So what are the main types of research and how should they be used?  Julian Dent, chief executive at management consultancy VIA International, differentiates between  ‘market research’ and  ‘consulting research’.   ‘The latter tends to be quantitative and to follow a predetermined questionnaire.  It enables you to benchmark trends and validate facts, and gives statistical validity. It confirms that you are on track.  Done regularly, it can track trends over time.’

Consulting research, on the other hand, is qualitative and probing. It should be carried out by experts who know the industry. It is good for probing the underlying issues, for proving a hypothesis and for identifying the specific things a company needs to do to deploy a new strategy successfully.

Dent says that people often expect too much from market research.  ‘They expect it to throw up the answers, and it simply is incapable of doing that.’

Research then can be tiered.

At one level, says Weldon, market research can be focused on how well a supplier is meeting a specific need.  ‘We can contact a number of callers to a technical support department and ask them how well their calls were dealt with.’ This very simple research is useful in establishing whether a supplier is carrying out a specific function well. Increasingly, it is being conducted over the web and by e-mail. Sanders says that this can generate response rates of up to 20% on partner websites.

At a slightly higher level, we have the channel audit. Typically conducted over the phone using a preset questionnaire, it can measure issues such as intermediaries’ general satisfaction levels. Anderson says such surveys can also be done on the web, but adds:  ‘It has clear-cut limits, but can be useful for taking the temperature once a year.’

Finding out what the channel really thinks of you is an exercise that can take many forms.  Xerox, for instance, came out with a whole series of measurements which enabled it to classify its channel partners into one of half a dozen categories, ranging from honeymooners who loved the company and its products through to deserters (see Measuring how much they trust you, page 9, Routes to Market, Winter 2003).

A lot of research is concerned with understanding views on a specific issue or topic – perhaps how far the channel perceives a supplier as competing with them, for instance. Here Anderson says that telephone research, carried out by skilled practitioners who know how to dig, can work well.  ‘You need people who can attack an issue in a multi-layered way.’

Weldon at HI says there is a growing market for in-depth, face-to-face research with senior managers in large intermediaries.  ‘What you get from this is some very direct, actionable planning on an account-by-account basis.’

It may also be worth researching partner business models. Dent says:  ‘Partners are willing to let a third party in to crawl over their books. We do this and then hold three or four in-depth interviews where we validate the principles before confirming this with a few others.’

But if you really want to prove a hypothesis or identify what changes you need to make in order to achieve new objectives, you will have to do face-to-face interviews using experts. Dent says:  ‘We do a lot of these. The trick is to start with an interview map, a series of issues you want to explore, and to then let the interviewee determine the order in which you address them. To do this successfully you need interviewers who know the issues before they start the interview and who can challenge the opinions being expressed by the interviewee, highlighting an apparent paradox, for example. They have to be really capable of digging. The more insight you can bring, the more respect and data they will give you in return.’