The Landmark Blog

The More Things Change...Mullets and Market Research

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Everyone has heard the saying, "The more things change...the more they stay the same".  Do you believe that? 

I had a very surreal experience recently.  As I've mentioned in previous articles, I grew up in a relatively small city in Idaho.  I was a teenager in the '80's (just dated myself).  The town I lived in was about as country as they come.  At the time (maybe still) the city I lived in was infested with mullets.  Yes...infested is the correct word choice.  A mullet is not a small furry animal, though on some people it looks like one.  It is not a rodent, an insect, or a bird.  A mullet, for those of you who don't know, is a hairstyle...operationally defined by some as "business in the front and party in the back"...also known as a...short-long, a mud flap, a yes-no, a 10/90, a Camaro Cut, etc.  The Beastie Boys actually wrote a song about mullets called Mullet Head.

In my town, almost everyone had a mullet.  You can imagine a whole town filled with mullet wearers.  The cowboys wore mullets, the athletes wore mullets, the nerds, the bandsters, the stoners, the teachers, the parents...even the girls wore mullets (called a gullet - a "girl mullet").  I'm proud to say I've never had a mullet.

But, my teenage son has had a mullet (this is not a picture of him smoking a cigarette).  My teenage son recently cut his shag haircut into a mullet.  I couldn't believe it...talk about a flashback.  Don't get me wrong...it's a new...evolved...2010...hip...kind of mullet...but it's still a mullet.  I just don't know what to think about it.  I didn't like mullets the first time around...don't like them the second time either. 

This recent experience has started me thinking.  Do market research methods and approaches come in and out of "fashion" like other trends?  I believe that they do.  Here are a couple of examples:

• Online market research related access panels have had a hey-day for the past several years.  New online companies were being created.  Online companies were being bought and sold based on their capabilities (aka panel size)...even their projected capabilities.  However, recently the growth that online research has experienced has slowed down significantly.  Quality concerns have been identified relating to access panel representation, sampling methods, respondent accuracy, overlap between panels, etc.  This area of our industry is saturated with providers operating in the mullet-wearing gladiator pit-of-doom to fight it out.  Are access panels past their prime or will they see growth in the future?  The jury's still out.

• Much of the growth seen in the online survey arena came at the expense of telephone research.  Telephone survey research has started to see some stabilization in the decline it was experiencing (prior to our current economic shake-up).  It will be interesting to see how the industry and market researchers approach this methodology as the economy rebounds.  Will it return to fashion in some altered form or is it like your old pair of jeans, you'll keep them around forever?

• Qualitative research in general has "made way" for online focus groups, MROC's (market research online communities), online product testing & taste tests.  Will these methods loop back around to "traditional" focus groups, test kitchens, and ethnographic research?  I recently saw an article giving advice on when focus group methods should be used vs. using a series of in-depth interviews (IDI's).  Within research types there are "in-vogue" fashions.

• In-person interviewing may be the most relevant example of "fashion changes" in research.  A number of years ago...a mall DIDN'T EXIST that didn't have a face-to-face research company located in it.  Over the past ten years, in-person, especially mall research underwent a significant reduction in the number of facilities available.  The number has stabilized and the method seems to be seeing a resurgence in popularity.  It has also begun to evolve.  I'm familiar with Quicktest, a research organization that represents a significant number of the mall research facilities in the US.  They have created a very unique concept, Quickview, which is a kiosk based mall research facility.  The concept places them in high traffic areas in malls, and takes up much less space but still provides all of the benefits of face-to-face research.  

I don't believe that methods come back in "un-evolved" states, however I do believe that they often come back in fashion.  Similar to my son's "non-'80's"...hip...modern...2010 retro punk...mullet, market research methods look different in their modernized form.  Here are a few suggestions for modernizing your market research product or market research service:

• Address the methodological concerns, expand your horizons and think "out-of-the-box".  A couple of years ago, Discovery Research got involved with conducting IVR surveys (Interactive Voice Response).  Online access panels were digging in to the research typically conducted over the phone.  One of the reasons (aside from cost) was that respondents could self-select time and day to complete interviews.  IVR research provides a cheap, self-select, quick method for conducting market research in an arena that Discovery Research understands better than most...telephone market research.

• Mold and evolve your market research products.  Quicktest evolved the mall market research process so that it was more relevant and accessible to respondents.  They've evolved their primary product into the "new mullet" of market research (would that be the nullet).

• Find your niche and be the best at it.  The nullet doesn't look much like the mullet from the '80's.  It looks retro...in a way...but looks very modern.  You've heard it say that you don't want your company to be a "manufacturer of buggy whips."  Maybe it's ok to be a buggy whip manufacturer, if you're the only person selling buggy whips, you're the best at it, and they address the needs of the current buggy whip market.

I'm interested in your thoughts:

• Have you ever had a mullet?  What year was it?

• Do you know of other names for mullets?

• Do you believe that market research methods and approaches go in and out of fashion?