ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews developments at the frontiers of marketing research through two different prisms – fakes and futures.
It starts with an examination of problems caused by marketers - disingenuity in decision-making. This is an area where marketing research may be complicit, with research designed, consciously or not, to reinforce a decision already taken or one which is favoured by managers, in decisions, for example, about sampling frames, form of questions or interpretation of results.
This issue is not confined to marketing or marketing research but is particularly dangerous for marketing, because it usually concerns information which is sourced, developed, managed and interpreted in ways that cannot just be “objective”. that is, external information.
The discussion then turns to one application of marketing research where interpretation become even more important, forecasting, particularly for new products and high technology and science-based areas, where data from existing customers is relatively weak, so big data cannot be used so powerfully, as most big data is mainly about current and past behaviour of customers.
In marketing forecasting – from market size to the prospects for new products and services – the marketing research industry is joined by several other types of suppliers, such as analysts, marketing communications agencies and consultancies (and sometimes joined within firms as the border between marketing research agencies and these other parties has become very fuzzy in the last two decades), all of whom have particular interests which can affect what they forecast.
