The Insights Revolution: Questioning Everything: Questioning Everything

by Andrew Grenville

The insights industry is in trouble. It’s not growing, despite an explosion of information, decreasing costs and an increase in the need for informed decision making. And it still does not have real influence in the boardroom. It is too often focused on what happened, and not on where to go and what to do next. It focuses on methodology instead of decision making. And it is gathering its data from people it treats like chattel, which leads to results being unreliable if not downright wrong. This book takes a problem/solution approach; it is organized into chapters which shine an uncomfortable light on all too familiar practices before suggesting a better way forward. The book is fueled by interviews with insights professionals, marketers and strategists from around the world, including people from organizations like Coca-Cola, Discovery Channel, Estée Lauder, ESOMAR, Facebook, Intel, Pfizer, PwC, Sunovion, Telstra, Twitter, Virgin Australia, U.S. Bank, Visa, Warner Bros, and World Vision.

142 pages, Paperback

Published August 30, 2018

Reviews

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A common sense diagnosis on the current state of traditional market research. Concise, understandable and written with a nice, casual tone. Might not contain a whole lot of new information but reading it makes you take stock of the challenges we are faced in the industry and how to go about trying to change things

[Dórian Bachmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Insight into the Future of Survey Companies
The author is a seasoned market research professional. In this book, he emphasizes that the research industry, as we know it, is doomed. But he points out directions, and perhaps the most important one is to stop answering questions and go deeper into issues that can benefit the business by offering insights. He claims that, for this, professionals in the segment will have to change, becoming more generalists.
Among the questions asked, highlight:
• Many surveys are done with unrepresentative or unreliable samples.
• When we ask people what is important, we get socially acceptable answers. What is not achieved is that they answer what they really do and how they really decide. We receive misleading information because people are always ready to give plausible answers to questions - even if they don't know the answer.

********* - Em Português - in Portuguese *********
Uma visão sobre o futuro das empresas de pesquisa.
O autor, Andrew Grenville, da Maru/Matchbox - empresa de pesquisas de mercado baseada em Toronto, Canadá - é um profissional experiente. Neste livro, ele enfatiza que a indústria de pesquisas, como conhecemos, está condenada. Mas, aponta direções e talvez a mais importante seja deixar de responder perguntas para se aprofundar nas questões que podem beneficiar o negócio oferecendo insights. Ele afirma que, para isso, os profissionais do segmento terão de mudar, tornando-se mais generalistas.

Entre os questionamentos que faz, destaco dois:
• Muitas pesquisas são feitas com amostras não representativas ou pouco confiáveis.
• Quando perguntamos às pessoas o que é importante, obtemos respostas socialmente aceitáveis. O que não se consegue é que respondam o que realmente fazem e como realmente decidem. Recebemos informações enganosas porque as pessoas estão sempre prontas para dar respostas plausíveis às perguntas - mesmo que não saibam a resposta.

[Carlos Reyes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read. A few good chapters that helped reinforce some ideas. I found it too focused on “doing surveys” or similar to get insights, and not much on using available data from other sources.