I’ll bet that if you hear one more person in our industrytalk about the pressure being applied on marketing researchers to do more withless, you will scream. These are clearly tough times in the industry, and it ishard to argue against the line of reasoning that it is essential to get fullvalue from every research dollar spent. The question is how to accomplish this.Most of the industry’s efforts in this direction up to now have been focused ongetting vendors to charge lower prices, offer rebates, etc., with preciouslittle energy spent on re-examining the way research is done.

A recent article in Pharma Market Research Report turned ona lightbulb for me. The article recounted an interview with Laurie Gelb, seniorconsultant, market strategy and research at Trellist, in which Gelb shares herheuristic research approach. It means that we should only study things we knoware related to the marketing issue at hand. That’s a far more efficient way ofdoing business, Gelb points out, than including questions in our interviews onevery knowledge, attitude or practice that might relate to the decision-makingprocess under study. Rather, she suggests determining what factorsdecision-makers really take into consideration. We can then begin to writequestionnaires that, because they are restricted to pertinent info, can bebriefer, to the point and more cost effective. When this approach is used,what’s left on the cutting room floor are expensive data that, while nice toknow, are not essential. We can no longer ask the everything-but-the-kitchen-sinklist of questions that still constitute the onerous questionnaires used in manystudies. Understanding the process under study constitutes an important steptoward doing more with less, and likely improving the quality of info beingcollected and the decisions being made.

Richard Vanderveer is group CEO, GfK US Healthcare Companies