Market researchers should condemn the practice of spam or spamvertising and face the truth — that they’re suffering just as much as their clients with their legacy models of interruption, interception and coercion. (Building research communities in MySpace would be interesting, though.) I can’t tell you how much I get spammed by large, “legite” market research companies, in my standard email, not even in the walls of MySpace. Yes, market research can be nothing more than a negative advertising campaign, for the guilty market research company itself, its clients and its larger industry.

When attention becomes the scarcity, information and source choice grows, and consumers simply become elusive, market researchers need to learn new, mutually beneficial ways of partnering with people — the individuals formerly known as the respondents, subjects, sample or panel — to collect data and produce insights. Some of the new rules include:

- increasingly observational
- transparent
- partnership
- mutual gain
- non-disruptive
- choice to opt in or out, and all the gray areas in between
- empowerment
- “real value” for participation

How much innovation has there been, really? Some, but the real insights, value and innovation are occurring more and more at businesses that don’t pretend to be in market research. Google, for example, or the customer-relations management system at E-trade.

Lastly, market research might want to consider losing its name. It’s stodgy and inherently looks to the past, not the future.

Cheers,
Max