The recent privacy debate between three representatives of the trade bodies (MRS, CASRO, and ESOMAR) and three sceptics (Michalis Michael, Tom Anderson, and myself) was widely reported and highlighted some of the core issues (you can find a write-up of the debate on Leonard Murphy’s blog and he links to a large number of other write-ups).
The core issues as I see them are:
The case for market research specific guidelines, based on the traditions of market research, centres on the need to protect market research from external regulation, to protect the consumers’ opinion of market research, and to ensure that there is a clear separation between market research and ‘selling’.
The sceptics argument is more varied, ranging from those who feel the proposed guidelines are not quite right through to some who seem to feel that anything that does not get you in court is fine – but the core of the sceptics position is that that the market research bodies do not ‘get’ the fact that the world has changed and that in many of the new areas of business activity market researchers are not in a position to define the rule.
Having listened to the many people who have added their opinion to the debate, my view of the future of market and social research is an onion skin model of market research, where each layer has its own characteristics of ethics, commercialisation, and guidelines.
These layers I call
1. Non-commercial research
2. Anonymous market research
3. Permission-based market research
4. Sales and marketing research
Note, I am not making the case for these specific titles, but I am making the case for these four levels. In the sections below I make the case for what I would include in the four levels.
Non-commercial research
Traditionally and in many parts of the word this type of research has been called social research, but the rise in social media research is introducing an element of ambiguity to the term social research. By non-commercial research I mean research whose primary purpose is not commercial, for example a large part of the research conducted by Governments, NGOs, and academics. This research can and should be held to the highest standards of ethics, be based on either informed consent and/or review by a relevant ethics board. Note, academic and Government research does not need to be harm free nor does it need to be based on informed consent, provided that the good to society outweighs the harm of conducting the research.
Personally, I would like this type of research to be closely aligned to the model adopted by many universities where all projects had to be presented to an ethical review board in order to qualify for this innermost level of research.
Anonymous market research
Anonymous market research is my term for what has been considered traditional market research. It is based on informed consent, keeping the respondents anonymous, and avoiding any risk of respondents being contacted for ‘selling’.
Where social media listening research was conducted the researcher would need to a) work out what permissions were required and b) ensure that individuals could not be identified through the reporting of their views.
Permission-based market research
Permission-based market research turns control of the process over to the suppliers of the views and opinions; i.e. the respondents, customers, social media users, etc. This category of market research would be include any form of market research whose primary purpose was not marketing or selling, but would permit those activities as by-products of the research, subject to consent.
The issue of what users of social media have consented to, and what operators of social networks can restrict, needs to be tested in courts of law and public opinion. Quoting something a journalist publishes in their commercial blog (subject to copyright issues) is seen as fine by most people, the Nielsen/Patients Like Me scraping is seen as ‘bad’ by almost everybody. But defining the boundary is less easy.
Sales and marketing research
This category would utilise the skills of the market researcher in the context of selling and marketing. This category would include the more aggressive uses of social media, Big Data integration, response marketing and much more.
This category would be defined more by law and regulation, than by self-regulation and codes of conduct. There will still be scope for ISOs to provide evidence of competence to clients and of corporate and social responsibility policies – but these apply to all companies and in all fields, they are not specific to market research.
How does this differ to what the bodies are saying?
At one level the difference between what I am suggesting and what the bodies is suggesting is quite subtle. Bodies, such as the MRS in the UK are saying that they would count my first two categories (non-commercial research and anonymous research research) as market research and they are happy for market research companies to conduct the second two categories provided they call it “Not market research”.
However, it is my belief that the first two categories are a declining share of the total and soon will be declining in absolute terms. I think that the second two categories will soon account for 90% of what clients want to buy in the area of market research, and for us to call it “Not market research” is just folly.
In many markets, the current definitions of market research confer some benefits as well as imposing some restrictions. For example, in many markets we can ring people who have said they do not want to be phoned, because we are not considered marketing. We might lose these exemptions with my model, or we might be able to make them specific to our non-commercial and anonymous research – but either way I think the industry would be better off without the constraints that the exemptions apply.
Ray Poynter, EVP Vision Critical, 7-Sep-2011
