Numbers, graphs and stats – market research as a career, is it fun?

Market researchers are number crunchers, staticians, and questionnaire boffins. Market researchers fanatically go through data. Definitely the query exists in the minds of countless when the term ‘market research’ is heard. It is a question that has dulled the appeal of the job for lots of capable candidates.

Definitely market research, as educated in universities, has polarised opinion, with numerous institutions failing to recreate the spark that drives this profession.

The stigma of market research as a rigid, methodical task is not hard to understand. After all, when someone thinks of market research, they most likely visualise a brilliant, friendly person at a makeshift podium in the local supermarket, casting an open hand at an array of cheese niblets on cocktail sticks or plastic cups of orange juice. Some people think of market researchers as quasi ‘try before you buy’ vendors, as confrontational clipboard- armed correspondents, comparable to a field sales job. But does this view reflect the truth?

While a lot of market research jobs involve face-to-face customer contact - being sent to Asda to question shoppers on their favourite kind of burger, for example - there is a lot more to the business than embarrassed chats in congested aisles. It’s all about how imaginative you are.

An enormous element of market research is, in fact, communication with big companies. Exciting your customers based on the results of your findings will allow the market researcher to comprehend the processes of such organisations, at the same time as learning about their company background, decision flow and hierarchy. Surely the personal development possibility is substantial within market research and media jobs as a whole.

A market researcher will also have provable influence in the eyes of manufacturers, whose research and development thoughts will pivot on the researcher’s advice. And while the researcher may need to go on foot to chart the customer’s needs and wants, they will also do a broad quantity of research from the comfort of their desk.

Vacancies in market research - at least entry-level ones - usually call for the task of industry-standard qualifications such as the MRS Advanced Certificate, to study about research theory. While this surely isn’t rollercoaster reading, it is a necessary means of gaining grounding in the practice.

Then it’s on to charting, analysis, behaviour studies (ringing up respondents for more detailed feedback) and consistently meeting with clients whose products you are determining interest in.

Not often do we notice market researchers and imagine ‘big company’. Frequently outsiders don’t value that market research is very important for businesses, and in fact underlies all business decisions made about a product; who is it for, why do they want/ need it and what packaging do they need to see to inspire this result?

If you are taking into consideration a career in the industry and are frightened by the thought of analysing data, interacting with customers and determining the emotional link between a brand and consumer, you need to ask yourself if the field is right for you. The majority of successful market researchers point to their manner of catharsis when a project is finished, and the rush of presenting their conclusions to a global brand.