BY CONTENT PRODUCTION MEDIA
The announcement of his appointment as the Managing Director Ipsos-Synovate Kenya was published in the local dailies on the July 30 2014. He effectively took over from September 15 2014. In his first ever interview since he was appointed MD of the top tier Market and Social research firm in the country, Mr. Aggrey Oriwo breaks his silence. He peers into the future of the research industry in Kenya and Africa; at what the country should expect in 2016 all the way to 2021. In a candid conversation he looks at innovation in research, methodology, adaptability and whether research in the future will get more specialized than it is right now:
Innovation in research
Innovation has made research amorphous. Research firms are being pushed to run with technology. This is chiefly because of the changes in the research industry, specifically in the needs of the clients. Take these two issues for instance; budgeting and immediacy.
Research budgets in most companies are being scaled down. This means that companies want information but on a tight budget. It is upon research firms to work around this budget; and the only way they can do that, is to innovate and rely on technology.
Most clients today want immediate results. They don’t want studies that run for several months before the information that they want is gathered, analyzed and presented. They want the information in a few weeks, sometimes in days.
I believe that the turnaround time will get even shorter going forward. That immediacy means that research firms have to use WhatsApp, Facebook, social audience listening and panels, like consumer panels. As long as the sampling and representation is done well, and the rules are followed as is ethically required, this information is real, credible and best of all, spontaneous.
I can tell you that we at Ipsos Synovate-Kenya have handled a one particular outstanding product-testing project here in Nairobi, where everything happened in nearly less than one week.
The four major things to watch out for when it comes to innovation in Kenya and Africa will be the mobile phone, Big Data, turnaround time and intrusion in research.
The mobile phone: It will play a critical role in research in Kenya and all over Africa. It will take center stage in defining audience sampling and in information gathering. The industry should expect more of geo-fencing done through the phone in specific studies. Those involved in market research should expect to go into passive audience listening in the coming five years.
Big Data: No one doubts the vast amount of information that is currently floating around. From your Bata Shoes or Nakumatt Supermarket loyalty cards to your shopping activities at your favourite shopping mall, the biggest future we have is in how we help companies utilize this data. What research firms need to do is to get the right analysts and the right people to mine this data and use it ethically. Research firms will have to invest heavily in people with the right skills to create algorithms that will help in analytics.
Intrusion in research: It is getting difficult to get respondents to create time for lengthy face-to-face interviews, group discussions or even computer assisted telephone interviews and engagements. I expect the research industry to respond to this by adopting less intrusive innovative research tools and methods.
Turnaround time: Expect this to keep on getting shorter and shorter. This means studies and analysis will have to be done faster, yet the quality of the findings still has to be top-notch.
Methodology
Methodology forms the backbone of research. This is not an easy thing to re-organize. The market normally drives such changes. For research, I see two possibilities;
Quantitative research in Kenya and in Africa will still hold. However, we will need a lot of input from technology to support the face-to-face engagements and; Dying practices will be done away with.
Depending on client needs, things like product testing will get more complex and I believe that we will have to do away with certain dying practices like Focus Group Discussions and replace them with research ‘immersions’.
And lastly, just as innovation is fluid everywhere, research firms should also brace for fluid research innovations and they should prepare to keep up. Ipsos Synovate has an innovation center in Cincinnati, U.S.A; I assume that most research firms will go this direction too.
Adaptability
Here in Africa, we’ve always adapted, and tried to make what is unfamiliar to us work for us. Research firms are not any different, they will have to adapt and in doing so, expect the following four scenarios;
Glocolization
We need to take the changes in research at the global level and localize them. That means understanding how new philosophies and policies, and technological advancements in research at the global stage can be adapted and localized for the needs of local clients and local respondents. Take data processing for instance, I see a situation where research will be centralized, more so, data processing.
Adapting to governments
African governments are getting very much interested in research, especially focused on public affairs (the political kind). Opinion polls have the ability of influencing public (citizens) opinion, and governments know that this is critical to how they are perceived. Research firms will have to navigate this area sensitively.
Language
Research information is at the moment delivered in a certain cumbersome diction that is mired in ‘officialdom’ and ‘legalese’. In my view, this will change in the next few years, to a language that people can easily understand. One of the things that should be expected in the future is the demystification of research. Not just in language but even in the overall services offered by research firms. Research firms don’t just conduct opinion polls.
Smaller research firms
It will be foolhardy to assume that large and established research firms are in a comfortable place. Smaller firms and startups have disrupted industries all over the world. The leading research firms in Kenya have to be cognizant of smaller firms and keep their activities in their radar.
Possibility for specialization
Research is already fine tipped. The level of specialization in research is very high at the moment. This is what the market needs; it is what the clients need. But is it the end? I don’t think so, though I can’t tell just how more highly specialized it will get.
These, for me, are what to look forward to in the research industry in 2016 and five years from now.
