Futuring Tools and the Futures of

Market ResearchRobert Moran April 19, 2012

2

It’s a VUCA World

The future will be more discontinuous with the past.

3

Creative Disruption: The 6Ds That Will Change Commerce (and eventually MR)

Disruption Ethos “Blur Group Raises $2M To Disrupt How Marketers Pick Creatives For Campaigns”

Disintermediation Remember “travel agents”? “Process gatekeepers” beware.

Digitization Book stores, music stores, cameras, libraries, paper maps, cash…

Dematerialization Smaller products. Less material. Often shifting focus to experience around product.

Democratization Crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, DEWmocracy, “Rateocracy”, customer in charge in a radically transparent world.

DIY Niche products, the maker movement, and eventually 3D printing

Foresight Tools for Thinking About the Futures

Futures Cone

Possible

Now

Potential

Potential

ProbablePlausible

Copyright 2000: Joseph Voros

Preferable

4

5

The Importance of STEEP in Plural Futures

• Social

• Technological

• Economic

• Ecological

• Political

6

The Incremental Approach

Today

Future

Forecast – Official Future

Alternative Future

Alternative Future

Alternative Future

Alternative Future

7

The Stretch Scenario Approach

Alternative Future A Alternative Future B

Alternative Future C Alternative Future D

Exploring futures via two greatest uncertainties

Uncertainty 1

Unc

erta

inty

2

8

Putting these tools to work…

Market Research Futures Shock. A Sampler.

9

2011

80% of global research spending is currently dedicated to quantitative,survey-based, research (ESOMAR, 2010)

Two thirds of all traditional marketing research is conducted in the five aging industrial democracies of the United States (30%), the United Kingdom (11%), Germany (9%), France (9%) and Japan (6%) (ESOMAR, 2010).

2021

The survey will not die, but research will move beyond the survey to social media listening, observational and co-creative (MROCs) tools. Established competitors will struggle through this transition.

Research spending will shift toward the emerging economies and firms that have strong research capacity in the emerging economies will grow more rapidly.

“…the next decade will…mark the definitive breakthrough of the global middle class, and demand from this group will be among the crucial economic factors of world economy” – Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies

Moving Beyond the Survey

Growing Emerging Markets

10

5 MegaTrends Shaping the Futures of Our Industry

• Data Abundance “Rateocracy”, social media, “lifestreaming”, IoT

• Asking-Observing Shift “listening posts” and feedback loops

• Democratization UGC, co-creation, predictive markets

• Convergence domain, tool and data

• Strategic Imperative evolving value in a data-abundant world

http://www.futureofinsight.com/interviews/

http://www.greenbookblog.org/2011/02/21/lead-up-to-the-iir-tdmr-interview-with-robert-moran-of-strategyone/

Abundance and the Deindustrialization of Research

Now Future

Form

Function

Collecting

Looking Backward

Filtering

Looking Forward

Customized Service

Consultative, Learning Based

Economies of Sale

Command and Control Pyramid

11

Data acquisition costs drop

Temporal focus shifts

Data acquisition costs drop

Temporal focus shifts

“As an industry, we’re often criticized for our lack of insight and an overreliance on an industrialised view of research.“

Mike Cooke, ESOMAR: 2009

One Plausible Evolutionary Path

12

• Mobile surveys• Location-based

research• Augmented

Reality• “Lifestreaming”

• Online surveys• Prompted by

declining telephone survey participation rates and onlinetechnology• Data becomes

abundant and inexpensive • Shift to

“convenience samples”

• Face to Face surveys

Face to Face Telephone1920-1950

• Telephone surveys• Vertically

integrated data collection systems

Online Geomobile1950-2000

2000-

Data Collection—Asking (Survey)Behavioral

• Move away from the survey instrument as the main research vehicle• Dramatic shift

from Intrusive, interrogatory research, to passive, listening-based research• Social media

research• “Listening posts” • MROCS• Text analytics• “Rateocracy”

2008-

Listening Neurological

• Track neurological response• fMRI • Eye-tracking

and other biological response monitoring

• CRM software• Big data• Experimental

marketing• Geotracking• Clickstreams

ObservationalUGC

• Collaborative co-creation• User-

generated content (UGC)• Insights

communities (MROCs) will dominate• Creation

of “design communities”

Co-Creative

• Focus shifts from mapping current opinion to anticipating future behaviors and alternative futures• Mass simulation

gaming*• MROC Delphi panels*• Strategic Foresight• Agent-based

computational modeling• Predictive markets

Anticipatory

Anticipatory

13

A brief tour of MR futures…

14

“Any useful statement about the futures should appear to be ridiculous.”

-Jim Dator

22 Plausible Futures Scenarios

16

Socially Driven Scenarios Technology Driven Scenarios Economically Drive Scenarios

The Incredible Shrinking Survey Geo-Timed Feedback Dispersive Convergence

Do Not Disturb Rapid In-Market Experimentation Lilliput

Back to the Future Iterative Insight Streaming E-Agency

What was privacy? Portal Power Global Depth

Power to the People Let’s Play a Game Need for Speed

From Value to Values Limbic Space Invaders

Tribal Rituals Nano-Targeting Anticipation

Epidemiology

Definition Signals

Power to the People

Co-creative design communities replace traditional market research. These are either open (and massive) or closed and proprietary. Project directors become community managers and engagement becomes the core concern.

DEWmocracy, My Starbucks Idea, HYVE’s Innovation communities http://www.hyve.de/ , Ideascale

Portal Power

All key consumer data is integrated on a single online interface. The portal becomes the most important “real estate” in market research. The portal provider becomes market research’s landlord. Corporate insights departments and CMOs guard these portals jealously.

Nunwood’s Fizz Dashboards and Fizz Library, Clarabridge, Salesforce.com , CRM-CEM software companies

E-Agency

Market research firms are replaced by individual e-lancers. Market researchers are hired based on their online competency scores at honestly.com or by their “whuffie” rating on future reputational currency sites.

Mechanical Turk, Victors & Spoils, guru.com, honestly.com, Angie’s List

Headline: “Blur Group Raises $2M To Disrupt How Marketers Pick Creatives For Campaigns”

Three Futures

Three potential outcomes for the traditional marketing research industry:

• Traditional MR repositions itself at center of widerinsights industry

• Traditional MR absorbs and integrates tools and knowledge from wider industry, placing itself at the top of the strategic insights value chain

• Collision of marketing research, management consulting, social media analytics, data mining, and software

• Produces a synthesis of tools and blurring of roles

• Convergence is forced on traditional MR industry and adjustment is difficult

• Traditional marketing research refuses to evolve, preferring to stay with questioning rather than observing tools

• Continues to execute tactical research projects while wider insights industry passes it by

18

Convergence Stagnation Transcendence

NextGen Insights Firms Will

o Harness mobile (in the moment) research

o Moving from gatekeeper to guide

o Make the leap from the Asking to the Observing Era

o Master “listening”

o Build insight communities (MROCs)

o Triangulate: Pull insights from multiple data streams

o Transition from projects to consultative retainers

o Build ethnographic capacity at a global level for the global middle class

o Master data visualization

o Leverage 24-7 global clock

o Develop foresight capacity

19

20

The best way to predict the future is to make it.