There is no such a thing as a free lunch.

Recent observations in the field have brought to life the truth of this old saying. From my perspective, market and consumer research moves considerably faster today than 20 years ago. We have faster methods, more outside resource support, and automated systems. Two weeks ago I was participating in a meeting in Herb Sorensen's office in Troutdale, Oregon, discussing the staffing and expansion of services offered by his company. During the course of the meeting, he received two phone calls from clients about tests they wanted to have conducted that weekend. Both studies were multiple-city studies, one at a base of 400 and the other a 200-base study. To my amazement, Herb not only agreed to the studies, but made a commitment to have the closed end results on the clients' desks on Monday morning.

I was impressed because I knew that Herb's company already had a full compliment of studies scheduled for the weekend. But a level of concern crept in and was magnified last week when giving a presentation on "Researching Research." My concern was not with the execution, but that business in general is moving too fast for the marketers and market researchers. As I meet with different market researchers, it becomes clear that they are racing day-to-day, putting out the brush fires and never finding time to stop and think about the basic fundamentals of their jobs. We appear to be developing market researchers who are more like automated clerks than researchers. I believe that researchers should not only have adequate time to do their jobs well but they also should have unaccountable time or non-project time available to invest in the development of their personal skills. In a recent presentation (the audience was a team of 39 market researchers), I recommended that each one present should spend at least one day a month in the field auditing and interviewing.

In auditing, we should not only be looking at the execution, but also assessing the limitations of the interviewers, such as their ability to read, understand and follow the instructions. Also observe the respondents and their reactions to the questions.

I feel very strongly about having researchers actually doing a couple of interviews each month. I believe there is a learning opportunity both concerning interviews, interviewing and respondents. With respect to interviews, there is learning about the length, vagueness of questions, complexity of skip patterns, repetitiveness, the inadequacy of the response alternatives, limitations of interview guides, etc. Interviewing also gives us the opportunity to experience the limitations of the respondents such as interest and comprehension. There is so much to learn and so little space on this page to cover all the potential points of learning.