4 Ways Agile Research Will Help Marketers Innovate Faster and Better

In today’s hyper-accelerated world, it seems virtually every business, every marketer and every researcher wants to be agile.

The question is: Are today’s agile research approaches helping marketers get to market faster with better products and services?

An Ipsos global survey found that only 24% of consumers feel that brands deliver regular innovations and new products. It seems that a new generation of agile research approaches is needed to help marketers innovate better and meet consumers’ expectations.

We believe agile research will evolve in four ways:

1. Research Quality and Speed Will Be Delivered

Many of today’s automated and standardized solutions — including idea, concept and package testing — offer the benefit of speed but can suffer from quality issues. Specifically, many automated and standardized solutions offer samples that are not representative, do not use proven measures of success and offer limited ways to analyze and interpret the data.

Going forward, we expect to see a demand for solutions that are not only fast, but also high-quality. For example, idea, concept and package testing results need to be compared to competition to be meaningful. When samples are not representative or replicable over time, benchmarking becomes impossible. Therefore, it is imperative that a disciplined approach to managing sample is in place and that surveys are device-agnostic to maximize coverage.

To further ensure accuracy of results, proven success measures should be used. For example, a recent McKinsey article stated that fast-moving consumer goods companies “will require a new operating model that … focuses relentlessly on consumer relevance … Mass merchants will fight back [against e-commerce giants and discounters] with … keenness for differentiation.”

Finally, as marketers increasingly demand quality along with speed, we expect that agile research solutions will deliver more diagnostics and guidance.

2. Social Data Mining Will Be Leveraged in Product Development

We expect that social data mining will become a go-to solution for accelerating innovation. Not only is social data mining fast, it is also flexible and cost-efficient. Social data mining approaches to innovation research are already emerging. For example, social data mining is being used to identify innovation opportunities by identifying consumer trends and then applying analysis that involves social and search metrics to see which trends are most important. Online reviews and ratings are being used for product evaluations and to deliver analytics such as performance versus competition and mental networks.

3. Artificial Intelligence Will Facilitate Iteration

Artificial intelligence can play an important role in iteration with its ability to automate. For example, a concept-testing survey typically includes an open-ended question about preferences. Often the responses are neither long nor insightful. AI can drill down on open-ended responses by creating follow-up questions based on responses, determining the two to three most important questions to extract the most efficient information.

4. Modular Innovation Approaches Will Become More Prevalent

Traditional innovation processes typically follow predefined sequences (e.g., ideation session, idea test, concept test, concept/product test and simulated test marklet) with yes/no outcomes at the end of each stage. As agile research evolves, we expect these linear processes to give way to modular approaches in which research and learnings from different sources (some of which may already exist) are brought together and, where appropriate, traditional steps are eliminated because they don’t add value. For example, a modular approach to innovation could employ social data mining for opportunity identification, rapid idea and concept testing and rapid product prototyping.

Moving Agile to the Next Level

Agile research promises to help marketers move more quickly, efficiently and intelligently than ever before. However, agile research as it exists today is just the beginning of what will be a seismic change in how we conduct innovation research. We expect to see agile research evolve to deliver higher-quality research, more iterative processes (with the ability to automate iteration) and more holistic learnings. The result will be faster, deeper insights that will help marketers get to market faster with more successful innovations.

About the Authors | Virginia Weil and Allyson Leavy

Virginia Weil is president of global innovation and product testing at Ipsos. Allyson Leavy is vice president of Ipsos Marketing in the U.S.