We recently had the chance to talk to Fred Bingle, an independent market researcher and owner of the company Bingle Research Group, Inc. Fred shared his experiences within the industry and gave some great insights as to how he thinks other researchers can best operate in its current state.
How did you get into market research?
I went to undergrad and graduate school in marketing. When I was graduated from MBA school, a friend of mine told me about a market research firm, National Family Opinion, which was in my hometown of Toledo, Ohio and I landed a position with them. They were a research supplier. I worked there for a couple years before taking jobs with Kimberly-Clark in Wisconsin as a research analyst and then a position as a research manager with Scotts in Marysville, Ohio.
That’s how I got started, and ever since I’ve been in market research. Now, I’m an independent research consultant. I have my own company called the Bingle Research Group, which was started in 1999.
Tell us a little about the kind of research you do now.
I do a broad range of research now, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative research techniques. As an example, most recently, I worked on a Disparity study for the state of Indiana as part of a research team. One research member conduced telephone interviews with small businesses throughout the state. I personally did 25 in-person follow-up interviews to provide more qualitative, in-depth information and insights into strategies for the State to use to increase usage of small businesses in their contracts.
Another example is my work, over several years, with a healthcare client, Eskenazi Health. I’ve been working with them for a while on their advertising and marketing campaign. I just recently did work on their senior citizens healthcare initiative. We did a combination of qualitative and quantitative research, including focus groups, telephone interviews with Medicare members and one-on-one interviews on the project.
How do clients typically use the info you provide?
A lot of the information and insights I provide is used in developing or evaluating their advertising or marketing programs. My clients use several different approaches. One approach is to conduct a pre-study with focus groups or a benchmark telephone or online study to develop or evaluate creative concepts for a new ad campaign. Just recently, we tested three different creative concepts on focus groups for a new healthcare campaign for the State of Indiana. From the information we gathered, my client decided on their key messages and which creative concept execution to use.
Another approach is to conduct research on the backend to evaluate an advertising or marketing campaign after it has been completed or a flight has been run. In that case, we go back in after the advertising flights have run and do telephone tracking studies to measure the effectiveness of the campaign in reaching its goals.
Regardless of the industry, everyone has the same questions though: What can I do to improve my business, service or product? And how can I increase sales? What’s the best way to get my message across to my target audiences? Our research helps answer those questions.
How would you describe the state of research industry?
It seems like the current state of the research industry is very strong. I keep seeing articles that talk about the “Top Jobs in the Next 10 Years,” and marketing research analyst is on the list.
The research industry has gone through a lot, though. It’s switching from mail, focus groups and telephone research to a lot being done online and mobile. There is now more usage of online electronic focus groups, online surveys, social media and hand-held mobile research. Capturing and analyzing social media has become more important and critical. Things and comments are happening every second and marketers have less control, so they’re looking to see what they can do better through studying social media.
Overall, there have been a lot of changes but I think the industry is doing a good job of addressing them.
What are the biggest challenges/opportunities you see for the industry?
One of the biggest challenges with market research is getting valid, accurate data. With more online or mobile surveys and usage of social media, it’s harder to be sure of the accuracy and representativeness of the sample and their responses. For example, social media users may have more influence and opinions, but, for the most, they are not a representative sample. But researchers are aware of this and are accepting that they’re not getting completely representative samples.
With the increase in hard data and big data, another challenge is to make sure you talk to the consumers and individuals instead of relying on just hard data. That hard data doesn’t really explain what’s behind it and why the consumers are acting that way or making those decisions.
What other advice would you give to other people in the industry?
Be careful of trendy techniques that may be really helpful, but need to be controlled and used correctly. Big data and mobile interviewing may be examples. Everyone seems to be talking about them, but we have to be able to understand the pros and cons of each and how to best use them. How do we pull everything together so someone can make sense of it?
Also, make sure you stay in touch with the consumers. They’re getting bombarded with so much information and ads, so it’s important to see how they’re reacting to all the stimuli and what gets noticed and what gets rejected and why.
What best practice(s) would you share with fellow researchers?
Coordinating big data is important, but make sure that’s not the only thing you look at. You can make assumptions on what pages people are looking at, but make sure they’re the right assumptions. It’s always good to go back to the consumer and find out exactly why they did certain things.
Looking for new ways to use research and collect accurate research is also important. The cost of research has gone up. And to get real, meaningful information, it sometimes takes longer, which means more money. The online interviews and mobile interviews can be quick, but you have to make sure you’re getting good data when you do that.
Any other things you think are important for other researchers to know about quantitative research, specifically in the healthcare industry?
For healthcare, there’s a lot -- hospitals, pharmaceuticals, etc. So for the quantitative, they can check out how marketing campaigns are performing. And for the qualitative, they can look at patient satisfaction surveys and ratings of the hospitals themselves. Those evaluations get tied into the hospital and doctors’ performances as well, so poor evaluations can come back to haunt them. In a lot of ways, market research has morphed into storytelling.
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