Blog

There can be no doubt that the rise and rise of digital technology has changed and continues to change the way we all work. This is no less true in the world of market research in general and here at Insight in particular.

Increasingly all of us here at Insight are being asked to research and often help develop the ways in which our clients use digital tools to engage with their clients - social media & viral marketing tools, website design, remote eDetailing, face to face eDetailing - for example are just some of the projects that are now regularly coming our way. In addition as a discipline market research is increasingly developing tools and that are underpinned by and draw upon digital technologies.

The emergence and improvement of digital technology has allowed us as researchers to develop and design a varied and ‘value adding’ set of extra research approaches. There are some obvious advantages to digitally grounded quantitative and qualitative approaches. For example on-line surveys can be designed to be more visually engaging, allow you to work with widely dispersed respondents , enable respondents to answer questions or fill in questionnaires in their own time and at their own pace. Visual prompting, materials and communications co-creation have all become more speedy and flexible as have the emergence and effective delivery of on-line group discussions and video streamed focus groups.

The widespread prevalence of and engagement with ‘social media’ by doctors and patients alike has also lead to some interesting challenges for our clients; how best, if at all, do we engage with this new informal and dialogue based way of reaching out to our HCP customers and if relevant their patients? In addition the arrival of social media in the medical ‘discourse’ has raised some interesting possibilities for us as researchers.

The emergence of Insight’s eVillage® and no doubt other Market Research On-line Communities of HCPs, draws on social media tools - blogging, video diaries, bulletin boards, chat-rooms, quick-polls, photo journals etc – to allow clients to ‘tune in’ to this discourse.   Indeed the commissioning of projects using the eVillage®/MROC approach has proved to be a real innovation that has allowed us to really go deeper on research topics over a sustained period of time generating genuinely new and valuable insights for clients, researchers and respondents alike.

Ultimately all market research is about delivering real insights that can drive competitive edge for clients. These days that means having a fairly complete grasp of current and emerging digital technologies. Clearly the best agencies will use this knowledge and indeed relevant external expertise to shape new research offerings in ways that add to and enhance the suite of approaches they offer to the clients with whom they wish to do business.

However it is really important not to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. Traditional market research remains as valuable as ever and the pursuit of more and more digital development should not obscure that fact. In my view, when done well, digitally grounded research adds to rather than replaces what is possible from market research.   We are still at the stage where there’s no real substitute for that face to face and indeed group discussion environment for really getting to understand the energy, process, visual and non verbal response to a topic. In turn this allows for deeper understanding of motivation and emotion and how best to influence, engage and shape a response in the area under discussion.

Digital will no doubt continue to grow as will the integration of digitally based approaches with ‘traditional’ qualitative and quantitative research. In our view these are developments to be embraced and where possible shaped by agencies like ours and others. In these rapidly evolving times one thing is crystal clear the future will be different and this is a great time to be at Insight.