THE MARKETER'S DILEMMA
If you don't know the ROI of your market research investment; odds are you are wasting your money. And if you are wasting your money, you can be sure that your managers and decision makers are not getting the guidance they need ...
And this is why...
Fifty "first dates" - The typical life span of market research insights is less than six months with its utility confined to the small team involved with the research. Lack of a comprehensive knowledge management protocol banishes this expensive knowledge to "inaccessible black space" where its value as a tool for educating managers is significantly compromised
Five Blind Men and the Elephant - Very few companies maintain a strategic "holistic" view of the market and instead rely on an assortment of tactical research projects focused on a specific set of questions (e.g., copy testing, pricing, segmentation). These uncoordinated snapshots of the market are often inconsistent and subject to significant variation in interpretation. You need to see the entire elephant to understand what it is.
Re-inventing the wheel - There are best practices for conducting market research, analyzing the results of that research and delivering information and insights to decision makers, yet few companies have established these standards and instead allow every project to "start from scratch" and charge significant dollars to conduct a completely customized engagement. This lack of discipline produces "failed projects" that were not consistent with end user expectations while increasing the cost of research by 15% to $20% and extending project timelines as much as 20%.
And "What do I do now?" - The biggest hit on ROI comes from the common experience of the managers commissioning the research not knowing how to translate insight into profit or productivity. Though this linkage should be clearly defined prior to commissioning any market research, few companies impose clear articulation of this linkage as a pre-requisite for funding. You can't measure the ROI of a market research investment without this foundation.