Are you staying true to your New Year’s resolutions? Strict new diet this month? Cutting down on the booze? We’re only 4 days in but it’s memorably easy to fall at the first hurdle.
Come on… be honest.
It’s a global tradition to try better ourselves for the year ahead, but should we be doing the same for our industry? Does Market Research need a resolution for 2013?
Resolution as a Solution
You may already have read our ‘Year in Review’ eBook, in which we shared Face Facts’ top ten resolutions. Included within our list is the hope to bring new faces into the Research industry (through the Face Facts Grad School and similar initiatives throughout the industry), to share and discuss ideas more frequently through social media, and to forge new relationships with fellow Researchers, through exciting conferences and other events. These, we feel, are manageable and achievable goals for our New Year.
But what should the industry plan to do this year? What do we need to prepare for?
What to Expect
Writing for Research Live, editor-in-chief of GreenBook and ‘Year in Review’ contributor, Lenny Murphy, summed up the year ahead brilliantly with just one word: MORE. This is the prediction that Market Research will see more of what we’ve already encountered in 2012, just bigger and bolder. A fair assumption we think. If Christmas has taught us anything this year, it’s that there is always room for more.
It’s inevitable that the likes of big data, social media analytics and mobile research will feature heavily in the coming year, but what can the industry as a whole do to assist the development of these trends? Maybe the real question is “do we need to assist them?”. Won’t they simply evolve on their own? Take big data for example. The rapid expansion and popularity of its use wasn’t particularly structured or well-predicted. After the huge rise in digital and social media usage, it became a necessity for today’s Researchers to embrace these new developments, whether they wanted to or not.
This is why we felt it important to feature in our top ten list, the resolution to welcome Big Data’s arrival in the industry with open arms. It can be a little unnerving to see such a dominant presence take centre stage over the more traditional and concise methods, but we understand its importance and will continue to be fascinated by what it can achieve.
One of our previous blogs discusses smart data, the evolution of the big data phenomenon. Unlike the latter, smart data looks likely to expand through a much slower process, with much needed assistance from behavioural and social science perspectives. Could this be an achievable resolution for the Research industry this year? Should we be encouraging further coexistence between big data and qualitative insight? Maybe this is a case where the industry needs to step in and offer guidance to, what is arguably, the next evolutionary step. It’s entirely possible that smart data could become the “big thing” of the 2013, right?
Whatever the outcome of this year, it’s a pretty safe bet to assume that our industry will see some brilliant, innovative and exciting changes.
