The Gap Between Market Research and Marketing
I worked in Market Research at Ford for about 6 months and I remember it was the most thankless job I've ever had. That's funny because you would think that about corporate IT (if you're a fan of Michael Scott). No, it was Market Research at Ford. Honestly, if the marketing guys paid attention, and they did sometimes, we had a lot of very interesting data. Coolest data set I personally played part in analyzing was a Rate of Adoption study I managed while on rotation. You could see, on a map, where vehicle styles took root and how they spread over time. Because Ford had such a pervasive dealer infrastructure, access rarely inhibited adoption.
In marketing, the problem isn't the data. Market researchers are like the, forgive me my friends, the geeks of marketing. They know it, we all know it. But geeks are cool, so there. The problem is marketers have to sell their decisions to very non-geek people. Guys who drink beer and manage P&L. Tell me over golf or don't tell me at all. My non-geek buddys. Well these guys care about dollars. Dollars influence decisions, but if marketers could become researchers and directly show how their decisions affect dollars, then we're getting somewhere.
Sam Decker spoke to us here at DreamIt Philly 2011 and he said, corporate decision makers care about three things:
1. Competition
2. Sentiment
3. Metrics
Monetate is helping put marketing decisions and execution in the hands of marketers; Facebook gives marketers the ability to sample, test and measure in hours, not months; and with the fast emergence of location based services, the new, ever-changing knowledge about consumers to the aggregated individual level has and will become a marketer’s wonderland.
The gap between market research and marketing is getting smaller and smaller. This could get very interesting.