FROM WHERE I SAT
Are Marketers Benefitting
From Research?
By Robert Wamai
Introduction
CIM quarterly breakfast late last year was
sponsored by Ipsos and the topic of the
day was aptly or ironically titled, ARE
WE LISTENING? The objective was for
Ipsos to find out from the participants
(marketers and thus consumers of
research) whether they (Ipsos) keenly
listen when their (clients) approach them
for research solutions. More importantly
how does listening or lack of it, impact
the outcome of research? clients) and us, research agencies’? He
said this was an important discussion and
calls for all of us to take a step back and
listen keenly to understand the clients,
as any disconnect will impact negatively
the quality of the research, the research
findings, the recommendations and even
worse the decisions made. To enrich
this article I later sat down with Enock
to gain more insights from him. Thus the
content of this article is a combination of
the discussions at the breakfast and the
session with Enock.
Enock Wandera, the Chief Client Officer
at Ipsos, introduced the discussion by
asking, rhetorically, ‘could there be a
disconnect between marketers (our From where I sat the session tackled
two important and interrelated issues;
firstly how can the quality of research be
enhanced and secondly how can research
It is becoming important for researchers
to need to go further and find out wheth-
er the client actioned the recommenda-
tions and met their business or market-
ing objectives. If need be they can work
together with the client to implement the
recommendations. This way the role of
market research will be elevated to that
of driving business growth not just gen-
erating data, no matter how useful.
24 MAL28/19 ISSUE
agencies expand their client base? There is
an obvious correlation between the two: as
the quality, hence usefulness, of research
improves the number of clients seeking
the same will naturally grow. It’s a ‘win
win’ situation.
To achieve the above objective the
discussion sought to answer 2 questions:
Are marketers (clients) benefitting from
research and how can the quality of
research be improved?
Are Marketers Benefitting
For Research?
From the discussions it was agreed that
market research is a critical business tool
as it provides useful information that
leads to fruitful decisions. As the quality
of research has a direct and proportionate
relationship to the quality of the decisions
made it is critical that both the research
companies and their clients strive to
improve its quality. From the discussions
there is no doubt that given the expanding
number of research firms as well as clients
seeking their services, research is deemed,
by a growing number, as beneficial.
However it was also unanimous that the
number of clients and the amount of the
research projects they commission needs
to increase if the industry is to thrive
going forward. In short the base needs to
widen.