Today, a group of Next Generation Market Research (NGMR) bloggers are posting their predictions about what will and won’t matter most to the market research industry in the next couple of years.

Here are element54 perspectives:

HOT:

Quality really is Job #1; with the plethora of SM/DIY solutions, we will renew our focus on quality and best practices. Traditional MR buyers still expect this from us.

Old Dogs Must Learn New Tricks; some ‘old school researchers are realizing their skillset is in need of sharpening (granted, they’re likely not reading this).

Next Gen BI; text analytics and data mining from social sites to interpret consumer insights across multiple touch-points.

Mobile; convergence of insights at the ‘moment of truth’ are huge.  GPS is enabling targeted insights (both active and passive).

Silos Be-Gone; client side organizations are seeing their traditional silos collapse with more cross-organizational functions.  MR firms will need to understand more about their clients’ businesses then they used to.

COLD:

PowerPoint; smaller and more focused strategic documents travel further up the food chain. Try it.

Trade Associations; this is a curious one. While we wish all Trade Org’s much success, some seem to really understand how the evolving role between clients-suppliers can be leveraged for success. I believe we will see some consolidation in this space within the next 2-3 years.

Privacy; as much as we might care (and we should), most people don’t.

Offshoring; other than a few large MR Org’s who have shifted entire teams offshore, most small-medium size firms will leverage already available software to live ‘better, faster, cheaper’.

Paper Newsletters; I confess, I do like getting a newsletter on real paper.  But a tree didn’t need to be cut down so I can get outdated information.  Save the nostalgia for Christmas cards.

Best wishes,

Bernie.