We told you last week about the Market Research Trends IdeaScale instance set up by Kathryn Korostoff of Research Rockstar. The site provides a crowdsourcing approach to identifying trends in market research over the coming year. Later, we took a look at one of the trends posted for discussion – the “insourcing” of market research, wherein more and more organizations are conducting their own research using self-service tools rather than engaging market research firms. Today, let’s look at the leading prediction on the site: that alternative and multi-modal approaches to data collection will finally see real traction in 2011.
The idea was posted by Vaughn Mordecai, President of Discovery Research Group. (You can find Vaughn on Twitter at @discores.) The thought behind Vaughn’s prediction as he describes it on the IdeaScale site is that while alternative modes of data collection – including social media tools, collection using mobile devices, and son – have boomed in the past year, they haven’t really taken hold in the larger scheme of conducting market research, which still relies more on traditional models.
So will 2011 be the year that changes? Will social media be accepted as more than a fad and become more “professionalized” as a market research tool? Will mobile devices reach a degree of proliferation that make them unavoidable as a tool for data collection? There are already a number of comments on Vaughn’s post, and with 29 votes in its favor, it currently leads the pack as “most likely” based on the crowd’s input. What do you think? Please share your comments on this post, and be sure to cast your vote over at the Market Research Trends IdeaScale site.
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