Market Research Predictions for 2022 (Part One)

Editor’s Note: The following article is the first installment in GreenBook’s two-part Market Research Predictions for 2022. Market Research Predictions is an annual series on the GreenBook Blog that features insights and analytics leaders’ predictions for the new year. View part two here.

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Well, it’s the close of another year (and what a year it was!) and while that means many things to many people, for me it means one of my favorite annual events: our year-ahead Market Research Predictions!

This year I reached out to many of the best and brightest in the insights and analytics space, and asked them for their predictions for 2022. They delivered in spades, with a deep, broad, and varied set of thoughts on what the year ahead will bring for market research and marketing analytics.

There are themes that run through all of these predictions, mainly about the continuing disruption brought by technology to our space, but also about the ongoing long-tail impact of Covid-19 and related changes in consumer behavior, economic factors, and evolving business processes that will continue to reshape our industry. Of course, many also focus on the unprecedented growth and concomitant volume of M&A/Investment activity targeting our industry and what that means for the future as well. Overall the take seems to be that while 2021 was an exciting year, 2022 likely holds more of the same! 

As always, none of our would-be seers have a crystal ball or a time machine, and we know that predicting the future accurately is a rare trait. However, our soothsayers are experienced business leaders and change agents, and they are folks I would never bet against based on their stellar bios and accomplishments. I suggest that you take each with a grain of salt and all the open-mindedness you can muster.

Thanks to everyone for playing along in my end-of-year ritual; I hope you all get as much out of reading this collection as I do in compiling it!

Growth and consolidation in the market research industry

“2022 will be the year that the pace of change within the industry aligns with that seen in other sectors; been a long time coming!”

– Alex Hunt, CEO of Behaviorally

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“Growing, growing, growing. Custom research will resurge as marketers deal with segmenting consumer needs in a post-vax world.”

– Chandler Mount, CEO of Affluent Consumer Research Company

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“More of the same. More mergers and acquisitions, more growth in the use of platforms, more non-researchers conducting research, more research being conducted, a continued shift away from complex solutions to pragmatic solutions (a shift from the 95% solution to the 80% solution).”

– Ray Poynter, Chief Research Officer of Potentiate

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“Consolidation will continue as will the rise of technology, while legacy players will continue to fall further and further behind. Data quality will continue to plague the industry as consumers will increasingly demand fair compensation for honest answers.”

– Keith Rinzler, Founder of 1Q

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“Continued market and economic fluctuations will force organizations to constantly re-evaluate their investments and strategies. This will increase demand for quick, cheap research solutions (leaning qualitative; relative to normal spending behaviors) while decreasing organizations’ willingness to commit to long-term deals. 

The consolidation from sample to full service and technologies will intensify as the most valuable assets are snatched up and buyers are left with decisions to make bigger moves or risk getting left behind.”

– Gary Ellis, President of Remesh

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“We will experience significant inflation in sample costs and a renewed focus on data quality from clients. This will have an impact throughout the industry – leading to more consolidation of agencies and more push to ‘better’ not ‘cheaper’. Don’t discount a market crash towards the end of the year bringing an abrupt halt to a lot of the bigger PE deals.”

– Stephen Phillips, CEO of Zappi

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“This year has seen several major announcements, both from an investment/funding announcement perspective, but also from a technological and product development perspective. 

I think both of those trends will continue  – there will be more investment in technology, both directly from companies already existing in the space, as well as external/VC/fund money. I also think there will be more consolidation on the supply side. With the exchanges largely consolidating, there will be further pressure on the supply side to do the same.

Finally, on the agency side, I think they will be investing more in technology as well as consolidation there too.”

– Vignesh Krishnan, CEO of Research Defender

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“Our industry will continue to grow in volume and value. The levels of uncertainty will be an engine for this growth. I have the impression that we will return to pressure to reduce prices and automate data collection, but to put more value on specialized advisory services for businesses (e.g. consulting). A period of economic restrictions is coming – as there were for 1999 or 2008. Those were years of great growth for an industry that tries to support decision making.”

– Rafa Cespedes, CEO of Provokers (Chile) and Founder/Director of GreenBook LatAm

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“2022 will be a year of phenomenal growth for the insights industry – building off of a great 2021. The market has changed. Consumer and business buyers have changed. The pandemic has changed everything in so many ways. Companies will continue to increase their investment in research to understand how their customers and influencers have changed. Pick an industry – there is a deep need to better understand how buyers want to interact and transact with their preferred brands.“

– Jay Shutter, CEO of ​​Iluminas

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“After nearly two years of an unprecedented pandemic, with the end not yet clearly in sight, our industry continues on its trajectory of accelerated transformation. New business models and non-traditional terms of engagement with clients and partners will be critical in 2022 and beyond. Companies that continue to innovate and courageously seize emerging opportunities will disproportionately win in this transformation.”

– Gary Laben, CEO of Dynata

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“Increasing consolidation in sample and data services with more of the large providers introducing their own exchanges – making unique panel assets even more attractive as quality sources for respondents.”

– Ged Parton, CEO of Maru

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“Consolidation will continue across the industry. Major players will acquire the technology and resources they need to vertically integrate and streamline their offerings to clients. While the last few years have been dominated by M&A activity among suppliers and research technology companies, 2022 will see insights agencies get more active as they look for ways to in-house pieces of the ResTech puzzle as they evolve their service portfolio.”

– Isaac Rogers, Chief Innovation Officer of Schlesinger Group

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“First, price will drive growth in 2022, as increasing mobility and inflation puts downward pressure on at-home consumption volume. Look for balanced growth across price tiers, including mainstream and value tiers. Second, to gain unit and volume share, CPGs and retailers will promote more often; pre-COVID-19 price cut discount levels will take a while to return. Third, consumers seek value in an inflationary environment, and value channels and value retailers will gain share. Fourth, continued investment in digital vs. store assortments, including speed of delivery and consumer experience, will drive incremental share gains. Pure-play e-commerce and mass channel will continue to dominate nonedible sales.”

– Joan Driggs, VP of Content and Thought Leadership of IRI

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Technology: AI, ResTech, and automation

“I predict the continued scaling of AI/ML into our insights business. We have so many clients using it with amazing results. The machines are coming. They are fast. They are cheap. They aren’t creative and they can’t tell stories…yet. We all need to focus on storytelling and creativity. Thinking outside the questionnaires and briefs to truly grow brands. It’s a glorious time to be in insights because without insights, there can be no growth.”

– Shane Skillen, CEO of Hotspex

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“The pandemic accelerated tech innovations and adoption in most industries. For life sciences, this has meant major breakthroughs, envisioned with the understanding that time is our most precious asset in fighting a little understood, deadly virus. To address pandemic demands, entire industries needed to step up. 

The traditional pace of market learning to inform business decisions is insufficient and has increasingly become stale. Though it began pre-pandemic, the need for advanced technology to springboard creativity and innovation became apparent – with continuous on-demand research and rapid-learning a business imperative. 

In 2022, we’ll see a further push towards tech innovation and new paths to customer access and engagement, particularly in market insights as the foundation of faster, continuous learning. Life science companies will double-down on continuous learning solutions in both quant and qual, and more aggressive real-time tracking solutions to understand market changes.”

– Daniel S. Fitzgerald, CEO and President of Apollo Intelligence

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“Technology will continue as our most disruptive force; forcing on-going productivity and capability gains in the traditional insights and analytics world, while defining how consumers interact with digital channels, such as e-commerce, simultaneously grows share of insights and analytics spend.”

– Alex Hunt, CEO of Behaviorally

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“AI is starting to come of age in the research and insights industry. We expect to see an increased prevalence of AI that will enable research and insights professionals to more easily search vast quantities of data to quickly find insights. The current state of AI can search millions of pages of content via natural language in seconds, an unimaginable level of content and precision beyond traditional keyword or boolean search. While this will aid insights professionals with their work, we also expect to see a democratization of knowledge and the ability for the constituents of insight professionals to use the same AI as the first layer of subject matter expertise within the organization. This will allow a level of self-service for marketing organizations and leadership that today are dependent on research and insights professionals to answer their routine questions. This will free up time for the experts to do more important work as they won’t be bogged down with routine queries.”

– Scott Litman, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Lucy.ai

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“We said two years ago that we will see a continuous focus on business outcomes driven by the increased integration of humans, data, and technology. Little did we know that a global pandemic supercharged that need for better and faster business support. With data and technology being a “commodity”, we will finally see a true integration and meshing of different data sources, resulting in hyper-rich, contextualized data that is curated and translated by curious insights seekers.”

– Horst Feldhaeuser, Group Services Director of Infotools

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“Next year is the year for optimism. The change we’ve seen since the pandemic began will continue. Understanding the future, and what makes people tick, is more important than ever. The spotlight is on us in MRX and insights.

We are obsessed with looking inside our heads. Although a focus on behavioural economics, neuroscience, and research tech can seem warranted, I believe it could be restrictive; this raises the question: where should we look? Much of human thinking happens between brains. This is the place to look to understand humans, and in 2022 will be more important after two years of global lockdowns.

ResTech will continue to be a big part of the conversation; however, I foresee more focus on the extraction of meaning. DIY and automation platforms will address simpler projects which require quick decision making, whilst AI and data-mining extract as much meaning as possible augmented by qualitative insight and better visualisation. This will help stakeholders make decisions more easily.”

– Martin Oxley, Managing Director of Buzzback

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“I believe that automation and technology are key to moving forward in order to generate the quick, in-the-moment tactical research needs. Given the current environment and constantly shifting landscape due to COVID, civil unrest, emerging blockchain, and DeFi, I think there will be a shift from highly deep, strategic consultations to now include more one-off and consumer sentiment snapshots.”

– Jacqueline P. Rosales, President of ISA/Material

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“The next wave of early-stage innovation will align with broader trends that will shape the future; AR/VR and the metaverse, Web 3.0 distributed and decentralized architecture, DeFi, the redefinition of work and the explosion of the “gig economy”, data privacy and sovereignty, the DAO model of collaborative ownership and decision-making, and yes, the rise of AI and robotics in both physical and virtual forms. Those things will drive the next decade of human innovation, so pioneers in the insights and analytics space will increasingly be focusing on their pragmatic applications as we head into 2022. However, we are not done with the full distribution of existing disruptions such as automation of virtually all aspects of the operational processes of research, insights democratization, applied behavioral science at scale, the conversion to digital qual, and practical usage of unstructured data analysis. It’s going to be fun!”

– Leonard Murphy, Executive Editor & Producer of GreenBook

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“In 2022, we’ll see a stark difference between businesses that act rapidly on insights and those that do not. Gone are the days where insights teams could put charts on a presentation and place them in a shared drive, where they’d be forgotten in a few weeks’ time. Customer preferences are evolving too quickly for successful businesses to slowly move information from team to team. To succeed, organizations must invest in insights technology that is tied to existing systems to speed up communication, increase efficiency, and provide actionable intelligence. As a result, new use cases will appear; engineering teams will receive customer feedback directly in their product development workflows, CMOs will receive Slack notifications when brand equity drops, and researchers will incorporate multiple data sources into their insights processes, facilitated by automation. At Fuel Cycle, we’re excited to help brands ignite action.”

– Rick Kelly, Chief Product Officer of Fuel Cycle

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“2022 will be the year that business leaders realize there is no such thing as the ‘new normal’. In fact, there is no normal. We live in an ever-changing world with evolving consumer demands that businesses must be prepared to meet.

The speed at which organizations are required to capture consumer insights will continue to increase as will the quality and variety of insights they need.

As a result, automation and AI research practices will become table stables (if they aren’t already). Brands will shift their focus towards humanizing insights by looking at consumers through multiple data sources and lenses to drive impact. Developing strategies rooted in empathy, the what, and the why behind consumer behavior is the key to keeping up with consumers and developing competitive moats in 2022.”

– Peter Aschmoneit, Co-Founder and CEO of quantilope

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“The future of the insights industry will rely on our ability to bridge insights with actions – better and more rapidly. To succeed, companies must not only uncover accurate insights in real-time, but must also activate, measure, and optimize the effectiveness of those insights in action. Technology and analytics will make this happen, in a seamless and automated way, and will take center stage with this effort.”

– Gary Laben, CEO of Dynata

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“Insights repositories will become mainstream – while knowledge management solutions have been in play for a while, companies are finally using the Insights Repository function to merge CX, UX and MrX together.”

– Vivek Bhaskaran, Founder of QuestionPro

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“Unstructured data analytics is claiming its rightful place on the insights and analytics table and as a result, adoption of machine learning is accelerated (think exponential). Since more than 95% of all humanity’s data (no proof about the number but it sounds right) are unstructured, how could it be any different?”

– Michalis Michael, CEO of DMR

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“Integrated Workflow Platforms for brand management will be the next focus for investment and M&A. These platforms, representing a suite of decision-support solutions, will use relevant data and analytics to power proven models and visualization for speed to decision making and activation. The platform will be advisor-enabled. We call this BrandTech.”

– Elaine Riddell and Ken Sonenclar, Managing Directors of Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips

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“2022 is going to demonstrate how much better we can deal with COVID and related disruptions that could hinder human behavioral research. The pandemic trail likely isn’t vanishing any time soon, but the last two years have accelerated the innovation that was bound to be part of the research industry’s future anyway. Advancements in online and mobile capabilities, coupled with hardware and sensors that continue to be more powerful, less intrusive, and less costly, will provide researchers with greater possibilities and more flexibility in studying behavior. This not only allows them to design the right studies for the right situation, but it will also allow them to navigate challenges from any further disruptions, since the lab-based studies won’t be the only way to get a peek into nonconscious processing and behavior.

With that said, research opportunities in the lab will continue to flourish – we’ve already seen in-lab research reach 2019 levels, and expect that to grow significantly in 2022.”

– Peter Hartzbech, Founder & CEO of iMotions A/S

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Talent acquisition in a remote work world

“I predict we’ll see the continued rise of remote work, even as COVID subsides. The real opportunity of a “remote first” approach is that it significantly increases the size of the pool of potential hires. A remote-first company can access the best talent in the world, meaning you can literally hire from any region in any country. An office-first company can only access those who live near their building. And this brings a Darwinian business dynamic into play. If you and I run companies competing in the same space, and I have better talent and lower staffing costs, I’ll put you out of business. In a knowledge-based economy, like research, your value is the talent you employ. If other companies employ better talent, they are better than you. And you can already see this beginning to happen in companies in our sector – firms are abandoning offices and hiring better talent from around the world, allowing them to reap the rewards of the profitability boosts that these moves generate.”

– Kristin Luck, Founder/Managing Partner of ScaleHouse

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“Market research will continue to come under pressure from alternative data sources and providers that decision-makers can use for decision making, many of which are cheaper, quicker, and easier to ingest, e.g. web data, in-house analytics, and syndicated data. The net effect of this is continued pressure on pricing and cost control within the agency business model to remain sustainable. Consolidation and aggregation in the panel world have optimised the price of key sample inputs (Cint/Lucid). In 2022, this model will move to the next largest P&L cost: People. People and talent will increasingly be procured through marketplaces on an as-and-when basis, minimizing overheads and maximising flexibility, enabled by talent marketplaces and remote working. Leaders will embrace this trend. Laggards will remain hooked on vertical integration. Sample automation has proven the case for how efficiency can be achieved without undermining the quality of client work. Next will be talent and service.”

– Julian Dailly, EVP, Consumer Insight of Savanta

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“Human talent will be in demand; in context of a dynamic labor market, amid a world awash with analytic and data options, people who can tell a story about why other people are behaving the way they are and connect the ramifications of those behaviors to commercial outcomes, will be a precious resource in all corners of the industry.”

– Alex Hunt, CEO of Behaviorally

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“I predict 2022 will see a balancing out of methodologies. Insights teams will have all of their trusted traditional methods available to them as the world (hopefully!) opens up, but now have an established toolbox of innovation to dip into as needed as well. And having a bigger, broader toolbox guided by innovation and iteration will never go out of fashion (or necessity). As teams continue to collaborate remotely across regions and working locations, they will need more collaborative platforms for research fieldwork, brainstorming sessions, participant recruiting, workshops and the collection, storage, and presentation of insights.”

– Katrina Noelle, President/Co-Founder of KNow Research/Scoot Insights

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Next week, look out for the second installment of Market Research Prediction for 2022 on the GreenBook Blog.