The Horrors of Market Research

The market research world is a scary place to be these days. From rampaging bots to tricky scammers, researchers have a lot to be afraid of. Here are some of the biggest monsters keeping market researchers up at night.

Fiendish Fraud

Fraud is, by far, the scariest thing in the research industry. A recent study conducted by the market research firm RepData declared that a third of all data funneled into market research is fake. Most of this fraud is what they termed “good-looking fraud”, meaning it is fraud that, at first glance, seems to be as good as legitimate responses, but is built on false data, AI-generated answers, and copy-pasted nonsense. While some fraud can be obvious, it’s this “good-looking” fraud that’s almost indistinguishable from real data that’s the real concern.

Luckily, there are ways to fight back against this kind of fraud. Besides the typical quality control checks and IP trackers, several market research companies have devised ways to specifically combat AI-based fraud. For example, some reject any open-ended responses that have been copy-pasted into the textbox (typically indicating an AI-generated response), while others keep track of digital footprints to ensure survey-takers are human. Some even use AI tools to find and root out AI responses, fighting fire with fire.

Pernicious Partners

A main source of the fraud are various unscrupulous panels and research firms that have made their way into the industry. These partner companies offer all the respondents you need for a survey at a very cheap rate, making them attractive to market researchers with time or financial restrictions. However, most of the respondents these companies offer are not who they say they are. Many are bots, but there are plenty of speedsters and cheaters as well. 

Regardless of their source, their data is fraudulent, misleading, and incorrect, and thus has to be thrown out. These companies rarely, if at all, verify the responses themselves, and are willing to let 90% of the fraudulent data they present pass by unchecked. This costs researchers time and money, as they have to go through the data and clean it themselves, or risk sharing incorrect data with their clients. 

Terrible Time

Just like everyone else, time is not on the market researchers’ side. The industry is no stranger to tight deadlines or slow turnaround times, but the issues of fraud seem to only exacerbate these, ironically timeless, issues. Even with all the advances in time-saving technology, there’s only so much one can do to fight against time: when you’ve promised your client five hundred completes over the weekend and you discover Monday morning that most are bots, what can you do?

For some, the solution is to turn to those lower-quality panels with higher amounts of fraud. For others, it’s to turn to digital respondents to help fill out a survey. While there’s no right or wrong way about it, more than anything though is the simple importance of communication. Letting the clients know the status of the project and keeping them updated throughout the process may not stop time, but it can help to gain some leeway and goodwill when things inevitably move slowly. Additionally, lowering the rates of fraud as much as possible prevents wasting valuable time on data cleaning and resurveying. 

ACOP Fraudbusters

As Symmetric president Arianne Larimer puts it, “there’s not much spookier than not being sure if your survey respondents are real when you are up against an insights deadline.” That’s why, with so much frightening fraud around, ACOP takes data quality seriously. From using our own proprietary anti-fraud system SLEUTH to partnering with industry-standard quality control systems like Research Defender, Sentry, and Verisoul, ACOP is dedicated to getting real data from real people, to help make things a little less scary.