Our guest on this episode is Jit Mitra, who is market research and analytics lead at Merck, in the US. Jit is currently working on the launch of their fantastic new brand in PAH, Sotatercep. Jit joins us on The Day One podcast to share what things in the industry he’d like to see banished to Room 101 forever. The main pet peeves Jit describes are: the perception that the respondent can solve your problem, the attitude of “it’s always been done this way”, and the idea that “research needs to be grand”. Jit provides meaningful criticism during our conversation, and we hope you enjoy it.

Disclaimer: Anything Jit says reflects his personal beliefs and in no way represent his employer.

Key Quotes:

• “One of the marketers that I worked with told me a very, very interesting comment. He said that, for a marketer, market research is insurance. It is something that I buy to support my decisions and to stand by on my decisions. Unfortunately, innovation doesn't really make for very good insurance. So, when you, when you give me, innovation, please try to package it with something that has a little bit more of a heritage per se.” (06:53)
• “We put a lot of onus during the design, when we take the business objectives and convert them to a market research project. I have often seen we are brutal when it comes to asking consumers questions.” (10:49)
• “Some of these decisions are marketing decisions. Correct. So, let marketing give you the business objectives, but you convert them into research objectives. It's a bit that we need to make a very important distinction. (18:11)
• “What I'm seeing is a lot of cross-pollination happening. Especially that's what analytics has helped us with. A lot of analytics folks are coming into market research because they want to do analytics. So, they don't come in with that “learned helplessness”. (23:45)
• “These new trends, like you were talking about, like AI, machine learning, a lot of the new analytical methods are drawing a lot of diverse talents into the field of market research, who are beginning to question and at least push against that “have always done it” kind of approach. So, it's a problem, but I also see us reaching a solution” (24:15)
• “How quickly we were able to transition everything online during COVID. It kind of taught us how you can, when you need to, you can kind of disrupt some of these existing practices. I remember we had in the olden days; we did nine days of central location where you went from one city to another, sat in the back room and saw interviews. We don't do that anymore. So, one of the good practices is how qualitative research has emerged to be like a lot more efficiently done.” (25:26)
• “We tend to make our research very grand. It's almost always like a big show kind of deal which, which I'm pretty sure like is not required or relevant. Why can't we break it into smaller, smaller chunks?” (29:04)
• “I think that that's why in research it's important to try and reflect on that sort of real environment that they're working in, because it is probably down to things like that at the end of the day, and unless you're asking the right questions or giving them the freedom to kind of tell you what it is that drives their decisions and make them feel comfortable to admit that that is a driver of their decision making, you're never going to get to it” (35:30)

Key Topics:

• How Jit “fell into” the world of market research and analytics (02:05)
• What keeps Jit in the market research industry (04:11)
• Jit shares what he thinks the future will look like for market research (05:45)
• The first nomination for Room 101 is revealed (10:35)
• Keeping business objectives and research objectives separate (18:44)
• Jit shares his second choice for Room 101 (20:21)
• Balancing innovation with proven methodologies (20:58)
• Diverse talent coming into market research without “learned helplessness” (24:00)
• Jit’s third proposal for Room 101 (29:05)
• Unique approaches to collecting emotional and practical insights (31:08)
• The importance of humanising research and decision-making (33:40) 
• Tips to make research more human (36:30)
• Sympathising too much with the respondents (39:46)
• Which nomination was selected for Room 101? (43:05)

About – Jit Mitra:

Jit is a seasoned consultant & market researcher with 20+ years of market research/consulting experience having led projects that range in scope from US domestic to multi-country global projects for the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. 

Jit is currently market research and analytics lead at Merck in the US. He collaborates closely with the global brand team leads and other key stakeholders to define market entry scenarios from a global perspective including, but not limited to, global market segmentation, patient journey, LCM valuation, positioning and messaging. He also works closely with other support functions as necessary to ensure efforts are coordinated to address business questions with all relevant information and support related strategic efforts (e.g., forecasting, performance reporting, and competitive intelligence).

Relevant Links:

• Indrajit Mitra - LinkedIn
• Day One - https://www.dayonestrategy.com/
• Hannah Mann - LinkedIn
• Abigail Stuart – LinkedIn

The Day One podcast is published by the Day One Strategy and produced by Zorbiant.

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