Communicating Research "ROI"

When asked about ROI for research I am conducting, I respond: “If you’re investing in information… isn’t that the return?”

As a researcher, I often ponder how I can communicate the value of the insights I’m providing, or going to provide. But the concept of time and information is often trumped by that of cost. In my researcher-oriented mind, ROI does not happen overnight; sometimes it doesn’t happen next period, or next quarter, either. In some cases, you won’t even know if there is ROI.

Think about Gen Y and Millennial research that many companies, I presume, are investing in. Do we conduct this research to capture a younger dollar, or to understand their behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions now to predict how they will change our businesses in the future? You see, the problem isn’t so much ROI. Instead, the problem is that some research is not viewed as a strategy-building tool. Some people see research as a means to an end – to solve an immediate problem. There are times when market research needs to be done today (or yesterday) to understand what is happening in the market – to shed light on something unforeseeable. And that (in some cases) is okay. The ROI, in that case, should be fairly straight-forward – provide the information needed to prevent [insert business problem here] from [a: continuing; or b: happening again] and BAM! There’s your return.

ROI in market research is complicated. Sometimes, proving your research was “worth the money” (I think all new information is “worth the money,” but I might be biased) is not only necessary, but mandatory. In that case, there are a few ways you can spin this:

1. 1. Did you know have this information before? Even if it’s not the answer they are/were looking for, you are probably providing information that was lurking in the category of “unknown.” In that case, new knowledge is worth every penny.
2. 2. No new insight is still meaningful. For you analysts out there – even if your test doesn’t return a difference between groups, or it feels like you don’t have anything to report – that is a finding!
3. 3. Can it help build strategy? I’m using my consumer insight experience here, but if I can learn even the slightest amount of information about a segment, a market, or a store, I can provide someone information that will help them make a strategic decision.
4. 4. “Return” is in the eye of the beholder. Use with caution.

The main premise behind market research is to protect the bottom line. We are providing information to help key stakeholders make decisions that are likely to effect the business. Isn’t that a return in itself? Maybe. Maybe not. You’ll learn a whole lot more about ROI and measurement when you attend The Market Research Event this November in Orlando, Florida!

Garrett McGuire (@GJMcGuire) is a Consumer Insights Analyst for a major retailer. His areas of focus are advertising research, brand equity, and providing consumer insights for many marketing initiatives. Prior to his current position, he was a graduate student at Michigan State University where he began his blog, "The Journal of a mAD Man," that explains the theories and methods of advertising.

TDI3: Technology Driven Intelligence, Insights & Implications - Call for Presenters Now Open

CALL FOR PRESENTERS:

TDI3 - Technology Driven Intelligence, Insights & Implications

May, 2012 | Las Vegas, NV

Call 646.895.7335 or email Conference Director Slevyn@iirusa.com 

Submission Deadline : FRIDAY, September 30, 2011

________________________________________
INDUSTRY ALERT: OFFICIAL CALL FOR PRESENTERS

The Institute for International Research (IIR) presents: Technology Driven Intelligence, Insights & Implications TDI3
Date: May, 2012

Due to the high volume of submissions, we suggest you submit your proposal early and no later than Friday, September 30, 2011 to Stacy Levyn, Conference Producer at slevyn@iirusa.com or 646.895.7335.

About the Event: From fragmentation to integration, data convergence is changing the landscape of business today. Primary research methodologies are no longer sufficient. A 360 degree perspective is required to fully grasp all of the data and tools that are being used, creatively and effectively, to better understand consumer behavior. It's more than Technology Driven Market Research; it's a holistic synthesis of intelligence, insights & implications.

Event Focus & Key Themes 2 Symposia's:

• • Mobile Research & Technologies
• • Research Innovation

High-level Keynotes:

• • Storytelling
• • Cultivating Insights from Numbers
• • Data Visualization
• • Social Media
• • Leadership & Strategy

3 Concurrent Tracks:

• • Intelligence
• • Insights
• • Implications

The Audience Managers, director level and above in Market Research, Innovation, Technology, Marketing, Analytics, Consumer Insights, Business Intelligence, Competitive Intelligence, Social Media, Data Mining, Text Analytics and CRM.

Speakers receive FREE admission to the conference as well as any pre-conference activity such as workshops or symposium.

Sponsorship & Exhibition Opportunities If you are interested in sponsorship or exhibit opportunities please contact Jon Saxe, Business Development Manager at jsaxe@iirusa.com or 646.895.7467.

Interested in Becoming a Media Partner or Featured Event Blogger? Contact Kacey Anderson, Marketing Manager, at kanderson@iirusa.com.

Call for Presenters: For consideration, please email slevyn@iirusa.com with the following information by Friday, September 30, 2011.

• • Proposed speaker name(s), job title(s), and company name(s)
• • Contact information including address, telephone and fax numbers and e-mail
• • Talk title
• • The main theme you plan to address
• • Summary of the presentation (3-5 sentences)
• • Please indicate what is NEW about the presentation
• • What the audience will gain from your presentation (please list 3-5 key “take-aways”)
• • Previous conference experience
• • Short bio

Due to the high volume of responses, we are unable to respond to each submission. All those selected to participate as speakers will be notified shortly after the deadline.

Why Your Idea is Worth Nothing, and How to Create Growth Plans that Work

In association with Strategyn, The Institute for International Research invites you to join us for a one hour complimentary Web Seminar:

Why Your Idea is Worth Nothing, and How to Create Growth Plans that Work
Tony Ulwick, Founder & CEO, Strategyn
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 1:00 - 2:00 PM EDT

Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://cc.readytalk.com/r/jd94qyn32jpu

You just had what you thought to be a great idea, but the reality is less than one idea in a million is actually worth anything. Fewer than that are worth a lot. Why? To start, most ideas are generated in markets that are not worthy of investment - they are either too small or not under-served. But more importantly, most ideas address one or two customer needs, not dozens, and therefore fail to provide customers with significant new value. When customers cannot find solutions that help them get a job done significantly better, they simply continue to buy the products and services they are used to using.

In this webinar, Tony Ulwick, the author of "What Customers Want" and founder of Strategyn, will provide you with more insight into why most ideas are worth nothing and a framework for overcoming this challenge. These insights will be useful for any organization who is trying to accelerate its growth through innovation.

What you will learn:
• Why most ideas don't succeed in the marketplace
• A customer-centric framework for creating ideas that customers will embrace
• A method for creating a growth plan that will accelerate your company's growth

Who will benefit from this webinar:
Executives who need to accelerate their growth and have not achieved their growth goals.

About Tony Ulwick:
Tony Ulwick is an inventor, entrepreneur and a thought leader in the field of strategy and innovation. As an inventor, Tony has spent 20 years creating Outcome-Driven Innovation, a powerful innovation process that has a success rate of 86 percent - that is 5 times the industry average. He holds 4 issued and 6 pending patents that explain how he reinvented this complex process.

As an entrepreneur, Tony is the founder and CEO of Strategyn Consulting and the co-founder and managing director of Strategyn Equity Partners. His work has generated billions of dollars in revenue growth for companies such as Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Motorola, Colgate-Palmolive and others. The focus of his businesses is to help companies accelerate growth through sound strategy and innovation.

As a thought leader, Tony has won the best business idea award from Harvard Business Review. he has authored the best selling book, "What Customers Want." His articles, which have been published in the Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, are cited in hundreds of publications. His counter-intuitive views have challenged the way academics and executives think about strategy and building a culture of innovation.

TMRE Keynote Spotlight:The Global Consumer

Leading up to The Market Research Event, we'll profile the keynotes, tracks and themes at the 2011 event.  Over the next few weeks, we'll be looking at the exciting keynote sessions.  For more information on TMRE, taking place November 7-9, 2011; in Orlando, Florida, download the brochure now.  If you register using code TMRE11BLOG, you can save $300 off of the standard registration rate!  This rate expires Friday,  September 16, 2011.

Featured Presentation: The Global Consumer

Featured Presenter: Dan Salzman, Vice President, Consumer & Market Insights, Hewlett Packard

About the session: New technology and communication platforms are creating a common set of real time experiences for consumers around the world. These experiences are driving attitudes and behaviors that are much more homogenous across cultures that are historically very different. Creating insights about the consumer that recognize global commonalities while capturing local differences is critical for companies who want to be truly successful in the future. Session will highlight HPs approach to global insights.

• • Learnings on global commonalities and differences in the consumer market 
• • How to do global research that captures global commonalities and local differences 
• • Hitting the mark in communicating global insights (what to show to whom)

Colors of cars, what do they tell you?

If you are in the automotive research then you know what I’m talking about. In nearly every study we have done for the automotive industry, at a certain stage the question about colors play an important role. Sometimes it’s the question about the dominant color of a car in the local market, sometimes it is about to decide which color a car scribble should have as stimulus material for group discussion (or should not have). And sometimes you want to know if a given car color represents mass taste.

In a world of deep depth of information about a huge range of topic you will need to mix the sources of knowledge. It is indeed important to know your category before starting a research. Sometimes you are lucky and you will find the information you need.Let’s have a look at this piece of information.

Let’s have a look at this piece of information.

Source: Kraftfahrzeugbundesamt, Germany

Accordingly, the 1980s in Germany, red was 22% of new registrations, more than any other. A similar proportion (21.6%) was gray it was followed by white with 20.6% ¬and blue with 15.7%.

Since then, Germany has become colorless. Just 6.8 % of new registrations in 2010 were still red. Thus, the red cars have quickly become less important. Even with green, it went down (from 5.5 to 1.4%), also with blue (15.7 to 10.5%) and the other colors (10.6 to 6.9%) as brown or orange.

Big winners are the black colored cars. In 1986, only every 25th car was black (4.0%). Today, however, black is regarded as noble and almost one third (30.4%) of all cars is painted black. Only in silver / gray, there are more cars (32.6%).

Is that all the numbers could tell you?

Source: Kraftfahrzeugbundesamt,Germany

If you – like me – like accurateness and precision the answer is No! Our philosophy is to go that extra mile to deliver better results.

You can see some kind of color fashion over the years. And it would be interesting to map the socio-demographic change against these numbers.But most important is the fact that every brand (and even every model) has its own hypecycle. In 2010 it is very hard to find a non-black Jaguar, Porsche or Jeep, because all brands have a proportion of black cars registered in this year of more than 50%.

And be careful to think that every silver / gray car is premium. Smart has a proportion of 58.4% for this color. This is a good example of how putting together different sources of knowledge from existing information about the market helps you produce better research results. Let’s see what we will learn about the topic of "mixing information" at the The Market Research Event 2011 in November in Orlando, Florida, hosted by IIR USA.

About the author: Christian Dössel is blogging about market research in German language here and here. After having worked for TNS, TBWA\ and other strategy and market research agencies he now holds the position of Senior Research Director at MM-Eye in Hamburg / Germany with special responsibilities for MM-Eye's new media and online research approaches.

TMRE Awards Offer Research Innovation Barometer

Part Two: EXPLOR Case Studies Showcase Real-World Innovation Excellence
By Marc Dresner, IIR USA

Last week, I posted the first of two interviews with the respective sponsors of what I like to call The Market Research Event’s “innovation barometer”: The EXPLOR and Disruptive Innovator Awards.
My first interview featured Tom Anderson, architect of the second annual Disruptive Innovator Awards and founder of Next Gen Market Research (NGMR), an online community and professional networking group for market researchers with nearly 13,000 members.

This week, I’m pleased to take you inside the prestigious and venerable EXPLOR Award competition, courtesy of my friend, Chuck Miller, chief research officer at uSamp, and co-founder/president of DMS (acquired by uSamp in June 2010 from AOL).

Q: Please tell us briefly about EXPLOR.
The EXPLOR Awards started over a decade ago to highlight the best uses of online research, which at that time was in its infancy. As for its name, it represents the desire for our industry to embrace change and exploration, and it originally stood for Exemplary Performance and Leadership in Online Research.

Over the years as online research gained traction, we broadened the focus of the award to showcase ALL innovation in research—technological or otherwise. Since doing so we’ve received even more interesting case study submissions each year, which makes this a really fun process! Winners and finalists have included many marquee brands and Fortune 50 companies. And in recent years we’ve had strong representation globally too. The best part of EXPLOR is its focus on tangible, practical applications that a client and a provider have implemented with successful results.

Q: Last year’s finalists each provided compelling case studies, but there can be only one winner. What ultimately set the 2010 winner, American Water, apart?
You’re right, Marc. Last year we had a really nice variety of finalists with great clients submitting. The American Water application was an awesome example of what EXPLOR embodies. It stood out because of its sophistication and scale—the aggregation and analysis of 40+ data sources that drove strategic direction and business development at their company. The work of the American Water, Digital Research and ThinkVine teams fundamentally changed the way this 7000-plus-employee company pursued business. The application was so valuable that the American Water CEO gave a demo of the tool at their annual investor conference. It was a great demonstration of the power of research-driven insight.

Q: What surprised you the most about the submissions, in general, that you received for last year’s competition? Why?
Honestly at this point in EXPLOR’s history, it takes a lot to surprise me. Year after year we’ve had great, innovative submissions demonstrating all types of organizations are embracing change. I guess one thing that continually impresses me is the wide variety of submissions we receive, and the variety of organizations submitting them.

Q: What themes/trends in research do you predict will be most prominently represented in this year’s submissions? Conversely, what do you expect to see less of this year?
I think we all know the key areas of industry interest these days are social media, mobile, and biometrics—lots of innovation there. I’d expect to see submissions in those areas, but again, the differentiator will be how those were used to create business impact. Even when the tool is sexy, that isn’t enough. The Organizational Relevance criterion of the award is always the tie breaker.

As for what’s run its course, I’d say we’ve highlighted plenty of large, multi-national measurement programs over the years. It will take something really compelling to “wow” the judges. But you never know, there might be something out there we haven’t seen before. I hope so!

Q: What advice do you have for prospective entrants this year?
The submissions that standout are those that demonstrate creativity and innovation. We always have a nice mix of judges—some new to EXPLOR judging (generally past award winners) and some that have judged for many years. It helps to have the consistency of the latter group, folks that can say “been there, done that.” And the new judges bring fresh perspective to the review process. I’d say something we always welcome is sophisticated analytics. Submissions that dig deep into insight delivery get the attention of our judges, most of whom are seasoned researchers and excellent practitioners.

The landmines to avoid are submissions that have a weak case study attached and/or those that look like pure capabilities pitches from a provider. We get those every year, the worst of which don’t even make it to the judges. So, the best advice I can give is to bring us your cool innovations that have helped an end-client see or do something totally new. The bigger the business impact, the better!

Editor’s note: For those of you who pride yourselves on fresh thinking, nominations for the EXPLOR Award are open through August 31, so don’t delay.

The winner will be announced and honored at The Market Research Event in Orlando, November 7-9.
For more information or to submit a nomination for EXPLOR, please visit www.iirusa.com/research/tmre-awards.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marc Dresner is an IIR USA communication lead with a background in trade journalism and marketing. He is the former executive editor of Research Business Report, a confidential newsletter for the marketing research and consumer insights industry. He may be reached at mdresner@iirusa.com. Follow him @mdrezz.

TMRE Keynote Spotlight: The Trend Report: Clusters of Innovation

Leading up to The Market Research Event, we'll profile the keynotes, tracks and themes at the 2011 event.  Over the next few weeks, we'll be looking at the exciting keynote sessions.  For more information on TMRE, taking place November 7-9, 2011; in Orlando, Florida, download the brochure now.  If you register using code TMRE11BLOG, you can save $400 off of the standard registration rate!  This rate expires TODAY,  August 19, 2011.

Featured Presentation: The Trend Report: Clusters of Innovation

Featured Presenter: Jeremy Gutsche, Founder of Trendhunter.com, Author of Exploiting Chaos

About the session: Attracting more than 200,000,000 views, TrendHunter.com is the #1 trend-spotting site in the world -- the largest, most influential, most updated collection of cutting edge ideas available anywhere. (It attracts roughly fifteen times more page views than its competitors). Its founder, Jeremy Gutsche, relentlessly tracks and finds The Next Big Thing -- that valuable but elusive commodity -- for a global audience that generates millions of views a month. Gutsche is a creative, globe-roaming individual with a broad appeal that stretches from The Economist, which uses him as a source, to MTV, which places him at"the forefront of cool."

Leveraging the world's largest database of micro-trends, Gutsche filters through the most viral innovations in the world, creating 'Clusters of Inspiration' Companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo and eBay, have bought and used this research. In this talk, Gutsche walks you through clusters of inspiration and teaches you how to create their own.

How Neuromarketing is Revolutionizing the Market Research Industry

Did you know the subconscious portion of our brains actually makes as much as 95% of our daily decisions, without us even being aware of it. Our senses flood our brains with 11 million bits of information a second, but our conscious minds can only process 40 bits a second.

What does this mean for retail marketing? If you learn what the brain loves, what it looks for, and what it avoids, you can create products and packaging, marketing materials, and store and aisle designs that attract the subconscious - that 'iceberg' inside our heads that lies submerged below the much smaller surface of our consciousness. Find out at The Market Research Event as Dr. A.K. Pradeep, CEO of Neurofocus, Inc. details the Seven Dimensions for Shopper Marketing Success.

Dr. Pradeep was the highest rated speaker among over 100 presenters at the 2011 Shopper Insights in Action Conference where he received rave reviews. Download the TMRE Brochure find out more about his presentation and to see the full program plus receive a copy of the 2010 TMRE Executive Summary.  The Market Research Event 2011 will be taking place November 7-9, 2011 in Orlando, Florida.  Friday, August 19, is the last day to register and save $400.  Mention priority code TMRE11BLOG.  With over 1200 market researchers from at least 17 countries, you won't want to miss this one of a kind event!

Social Media and Communities

The key to shaping perceptions of brands, products, or services comes from an intimate understanding of consumers’ experiences and preferences in their natural settings. As new media transitioned to social media, consumers began forming communities to discuss these very aspects of their lives. As market researchers, we now have the ability to not only tap these communities to hear what the consumers of our brands are saying, but we also have the ability to form these communities.

At one time, conversation between a consumer and a brand was limited, if not nearly impossible. With social media and online brand communities, conversation is not only possible, but also instantaneous. Consumers now expect to be heard and they know we’re listening.

Market and brand researchers now have the ability to track online conversations. As not all campaigns are designed to increase sales, conversation tracking has become a part of many business’s tracking strategies. For research initiatives, we can pose specific questions to gain the feedback from the consumers closest to our brands. By understanding these perceptions, marketers can act much more quickly than ever before to responding to the needs of consumers.

There are other benefits to social media and online brand communities. I truly believe that consumers are much more comfortable typing their opinions, attitudes, and beliefs about a brand than they are in interviews and focus groups. Without a researcher present, or at least in person, consumers seem to be more candid in their responses – providing rich and meaningful data for researchers about their brands.

For more information about social media and communities, join us in Orlando at The Market Research Event in November where experts will discuss the new opportunities of these resources.

Garrett McGuire is a Consumer Insights Analyst for a major retailer. His areas of focus are advertising research, brand equity, and providing consumer insights for many marketing initiatives. Prior to his current position, he was a graduate student at Michigan State University where he began his blog, "The Journal of mAD Man," that explains the theories and methods of advertising.

Diaries - the right method for the right purpose

Diaries have traditionally taken a major role in the qualitative research and have their place in the modern canon of methods. They offer an authentic view in consumers' everyday life and give room for participants' creative self-expression. More and more they are used as a kind of pre-task ahead of qualitative methods, used to stimulate participants to deal with the research subject in the run-up and to gather initial findings for the design of the survey situation (e.g. design of the discussion room, fine-tuning of the guideline ...).

Photo by Josh DiMauro

Technological progress and the opportunities it creates for market research have particular impact on this method. Several years ago the method of keeping diaries had to be carried out as paper-and-pencil. Over the past years it has diversified and now offers plenty of different varieties.

In addition to the traditional paper-and-pencil method, participants are increasingly encouraged to keep mobile or online diaries.

So when to use what?

Rules of thumb are a little flat. Neither is paper-and-pencil completely out of fashion nor is it necessary to go all the way mobile. As so often, it depends...

Depending on the research objectives, different methods for using diaries are useful and others are not.
When it comes to mobile usage of diaries, because notes about emotions and activities on the go should be recorded, flexibility and simplicity is important. On these dimensions paper-and-pencil executions as well mobile diaries offer more benefits than online, because both smart-phone and offline diary can be carried around easily and flexible.

In specific settings, for example where drawings of the participants are important, or where own handwriting is essential, because deeper reflection is necessary, there is no alternative to paper-pencil notes. In particular, the online and mobile versions are somewhat limited when it comes to expressing the own creativity. The technological development indeed evolves rapidly. But currently internet technology is not equal to creative possibilities of offline diaries yet.


A huge advantage of online diaries is the possible integration of audio-visual elements such as photos, videos and audio files. These elements can serve as a support of the written word. Furthermore it is much easier to process participants' input via online, no shipping, transcription or scanning needed. And the researchers themselves are able to follow the process in real time and so are able to give feedback on specific aspects while participants are keeping their notes.

Nevertheless it is quite important to be clear about the question in which environments the records will be used. For the implementation of workshop formats creatively-made paper-pencil diaries are significantly better suitable than mobile diaries. Online diaries are constantly improving, mainly because videos deliver unique insights into the reality of life and emotions of the participants.

The Market Research Event 2011 is November in Orlando, Florida, hosted by IIR USA, deals with the topics Online Research and Mobile Research (among others). I'm curious what they will tell us about diaries.

About the author: Christian Dössel is blogging about market research in German language here and here. After having worked for TNS, TBWA\ and other strategy and market research agencies he now holds the position of Senior Research Director at MM-Eye in Hamburg / Germany with special responsibilities for MM-Eye's new media and online research approaches.

Is neuromarketing more precise than focus groups?

Source: Fast Company

A. K. Pradeep, CEO and Founder of NeuroFocus, and TMRE 2011 Keynote Speaker, claims that everyone loves their Apple iPad not because of the luxury of the product, but instead because Apple scientifically designed and built it so that customers would like it.  According to a recent article at Fast Company, Apple is not the only company using neuromarketnig to get inside consumers heads and figure out what makes them desire products. Citi, Google, HP, Paypal and Microsoft are just a few of the companies using ECG scanners to measure brain activity of consumers when their products are being marketed.

 This new portable device designed by NeuroFocus is one of a kind: The skullcap-size device sports dozens of sensors that rest on a subject's head like a crown of thorns. It covers the entire area of the brain, he explains, so it can comprehensively capture synaptic waves; but unlike previous models, it doesn't require messy gel.


Pradeep goes on to claim in the article that he believes this type of market research is both more cost effective and precise than the traditional focus group: While Gallup must poll roughly a thousand people to achieve a 4% margin of error, NeuroFocus tests just two dozen subjects for its corporate clients--and even that is a sample size larger than those deployed by leading academic neuroscience labs.


A.K. Pradeep will be presenting Seven Dimensions For Shopper Marketing Success at TMRE 2011 this year.  Join Pradeep plus over 1200 market researcher to discuss this topic, among others, at the world's largest research event.

Do you agree?  Do you see neuromarketing as more cost effective and precise than traditional market research methods?  Do you see it outpacing them in the near future?

TMRE Keynote Spotlight: The Predictioneer’s Game

Leading up to The Market Research Event, we'll profile the keynotes, tracks and themes at the 2011 event.  Over the next few weeks, we'll be looking at the exciting keynote sessions.  For more information on TMRE, taking place November 7-9, 2011; in Orlando, Florida, download the brochure now.  If you register using code TMRE11BLOG, you can save $400 off of the standard registration rate!  This rate is only available until August 19, 2011.

Featured Session:  The Predictioneer’s Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future

Featured Speaker:  Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Silver Professor of Politics, New York University; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Consultant to CIA

About the session:  Since the 1970s, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has been making amazingly precise and accurate forecasts of future events in politics, government, and business. Working with the State Department, CIA, and the Defense Department Bruce predicts how the leaders involved in making decisions will act over time, based on their own self interest, their predilections, and given their relative influence on any particular issue. He uses complex computer algorithms, along with a deep understanding of the players in the geopolitical game, to predict outcomes. Bruce was recently profiled in a cover story in the New York Times Magazine. He is also the subject of a recent History Channel program entitled, The Next Nostradamus.

Awards Showcase Research Industry Innovation

Part One: Disrupting Research-As-Usual By Marc Dresner, IIR USA 

It’s that time of year again, research fans!

The Market Research Event (TMRE) has officially issued a call for nominations for two distinct awards honoring innovation in research:

• The EXPLOR Award, sponsored by uSamp, recognizes breakthrough innovation in technology as applied to market research through a real-world case study competition.

 • The Disruptive Innovator Award, sponsored by Next Gen Market Research (NGMR), recognizes companies and individuals that have demonstrated leadership as change agents and made significant contributions toward harnessing disruptive innovation to drive research industry progress.

That both awards celebrate innovation in an industry/profession with a relatively conservative legacy says quite a bit not only about the times in which we now work and live, but how far we’ve come so fast.

So much has changed in just the last decade, and I’m particularly excited to see what comes out of this year’s pool of nominations, because these awards are in some respects innovation barometers.

Hoping for an early read, I asked the respective sponsors of each award to answer a few questions for us. 

This post features responses from Tom Anderson, founder of NGMR, an online community and professional networking group for market researchers with more than 12,000 members centered on exploring innovative, emerging research technologies and techniques.

 Anderson is also founder and managing partner of Anderson Analytics LLC, a full-service market research consultancy specializing in combining advanced analytics and traditional methodologies with data and text mining.

For those who don’t know him as I do, Anderson is a bit of a maverick with a passion for bucking convention, so it’s not surprising that NGMR’s award—now in its second year—focuses on innovation as a disruptive force for positive change…

 Q: What’s the Disruptive Innovator Award all about?
 A: Times are changing. So the concept is to celebrate and encourage what I like to call “next generation” thinking in research. We want to recognize innovation that challenges the status quo and pushes boundaries beyond “traditional” market research—hence the title “Disruptive Innovation”—and to also use this award to welcome new members into the research industry, which has historically been a pretty exclusive and conservative club. This includes methodologies and techniques from other, less traditional fields like data mining, text analytics, Web and social media analytics—really any potential knowledge stream or insight source that can help marketers and business people make better decisions in today’s world. So in a sense, the award was created to broaden how we define consumer/market research in order to keep pace with the times.

Q: What set the 2010 winners apart from the rest of the entrants?
 A: Last year was our first year out, so the ferocity of the competition caught us a bit off guard. In order to make the difficult decision of picking the winners, we decided to look beyond just how innovative someone was, and to focus on the second component of the award: disruption.

For example, on the client side, 3M won based on how they had leveraged DIY; not because the specific methodology used was that innovative, but rather their innovativeness in applying it to their organization. If the same model were to be adopted by other clients, it could have a really disruptive impact on our industry.

On the agency side, our second winner, Communispace, which really pioneered the use of online communities for research, had already taken a significant portion of research spending and encouraged many across the industry to look at how we engaged respondents and fans of products and brands differently.

Last year we also had two winners in the individual recognition category—Sean Conry of Technoes and AJ Johnson of Ipsos—who won not only because their methodology was interesting (mobile GPS data and visualization, etc.), but also because their collaboration focused on experimenting by combining various methodologies and software in novel ways.

Q: What surprised you the most about the submissions, in general, that you received for last year’s competition? Why? 
 A: I was surprised by the quality and quantity of nominations we received in just our first year out. That confirmed to me that the research industry is very much focused on and excited about change and attuned to the spirit of Next Gen Market Research.

That said, while we did receive a couple of nominations from companies that are outside traditional research—RapLeaf, for instance—I was surprised that there weren’t more of them. I think we could do a better job of attracting different types of providers with different perspectives and maybe less orthodox solutions.

Q: What themes/trends in research do you predict will be most prominently represented in this year’s submissions? And conversely, what do you expect to see less of this year?
 A: I hope and expect to see more nominations from disciplines like text analytics—a personal favorite—and various types of data mining from CRM to Web analytics. I would also imagine there may be some nominations from neuroscience and eye tracking, too.

But I would really love to see submissions from companies that don’t even view themselves as research firms. Marketing, advertising and PR firms, for instance, are all rushing to leverage various text, campaign and influence tracking technologies and they’re building their own methodologies around them as needed.

I would emphasize that we consider the basic methodological soundness of every technique and technology quite seriously in our deliberations. That’s a key strength in having such a diverse brain trust of expertise and experience on the NGMR Board.

Q: What advice do you have for prospective entrants this year?
A: Some nominations submitted last year were quite lengthy. You should be able to state why you are eligible for the NGMR Disruptive Innovator Award in one page or less (though you may also submit accompanying videos or charts if needed).

If we receive a 10-page document, and it’s not clear on the first page why this individual or organization deserves the award, chances are high that they will not make the first round of cuts.

Don’t worry, if we need more information to make a determination, we will ask you for it. I only wish that we could give out more awards. This is a very exciting time for anyone involved in analytics. I wish all of this year’s entrants good luck!

 Editor's note: For those of you who pride yourselves on shaking things up for the greater good, nominations for the NGMR Disruptive Innovator are open through August 31, so don’t delay.

For more information on how to submit a nomination, please visit www.tomhcanderson.com/2011-ngmr-innovation-awards. Winners will be announced and honored at The Market Research Event in Orlando, November 7-9, 2001.

And be sure to check in for part two of this segment, when my friend, Chuck Miller of uSamp, takes us on an EXPLORation of the industry’s foremost innovation case study competition!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Marc Dresner is an IIR USA communication lead with a background in trade journalism and marketing. He is the former executive editor of Research Business Report, a confidential newsletter for the marketing research and consumer insights industry. He may be reached at mdresner@iirusa.com. Follow him @mdrezz.

Brand research in social web - what about B2C2C communication?

About the author: Christian Dössel is blogging about market research in German language here and here. After having worked for TNS, TBWA\ and other strategy and market research agencies he now holds the position of Senior Research Director at MM-Eye in Hamburg / Germany with special responsibilities for MM-Eye's new media and online research approaches.

Stating the obvious, Facebook's 714 million unique visitors worldwide in May 2011 (according to comScore) make it the largest social network amongst all. The immense coverage of social networks has animated brands to spread their branded content on social networks in general and specifically on Facebook.

Whereas there are more or less tried and tested instruments to examine coverage, brand exposure and so on for the distribution of branded content and advertising on traditional channels for years, for branded content via Facebook this is not the case.

There is hard evidence for the quantitative assessment of users of brand pages on Facebook (so called "fans"), but almost all relate to the pure number of fans. Coverage is equated with the number of fans in most of the cases.
This is only the first half of the story, as current research shows the effect of branded content on Facebook (such as the study in collaboration by comScore and Facebook, link to the white paper (for free, but you need to register).

In addition to the fans of brands on Facebook, where marketing as well as market research focus on, the friends of the fans are moving increasingly into the centre of interest. One reason for this is the fact that the number of friends of the fans surpasses the number of brand fans by far across almost all brands (comScore states factor 34 for this relationship for the top 100 U.S. brands on Facebook).

Another reason for paramount importance of friends of the fans can be seen in the fact that over 25% of the time on Facebook is spent with reading, viewing and tracking of the newsfeed (timeline). This area is the part of Facebook where messages of friends are displayed, including their interactions with brands that they are "friends" of. The effect of this pure and additional brand impression is to be evaluated significantly more intense, because impressions don’t come from the brands but from the friends.

Therefore in this case, and unlike to traditional media, it is required to investigate further research in this "B2C2C communication" to understand the modes of causal relationship.

I'm curious about how the two topic "social networks" and "brand perception" will be presented and discussed at this year's "The Market Research Event 2011" presented by IIR USA in November 2011.

TMRE Keynote Spotlight: Market Research In An "I'll have what she's having" World

Leading up to The Market Research Event, we'll profile the keynotes, tracks and themes at the 2011 event.  Over the next few weeks, we'll be looking at the exciting keynote sessions.  For more information on TMRE, taking place November 7-9, 2011; in Orlando, Florida, download the brochure now.  If you register using code TMRE11BLOG, you can save $400 off of the standard registration rate!  This rate is only available until August 19, 2011.

Featured Session:  Market Research In An "I'll have what she's having" World

Featured Speaker: Marc Earls, Author, Herd, How to Change Mass Behavior by Harnessing Our True Nature

About the session:  Most marketing and market research practice is based on the assumption that human behavior is primarily an individual phenomenon - that what we do is shaped by the decisions and choices of individuals acting independently from the peers. So for example, we draw representative samples of individuals and insist on asking them about themselves as individual agents.
What if things worked differently? What if the behavior we study turned out to be fundamentally socially shaped? Author and consultant Mark Earls explores the new science of social and outlines a new agenda for marketing and market research.

J&J Global Strategic Insights Director Reimagines Research

Research Insighter Series Explores New Consumer Insights Nomenclature

By Marc Dresner, IIR USA

When Jennifer Nelson returns to Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health Care from maternity leave later this year, it will be in a new role as leader of Global Strategic Insights (GSI) for J&J’s skin product portfolio and baby businesses.

And she plans to make a few changes.

“We in marketing research are probably our own worst enemy on a variety of fronts. But in particular, in how we communicate about our own craft,” Nelson told The Research Insighter.

“To be relevant, you need to stop talking about what you do in terms of methods,” she said. “It’s really time we take control of this discourse and own our own identity as a function by framing what we do in the full context of business need.”

In this exclusive podcast interview for The Research Insighter, Nelson outlines her blueprint for reframing the research conversation at J&J via a framework of categories and subcategories.

Change is never easy, especially in a conservative field like research.

So Nelson is also interested in raising a new generation of researchers—perhaps with unconventional backgrounds, like engineering or business—who aren’t afraid to break the rules.

Listen to the interview here.

Read the transcript here.

Author’s note: Jennifer Nelson will be speaking at The Market Research Event in a session titled “Instigating Marketing Transformation Through Marketing Research Innovation.”  Download the program here to find out more about her presentation and the rest of the agenda.

For information or to register for The Market Research Event 2011, taking place November 7-9 in Orlando, Florida, please visit TheMarketResearchEvent.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR/INTERVIEWER
Marc Dresner is an IIR USA communication lead with a background in trade journalism and marketing. He is the former executive editor of Research Business Report, a confidential newsletter for the marketing research and consumer insights industry. He may be reached at mdresner@iirusa.com. Follow him @mdrezz.

No insight without context!

About the author: Christian Dössel is blogging about market research in German language here and here. After having worked for TNS, TBWA\ and other strategy and market research agencies he now holds the position of Senior Research Director at MM-Eye in Hamburg / Germany with special responsibilities for MM-Eye's new media and online research approaches.

Some time has passed since "contextual insights" was promoted (by Bruce Tempkin and others) as a great opportunity to deliver and activate insights.

Contextual insights - as the opposite of pure statistical analysis - need a broad and deep understanding of our clients' business. In other words contextual insights are "…observations drawn from data that resonates with an understanding of the business”.

We benefit from contextual insights primarily by understandingt he business context for the interpretation and application of the results, combined with adequate data.

I like the idea very much, I think it's extremely charming. We might need more than data to deliver good insights. We have to dive deep into the client's business world and understand the context of their needs and opportunities.

But that's not easy in every case (and btw. that's the reason why highly specialized companies more often employ their own market researchers instead of commissioning external agencies…) Social Media Data is a perfect field for contextual data. Although there are tons of data, they weight nothing without appropriate context information.

This is a graph of more than 10,000 Facebook status messages, where people have reported that they have separated.

What is clearly missing here are real "contextual insights", because the data reveal only the "when" and not the "why". But as a starting point for analysis and as a pool for building hypothesis social media data could be quite interesting.

The question that remains is whether this is already the end of the road or if there is more.
Let's see what we can learn from the 2011 TMRE11 in November, hosted by IIR USA. There is a nice track called "Activating Insights". Really looking forward to it …

21st Century Innovation Inputs And Validation

Today's blog post comes to us from TMRE 2011 sponsor Affinnova. Affinnova is changing the rules of product and brand development by using the science and theories of evolution to successfully optimize concepts, products and brands. Our patented patent-pending IDDEA (Interactive Discovery and Design by Evolutionary Algorithms) technology has broad applicability and is able to deliver profound insight and decision-making support throughout the product development life cycle: from concept testing to product and package design -- to merchandising to marketing and promotion.

21st Century Innovation Inputs And Validation

Ideation and insight-gathering techniques are evolving to meet the current realities of an increasingly connected customer. Specifically:

• - Qualitative insight gathering – Online communities, self-ethnography, and social media data now supplement and sometimes replace focus groups, in-depth interviews and in-person ethnography.

• - Quantitative insights gathering – Online surveys have become a top research expenditure at many companies, and mobile surveys via phones and tablets are gaining momentum. Traditional phone surveys are becoming more expensive, and at times less representative, as consumers cut out landline phones in favor of mobile.

• - Online ideation and brainstorming techniques – The in-person brainstorming session and focus groups are giving way to innovation jams, idea-voting sites like Ideastorm and MyStarbucks, and other online tools offered by research firms, technology platforms and innovation consultancies.

These are great new sources of inputs to fuel the bottom of the innovation rocket (our revamp of the old innovation funnel). But, with all of these new ways of eliciting ideas and gathering data, techniques for vetting this into viable, validated concepts at the top of the rocket have not evolved as quickly:

• - Qualitative techniques – Qualitative techniques are great for those jewels of insight that you would never get from a survey, and they add an invaluable personal dimension to otherwise broad markets. They are poor indicators, though, of the specific needs your customers have on a broad basis. Yet, companies may still rely on qualitative work out of habit or because other quantitative methods aren’t perceived to be any more effective. Are quantitative techniques any better for concept testing?

• - Quantitative techniques – Many techniques that are commonplace in the innovation process are inefficient at exploring and testing the full range of concepts. For example, sequential monadic testing – showing one concept at a time - does not account for the fact that people choose from an assortment of options in the market place. Discrete choice methods account for this but, require testing in waves or batches to be cost effective. And even then, results are not easily comparable to other metrics. Lastly, conjoint analysis – which narrows-in on the appeal of specific features and messages – is limited in the number of features that can be tested at once and cannot test for interaction effects between different features.

So, what is an innovator to do? If companies rely on directional information or – worse yet – gut, they make decisions in an ivory tower, disconnected from the full picture of their consumers’ needs and desires. On the other hand, quantitative testing and retesting may feel like a closer collaboration with consumers, but companies still lose out because they can’t possibly be exposing the full range of concepts that a customer may potentially want.

Current methods leave a lot of risk on the table, and we find that many companies are stuck in analysis paralysis – a prolonged, expensive cycle of ideate-test-retest. The act of commercialization – knowing which ideas will perform best in market and then making them a reality through testing and validation – is the hard, gritty peak of the innovation process before going to market. No one technique is a silver bullet for the entire process; researchers, marketers and product developers need to know when to use not only qual versus quant, but also the variety of methods within those two camps. What combinations of techniques do you use to distill ideas and concepts from the river of information into market-ready products?