The annual Insights Association conference, CONVERGE, was held virtually earlier this week. Our Director of Programmatic and Operations, Guy Wates, spoke about some of the things he’s discovered “from the other side of the sample marketplace.” During his presentation, he addressed the critical need for trust, transparency and privacy in the market research space – speaking from the perspective of the respondent.
His session was grounded in Guy’s own unique perspective gained from a year with Measure on the supply side, after spending much of his career on the sample buyer side of the marketplace. Through this experience, he’s realized a number of key truths about what must happen for market research to move forward and even thrive. He indicated that the main premise we must always remember is that “our entire industry is built on real people willing to share data and opinions” and this reality will not change. So, it stands to reason that we must start treating individuals better.
One crucial aspect in accomplishing this goal is to build consumer trust. People are more and more aware of their rights when it comes to their personal data, so trust, privacy and transparency are core value propositions that must be prioritized. Right now, the data shows that 26% of people don’t trust market research companies. This needs to change.
Guy says it is possible to shift this perception. One step is to build individual relationships over time, with consistency. This means creating positive respondent experiences that span more than one interaction at a single point in time. In addition to a great experience, our research has shown that respondents want their basic freedoms protected and to be paid fairly for what they do.
After sharing a few examples to illustrate the importance of these factors, Guy outlined principles for the industry to follow in order to move in the right direction. He said, “We believe to create respondent trust a set of principles is needed to drive all our decision making:
- Provide users greater custody of their data and to build their data asset
- Go above and beyond to protect their privacy - by design
- Be transparent along each step
- Be relentless on the user experience
- Provide fair rewards
Cumulatively, these principles provide the foundation for what we like to refer to as an ‘ecosystem of trust and data quality.’”
There are some tangible steps that organizations should consider when building processes based on these principles. Guy said that companies need to do things like minimize routing and profiling questions within each survey; protect privacy by design; be transparent; say thank you; prime for honesty (really think about the user experience!); and pay fairly.
At Measure, we’ve clearly seen the benefits and positive outcomes of taking this approach. You can read more about our findings in our white paper, “Is trust the solution to dirty data?”
