Top 5 market research trends in 2022
Trends in Market Research are inextricably linked to societal and technological changes and 2022 looks to be no different.
A number of recent advances in access points for data collection has meant that the industry has been given a number of challenges to overcome. But these challenges can and should be embraced, as they give us an opportunity to provide quicker, clearer and more strategically actionable insight at a time when businesses and organisations need it the most.
So exactly what do you need to be looking out for in 2022? We’ve put together our top 5 market research trends to consider:
Reduced survey lengths
Development in technology
Generational access
Cookie-less society
Foresight market research
Reduced survey lengths
Reduction in overall survey lengths and its positive impact on data quality, whilst still getting the most amount of useable information out of respondents is a common challenge that affects all researchers.
Pressure often comes from clients to include many more questions than may be necessary to answer the brief due to an attitude of “whilst we’ve got them… let’s ask them!” - which is absolutely valid.
However, it should be noted that the longer the survey, the more likely we are to see evidence of bad data in survey sets. Funnily enough, the market research industry did some research into this and has found that the maximum survey length to get best quality data and lowest dropout rates is around the 5-7 minute mark.
Development in technology
Machine Learning & AI advances will become more prominent in 2022 - particularly amongst social listening projects, Key Opinion Leader mapping and larger, multi-source secondary research projects. Machine learning, AI applications in research and the deployment of these are likely to become more commonplace where expertise allow.
The utopia scenario in these traditionally time & resource intensive one off projects would be to create a research model that allows significantly faster data collection, automated research validation and continuous updating - to create an “always on” research experience.
Generational access
The ability to collect better information from both the youngest and oldest of audiences has always been a challenge - however in recent years we have seen a significant generational shift in attitudes and technology adoption relevant to market research.
Online panel and traditional face to face methodologies are challenged for different reasons. Gen-Z populations in particular are going to be increasingly more difficult to recruit, maintain and grow through panels - and ongoing innovation work into the ability to collect information through TikTok, direct mobile and in app engagement will be critical to maintaining access to these audiences.
At the opposite end of the spectrum as technology continues to advance, it becomes trickier to quickly gather information from older audiences. Already we see panel research, particularly when looking at nationally representative audiences, having fieldwork periods extended by a number of days (sometimes even weeks) to collect the adequate data - particularly in 65+ age ranges.
Cookie-less society
At the start of 2020, Google announced that it’s going to be phasing out 3rd party cookies from it’s Chrome Browser starting in 2022, in a move that threatens to completely upend the industry.
Its impact, particularly on the advertising industry will be obvious - but what about Market Research? The cookie-less future may bode well for the future of market research.
The loss of tracking cookies represents a huge loss for many companies who rely on this technology to understand what their customers are doing. First-party data, including survey data, can address this gap.
Marketers, however, should keep in mind that not all data sources are equal. To generate insights that result in positive business outcomes, companies need to ensure the qualitative and quantitative data they are capturing accurately reflects the real opinions, attitudes and behaviours of their customers.
Foresight market research
Crystal ball? Or Foresight? - The expectation that foresight market research will take a huge leap over the coming years has been given further credence by the societal changes we have all experienced over the last 18 months.
How is the economy going to look next year? Will the property market crash? What about purchasing habits - are they going to revert to previous pre-pandemic levels? How long will it take the car manufacturing industry to recover from global semiconductor shortages?
These are all questions that are difficult to answer with a high degree of accuracy - however the ability to predict future trends, habits and preferences is going to be of huge advantage to the organisations and agencies that can crack the code.
Find out more about our consulting services by emailing us at hello@rare.consulting or calling us on 020 7859 4627.
