Online MR Magazine May Edition 2016 Issue 1 | Page 24

Dave Lundahl Research methodologies have more or less been the same, however customer needs changes rapidly – are we changing with times or waiting to become obsolete? maybe not fast enough for some. David Lundahl: We are in the midst of a time of great change in the market research industry. There is still a gap between insights providers and users in terms of perception of relevancy. Yet, I believe the industry is making progress in closing this gap – although Dave Lundahl: Traditional MR developed great techniques to track what consumers do and ask them questions as to why. However, new age consumers are fundamentally different in some ways. Unfortunately, what consumers say they do does not always track with their actual What are some of the challenges posed by new age customers? How can the traditional market researchers adapt? behaviors. Traditional market research is infact fundamentally missing something when trying to identify insights explaining why shoppers make their purchase decisions. The real challenge is to understand why these new age consumers are behaving differently. To meet this challenge, researchers must design and interpret research using a new framework – one that is more predictive of the behavior than past approaches. Market researchers have