What does a market research analyst actually do?

“Anything! Or Whatever!”

I still remember saying these phrases to the drinks stall auntie back when I was in primary school. The packaging of the cans, the gimmick and the craze Singaporeans were riding on when this obsession began, I remember all of it. Now if you still don’t know what I’m talking about, perhaps I’m too old or maybe you should give it a quick Google. 

For context, the drinks Anything and Whatever offered consumers (especially indecisive ones like me) the unique “choice” of picking up a random can and expecting to drink any of the flavours it advertised. The drinks may not be around today, but they were memes before memes were even a thing, a marketing accomplishment over a decade ago. What made it so successful? And why did the hype fizzle out? These are questions that any good marketer ponders upon. 

Just like ‘Anything and Whatever’, common commodities such as soap and toothpaste can be sold with new ideas to grab consumers’ attention. This key element of ‘marketing’ is what I learned when I interned (3rd Year in SMU), at Nielsen in the Innovation Practice department; where FMCG innovations were assessed to understand consumer acceptance and market potential.

Imagine innovations such as toothpastes that glow in the dark, grabbing your attention right? So then would you buy it? Maybe not. How about charcoal toothpaste? Perhaps not a novelty item to some, but surely some people would have doubts about it. All of these questions run through a consumer’s mind, along with another thousand thoughts as they walk down the toothpaste aisle in the supermarket. At the end of the day, maybe they just buy their regular toothpaste, because they are ‘loyal’ to the brands they have come to know and love. 

But this shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all for these big FMCG companies. Legacy items may cement a company’s position in the market, but expanding their product line and being innovative so as to deliver value to the customers is their key goal that companies strive for. As a market researcher, we help companies assess their position/innovation in the market by understanding ‘the readiness of the product’ i.e what the consumers like/accept about the product. In turn our goal remains the same, that is to deliver value to the consumers.

Now keeping that in mind, with a clearly defined business objective, the research will be sharp and aims towards answering this one question — Will the addition of this new product (for example, Anything, or Whatever), contribute to the portfolio of the brand? Simplifying it even further — should we launch it? And how do we launch it? Business decisions like these need to be substantiated and supported with data; this is done through market research tests.

My experiences as an Innovation Practice Researcher were interesting — crafting hypotheses and using data to prove or disprove these hypotheses. These opened up actionable insights that sometimes reveal customers’ preferences that one would not expect.  Going back to the example, imagine finding out that customers prefer the word “Anything” to “Whatever”. How would you tweak your recommendations to fit this insight? Or what if you realize from the data that customers may not actually prefer the idea of the flavour being “mysterious” and “unknown”? Should we still go ahead with the product? 

Learning to ask the right questions (and crafting the right hypotheses) — being curious, in general — will certainly bring value to the data. Beyond the hard skills such as manipulating Excel pivot tables and diving deep into customer segments with survey analytics softwares, this internship also taught me soft skills — storytelling, and presentation. Every product has a story — what’s the hero of this product? (what’s strong about it?) What villains or obstacles does our hero face? And how can we overcome it? Beyond predicting if a product will do well on launch, every product can do better, and the answers may lie in what consumers tell you through the data. 

 All in all, the experiences of understanding different industries, seeing innovative products before they launch (or maybe they don’t even launch) can be really exciting. If you have an inquisitive mind and an interest in testing out hypotheses while gaining exposure in understanding various customer segments, market research is definitely a path worth exploring! You never know — it might be the ‘Anything or Whatever’ of your life experiences.