Jeffrey Henning’s Top 10 #MRX Stories: Blog of the Year, ARF 2012 & Survey Medic

By Jeffrey Henning & Tamara Barber

There’s now ample opportunity to stay on top of what the market research community is saying in the Twitter-sphere. In addition to our weekly coverage on the top #MRX tweets of the week on the Innovation Evolved blog, we’ll be doing a top-ten recap every two weeks right here on GreenBook.

Of the 1301 unique links shared on #MRX in the past two weeks, here are the 10 most retweeted:

1. Top Market Research Blogs of 2012: Open Call for Nominations – Sean Copeland, MRX blogger (and new dad!), plans to update his analysis of the top research blogs and is kicking it off with an open call for nominations (deadline September 30). Here’s a list of his 2011 Top 10 Market Research Blogs.
2. The Full List of Nominees for The Top New Market Research Blogs of 2012 – As he compiles his list of nominations, he is maintaining the most exhaustive list of research blogs yet, listing over 135 blogs.
3. Time to Rewrite the Rules of Research? – Robert Bain writes a well-thought-out summary of the recent GreenBook debate on online privacy, discussing the general background as well as research from a number of firms on consumer attitudes toward social media contacts.
4. In Search of Horribly Low Response Rates – Annie Pettit of Research Now wonders if the pursuit of higher response rates comes at the expense of the quality of response.
5. How Much Consumers Innovate & How Businesses Lag Behind – Yannig Roth shares some interesting data measuring consumer innovation and contrasts it to a National Science Foundation study of the rate of innovation within American businesses by industry.
6. Questioning the Nature of Research – Brian Tarren, editor of Research magazine, interviews Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy Group UK, who thinks survey research is “better than ignorance in many cases” but is “slightly baffled by the ratio of money spent on research versus the money spent on experimentation within marketing.”
7. ‘Qualmonella’ & the Darker Side of “Consumer Insights” – Riffing on the ill-conceived girls tee that says “I’m too pretty to do homework”, Tom Ewing of Kantar calls it an instance of qualmonella: qualitative insights served up raw rather than fully baked.
8. New Ipsos MORI Poll Shows British Public Feeling the Squeeze – Ipsos announces, “Fewer than half of British adults (43%) say they have cash left over at the end of the month, according to a new poll for the Resolution Foundation by Ipsos MORI. Just one in five make regular monthly savings (22%).”
9. Research Rockstar Announces Free Online Survey Assessment Tool – Sometimes it seems that DIY survey quality is like the weather: everyone complains about it, but no one does anything about it! Finally someone is doing something about it: Kathryn Korostoff of Research Rockstar has launched SurveyMedic, which offers a free assessment tool for judging the quality of your questionnaire, as well as a paid review service. A great way to keep your survey results from being under the weather.
10. Re:think 2012: Proposal Submissions– The Advertising Research Foundation has a call for papers for their 2012 conference (deadline September 16), covering topics including:
    1. Advances in Understanding How Advertising Works
    2. Evaluating Media Campaigns
    3. Social Media: Planning and Metrics
    4. Dividends of Investing in Data/Research Quality
    5. New Developments in Consumer and Shopper Insights
    6. Neuroscience and Other Lab-Based Research Methods
    7. Global Research: Challenges, Solutions and Insights

Want to share your own favorite links? Just tag them #MRX on Twitter.