When good researchers go bad: cautionary tales from the front lines

Consumer insight has become the catchphrase of the new millennium in market research. This paper suggests that the emphasis on insight as opposed to research can produce shoddy research with poor insights.

When good researchers go bad: cautionary tales from the front lines

Stephen NeedelAdvanced Simulations, LLC, United States

INTRODUCTION

The proliferation of scanner data in the 1990s allowed marketing research to shift its emphasis to what we might call marketing efficiency. Most of the things we researched in the 1990s were not about building strong brands and delivering to consumer needs. Instead, we were focused on optimizing our marketing actions, our logistics, and our research. The growth and popularity of store-based scanner data and household panel data permitted us to relegate the immediate consumer to secondary status; we interpreted consumer...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands