MANILA, PHILIPPINES — When the pandemic began, the whole world was stirred. In a struggle to keep economies afloat amid restrictions, there has been an explosion in usage of online meeting platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, making working from home possible.
Two years in, this virtual model of working proved to be sustainable – and while in the future we may return to a blend of working from home and from the office, it seems unlikely that things will return to the way they were. Majority of Filipino employees prefer flexibility in when and where they work, and are now taking it into consideration in choosing their place of employment. Hybrid model of working is here to stay, because it offers flexibility for employees, and creates an opportunity for better employee attraction, retention, and satisfaction beneficial for employers.
Disruption accelerates change
A change like working from home sticks because the new behavior is an improvement of what came before – and it is easy to adopt, thanks to new tech platforms.
The same way it has shaken the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic also stirred up businesses. Struggling to adjust to changes in consumer demand, many companies have turned to self-serve market research platforms to get fast feedback on their marketing initiatives.
Breaking the compromise between speed and quality
Developing anything new, particularly at speed, is a risky process. An idea that seems great to the originators can fizzle given the reality of people’s day-to-day lives. But the chances of success can improve dramatically if the right feedback is available at the relevant moment in the development process – thus market research is conducted.
The usefulness and reliability of market research has always been a function of speed, scope, and cost. But all too often, this meant research practitioners being forced to compromise. Increasing speed or scope drove up the cost of research if quality was to be maintained. Speed potentially undermined reliability and confidence in results, as tighter deadlines sidelined the opportunity to get feedback on important initiatives.
This is where automated market research comes in. When a market research platform is designed to deliver quality research at speed and with intelligence and expertise built in, the conflict between speed and reliability disappears. Compromising is now a thing of the past, as technology has allowed the automation of ever more sophisticated research methodologies.
This, in turn, opens the opportunity to put market research at the heart of a truly agile marketing process.
Welcome to the Era of Agility
Agile refers to an iterative development process by which teams design, test, and adapt their projects to bring them to completion quickly and successfully.
Testing is quite central to the agile process. While agile software development requires testing and debugging code, marketing initiatives demand feedback from their intended audience.
Automated Marketing Platforms is the future
During a time where the need for fast consumer feedback is most critical, the use of online market research platforms has accelerated. In the Philippines, 2021 is the biggest year for Kantar Marketplace with over 358% revenue growth versus the previous year. Additional 20 new brands from different categories also started using the platform.
Automated market research tools offer the chance to know within hours what resonates or not before further time and effort is committed to the project. There is no more compromise when it comes to the delivery of findings. Online dashboards make it easy to see what worked and what did not, while relevant benchmarks and diagnostics offer insights into how things might be improved.
What was then considered a poor substitute for traditional research, automated market research platforms now offer the benefits of speed, quality, and powerful meta-analysis across studies – something that was simply not available in the past.
Whether one chooses to conduct the same development process as before but faster, or opt to include more early-stage ideas, or test a wider variety of prototypes or final executions, automation widens the options, gives more time for thought, and encourages a better, more agile, way of working.
To know more about agile market research, you may visit this link: https://www.kantar.com/marketplace/request-demo
