2012 EU Forecast: Can the market research industry beat uncertainty in Eurozone?
by Ben Leet, Senior Director HRT and Survey Solutions
Ben joined the uSamp UK team at the very beginning, and is charged with building out our new client relationships in Europe. Prior to joining uSamp Ben held senior positions with Decision Tree Consulting, Toluna and Ugam, the first of which saw Ben designing, conducting and delivering full service research programmes to blue chip clients for over 5 years, before joining the online panel business at Toluna in early 2008. This combination allows Ben to understand all aspects of the market research process, adding value to uSamp clients along the way. Ben is a Graduate of the Nottingham Business School in the UK with a BA (Hons) in European Business.
The European economy is back on the brink. In recent weeks we’ve seen new governments installed in Greece and Italy, debt levels rising to dangerous levels in other EU countries, and a European Central Bank that seems unwilling or unable to step in. Politicians are divided as to the best course of action, which has led to very little action and has created an even larger sense of economic uncertainty across the whole region.
We don’t know for certain that another recession will hit in 2012, but it seems unlikely that the Eurozone is going to avoid it. In fact, most commentary on the subject seems keen to talk us straight back into a recession, with consumer confidence dropping ever more steadily at every mention of the words “double-dip”. As before, there will be talk in MR circles about our industry being relatively “recession proof” – businesses still need to invest in research to make decisions after all, and many argue that this is even truer in times of uncertainty.
The issue for the MR industry is that during tough times, although end clients want to continue doing research, they also want more for their budgets –and they want it fast. For any brand or business to progress they need to be reactive to the market and to consumer trends; in turn, the MR industry needs to keep up with these new and ever-increasing demands. We have already seen the impact of this – online research is being used to replace other methods to maximize time and cost, even when online may not be a fit-for-purpose methodology, end clients have more and more tools available to conduct research themselves, and new methods such as mobile and social media are also emerging to cater for these increasingly tough demands.
Should a recession hit in 2012, the economic crisis will drive these new models forward at an even faster pace than we have previously experienced. In my last blog post, I wrote about the MR industry being conservatively innovative, with end clients being the driver behind this pace of change—a recession will only amplify this industry development. In essence, an increasing number of end clients will make tough decisions about whether to continue using MR agencies, or whether to try and go it alone. MR agencies that add genuine value will always have plenty of demand, but work that is low value-add and simply a data collection process will increasingly migrate towards end-client management and delivery in order to save both time and money.
With the right tools at hand, there is a place in the industry for end clients to self-serve, and I don’t think the MR industry should discourage this direction; in fact it should be embraced. The difficulty for end clients will be in deciding what they sacrifice and where – in depth analysis and high level value, or lower cost and faster turnaround. Ultimately, the end clients who get this mix right will be the ones nimble enough to move with the fast pace of change that the 2012 economy will bring, whilst at the same time taking the right strategic steps towards their longer term goals. If only our European political leaders can learn from the private sector and engage in the same thought process.
As for MR suppliers, those that get their propositions correctly aligned with the demands and visions of customers can still be successful in 2012, even with another recession looming. For uSamp, that means continuing to develop our cutting-edge technologies to keep pace or outpace the marketplace. We have a robust product roadmap for our self-serve sampling engine SampleMarketTM, and our new survey-authoring platform SurveyBuilderTM will allow clients to create their surveys and deploy them directly to any audience, including uSamp’s vetted panel, in real time. The key beneficiaries of SampleMarket are MR agencies who need to get a survey deployed to uSamp’s panel quicker and more efficiently than ever before, and we also believe that there is a place for end clients to “self-serve”, with SurveyBuilder our new offering in this space. We hope to continue providing both services to meet the expectations of our clients and the market research industry as a whole in 2012.
Our first year in Europe is nearly over, and we are already truly excited about bringing our latest technologies and innovations to market next year. We hope that you keep checking back with us and this blog for updates as we continue our development and expansion path. From Europe, we wish all our clients and partners a prosperous 2012!
