Greening Market Research
9/11/08 / David Kennedy
We’ve been trying to do our part here at Corona to help the environment, or at least minimize our impact on it. From office recycling, buying “greener” products, to the EcoPass (Denver’s public transit pass provided by employers), we continue to look for ways to shrink our footprint.
That’s why I was quite excited to see an article in Quirk’s Marketing Research Review on “How to green your research” (you’ll need to register to read it, but registration is free). The article gives several useful tips related to areas of market research, such as travel, research facilities, and everyday worklife.
I won’t recite every pointer here, but here are a few of my favorites:
- Fly direct when possible and combine several trips into one.
- When at facilities, request local food choices.
- Stay near the client or facility when traveling – and walk instead of renting a car.
- Digitize everything to reduce paper.
One thing I would like to add to the travel and facilities portion that I think was missing is the use of streaming video. Why even travel for all your focus groups when you can easily watch them over a secure Internet connection?
What else can we do to minimize the impact of our services on the environment?
- Previous Post / Corona is a semi-finalist for the Better Business Bureau’s Torch Award
- The Godless West? / Next Post
We agree that you should go with “greener” research options whenever possible, but of course the goals of the research should come first, and sometimes traveling for in-person interviews, or conducting mail surveys is the best or only way to accomplish the research goals.
Nevertheless, if all market research firms made a conscious effort to weigh the “green-ness” of the research method as one of the criteria for the research, we think our field could reduce its carbon footprint significantly.
And lets not forget that even online surveys leave a footprint. All those computers and servers running do require energy. (http://www.goodcleantech.com/2008/04/new_study_it_fails_to_curb_dat.php)
Hi, you have put a very good blog on greening market research, but dear we should some thing more for our nature, environment & our self also.