The world is rapidly changing, in fact at a pace that’s quite daunting and unprecedented. Information, innovation and technological developments, population change, dynamics of economic power, environmental changes and evolving consumer values all affect nearly every industry worldwide. This evolution and paradigm shift has affected everything we do, and how many things are done, and market research is not excluded.
Today, the market research industry is also responding to the changes in the trends of information, communication, and advertisement and branding. These trends ultimately determine the efficacy of a marketing campaign, strategy or plan. Hence, it’s important and helpful to look out for them because of their huge impact.
Here are 3 important global trends affecting and influencing the output of marketing campaigns that every market researcher should look out for.
Automation and DIY
It’s the golden age of the Internet, social media and 24/7 on-the-go news feed. This translates to an always-connected audience and reduced timeframe expectations. That means clients want data and information as soon as they request it and as accurate as possible.
Hence, automation and the do-it-yourself paradigms are at the forefront, all enabled by the agile software development framework and the innovations from the tech space. Similarly, more market research and insights consultants now report directly into strategy, thus facilitating faster decision-making at the top management levels of the company.
Simultaneously, companies are now empowering mid-level employees to create game-changing innovations faster, remove bottlenecks and streamline reporting and approval strategies.
Big Data and Predictive Analytics
Another ubiquitous buzzword today is Big Data. Simply put, Big Data refers to a vast volume of data usually collected from different sources over time in a database. This massive volume of data can take many forms – structured, highly organized and navigable, or unstructured, non-coded and unnavigable.
Market researchers who are also data scientists are proficient at analyzing this vast volume of data to identify patterns and forecast future events ahead of time. This is known as predictive analytics, and is now a hot commodity in market research.
As businesses devote resources to quickly gain competitive insights and stay ahead of the game, most are resorting to big data and predictive analytics. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IOT) eventually evolve and become the game-changing paradigms, companies will increasingly seek to understand their own existing databases. Simultaneously, these companies will invest in more resources in the assemblage, storage and analysis of aggregated data to continue in the industrial race.
User Experience/Customer Experience (UX/CX)
User Experience/Customer Experience (UX/CX) remains an integral aspect of marketing, business, and by extension, market research. Due to changes and evolution in the digital ecosystems, businesses and their marketing strategies also had to change substantially to stay abreast of the trends.
Never have there been a fiercer competition for the hearts and minds of customers in history than now. Over the last decade, the competitive landscape has changed drastically and is now considerably more complex. Some of the reasons companies now put great emphasis on UX/CX to win, gain, retain, surprise, satisfy and reward their customers include:
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