There have been increasing calls for inclusiveness and fairness across America and the world. The issues presented by the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements affect all sectors of society and the business world. Market research is no exception. Recent events have spurred me to reflect on my experiences and to think about whether the market research field is diverse enough and ready to make meaningful changes. Does market research have structural, systemic barriers preventing women and minorities from succeeding?

My recollections are anecdotal – just one person’s experiences when working in market research for more than 30 years. What follows isn’t based on an industry study or necessarily representative of all researchers’ experiences.

Women in Market Research

When it comes to gender equity in the market research field, my gut reaction is to think that research is a good field for women and one that I would recommend. I reviewed Crux Research’s client base and client contacts. In 15 years, we have worked with about 150 individual research clients across 70 organizations. 110 (73%) of those 150 clients are female. This dovetails with my recollection of my time at a major research supplier. Most of my direct clients there were women.

Crux’s client base is largely mid-career professionals – I’d say our typical client is a research manager or director in his/her 30’s or 40’s. I’d conclude that in my experience, women are well represented at this level.

But, when I look through our list of 70 clients and catalog who the “top” research manager is at these organizations, I find that 42 (60%) of the 70 research VPs and directors are male. And, when I catalog who these research VP’s report into, typically a CMO, I find that 60 (86%) of the 70 individuals are male. To recap, among our client base, 73% of the research managers are female, 40% of the research VPs are female, and 14% of the CMO’s are female.

This meshes with my experience working at a large supplier. While I was there, women were well-represented in our research director and VP roles but there were almost no women represented in the C-suite or among those that report to them. There seem to be a clear but firm glass ceiling in place in market research suppliers and in clients.

Minorities in Market Research

My experience paints a bleaker picture when I think of ethnic minority representation in market research. Of our 150 individual research clients, just 25 (17%) have been non-white and just 3 (2%) have been black. Moving up the corporate ladder, in only 5 (13%) of our 70 clients is the top researcher in the organization non-white and in only 4 (6%) of the 70 companies is the CMO non-white, and none of the CMOs are black. Undoubtedly, we have a long way to go.

A lack of staff diversity in research suppliers and market research corporate staffs is a problem worth resolving for a very important reason: market researchers and pollsters are the folks providing the information to the rest of the world on diversity issues. Our field can’t possibly provide an appropriate perspective to decision makers if we aren’t more diverse. Our lack of diversity affects the conversation because we provide the data the conversation is based upon.  

Non-profits seem to be a notable exception when it comes to ethnic diversity. I have had large non-profit clients that have wonderfully diverse employee bases, to the point where it is not uncommon to attend meetings and Zoom calls where I am the only white male in the session. These non-profits make an effort to recruit and train diverse staffs and their work benefits greatly from the diversity of perspectives this brings. There is a palpable openness of ideas in these organizations. Research clients and suppliers would do well to learn from their example.  

I can’t think of explicit structural barriers that limit the progression of minorities thought the market research ranks, but that just illustrates the problem: the barriers aren’t explicit, they are more subtle and implicit. Which is what makes them so intractable.

We have to make a commitment to develop more diverse employee bases. I worked directly for the CEO of a major supplier for a number of years. One thing I respected about him was he was confident enough in himself that he was not afraid to hire people who were smarter than him or didn’t think like him or came from an entirely different background. It made him unique. In my experience, most hiring managers unintentionally hire “mini-me’s” – younger variants of themselves whom they naturally like in a job interview. Well, if the hiring managers are mostly white males and they are predisposed to hire a lot of “mini-me’s” over time this perpetuates a privilege and is an example of an unintentional, but nonetheless structural bias that limits the progress of women and minorities.

If you don’t think managers tend to hire in their own image, consider a recent Economist article that states “In 2018 there were more men called Steve than there were women among the chief executives of FTSE 100 companies.” I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more market researchers in the US named Steve than there are black market researchers.

To further illustrate that we naturally seek people like ourselves, I reviewed my own LinkedIn contact list. This list is made up of former colleagues, clients, people I have met along the way, etc. It is a good representation of the professional circle I exist within. It turns out that my LinkedIn contact list is 60% female and has 25% non-whites. But, just 3% of my LinkedIn contacts are black. And, yes, I have more LinkedIn contacts named Steve than I have contacts who are black.

This is a problem because as researchers we need to do our best to cast aside our biases and provide an objective analysis of the data we collect. We cannot do that well if we do not have a diverse array of people working on our projects.

Many managers will tell you that they would like to hire a minority for a position but they just don’t get quality candidates applying. This is not taking ownership of the issue. What are you doing to generate candidates in the first place?

It is all too easy to point the finger backwards at colleges and universities and say that we aren’t getting enough qualified candidates of color. And that might be true. MBA programs continue to enroll many more men than women and many more whites than non-whites. They should be taken to task for this. As employers we also need to be making more demands on them to recruit women and minorities to their programs in the first place.

I like that many research firms have come out with supportive statements and financial contributions to relevant causes recently. This is just a first step and needs to be the catalyst to more long-lasting cultural changes in organizations.

We need to share best practices, and our industry associations need to step up and lead this process. Let’s establish relationships with HCBU’s and other institutions to train the next generation of black researchers.

The need to be diverse is also important in the studies we conduct. We need to call more attention to similarities and differences in our analyses – and sample enough minorities in the first place so that we can do this. Most researchers do this already when we have a reason to believe before we launch the study that there might be important differences by race/ethnicity. However, we need to do this more as a matter of course, and become more attuned to highlighting the nuances in our data sets that are driven by race.

Our sample suppliers need to do a better job of recruiting minorities to our studies, and to ensure that the minorities we sample are representative of a wider population. As their clients, we as suppliers need to make more demands about the quality of the minority samples we seek.

We need an advocacy group for minorities in market research. There is an excellent group, Women in Research https://www.womeninresearch.org/ advocating for women. We need an analogous organization for minorities.

Since I am in research, I naturally think that measurement is key to the solution. I’ve long thought that organizations only change what they can measure. Does your organization’s management team have a formal reporting process that informs them of the diversity of their staff, of their new hires, of the candidates they bring in for interviews? If they do not, your organization is not poised to fix the problem. If your head of HR cannot readily tell you what proportion of your staff is made up of minorities, your firm is likely not paying enough attention.

Researchers will need to realize that their organizations will become better and more profitable when they recruit and develop a more diverse client base. Even though it is the right thing to do, we need to view resolving these issues not solely as altruism. It is in our own self-interest to work on this problem. It is truly the case that if we aren’t part of the solution, we are likely part of the problem. And again, because we are the ones that inform everyone else about public opinion on these issues, we need to lead the way.

My belief is it that this issue will be resolved by Millennials once they get to an age when they are more senior in organizations. Millennials are a generation that is intolerant to unfairness of this sort and notices the subtle biases that add up. They are the most diverse generation in US history. The oldest Millennials are currently in their mid-30’s. In 10-20 years’ time they will be in powerful positions in business, non-profits, education, and government.

Optimistically, I believe Millennials will make a big difference. Pessimistically, I wonder if real change will happen before they are the ones managing suppliers and clients, as thus far the older generations have not shown that they are up to the task.