Market research – the term is ubiquitous as it is the key driver to the development of any industry. With constant changes across economies and technologies around the globe, market research has proved to be an ardent advocate who guides an organization toward innovation and potential investments.
However, the market research industry is now facing certain challenges because of technological advancements and transformations in business and consumer needs.
Also Read: A New Approach to Accelerate Innovation in Market Research
Here is a brief look into the market research challenges growing into a big deal for researchers in the digital landscape.
Challenges Faced by Market Researchers
Data Quality
The data explosion in the digital era may have enabled data-driven decision-making. Still, an unrealized challenge has come into the limelight recently, i.e., data quality. The data clutter proliferating today has made it a mammoth task to glean meaningful insights and ensure the quality of data gathered and processed.
Although frontier technologies like data analytics, AI, machine learning, etc., enable easy collating, processing, and analysis of big data, ultimately, the quality of the input data affects the quality of market research outcomes, which sequentially affects the decisions made.
An automated data quality solution would be the most beneficial breakthrough in 2022 for overcoming their organization's problems. In fact, obtaining and analyzing data frequently results in illuminating or subpar findings, particularly with several disjointed, divergent technologies and an expanding number of digital channels.
However, some businesses also lack the resources and skills necessary to effectively employ the resources at their disposal and the appropriate tools. Twenty percent of respondents claim that one of the challenges facing their market research is a lack of expertise and training—the second-factor influencing data quality.
Similarly, data from Forrester Consulting's report (The State of Evidence-Based Experience Design), which Qualtrics commissioned, shows that siloed processes and limited use of analytics tools (by almost half of the respondents) pose significant obstacles to the development and adoption of data-driven experience design.
Related: Improved Targeting, Sustainability, and Validity: Market Research Trends for 2022
Data Security & Compliance
The growing consumer awareness of data security and compliance has become a hurdle for market research companies to perform extensive analyses. As consumers learn how their historical purchase data, feedback, and reviews are utilized to comprehend their needs and behaviors, they have become fretful. They have begun to avoid interviews and surveys tartly. This is growing into a disturbing situation for market researchers and marketing analytics solutions. However, the advent of data governance promises to end the data security concerns for both businesses and consumers.
User Experience
The advent of mobile devices and social media has undoubtedly made data collection easy and simple. While digital disruption has reshaped traditional market research, it has also altered the value of user experience. The value of user experience has extended so deeply that users can no longer be overlooked in the information age.
Hence good user experience on mobile devices and websites has become essential for successful and significantly faster online surveys and other feedback approaches.
Real-time Consumer Insights
Consumer insights are the big cheese for market researchers. As the selling strategies have shifted from product-centric to customer-centric today, it is crucial to achieve real-time consumer insights. A customer's preference is influenced by various factors like previous experience, unmet requirements, customer analytics services, etc.
Thus, real-time consumer insights are vital for market researchers to map historical and actual data to foresee customers' future needs and avoid barking up the wrong tree.
Also Read: It's Time to Put Marketing at the Data Table. Why?
Dealing with Market Ambiguity
Acting in times of uncertainty is nothing new for market researchers. After all, a big portion of their competence is evaluating enormous volumes of varied data to draw inferences and identify possibilities. And it is with this data, particularly the experience data, that researchers can determine their next steps.
There is a propensity to halt or terminate projects and efforts under these circumstances, with the post-pandemic and move to digital, maybe to make up for lost investments, safeguard staff, or preserve the company's viability.
Despite this, there is a strong case for businesses to persevere through the crisis and place greater trust in their research initiatives to comprehend how consumer and company attitudes have changed. Organizations may get an advantage over the competition and begin to provide experiences appropriate for the new workplace by devoting more time and money to market research.
Uncertain times are, in fact, quite dynamic. Needs, priorities, worries, and perceptions all fluctuate a lot. The only way to succeed in a constantly shifting environment is to adapt and comprehend the game's new rules.
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Getting Leaders to Invest
One of the most crucial things a company can do in the modern day is market research. With the correct data sources, product developers may design answers to company issues, executives can drive business choices, and market researchers can gain superior insights.
Getting leaders to invest continuously is a difficulty. In one survey, 21% of respondents named conveying ROI and business effect as one of their main problems in conducting market research. Comparable percentages show conflicting internal priorities.
Market research may be used to an end for some businesses, supporting new product developments or marketing campaigns. However, the true value lies in continual market research backed by an embedded research function.
The first step in encouraging executives to spend is consistently showing how market research affects company results. For instance, you may give executives and stakeholders high-level summaries of how market research initiatives have influenced business outcomes by utilizing role-based dashboards.
Read Also - Market Research Role: Guide to Decision Making in Business
What is One of the Significant Challenges for Marketing Research?
You can procure the best market research tools in the world, but acquiring the right talent to handle them is the most daunting task. After all, MR professionals must operate multiple software programs, document their strategies, and execute them precisely.
Doing so demands unique expertise across consumer psychology, market research survey preparation, statistical modeling, reputation management, market intelligence services, and industry dynamics. Furthermore, reliable marketing researchers must recognize the top privacy law challenges and stakeholder trust problems that international companies might be facing due to potential data security issues affecting market research operations.
Finally, finding competent professionals to conduct market research becomes more difficult if you want qualitative primary market research and secondary market research reports. Unlike quantitative analysis, qualitative insight discovery entails efficiently applying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
Moreover, market researchers must eliminate bias and mathematical inconsistencies from analytical models and reports. Otherwise, inaccurate reporting will mislead their clients or employers, threatening stakeholder trust in the MR industry and related practices.
Summing Up
Despite these top challenges facing the market research industry, evolving technological advancements may surely help international marketing researchers tackle distressing problems in conducting MR and improving the underlying digital ecosystem.
With a presence in New York, San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Toronto, London, Zurich, Pune, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, SG Analytics, a pioneer in Research and Analytics, offers tailor-made services to enterprises worldwide.
A leader in Market Research services, SG Analytics enables organizations to achieve actionable insights into products, technology, customers, competition, and the marketplace to make insight-driven decisions. Contact us today if you are an enterprise looking to make critical data-driven decisions to prompt accelerated growth and breakthrough performance.
