The 2022 GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) Report highlights the evolving nature of insights organizations and the role of insights professionals. While last year’s report focused heavily on COVID-19 implications, this year’s report demonstrates the need to put more emphasis on customer satisfaction and loyalty, attitudes and opinions, and brand tracking.
The GRIT Report is based on 1,323 completed interviews with research buyers and suppliers. Findings demonstrate that buyers continue to focus on unlocking more value from insights while suppliers focus more on methods aligned to the actual collection of insights themselves.
So, what’s the “buzz?” Where do research buyers and suppliers align?
A few of this year’s insights industry buzz topics are:
- Storytelling and Data Visualization
- Agile Research
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Let’s dive into each topic.
Storytelling and Data Visualization
Storytelling and good charts can frame research results in more concrete ways. Crafting each provides clarity for these important research questions: ‘so what?’ and ‘now what?’. Without effective communication, relevant business insights may be lost.
Often research professionals sit upon mountains of data. Successfully depicting what the data indicates in a memorable way is a valuable skill. A few tips:
- Decide who is the protagonist and antagonist in the insights story.
- Is the protagonist a potential new customer or a brand or product?
- What obstacles and complications does the antagonist present along the journey?
- Organize the data into 3 or 5 key events, conflicts, or challenges. Anything more likely will cause the audience to disengage.
- Illustrate a key finding in each slide or section that builds the overall story.
- Reflect a slide’s top statement with strategic chart and table design to make the story more memorable.
- Try color blocking to combine similar features or attributes.
- Use grey tones for “background information.”
Agile Research
Agile market research is the process of gathering consumer feedback quickly and iteratively. This approach helps companies test, iterate, and adapt their plans to the data collected, facilitating growth and innovation. Many organizations across all industries are working to become more agile.
In market research projects, agility can simplify any pivots, reduce overall costs, and increase fresh perspectives. Research buyers need a research team that can provide the insights quickly to support timely strategic decisions. Martec has been exposed to thousands of client requests for external market research that include collaborative and iterative assignments focusing on ‘how do we figure this out’. As a trusted supplier, we help organizations figure things out to unlock opportunities.
Artificial Intelligence
Within market research, AI can produce accurate data simply because it reduces the chances of human bias. With AI, human bias is basically eliminated because the program only processes the data fed to it. With the continued development of different AI features like Natural Language Processing (NLP) and sentiment and tone analysis, AI is continuing to scale.
For nearly a decade, The Martec Group has been conducting Emotion Intelligence research. Emotion Intelligence is an AI market research solution based upon Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. This toolkit employs:
- Emotion Detecting or multi-dimensional sentiment analysis, using existing data (i.e., transcripts from focus groups or open-ended survey responses)
- Emotion Discovery, which plugs into primary research
- Emotion Monitoring — of “community” content data (social media and review sites)
It seamlessly yields reliable, actionable data addressing customers’ most intense feelings regarding a product, service, or brand.
Lastly, another area where research buyers and suppliers had a significant degree of agreement is blockchain. Blockchain applications have the lowest prioritization ranking across all segments. While blockchain technology may help organizations build trust, use cases within the insights industry continue to be unconvincing.
The insights industry buzz topics identified in this year’s GRIT Report show that research buyers and suppliers desire solutions that increase operational efficiencies. From value creation through data-driven insights to new or enhanced methodologies, the ability to develop relevant and timely business insights is paramount.
