What Worries Research Buyers?

UK-based research buyers want agencies to understand and help ease the pressures they are under from internal clients, according to a survey for the latest MRWho. Many are still making scant use of online data collection, and those that are face new challenges finding time to be thoughtful in much-reduced project timetables.

And they still want more actionable reporting - but that's not going to surprise anyone, except perhaps the marketing men who claim their agencies already do it without looking to see if it's true.

The article, in the April MRWho due out next week, introduces an email survey of blue chip UK clients, whose conclusions will be discussed further in the following issue.

Many UK-based research clients still regard justifying research to internal clients as a bigger problem than anything in their dealings with agencies. 'I wouldn't describe any part of my relationships with agencies as headaches' said one. 'If I did, relationships with some internal clients would be classed as debilitating migraines'.

Often the single biggest requirement from agencies is that they understand better the pressures on clients from within their own organisations - and help them deal with them. Agencies often fail to take advantage of the fellow feeling that exists, and the desire to work together.

Another common theme, still, is wood-for-trees reporting. Clients are still having to stress that they want insight rather than numbers. Agency marketing is perhaps guilty of over-mystifying this, as if insight were some grail for only the most brilliant minds to aspire to. Some clients would beg to differ - it's something quite simple they want: to feel like the agency has left a little time after the results are all analysed, to sit and interpret and think about the implications, based on a reasonable knowledge of the client's business issues.

More than one client said it is the big agencies- often the ones that do most of the talking about closer partnerships and aligning themselves with clients' business objectives - who fall down most often on providing actionable results. This may be because the need for actionable findings has not trickled through the company to the people who, very often, end up doing the projects once directors have won them.

Clients also worry about getting suppliers up to speed on increasingly specialist technical products and services - this is covered in more detail in the MRWho article.

One particular new phenomenon accompanying the Internet revolution is that of bottlenecks in unexpected places in the research process. Some bits of the cycle have speeded up so much that other, previously efficient parts suddenly seem quite slow. Because fieldwork can be done in a very short time, clients are suddenly aware of how long it's taking to get questionnaires into the field. Because many charts can be produced on the fly and finalised the moment the last response is in, research execs are under more pressure to get their brains working fast and start digging for insight. Sometimes, unreasonable pressure.

There are two ways of looking at this change. Internet-focused agencies tend to say, especially in their marketing and public-facing materials, that the time saved on data collection can be spent on thoughtful analysis. In their private moments, they sometimes admit that the opposite is true. 'Thoughtfully fast research' boasts one US agency. Well if it's true, good for them - but 'Havable, eatable cake' may be next.

The survey prompts clients about areas least affected by the Internet, and finds there are rather a lot of them - something which may or may not surprise our US readers. The Internet may be the biggest thing looming on the horizon for the agency / supplier side researcher, and our job ads may be asking for more and more online specialists and Internet project managers, but for the moment there are many clients who say they make scant use of online surveys. This is not just for qual, but includes wide areas of quant research too, including new product testing, at least where touching and holding the product is important; a lot of mystery shopping; a great deal of public sector research which needs to represent all sections of society and remain inclusive; and so on.

MRWho is the People and Skills supplement to DRNO, free of charge and emailed as a PDF every month. To subscribe, send your name, job title, company name and the address to which we should send it, to mrwho@mrweb.com . Please indicate whether you would like a copy of the last issue sent also. More details are at www.mrweb.com/who

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.