You're a market researcher and you don't even know it
I know I'm a market researcher. I write surveys that ask
people about their purchases, what they plan to purchase, and why they plan to
purchase those things. I use words like norms, box scores, and straightlining.
Chances are, if you know what those words mean, you're also a market researcher.
there are hundreds of thousands of people who have no clue that they are market
researchers. They have impressive sounding titles like 'Database and
Analytics Manager,' or 'Business Intelligence Analyst,' or 'Data Scientist'
which are nothing like our traditional titles of 'Market Research Manager,' or 'Qualitative
Researcher.'
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Work with marketing and merchandising managers
to develop marketing campaigns that drive incremental sales and revenue by
supplying data insights and support for better decision making -
Evaluate data-driven insights to identify
opportunities for optimization of marketing campaigns and provide
recommendations to improve program performance -
Driving marketing strategy and tactics through
the design, development, and implementation of segmentation based marketing
solutions -
Provide insight into user experience
I don't know about you but that sounds an awful lot like a
market researcher to me. Though we may not speak the same language or belong to
the same industry organizations, what brings us all together is one common
goal: To collect, organize, and analyze data to better understand consumers and
their needs.
We talk a lot about new and innovative methods of marketing research. We focus a lot of attention on eye-tracking and neuroscience and social media listening and a whole host of other really cool technological devices. Perhaps in our quest to seek out the next tool that will bring us untold insights, we have forgotten the simplest strategy: Talking to the people sitting next to us typing wildly at their computers, the people who are already conducting marketing research albeit under another name.
