A Look Back at TMRE 2009: Toyota: Continuous Improvement Through Research

The Market Research Event 2010 is taking place this November 8-10, 2010 in San Diego, California. Every Friday leading up to the event, we'll be recapping one session from The Market Research Event 2009.

TMRE General Session: Toyota: Continuous Improvement Through Research

Toyota: Continuous Improvement Through Research
Steven Sturm, Group Vice President, Americas Strategic Research & Planning and Corporate Communications, Toyota Motor North America, Inc.

Toyota runs their business according to the Toyota Way which relies on two principles:
-Continuous improvement
-respect for people

Toyota entered the US car market over 50 years ago. Their first car, Toyopet Crown, failed; it did not meet the quality or expectations of the US customer. This became the stimulus to meet more of the Americans needs

Toyota is the #1 brand in the US, and Lexus is the #1 luxury brand. Toyota is expecting affluent homes to grow over the next few years.

Lexus: best car and best ownership experience. So they then determined they’d sell Lexuses in their own dealer networks, and they would treated each customer as if they were a guest in their own home. Of 1,600 dealers that applied to be Lexus dealers at the beginning, only 80 were selected.

The #1 selling luxury brand in the US is the Lexus RX.

Toyota’s Concept of Sustainability
Core of what Toyota does is to have respect for people and the environment. They’ve capitalized on this with the Toyota Prius.

It has two power sources: gas engine and electric motor. A computer chooses which to use for maximum use, and the batter never needs recharged because it’s automatically recharged when the car breaks. It went on sale in 1997, and was not a success. They began using a family demo program. They did real road testing and got feedback directly from the customer. This also created buzz. Families felt that they were participating in a breakthrough, and also were getting attention.

People needed to be educated on how the Prius worked, as the technology for the car was unknown. Early adopters began to get their information about the Prius online. It was launched in 2000, and they exceeded their sales expectations from that year on. Media coverage, partnerships, and government incentives to purchase the car have since followed.

Webinar: New Research on the Changing Face of Beauty

New Research on the Changing Face of Beauty
Join us for a Free Web Seminar on Thursday, June 10th from 11:00 AM -12:00PM EDT

Reserve your Web Seminar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/260448192
Mention priority code MWS0029Blog

About the web seminar:
Personal care and appearance have become an obsession. Personal care product usage has increased in double digits in the past 5 years with consumers using more individual products on average every day.

In order to develop new products, companies need to identify unmet needs as well as emerging trends and attitudes. Furthermore, we need to better understand how consumers navigate through new categories.

This beauty and personal care development has created a need for new understanding. How has behavior changed? Do women feel differently about themselves?

In order to understand how the category has evolved, we need to be able to look back in time. In 2005, BuzzBack conducted a study among US women around personal appearance and their use of personal care products – from cosmetics to body and face lotion. The study utilized eCollage, our award-winning online technique for revealing visual associations and underlying emotions/feelings.

In this new webinar, five years later, we will look at what’s changed – as well as compare to new findings among women in the UK.

Attendees of this webinar will learn:
• How attitudes related to beauty and appearance have changed among females in the past 5 years and why
• How women use imagery to better express how they feel about their personal appearance on a typical day
• What remains the same -- which consumer feelings are similar today compared to 5 years ago and why
• How the recession has impacted purchase behavior and why

In addition, you’ll learn how new research methodologies, especially hybrid qual-quant online techniques, have evolved. Traditional quantitative measures will be combined with future-facing qualitative collection methods and advanced qualitative analysis.

Featured Speaker:
Brendan Light, SVP, Research and Development, BuzzBack Market Research

Brendan has been leading research development and best-practices for BuzzBack, with recent recognition by the Advertising Research Foundation as a Great Mind winner for Innovation. In addition to continually improving the quality of the quantitative and qualitative methodologies and analytics of BuzzBack's research offerings, he pioneered BuzzBack's award-winning and patent-pending eCollage and Verbatim Viewer technology, and leads a broad team of future development and research strategy for BuzzBack. He continues to focus on leveraging the transformative powers of the Internet to evolve respondent engagement, operational efficiency, and visualization of analytics and insight. He has over 10 years of client and research supplier side experience, having also served as Research Director for Grey Interactive and as the Global Director of Ipsos-ASI Interactive.

Europe's privacy laws affect ad effectiveness

Online Media Daily looked at the study that showed how effective Europe's online privacy laws are in response to the effectiveness of banner ads on webpages. In Europe, a data protection law states that companies are not allowed to track users via web bugs and cookies unless they have consent from the user. While this can allow webpages to tailor the ads to the user in the US, it can not be done in Europe. This dramatically affected the effectiveness of online advertising between the US and Europe, decreasing effectiveness up to 65%. Read the full article here.

Facebook gets snapshots of market

In a recent article at the San Francisco Chronicle, they looked at how Facebook is becoming a great picture to the people's current feelings. While we have know this for some time, the article points out that on any given day, this chart can demonstrate the national happiness generated by Facebook statuses. The researchers have even taken it one step futher and looked at how relationships statuses affect men and women. Read the full article here.

Have you begun to use Facebook for market research? Do you look at the status trends of the biggest fans of your products? How can Twitter and Facebook measuring national happiness on a daily basis be a benefit to your research?

How is your customer using Twitter?

An interesting article at Agency Spy reveals that 53% of Twitter users do not post anything. While you may be monitoring what people are saying about your brand or product, many more are out there reading about your product. And two-thirds of the users also access the information on their phone. What does this mean for your company? Users are monitoring your product, and often times on the go. Read more about the Twitter statistics here.

Save $800 on The Market Research Event this week only

We are excited to present you with a first preview of our 2010 program. The Market Research Event isn't just a conference - it's a life changing experience that promises results. Stay tuned as we reveal the 2010 full agenda. Can't wait?

Get a sneak peek at the program now:
http://bit.ly/bO43Qh

TMRE unites the world's most influential researchers to share beset practices, industry innovation and showcase the business value of market research. Over 800 attendees are expected to attend and more than 60% will be from client side companies. Get exclusive access to more than 100 sessions and 150 speakers. Attend just one event in 2010 and learn strategies that will prepare you to deliver value in a new era of business. Client, customer and stakeholder expectations are rising. Respond to your call of duty. Make 2010 the year insights deliver.

Special Early Bird Discount expires May 7th!
Register Today and Save $800 off the standard & onsite rate.