In market research, the researcher or agency is only as good as the last job. This is undoubtedly unfair, but unfortunately true. Most researchers do good jobs within the constraints that are imposed upon them, but still researchers get dropped from lists either by being delib- erately axed, or simply by not getting any more jobs. An obvious reason for this is that the researcher is perceived to have done a ‘bad job’.
Occasionally, a research project may go wrong for all sorts of reasons, which could involve failure of the client, failure in recruitment, or just bad luck. However, another is that the researcher may have been ‘off form’ – ill, bored, uninterested, having personal problems, and so forth (see Chapter 10). Whatever the reason, it is quite likely that the researcher will get the blame, rightly or wrongly. Given the high stakes that can surround the outcome of research, long-term relationships can terminate quite easily if the conditions are right (or wrong!). This is all the more unfortunate as no researcher willingly makes this happen,
and in general the problems are ones of misunderstanding, not ignorance or incompetence.
However, there are also a number of straightforward things that can upset a research buyer. Clients do vary greatly in what they expect and how they define a ‘quality’ job, and it is prudent to have an eye to their basic expectations, as this is essential to maintaining the relationship.
The following sections describe the critical aspects of managing the relationship between the researcher and the client during the course of a job, which may influence the future relationship.
Contact
The ability for a researcher to be contactable is critical. Although researchers are often away from their desk, as is required by the nature of their work, clients expect to be able to contact them easily. Not only is good contact taken as a sign of a dedication of the researcher to the job, it is also a way in which any problem the buyer might have can be resolved. Failure to respond to contacts is really the death knell of a relationship, and with modern technology there is no reason good contact should not be maintained.
The buyer may wish to make contact in order to place the initial brief (which will probably have tight deadlines, and he or she will need to know whether the supplier is able and willing to take the job on), for organizing elements of the research process, for example, the stimulus material or contact details, for changes to the brief and so on.
Contact is a mutual thing and it is vital that the research buyer is also easily contactable. Unfortunately, the buyer does not always take the same view with respect to contact the other way, and this can be difficult.
Implicit aspects of the contract
A lot of research is placed with little in the way of documentation about the job itself, although there will be some form of brief created.
However, even in a well-documented briefing there is much about the job that is unstated and implicit because it is seen to be obvious. This is the area where major problems can occur, because what is obvious to one person is not to another.
In qualitative research, the areas that need attention include: the number of people in a group, how many can have been in groups
before, what happens if there has been a mis-recruitment, what is expected of client observers at the group, expectations of who is doing the moderation, use of transcripts in analysis, expectations of reporting and so forth.
In quantitative research areas requiring attention include matters of timing (it is important that a pre-advertising research wave takes place before the advertising starts!), the total base size being what was requested, the stimulus material not getting mixed up and so forth.
It is extremely tedious to tie all these things down, especially with the speed of job placement, and this is even worse when the time imperatives require a trade-off to be made against these ‘normal’
requirements with little guidance as to which the buyer might consid- er to be inviolate. Neither the buyer nor the supplier is especially interested in this until something goes wrong – when the ‘proverbial’
hits the fan.
Other issues that are really bad news are: taking the client for granted, acting in an insensitive way in the debrief, being late with documentation (especially reports if these were requested), spelling brand names incorrectly and generally letting the client down in a variety of unspecified ways.
This is where the role of a purchasing department can be helpful (if present), in that it has the expertise (and interest) to get a lot of this stuff into the basic contract that underwrites the researcher being on the roster.
Informing on progress
As mentioned earlier there is an essential difference between an end-user who is commissioning for him- or herself, and one who is commission- ing on behalf of another. In the former case, the buyer will be keen to know of the results as soon as anything is available or half available.
Managing this is a job that the researcher has to develop and be happy with, as it is not helpful to the analytical process to be asked constantly what the findings are.
In the latter case, the buyer will be busy with other activities and will not be particularly interested in the progress of any particular pro- ject, only that the job is progressing smoothly and according to plan.
This is because the buyer will mostly not have a stake in the actual findings, only that the research was professionally conducted and
worked well. Also, because the buyer will be working with researchers with whom he or she is familiar, he or she will presume that everything is going well, and not need reassurance of this. However, it takes little effort to email that the key stages have been successful, for example, and that the fieldwork has been completed successfully.
Managing the results
Although it is always good practice for a researcher (especially a qualitative researcher) to be left alone by the client while he or she is formulating the results (see Chapter 9), it is generally of value for him or her to give some idea about the outcome of the research before the formal debrief.
As has been mentioned, the research function in an organization will primarily be concerned that the research process has happened in a satisfactory way – and should know this anyway by the time of the debrief. However, by this time the department will also want to be able to prepare the way for managing the impact of the results on the end-user client, and will normally want some idea about the nature of the findings. In particular, it needs to have a feel for any information that might be controversial, both to help the researcher in how to han- dle it – and to prepare him or her for the sorts of questioning that might be coming – and to ‘soften up’ the end-user so he or she is not
‘thrown’ in the actual debrief – which is not helpful to anyone. Even bland sorts of information, such as ‘There are no surprises’, or ‘It’s good news’, or ‘It’s bad news’ really do help the debrief group to orientate itself before the debrief.
There are some buyers who actually like to spend the time with the researcher to influence the tone of the final presentation and to help with any potential political issues. This is not anything like as common for qualitative research as for quantitative.
Lunches
Given that personal relationships are important in this business, it is not surprising that an amount of entertainment goes on between sup- plier and buyer. Obviously there are a number of ethical considerations to take into account: for example, it is not normal to take a person out to lunch before work has been commissioned as this could be construed
inappropriately. Many researchers do not take clients out to lunch at all and manage their businesses perfectly well, while others are much more inclined to do so. Some clients relish being taken out, others avoid it, and some organizations, especially in the public service domain, actively discourage it.
Feedback
It is always good practice for the commissioning client to give some sort of feedback to the researcher after the debrief. This is rarely done enough. The reason is that generally the work is delivered to expecta- tion, and therefore there does not seem to be much to say. When the work is deemed to be poor, rightly or wrongly, then it is embarrassing to tell the researcher this, and the most normal reaction is to dodge the responsibility of discussing it and instead not to give that person any more work in the future.
Both these actions are not satisfactory. In the former case it does not recognize that researchers are human too, that they have dedicated a part of themselves to the company for a period of time and therefore have an identification with the work that is more than just a simple financial transaction. In the case when the researcher is deemed to have done poor work, feedback should be carried out so that the researcher can gain some idea why the people in the company came to this view.
As was mentioned earlier (this is developed in later chapters), work may be deemed to be poor simply to discredit it as part of the political games that are almost always present in any social organization and may be particularly strong on a particular job. When this is the case, it is especially difficult to go to the researcher and explain the reasons for their work appearing poor. There are cases where the work is poor, and the effect is that money, and worse, time have been wasted. Under these circumstances, it seems fairly obvious that the job failed, and there seems little point on the part of the commissioner of going through it all.
This is not to say that the process should still not take place.
The feedback can be as simple as thanking the researcher and com- plimenting him or her on the work – no more than good manners really. A further way of giving feedback is to tell the researcher of the outcome of the work: the immediate decision that has been taken, or later on, the longer-term consequences. This latter input, although very much welcomed by the researchers, is actually a lot more difficult to
manage by the commissioner than might be expected, as often a lot of time has passed, the world has moved on and the researcher and the work are simply out of mind. A simple, but rare, way of doing this is to include regular suppliers on the circulation of any company newspa- per or magazine in which new products or changes are reported. This means that not only are they informed about the company, which will help them in subsequent briefings, but they will be able to see what hap- pened as a result of their research.