I entered the Research Industry when I was 16 years old in the call centres and have been a part of the industry for over a decade now in a wide variety of roles.

Industry after industry Digital Innovation has caused a disruption. A few years back at a conference I raised the question “What if the Market Research industry allied with someone like Facebook or Google“? It’s a question that had probably crossed most peoples minds who work within the industry, and was a matter of time until there was some sort of movement in the space.To put it rather bluntly, that Google, Facebook or any of the other networks might be a crucial and significant part of the industry was always a reality that had to be faced one day.

Since then, Google has launched Google Consumer Surveys which it presented at The Technology Market Research Event 2012 and caused a flurry at the event as expected.

So firstly, what is Google Consumer Surveys?

In case you missed it, this is how the the service works, available only to US publishers for the time being:

Google gets $0.10 per question from market research companies, while online publishers walk away with half of that. Google does place a condition, that if readers don’t want to answer the question, the publisher has to provide an alternative such as signing up for an email alert.

Publishers are not the only ones who stand to gain from Google’s product. It provides a cost-effective way for researchers to come by the data they need, and for the end-user…

The Research industry is an extremely progressive one which has constantly evolved keeping in mind digital disruptions and changing consumer behavior and I believe this kind of movement within the Market Research space will benefit in the long haul then harm.

I had a great chat with Lenny Murphy who runs the Green Book Blog the other week and attended the conference. Based on a conversation with him, below is a series of thoughts, implications and opportunities.

1) Google plans to treat this as a Phase 1 launch of an overall bigger scheme. Which means that this isn’t likely to be another Google Wave which will just go away (I might be wrong here though Lenny confirmed this was the case). It seems like Google is covering off not only an extensive library of survey types, but also a core focus on a simple DIY questionnaire module as well as reporting and data visualization. This may likely integrate with their other services and also across other browsers and obviously platforms like Android.

2) The quant survey scene may be impacted, however for specialist quant enabled methodologies, I don’t foresee a direct impact at this stage. This may in fact accelerate what the Market Research industry (and consumers) have been saying for some time, shorter/snappier/more effective surveys. And DIY surveying isn’t a new trend, Survey Monkey with $1B funding has been garnering traction for some time.

3) As this article states: “For market researchers, stopping at one question is like eating only one potato chip – impossible for all but the most strong willed. The key to satisfying both researchers and respondents is to always field questionnaires to individuals as subsets.”…..“If Google has to choose between satisfying the respondent or the researcher, they’ll choose the respondent first every time: the implied contract they are creating for respondents is that they will never have to answer more than two questions. Of course, their survey authoring user interface lets researchers write questionnaires of any length, but with only one branching question (the screener).”

4) Online surveys and online panels is a very large part of Market Research, but the Research industry overall is a massive one which has a lot of other areas.

So what are the core opportunities for Market Research despite the disruption?

1) Methodologies like Sensory and Qualitative (online and offline) will become “super-niches” and have an even stronger foundation.