The Wall Street Journal recently reported that marketing budgets as a share of revenue have fallen to a post-pandemic low.

Against this challenging backdrop, leveraging insights from existing market research is a promising approach: for organisations and for research agencies.

This article describes three reasons why revisiting existing research is valuable.

In summary, existing research:

1. Is likely still valid

2. Contains new, unexplored gems of insight

3. Helps save us a lot of time

Let’s begin with reason one…

1. Existing research is likely still valid

How valid is existing research?

Well, according to GQ magazine’s 3rd most connected man in 2015, likely very valid:

“Our needs fundamentally don’t change that much. Most of our behaviour defaults to not changing or not trying something new. I, like everybody else, is subject to the status quo bias.”

- Ben Page, CEO Ipsos

Ok, but how can we be so sure our needs change so little over time?

One recent study examined physician attitudes to risk taking at work.

The study found that over a 4-year period, physician attitudes stayed largely unchanged.

In other words, if we want to understand risk attitudes of physicians now…

…a very helpful start point is relevant existing research from the last four years.

And do our behaviours really change so little?

Of course, large disruptions can change specific market dynamics over time; however, as Ben Page describes above, most of the time powerful cognitive biases (of which nearly 200 have been documented) end up curtailing significant changes in behaviour.

2. Existing research contains new, unexplored gems of insight

As well as likely being valid, existing research often contains hidden, unexplored insights.

For example, imagine existing research measuring incidences of a particular behaviour occurring.

By revisiting this research using a behavioural science ‘lens’, we can get a deeper understanding of why this behaviour is occurring (or why not).

In one recent project, a behavioural economics lens helped us demonstrate previously unexplored (to our client) influences on consumer financial behaviour, such as the over-confidence effect and present bias.

Similarly, imagine existing research which captures the barriers to respondents of doing a particular behaviour in future.

In a different project, revisiting questions like this using a behaviour change model helped us suggest fresh, innovative tactics to address stated barriers to the behaviour.

In summary, whether we are looking to summarise lots of existing research – or instead tackle a few specific, perhaps long-standing business challenges – unexplored gems of insight can often be found within existing research. 

3. Existing research helps save us a lot of time

Finally, revisiting existing research can help save us a lot of time.

The average market research study takes 6-7 weeks – although larger projects which include translations, multiple rounds of questionnaire approval etc can take much longer.

Therefore, if some answers to key questions might be found in existing research, organisations would be crazy not to revisit it.

Similarly, in challenging economic conditions for their clients, agencies can utilise existing research to get valid and impactful solutions to business questions to clients much more quickly.

Conclusion

This article has presented three reasons why revisiting existing research is valuable.

In summary, existing research:

1. Is likely still valid

2. Contains new, unexplored gems of insight

3. Helps save us a lot of time

Ultimately, Insight teams benefit from revisiting existing research by increasing their organisational impact…

…while research agencies are able to create deeper bonds with clients, by demonstrating an ability to adapt to clients’ new economic environment.

Thanks for reading!