Personal Reflections on Changes Over the Past Half Century

There have been many changes over the past half century.  I could talk about my first computer purchased for me by Procter & Gamble.  But how many would appreciate a Picket Model #4 Vector hyperbolic Log Log Slide Rule?  It wasn't one of those cheap wooden models.  It was made of aluminum, really first class.  I still keep it in the top drawer of my desk to remind me of how things change.  It sits right next to my Hewlett Packard Model 45 Pocket Calculator (purchased in the mid sixties) which I still use to test the independence of proportions.

What I really want to write about today are the changes in our market research protocols from the fifties to today.

Our consumer contact has moved from Door-to-Door, to CLTs, to Mail Panels, to Mall Research, and now Internet.  The prime reason for each move was to reduce cost of the research.  With the gain in cost savings, look at the loss in representivity of our panels.

Our Researchers have moved from being designers of research to mere clerks.  Enough said here.

Sequence of testing went from one of Pilot Testing and then Execution to just Execution.  I am told that we can't afford the cost or the time to pilot test anymore.

How do I introduce the change in Research when we do not really conduct research like it should be done anymore?  I remember when there were three stages of research, Exploratory, Experimental and Evaluative.  We now have a one-step program called "Confirmatory" research.  We conduct a single study to Confirm that our reasoning is correct or should I say the reasoning of Management is correct.  There are no such things as Learning and Understanding Research anymore.

Execution of research today appears to involve picking up the phone and calling an agency to conduct the research and sitting back and waiting for the results to appear.  Long gone is such a thing as Auditing to ensure that the studies are conducted properly.  Long gone is the personal contact of the research with the customer and consumer.

Maybe I'm getting too old for this business, but I believe that there are limits to cost cutting.  Each of the above changes were brought about in an effort to reduce the cost of research.  Think about the overall effect.  If we knew we were giving up some element of quality for a cost reduction in every step, where do you think our quality effectiveness is today?  How many changes have you seen that were made to improve quality?  I don't mean the "new and improved" type of changes, I mean real changes.  OK, we have computer tabulation vs. McBee Key Sort Cards, that is a real improvement so that we can take the poor data we get now and dress it up to look professional.  In-Store Research was another step in the quality direction.  CRT interviewing was another improvement.  Random Digit Dialing was another improvement.  That's a few that I can think of but they in no way compensate for the loss of quality in the other moves.

The above review was intended to stimulate some thinking about how we might improve our profession.

If you know where you are and you know where you have been,  it is pretty easy to see where you are going.