Conducting Research During (and After) the COVID-19 | Jose R. Garcia

The current situation is unprecedented for market researchers. Market researchers are figuring out how best to conduct research in the context of a pandemic and a severe economic recession. This is uncharted, and there is no research analyzing both situations at the same time to understand what consumers expect from brands right now. And vice versa, how brands can understand consumer behavior when in times of economic crisis and social distancing. 

To shed light on this situation, the Advertising Research Foundation, in its Insights Studio Series, hosted a panel titled Conducting Research During (and After) the COVID-19 Crisis, on April 30, 2020, at 1 p.m. via Zoom. This presentation consisted of three panelists who have studied other notable crises. The panelists shared the type of research they are doing, the resulting trends, as well as best practices.

It is essential to mention that market research and advertising research were facing plenty of obstacles before the Coronavirus outbreak. Now the pandemic and a potential recession present more challenges for brands to understand their consumers. Some of the questions that the panel addressed were: How are field methods adapting? Is there evidence that staying at home is increasing response rates? Do rising unemployment rates change the demography of respondent pools? Is the more widespread adoption of video conferencing platforms affording new and improved methods for conducting face-to-face interviews or other qualitative techniques? Will the crisis teach us new ways to improve data quality and will clients and end-users be reassured?

The panel was moderated by Paul Donato, the Chief Research Officer at the Advertising Research Foundation: Donato joined the ARF as Chief Research Officer in October 2017. Donato is a highly-regarded leader in media and advertising research with more than two decades of industry experience. 

Donato introduced the three panelists in the following order. Seth Duncan, Leader, Analytics & Insights at W20: Ducan has led research and analytics teams in both academic and business settings. His research focused on using digital and social media data to provide marketing, communications, and strategy insights to a range of clients. Julio Franco, EVP, Global Customer Team at Zappi: Franco is head of Zappi's Global Customer Team. His team is focused on helping our customers transform how they engage with and utilize insights to create enterprise-wide value from their Zappi platform. Steven Millman: Senior Vice President, Research & Operations at Dynata. Millman is an award-winning researcher currently leading all research and operations initiatives across Dynata's Advertising Solutions division, which provides activation and campaign measurement over the entire lifecycle of a campaign. 

Seth Duncan

Duncan was asked, what are you looking at to see what the new normal is for both research and creative? Duncan elaborated on how different businesses react differently. For instance, how pharma is conservative and regulated and everything takes a long time, and everything requires the review of the legal department, as opposed to the agility you need to have in a dramatically changing environment like the one that the Covid crisis presents. Duncan said,

"it's just the nature of the fact that it's highly regulated and you don't get an opportunity to make different variations of a piece … even in social, even just having slightly different copy at the bottom initiates a legal review that can take weeks. So it's just it's very, very, very difficult to be agile in that world."

On the question of whether the short-term crisis-induced changes in methodologies result in lasting shifts in research practice, Duncan mentioned that "the way we segment our audiences is completely transformed."

Duncan also commented that 

"I don't think that's just true for life sciences. I mean, there's some people that willingly are going to shelter in place. They don't want to have people come to their house. They might have no interest in certain goods and services. And there's others that are going to be a lot more open to go into the beach, going to the grocery store, going to see their doctor."

For Duncan, understanding the psychological differences between those types of people and being able to produce the right messaging and effectively target them is going to be key.

Julio Franco

On the question of market research during the pandemic, Julio Franco said: "we're also comfortable with everything that we tested, did not have a heightened sensitivity around the virus." Mr. Franco also added that some consumer categories that are related to the virus, like home hygiene, as well as ads showing people being outside, people within concerts, sporting events, which we had a hypothesis initially that would cause a bit of a change in terms of results. We didn't see that." 

It is important to point out that Julio mentioned after running this test market research during a pandemic, they feel very confident to say that there is no bias in the response of these quant surveys caused by the virus. 

Franco indicated that they had seen an increase in advertising testing, especially with new customers that did not do business with them before. And surprisingly, they also have some other ones that used to focus primarily on innovation that are now doing advertising. To this new business opportunity, Franco said, 

"So to be honest with you; I don't know if it's because they know that we can turn something around in a day and that's why they're coming to us particularly or if they're starting to do it. But there is definitely a concern around making sure that your advertising is hitting on the right notes to make sure that you're not missing the mark."

Steven Millman

According to Millman, this is sort of a collective pause in the marketplace where people are trying to figure out what is the right way to communicate to consumers. 

"There's really not an adequate precedent that anybody alive today really has to think about what they should be doing. But more importantly, what's going to happen next."

Millman also said that 

"there's a substantial demand right now in market research … to do research on the opinions of how folks are thinking about brands and how they interact with them, how they want to interact with them."

On the question of whether the crisis teaches us new ways to improve data quality and will clients and end-users be reassured, for Millman, in times of crisis, confusion, research is more central than ever. 

"When people ask me, shouldn't we still be doing research, I sort of furrow my brow and wonder how could they ask the question? It's the moments where you don't know what the hell is going on, that you need research the moment the most. And this is the moment," 

said Millman.

On the question of what do consumers expect from brands right now, Millman said, 

"What we hear a lot is a concern about whether it's even OK to advertise right now. If my brand is going to be vilified by going out and trying to sell a piece of hardware or sell a not central item of any sort."

 The perception is that consumers are focusing right now on bare necessities. To this, Millman also said, 

"the only thing I've seen where there really has been a negative response are people who are advertising for things which are not currently available or shouldn't be used. Kind of makes a lot of sense." 

According to Paul Donato, the way brands deal with the crisis right now will influence consumer opinion and loyalty in the future. Donato also said, 

"From the Advertiser Perception Report, 50% of advertisers have said that they're holding back on new campaigns. 50% said they've changed media, that their campaigns are going from television to digital or vice versa from digital to spot. 45% said they've canceled a campaign mid-flight. And 40-45% have said that they've stopped … advertising altogether."

So how do brands conduct research during (and after) the COVID-19 crisis while preparing for this uncertainty and unpredictable growth? The firms of the three panelists continue conducting market research which displays resilience, while monitoring how the COVID-19 crisis has affected respondent behavior, introduced biases, or required changes in data collection methods. The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted almost all aspects of consumers' lives. Also, the pandemic has created new opportunities for market researchers. But marketers also have a vital role to play both during and after the pandemic. Experts predict that the current situation will repeat itself. Brands, market researchers, private and public institutions, and consumers at large can benefit immensely from researchers aiming to understand the current situation.