Can Social Media Analytics Replace Traditional Market Research?

 

Social media analytics has some clear advantages over traditional marketing research. Perhaps most importantly, it is fast and inexpensive. Are the advantages for social media analytics a death knell for traditional market research methods?

Advantages of Social Media Analytics for Market Research

Improvements in social media monitoring and measurement services have literally placed new market research tools at marketers’ fingertips. Conducting keyword searches of Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media platforms produces wide-ranging and in-depth consumer conversations about most any topic. Services such as Glean.info aggregate the social media posts and use a combination of automated software and human analysts to perform analysis and produce reports.

Social media analytics can produce data in hours or days, as opposed to months for conventional research methods. In addition, consumer research through social media can be more accurate than conventional market research because consumers are less disposed to social desirability bias and mistaken recall. People tend to be honest on social media, since they post their opinions without being prompted by survey questions.

Because of its advantages, social media analytics is making headway in replacing face to face interviews, surveys, focus groups and other traditional market research techniques.

Limitations of Social Media Analysis

However, many marketing experts say social media research cannot completely replace traditional marketing research, at least not yet.

Many consumers do not use social media or may have social media accounts but rarely or never post or engage others. Social media results produce a self-selecting bias that traditional market research avoids through random selection techniques. In addition, social media analytics may not include specific demographic information, such as geographic regions or professions or education levels — and some people may make up or hide their profile information. Opinions of individuals who don’t use social media may differ significantly from those that do – if only because the two groups represent different demographics.

In some countries only a small percentage of people have Internet access. International brands need to conduct conventional research to take those consumers into account.

Social media analysis is young; its research techniques are evolving quickly and are not at all well-established. Therefore, its data and results are sometimes questionable. Traditional market research including surveys and focus groups has the major advantage of deep-rooted, thoroughly-vetted and well-proven techniques and results.

Complement, Not Substitute

Marketing scientist Kevin Gray, founder of Cannon Gray consultancy, and Koen Pauwels, a professor of marketing at Ozyegin University, Istanbul, argue that social media is a valuable complement rather than a complete substitute for traditional market research.

 “Social media is still quite new, and the media themselves and the analytic tools for exploiting them are still evolving,” they write in post for Green Book, a blog on market research. Questions remain about the accuracy of social media data. It’s not clear how many social media users make up information about themselves, if they are more representative of an overall audience, or if they are indeed entirely honest.

Still, they concede that social media has provided a wealth of new data and has substantially impacted marketing research. “The marketing world has changed dramatically in the past decade and there is no turning back the clock even if one wished to,” they say.

Research by Vision Critical, a market research technology provider, points out potential pitfalls in relying solely on social media analytics. Its study What Social Media Analytics Can’t Tell You About Your Customers, describes how social media enthusiasts — who represented 29 percent of social media audience of three major brands but generated 85 percent its Facebook posts — differ markedly from other consumers in their shopping habits.

Social media enthusiasts tend to be eager shoppers, are more likely to comparison shop on their mobile devices while inside stores, and are easier for marketers to understand. Consumers who post rarely or occasionally posted, represented the majority of the brands’ customers, are less enthusiastic shoppers and are more difficult to understand due to their infrequent comments.

Comparing social media analytics to traditional market research results will assist marketers in determining the discrepancies between the research approaches and in evaluating the accuracy of results. In conducting market research now, marketers should take one step beyond examining results of each study. It’s now vital to compare results of traditional research techniques to new social media research to better determine the validity and most appropriate uses of each system.

Bottom Line: Many brands now conduct social media analysis to quickly and affordably obtain market research on consumer opinion. Although some marketers say social media analytics can supplant traditional marketing research, employing both traditional and social media methods is the most effective approach to market research in order to obtain the most accurate data and best market insights and to establish the appropriate uses for each type of market research.