We’ve just finished our own company presentation in the morning break where my co-blogger, Roderick White, talked about the 20 problems facing today’s market research (plus providing a few answers, I should add).

Roderick did it in the Petcha Kucha style. Just in case you don’t know what Petcha Kucha is (I didn’t myself until I was asked the other day to introduce the session …), it was devised in 2003 by two Toyko architects as a way for designers to meet together to share and showcase their work in public.

Literally meaning “sound of conversation” in Japanese, there are two rules for Petcha Kucha presentations, both designed to keep presentations brief and to maximise interest levels and participation:

1. You are only allowed 20 slides.

2. Each slide can only be shown for 20 seconds.

Apparently, in architectural and design circles, there are Petcha Kucha foundations in 80 cities worldwide. But the idea has also been adopted and adapted by businesses in other sectors who are fed up with sitting through long, waffling presentations.

WARC is one of them, and below you’ll find Roderick’s 6 minutes and 40 seconds’ worth of thought about the 20 problems facing market research. We’ve also added in links to relevant articles on WARC.com that can help provide some answers.

Qu 1. Will response rates continue to fall?

A. It looks like it, but ‘diminishing returns’ must surely set in

Will survey research survive the digital age?
Andrew Green, WARC Media FAQ, March 2007

Perceptions of survey participation
Leonardo Athias, Fabian Echegaray and Francisco Abundis, ESOMAR, Latin America Conference, Buenos Aires, September 2005

Assessment of survey data quality: a pragmatic approach focused on interviewer tasks
Jack Billet, Ann Carton and Geert Loosveldt, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 46, No. 1, 2004, pp.65-82

The live or digital interviewer - a comparison between CASI, CAPI and CATI with respect to differences in response behaviour
Fred Bronner and Ton Kuijlen, International Journal of Market Research, Volume 49, No.2, 2007, pp.167-190

Qu 2. Is sampling dead?

A. Not exactly, but quota sampling was always sub-optimal, and online research ignores non-users of the