faster, more efficient cadence for a long time.

Drenik: Thank you, Rick, for sharing your unique perspective and insights.

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