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Chris Forbes
Chris has more than 25 years experience in corporate marketing and marketing strategy consulting. He co-founded Insight Marketing Systems in 1992. With the development of Research Reporter, Chris has pioneered a system to help corporate research clients to utilise technology to maximise the use of their research assets and improve the quality and efficiency of the research process.
Read the full biography here. |
Sushi versus the Fine Dining Experience:
Research Findings In Bite-Sized Chunks
25th August, 2010
By Chris Forbes
Ever wondered what happened to all those fine dining restaurants? You know the ones; small, darkly lit where the maître d is required to explain everything on the menu and you have to wait for at least half an hour before the specially cooked meal is presented, then sit politely while the waiter explains that the organic peas were freshly picked this morning by Buddhist monks in the Kingdom of Bhutan.
The fine dining experience may have been the mainstay of the restaurant industry a generation ago, but now good quality gourmet food can be easily accessed in casual dining venues, pushing the fine dining experience into smaller niche markets.
So what does this have to do with the research industry? Well, typically the way research is presented is in a small darkened room, where the purpose of the study is reviewed, then the results are served up, taking great care to explain confidence intervals, segment descriptions, and limitations on how the research can be applied.
While there might be parallels between the high service levels of fine dining and the way research has been traditionally presented, is research in danger of being marginalised by new trends in the same way that fine dining has been? Has the way decision-makers consume information changed since the research industry discovered powerpoint back in the 1980’s?
Of course, the biggest change to how people access information has been the internet, and for many companies, the corporate intranet. The browser has increasingly become the dominant channel through which information is accessed and decisions made.
Research was initially deemed inappropriate for this channel, as the information produced is often confidential and relevant only to senior people within the organisation. However, changes in web technology now means that decision-makers can ‘self-serve’ an organisation’s information anywhere across their business locations, while still protecting sensitive information. So what does the research industry do in this new environment when the pinnacle of achievement has traditionally been the equivalent of presenting a formal four-course meal?
One innovation that takes advantage of the trend to more casual food consumption has been the sushi train conveyor belt, where small parcels of food can be selected by customers without getting out of their seat, and either consumed as a single dish or combined with other dishes to make a more substantial meal. In the same way, many other marketing information providers are now creating much smaller parcels of information that can be easily accessed through the browser, with the option to link to and consume other information.
Market research can also adapt and benefit from this new trend, and increase the influence of research across the business. While the research industry has been late to embrace these new trends, some innovative examples are appearing. Web-based research management systems are allowing organisations to:
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Create stand-alone separate key findings and implications classified not just by project, but also based on the strategic imperatives of the business. These can be easily accessed and consumed through the browser, or be directly integrated into annual marketing plans.
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Record research learnings against project methodologies that can then be directly applied when new projects draw on similar methodologies.
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Automatically create cross- project reports such as Objectives and Output summaries, allowing researchers to identify how and where research has been applied, as input for future projects.
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These research management systems give researchers and decision-makers the ability to self- select and combine pieces of information from multiple projects.
Of course, there are many challenges for researchers in adapting to this delivery method; our traditional focus has been on providing the information equivalent of a four-course meal, but attempts to serve full research reports through the browser has been as successful as Sunday roasts on the sushi conveyor belt.
While many traditional researchers will view this new way of consuming information as an affront to the professionalism and purity of their research, new adaptive agencies are taking advantage of the trends in how information is accessed to increase the use of research for their clients, often outside of the scope of the original project.
And while there will always be a place for the research equivalent of the fine dining experience, it’s also worth noting that wasted research is worth as much as wasted food, no matter how much it costs to prepare.
Chris Forbes
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