Respondents: Our Livelihood

Last week I had the pleasure of attending two market research conferences, the first being MRIA in beautiful Kelowna, B.C. and the second being CASRO Technology in NYC. It was encouraging to note all of the innovation in our field, from mobile research to social media research to survey routers and community technologies. A common theme was "How do we keep respondents engaged? How do we ensure we have a sufficient number and diversity of respondents in the future?"

Researchers acknowledged the usual suspects behind declining return rates: long surveys, boring surveys, surveying people too frequently, and lack of personalization. Data was presented showing that respondents are more engaged and enthusiastic about shorter surveys, surveys that use flash and other appealing technologies, and surveys that aren't repetitive and don't contain endless attribute lists. Still, the question arose: Who is responsible for improving the situation? Should research companies refuse to field surveys over 17 minutes in length - would we be able to reach such a consensus? Is it up to clients to understand that without respondents we have no data? What is the role of industry associations? One thing is clear - the future of our industry depends upon how well we do in addressing respondent satisfaction.

Mobile research was a major theme of both conferences, with good reason. Worldwide, the growth in mobile ownership is stunning, and the devices allow researchers to connect to consumers in any location using new tools such as scanner devices and GPS. However, to migrate from computers to mobile devices means understanding the very limited real estate that a phone allows. Recommendations were made to keep surveys at under 10 questions, with very limited response options, and to show respect for consumers' time and limited tolerance for endless scrolling. As an industry, we need to migrate to mobile, particularly to reach young people and people in developing countries. But the rub is that if there is any respondent group that is impatient, it's young people. No doubt the shift from 45 minute surveys to mini mobile surveys will be difficult in many ways, but neither is there any doubt that we need to work together to achieve this goal.

On the community front, great strides are being made in terms of listening to what consumers want to say and how they want to say it. Consumers have moved from being passive recipients of information to active influencers of others' attitudes and behaviors. When they are dissatisfied, they'll write about it on twitter or Facebook so quickly it can make your head spin. Consumers have more power than ever before, and new technologies that allow them to express themselves, free from the constraints of traditional surveys, will become ever more important over time.