Research has always played a pivotal role in shaping businesses and paving new avenues when it comes to business transformation, and the pandemic amplified its capabilities. 2020 suddenly shocked almost every industry, and they soon understood that doing the right research would stabilize businesses faster. Since organizations imposed budget cuts, researchers had to do more with less and with shortened timelines. Developing new technology and a shift in how researchers performed the research seemed to be the answer to efficient working.
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How does research look in 2021 and beyond?
Here are the emerging research trends we see in 2021
- Technology: Industries immediately recognized the need for improved technology to stay above the competition. It meant getting their hands on tools that were efficient enough to handle projects with research budget cuts for researchers. Research technology has been evolving rapidly ever since to keep up with this demand. We recognized this need to collect insights, collate them, apply data quality measures, analyze and display information in an enhanced way. We rapidly brought about innovative products like Instant Answers, Insights Hub, Video Focus Groups, and features to identify inadequate responses and respondents.
Here are a few highlights from 2021.
- Verified digital signature
- Multilingual broadcasting
- Sample filter upgrade
- Multiple community polls
- Gabor Granger price modeling
- HotSpot 3.0
- Answer groups
- Custom dashboards
- HTML support for language translation import
- Video discussions
- Enhanced survey data quality
Check out the detailed updates here.
- Speed: Research speed has been one of the topmost priorities for researchers. The demand for the time from fielding surveys to applying findings has been considerably reduced. This means a higher need for reaching audiences faster, translating surveys to their local language if necessary, gathering data, ensuring its quality, analyzing results, and displaying them for quick decision making. The need to complete research faster than ever to make decisions and build strategies has pushed research organizations to take significant steps and satisfy this demand. The strategic importance of market research is now recognized and accepted by more and more organizations.
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- Agile market research: Researchers have recognized the need to conduct smaller, quicker surveys than the traditional approach of extensive, structured research. It helps researchers move faster and make quick adjustments to their processes. Smaller surveys also translate to more rapid insights – the need of the hour currently. Constant feedback from agile practices helps organizations identify the short-term needs and challenges – an essential part of the post-pandemic world. This never-finished approach has proved to be the key driver in overcoming the initial challenges posed by COVID-19. Also, running surveys in an iterative fashion have helped researchers build off previous projects, paving the way to prepare for unfamiliar territory and adjust to changes very fast.
- Combined approach: As research is a never-ending process of continuous improvement, no single system helps solve questions while identifying threats and opportunities. A mix of research techniques and methodologies has seen a massive rise among researchers. This mix has proved to be fruitful while identifying trends and getting a complete understanding of the market. It opened the door for the need for a single platform with the capabilities of wearing different hats. Single centralized platforms have emerged and are in high demand among researchers. QuestionPro handles end-to-end research – everything from survey building to intelligent data dashboards. Run community discussions and polls, find audiences anywhere globally, or apply advanced research techniques all under one roof.
Insights hub – a vital aid for modern research
As the name suggests, the insights hub or insights repository is a central repository where researchers and stakeholders can find all the information and insights they need from any ongoing project or ones conducted in the past. This organized repository provides a consolidated platform for researchers to sort out, inspect, look for and discover any research data in one place. The platform can quickly surface research and consumer insights in a simple model, aiding in continuous discovery.
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The insights hub satisfies the four emerging trends we’ve spoken about earlier, and this is how.
- Technology: A purpose-built tool that brings research data under one roof – readily accessible to all the project stakeholders.
- Speed: Never lose time sifting through piles of new data. Pulling data and insights is much quicker than it used to be.
- Agile: Create a continuous innovation stream that has made it possible to refer to previous research data – enabling agile methodologies.
- Combined approach: Apply different research methods and collect various data types, but access them all at the same place.
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