34 [ the Journal ] J

The market research industry is a bit like Leonard Cohen. Or Marmite. Or even Manchester United. Some people love market research (usually clients) and some loathe it

(almost every creative director). But whichever side of the fence you’re on, even if you’re a rabid opponent, you would probably still concede that most research is conducted with a high degree of competence, and to standards that can withstand rigorous enquiry. This assumption becomes all the more significant when you remember that most quantitative market research is executed somewhere out there in a different demographic world, beyond the prying eyes of clients or creatives. With or without fieldwork backchecks, those marketers who commission research ultimately put their faith in the hands of total strangers whom they will never meet nor have a chance to evaluate.

Which, in my recent experience, is rather worrying.

A week or two ago, I was recruited by phone to take part in a very vaguely articulated ‘brand enhancement’ programme. Fearing the worst, I nevertheless agreed to take part, as much out of a sense of morbid curiosity as a desire to demonstrate professional solidarity. And so I accepted the invitation to spend thirty minutes or so with someone whom I suspected – correctly as it turned out – to be a market research interviewer. Big mistake.

What followed next was a litany of embarrassing and amateurish incidents that would have been amusing if they hadn’t been so damaging to my perception of research fieldworkers as highly trained practitioners of their often tedious craft. First, my interrogator-to-be got hopelessly lost, and while phoning me for directions somehow conspired to make it clear that it was my fault that our offices were so hard to find. And if I wasn’t to blame, then her previous appointment, or the taxi driver, or both, most certainly was. She was not a happy bunny, and made sure I knew it.

When she finally arrived, very late, I was immediately reminded of that first rule of effective fieldwork – match your interviewer to your

respondent. Now I know that it’s hard to make this point without sounding patronising or arrogant, but if you’re going to interview someone who’s been around the block a few times on the subject of personal financial management and the use of charge cards, it is surely unwise to send someone who behaves and dresses like a first year arts undergraduate. Grubby paperwork and uncertain computer skills only served to exacerbate my poor initial impression.

But worse was to come. All good questionnaires start with the ‘filter questions’ which are designed to weed out respondents who might be deemed to have an interest in the subject under discussion, either because they work in the same field as the client, or because they are professionally close to the market research industry. Which should have ruled me out, as I made clear to my interviewer. However, she was having none of it, and was determined to get her fee for a completed questionnaire, especially given the angst she had suffered trying to find me in the first place. Every conceivable argument was used to try to avoid disqualifying me, until eventually I relented, having satisfied myself that I could still answer her questions fairly and frankly as a typical charge card owner. (I hereby throw myself at the mercy of the SAMRA disciplinary inquisition and plead forgiveness as a first-time offender).

I am well aware that research companies put in place checks and balances to maintain the highest professional fieldwork standards. I am also certain that what I encountered is likely to be the exception rather than the norm. But I still think it comes as a salutary lesson to marketers that there is no substitute for first-hand experience as a means of judging what happens in those disciplines that you choose to outsource to external suppliers (and this extends way beyond market research). Get out there, get stuck into the real marketplace, however remote it might be from your everyday world, and put yourself for just a few minutes in a respondent’s shoes.

It might even tempt you to try a Marmite sandwich while listening to Leonard Cohen.

Who researches the researchers?

BY ANDY RICE

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