The future of market research lies in open source thinking

As with all parts of the marketing and communications sector, the market research industry has spent the past decade considering how to respond to technological change. However, too much of this debate has focused on the impact of technology on the process of research, rather than on how it is leading to a new relationship between people and organisations. future of market research

New information and communications technologies are allowing people to become creators as well as consumers, and providing them with the platform for direct conversations with businesses. As an industry that has traditionally acted as a mediator between businesses and people, this represents a major challenge to what we do – and requires us to adapt our way of working to reflect this new environment.

THE CREATIVE AND EMPOWERED CONSUMER

The impact of new technology has been to democratise creativity. Authorship and publication used to be the preserve of the State and the rich. Now, the advent of digitisation and devices that emphasise access and convenience – the PC, the MP3 player and camera mobile phone – means authorship is open to all those that seek it.

This chance to demonstrate individual creativity is beginning to resonate with people. The emergence of 2.5 million blogs in the UK shows the popularity of using new technology to express views, experiences and beliefs. We should view this democratisation hand-in-hand with people's increasing savviness when it comes to marketing and communication. Through exposure to constant media and messaging, people have become adept at deconstructing communication and the motives behind that communication.

This powerful combination of the rise in self-authorship and increasing media savviness can be seen with the growth of 'citizen journalism' – where people are acting as active reporters rather than just passive viewers or readers. After the 7/7 bombings, the BBC received 1,000 images and mobile clips from the public – some of which became the defining images of the day. The response to the Buncefield oil depot explosion was even greater – the BBC received 6,500 contributions, many containing images and clips from mobiles. We are only at the start of this trend – Ashley Highfield, the BBC's Director of New Media, predicts that we will become a 'nation of journalists and cameramen'.(1)

Most worryingly for brands, the emergence of new technology allows individuals to take direct action against companies. Take the case of Matthew Peterson – who, frustrated after his new Apple iPod Nano broke, set up www.flawedmusicplayer.com. This site rapidly attracted a swarm of other angry Nano owners – at one point, Peterson was getting 30 complaints an hour. Peterson's story and campaign were quickly picked up by the mainstream media around the world. Faced with this PR nightmare, Apple was forced to admit a flaw in certain Nanos, and offer a free exchange to aggrieved customers.

NO LIMITS ON INNOVATION

Beyond a platform for asymmetric action against brands, new technology brings people and perspectives together. Business thinkers CK Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy have written about how the internet has allowed for the creation of virtual 'thematic communities'(2), that bring together consumers worldwide with a specific interest or passion, whether that is for Manolo Blahniks, Tivo or red wine.

As Prahalad and Ramaswamy show, 'thematic communities' can provide the starting point for action on the part of brand aficionados. LEGO fans have taken the toy's Mindstorms programme – which enables you to use PC software to create robots – and have posted new and improved versions online. After initial uncertainty over this, LEGO now cleverly allows these 'amateur programmers' to access the original code and to modify and advance it for others.

Indeed, the reality for companies is that limits cannot be set on people-led innovation. Consumer imagination has revolutionised the entertainment industry through user-led innovations such as youtube.com and Kazaa, and are leaving 'big media' behind. As MIT Professor Eric Von Hippel argues, 'If customers really want something, they won't wait for you anymore.'(3)

SMART ORGANISATIONS

Clever businesses and brands have picked up on the changing relationship between people and organisations, and are co-opting people's creativity. In particular, trends consultancy TrendWatching.com has shown how innovative firms are seeking to involve people as advertisers, innovators, designers and strategists:

• Tapping into consumer passion, Boeing has set up the 'Boeing World Design Team', a global initiative that is asking for participation and feedback while the plane manufacturer develops its new airlines. As part of the programme, Boeing includes surveys on design features and exclusive previews on work so far. Around 12,000 flyers and aviation enthusiasts have joined up.
• Intelligent brands are also realising that their evangelists represent the perfect group for advice on innovation – carmakers, including Audi and BMW, have led the way in creating toolkits for brand advocates to submit their ideas on how aspects of their makes can be improved.
• Seeking to involve people as designers and not just consumers, IKEA has run a competition in Sweden in which it asked people to submit their ideas for new home entertainment storage products. Over 5,000 ideas were submitted, with 14 winners taking part in a workshop with IKEA's 'professional designers' to turn their ideas into actual products for sale.
• Turning the conventional model of advertising on its head, brands such as Converse and Mercedes have asked brand aficionados in the US to submit their own ideas for TV ads, with the best ones being turned into real spots.

Beyond brand-sponsored initiatives, new technology is being used by consumers to create spaces for themselves to voluntarily advise brands. The internet has provided the means for 65,000 Tivo subscribers in the US to join a self-organised Tivo Community Forum. The site allows for an exchange of ideas on how the service can be improved, and discussion on how to persuade friends and family to take out the service.

WE'RE STUCK

Aside from these pockets of exciting innovation, the issue for the research and marketing industries is that treating people as passive consumers is hard-wired into what we do and how we operate. Market research is still too wedded to out-moded notions of command and control, and too often we like to see ourselves as a noble elite of research Brahmins who are there to help the unwitting consumer understand what he or she needs. Rather than seeing people as potential partners in creativity, we treat them as passive 'respondents'.

If you contrast market research with new communities of co-creation, it is clear that our approaches and techniques are looking dated, old fashioned and pretty uncompelling. If you can show how to innovate a product and get recognition from others in a thematic community, how can traditional research compete? Research is designed to be a mediator between organisations and people, but how can it be made relevant when consumer-activists can set up blogs and websites to send a message direct to a brand? Why should people bother spending their time responding to someone else's prescribed ideas, when they can create their own?

THE CATHEDRAL AND THE BAZAAR

The challenge then for researchers and marketers is to co-opt the creativity of consumers. We need to look at technology again and learn from the 'open source' movement in computer programming. In contrast to a programme where the designers hold tightly onto control of the source code, open source programmes are open to everyone to test, scrutinise and add to. The thinking is that by ceding control, programmers get better results – 'given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow' is the mantra of the movement, referring to how the more people look at something, the more likely you'll spot issues and problems early on. Openness is seen as leading to greater and quicker innovation.

In a famous polemic on the open source movement, IT thinker Eric Raymond compares the difference between open source, and closed source development, to the contrast between a cathedral and a bazaar. According to Raymond, whereas the building of a cathedral relies on central command and control, a bazaar operates on the basis of a myriad of conversations, discussions and dealings. The wider power of this thinking is that it can be applied across many spheres, aside from the narrow confines of software programming. Open source is about having the potential and right to create, and to be recognised for that creativity. From an organisation's perspective, it is about giving up an element of control in order to achieve better results than those that the organisation could achieve on its own.

This is done through combining the expertise or structure of a sponsoring organisation with the passion and creativity of engaged 'amateurs'. The success of this can be seen across a range of areas: in astronomy, where hundreds of thousands of amateurs support professionals in their work; or Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia that has been built through voluntary contributions and now rivals traditional paper-based editions; or OhMyNews, a South Korean newspaper that has 26,000 citizen reporters who contribute 80% of the content.

THE OPEN SOURCE MANIFESTO

The clear challenge then for the market research industry is to learn from open source thinking, and to adapt its techniques and approaches to reflect that people wish to create as well as consume.

What then are the elements and aspects of open source research?

1 Connect with People as 'Lay' Strategists

In order to reflect the latent creativity of people, research should seek to connect with people as active creators not passive 'respondents'. Qualitative group discussions and workshops should be viewed as opportunities to empower people to come up with their own ideas, instead of exclusively asking people to respond to concepts dreamt up by the client or agency.

The emphasis of market research should shift from being a platform for testing to a forum for creativity. Building on the success of existing work in this area, we should seek to facilitate forums where people can develop new products, design campaigns and provide inspiration for innovation.

2 Bring About Ongoing Conversations

We should also look to get more out of the people who volunteer to take part in research. Research is too often a one-off event where people kindly offer their views and opinions – but then we fail to build an ongoing conversation with them.

Ongoing dialogue with people shows a greater respect for their contribution to research – especially if later sessions revolve around talking about what's been done as the result of the first phase of work. Opportunities to continue the conversation could be something as simple as a follow on telephone interview a week after a group discussion. Or it could be reconvening a workshop once a new product or service is nearly finalised.

Of course, ongoing panels exist at present. However, they tend to be based on a one-way approach to research. Brand researchers should aim to learn from aspects of deliberative research, such as Citizens' Juries. When Government departments conduct Citizens' Juries, they often ask a small number of the participants to form a working group after the event. The group then meets regularly after the Jury, in order to 'audit' what has been done with the original work, and to provide new thinking.

3 Involve People in Analysis and Reporting

We should also seek to involve participants in qualitative analysis and reporting. Analysis still represents the 'black box' of research. However, opening up analysis to participants would allow us to acknowledge people's creativity.

We need to seek out opportunities to gain feedback from participants on our initial thinking and recommendations. We should seek to conduct more re-convened workshops where we run our initial ideas past participants.

Beyond this, we should look at setting up online forums where participants read the draft debrief and submit comments. After seeing the initial analysis, there is scope to facilitate discussion about recommendations. Learning from online communities such as eBay and Slashdot, we should look at how technology can be used to rate the popularity and resonance of findings and conclusions.

4 Demonstrate Recognition and Make it Visible

Throughout the research process, we need to think more carefully about ensuring people feel a sense of recognition and status from taking part. Part of the success of co-creative communities is that they offer people a visible opportunity to be creative, and for their efforts to be recognised by others.

Aside from offering incentives, we need to acknowledge the commitment people make in taking part in research. Why is it not standard practice that we send participants a management summary of the findings, and notes on what will happen as a result?

Showing recognition is about making research as visible as possible. Of course, issues around confidentiality mean that, at times, we have to be discreet. But what makes initiatives such as Boeing World Design a success is their visibility – it is not hidden away, it is an active form of communication.

5 Connecting with Thematic Communities

In this new open source environment, we should also seek to listen and connect to 'thematic communities'. As part of our research efforts, virtual communities of brand evangelicals or detractors are likely to prove a fruitful audience of research.

Reflecting the online nature of these communities, internet-based qualitative techniques are likely to provide the right platform for research. Importantly though, we should not seek to build artificial thematic communities as if they are a new kind of panel. Their power and authenticity lies in their self-organisation.

6 Going Beyond the Evangelicals and Detractors

Lastly, the research industry has a role to play in ensuring that co-creative communities set up by brands are not just the domain of an aficionado or detractor.

Though some of our practices are out of sync with this new environment, our approach to sampling and recruitment can improve how open source initiatives work.

The downside of many current initiatives is that they only attract people with an existing level of interest or engagement. If you only had a passing interest in what car you wanted to drive, why would you volunteer to help innovate a specific model?

The researcher's role should be to help organisations ensure their co-creative exercises reach out beyond those who would naturally volunteer. In light of the importance of the mainstream middle – the corporate equivalent of 'floating voters' – our expertise at identifying and involving this segment become more, and not less, important.

EMBRACING CHANGE

Savvy consumers are assuming the tools of creativity and communication, and are using them to seek and demand direct dialogue with those who wish to serve them. In response, smart organisations are seeking out platforms to connect directly with creative consumers; undercutting the research industry's traditional role as a mediator between organisations and people.

The challenge for the research industry is to adapt to the new needs and interests of creative consumers. Rather than seeing people as passive 'lab rats' waiting to be prodded and probed, we need to connect with them as active creators. In doing so, we should always remember the principle of the open source movement – that the collective imagination can and should be harnessed for the wider good.

This article featured in Market Leader, Summer 2006.

REFERENCES

1. Quoted in the New Statesman, 1 January 2005.

2. Prahalad, C.K. & Ramaswamy, Venkat (2004) The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers, Harvard Business School Publishing.

3. Quoted in Business 2.0, October 2005.