An Introduction to the market as it stands, and a glimpse towards the future

 

You have to hand it to them.  Viewing facilities have come an awful long way since the days when they were usually simulacra of suburban living rooms, right down to the chintz, the antimacassars and the pot pourri.

Today’s marketplace is a model of diversity by way of contrast and perhaps consequently it provides an increasingly sophisticated, complex and challenging environment to work in.  No doubt there are more competitive and cut-throat businesses, to be sure, but if ever there were a perception that facilities offered easy money to anyone with a few spare rooms and a tape recorder, surely it must be long gone by now.  There are, if you’ll pardon the cliché, no low-hanging fruit anymore; “the easy times are behind us”, confirms Bridget Shirley, managing director of market leading facility the Research House.  A Schlesinger Associates Company.  “We will need to work harder for every piece of business”.

The reasons aren’t hard to find.  Viewing facilities have been around long enough to settling into a more sedate period of slow-to-moderate growth by now; but the pace of evolution and change in that market, particularly in the last few years, means that there is still plenty of unpredictability which could unseat the complacent or unwary.  “The present (climate) dictates that we keep up, maintain and exceed – or get left behind”, explains Emma Pettifer, director of Leeds-based Roundhay Research.  “It is by no means mature and due to increased customer expectation – the example with regard to web streaming – the market is far from saturated”.

 

Facilities have responded to the challenge in different ways.  Some have sought to provide something of a one-stop-shop service, consolidating their offering with fieldwork services.  It is arguably a defensive move, but for some at least, a successful and popular one.  “It has definitely been an added bonus and a selling point for us”, says Amy Boast, viewing facilities manager at All Global Viewing.  “Clients have been pleased that we can take care of the whole fieldwork process, from booking out the project to ordering incentives and pre-checking”.  The Research House has a similar story to tell.  Sue Maldonado, its marketing director elaborates; “In response to increasing demand from our clients for international project management and for one quote for both the facility and recruitment, we took the decision to invest in and develop this service.  Having taken the plunge, we have not looked back.  Our clients feel confident that the recruitment is of a high standard – we recognise that our recruitment services must be of the highest quality and any lapse will reflect on our entire business.  The team employed to recruit for their groups are there on site ensuring things run smoothly and have a complete understanding of the project.”

But there are no hard-and-fast rules, and businesses can develop in many other ways too, bolting on additional specialist services to create a niche for themselves in a crowded marketplace.  “Viewing facilities operate on similar levels to hotels”, says Liz Sykes, chair of the Viewing Facilities Association.  “It is a matter of choice which direction businesses go in.  Some facilities don’t offer recruitment, others do.  Some offer moderation, transcription and simultaneous translation.  Others source it as and when it is required.”

 

These are small measures perhaps.  But they point to a larger truth about today’s marketplace.  Facilities are having to work harder – and think more carefully – about their own identities and what they say about the service that is on offer; it certainly hasn’t escaped clients’ attention that new facility launches are eschewing names on the ‘Norwich Viewing Room’ model, for more explicitly branded solutions.  In other words, facilities are having to differentiate themselves clearly from their competitors on the basis of their service offering – arguably for the first time.

It’s likely to be a development that will snowball over time, particularly as technology-driven globalisation impacts more fully on the market.  It is ironic, perhaps, that suburban facilities which might once have seemed the epitome of parochialism to some are now developing increasingly international horizons.  But it will become something like the norm, the technology will almost demand it.

Pettifer, for one, is optimistic. “A lot of the companies we deal with are international, we have clients who fly in from the US and Europe to view focus groups.  Web streaming, however, will clients to log on any where in the world and watch their focus group in progress.  It will save those clients time and expense on travelling and hotels, and therefore make the UK market more attractive.”  But, as with everything there are risks, and it may prove difficult to enter the right balance and, in Shirley’s words, “Ensuring that technology does not become the competitor to viewing facilities by remembering we are always a people business and ensuring technology servers our future rather than dictates our future.”

Whether facilities can maintain that balance is to a large degree dependent on how aggressively clients push their demands.  But clients are increasingly at the centre of the facility experience, as clients themselves have integrated facilities into their wider work practices and begun to expect considerably more than ac up of coffee and a sandwich while they sit and watch through the mirror.  In this respect, and perhaps in part driven by increased transatlantic research traffic, UK facilities are becoming much more like their US counterparts.  “We are moving towards the state-of-the-art viewing facilities of the US” observes Roast.  “Novel, hotel-style viewing facilities, with a concierge, gym and shower facilities.  Researchers are spending more and more time in viewing facilities so why not make it a more enjoyable experience?”

The future, then, could be supersize.  “We envisage more acquisitions and a development of chains of facilities that can cope with multi-market studies and the one-stop-shop demands of the international market,” confirms Shirley.  “Clients need more and more personal space for their business and personal use during their visits.”

Or perhaps the future will be a good deal bleaker than that.  Li\ Sykes, as befits here position as chair of the VFA is looking further ahead; “The next big change will probably be clients trying to cut their carbon footprint.  Instead of flying they will be viewing nationwide and overseas groups by increasingly sophisticated video conferencing.  It may not be an issue as such in the industry now, but looking ahead it is clearly a big issue for society generally and in the long term we can’t carry on in the same way with the level of concern that exists about the environment.”

The kind of paradigm shift would be a major challenge – not to say threat – for the research market.  But the technology is there – more or less – to overcome it.  And it seems fitting that this most people-focused segment of a people-focused industry should be thinking about such things already.  “After all,” adds Sykes, “people aren’t going to die if we don’t do research.”

 

Liz Sykes is managing director of Field Initiatives, chairperson of the VFA and a committee member of the AQR.

Research, March 2007, In Focus