Mirror Mirror On The Wall…

Market Research is like the the magic mirror from Snow White; often our clients depend on us to deliver insight. intelligence, and implications for critical decision making, and often we work magic to make it happen. It’s something that we’re very good at doing for others, but often we seem to lack the critical ability of self-reflection. Luckily, that seems to be changing based on a spate of recent initiatives focused on taking a look at where the market research industry is, and more importantly, where we are going!

First, at the beginning of the month was the Merlien Institute’s International Conference on Market Research in the Mobile World 2010 in Berlin.  I was unable to attend due to the birth of my son, but judging from the tweetstream it was a great success! Here is a writeup from Merlien:

This highly interactive event brought together top researchers and practitioners to discuss new challenges and opportunities of leveraging mobile devices as a new way for collecting data and capturing customer insights.

The conference format consisted of submitted (reviewed) presentations, invited keynotes, two highly interactive brainstorming workshops and groupwork sessions. As with past events, this conference provided excellent opportunities for participants to network with peers. Highlights of the conference included a keynote speech by Siamack Salari, Founder of EverydayLives and a pioneer in video ethnography. He presented a unique case study on how a mobile ethnography research tool is used successfully by the World’s No. 1 brand. He discussed critical issues on security, legal and data aspects of using mobile application for research and also outlining learnings, mistakes and risks to proof test ideas and ensure wide adoption.

Topics that were discussed during the event included:

• Developing successful strategies to plan, implement and report mobile research studies
• Using smart phones for extracting insights from online research communities
• Using mobile phones to determine what really drives customer satisfaction and behaviour
• Mobilising online qualitative research via smart phones: what are the pros and cons
• Using mobile ethnography for consumer insights: what are the learnings and risks?
• Exploring the application of qualitative & quantitative methods across mobile platforms
• Understanding consumers’ acceptance and incentives for participating in mobile market research

It sounds like a wonderfully forward thinking event that was focused on developing practical strategies for moving the industry forward in the adoption of mobile methods!

GreenBook Blog has worked out a special opportunity with the Merlien Institute for our readers; the presentation slides can be viewed or downloaded for a limited time through slideshare: https://www.slideshare.net/merlien . There are a couple of decks which are currently being updated by the speakers. Merlien will post the updated versions on slideshare as soon as they receive them. Also, as promised to attendees by presenter Jorg Hecker of ATLAS.ti , here are the links to the ATLAS.ti tutorial videos:

ATLAS.ti Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/ATLASti01#p/u
Tutorials listed by theme: https://www.atlasti.com/tutorials.html

Following on the heels of the Merlien conference was an event close to my heart: the Festival of NewMR! Again, the fates were aligned against me and I was unable to attend this first ever global webinar focused on the future of market research. Thanks to the hard work of Ray Poynter and the collaboration of a host of very talented people in the market research industry this unique opportunity to showcase some of the most innovative thought leaders in our industry was a great success! The Festival was much more than a series of webinars though, and here are some updates on how you can access the sessions and how several other Fringe events played out:

Research Liberation Front Challenge Results

The results of the Challenge are available on the RLF Fringe Page, well done Katie Jones.

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Tickets still for sale

We have been asked if people can still buy a ticket so they can access the materials, i.e. the recordings and the slides. The answer is yes and the link is below. Note the recordings are a mixture of live recordings and recordings from the rehearsals.

Online event registration for Main Stage Webinar – Access to Materials powered by Eventbrite

 

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When can you access the recordings and slides? We expect post links to the recordings and slides on Monday 13th December

 

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Competition Results

We will post these in a nicer form tomorrow – but the key results are:

NIPO Video Competition: Ali Macleod “Why Market Research”

Poster Competition: Tanvi Gupta “Choiceville – Conjoint Analysis in a new Avatar”

RLF Challenge: Katie Jones

In all three competitions there was severe competition, with some very good contenders.

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Discussions about the Presentations

– there is a discussion thread for each presentation, why not add your thoughts or comments, you can visit the threads before, during, or after the live presentations.

Some of the threads also include extra information (check out John Kearon’s for example https://newmr.org/forum/topics/john-kearon-digividuals).

For Part 1 (Asia Pacific) threads visit https://newmr.org/forum/categories/part-1-east/listForCategory

For Part 2 (Europe/Africa) threads visit https://newmr.org/forum/categories/part-2-mid/listForCategory

For Part 3 (Americas) threads visit https://newmr.org/forum/categories/part-3-west/listForCategory.

The good news for those of us unlucky enough to not have been able to attend the Festival is that through the miracle of social media, we all can follow along! Jeffrey Henning, “The Fastest MR Blogger In The World”, posted four excellent summaries:

• Serious Games: A Serious Opportunity for Respondent Fun
• The 8 Myths about Successful Research Communities
• New MR & Old MR: Turning Radical Methods into Sustainable Business
• 3 Ways to Turn Online Discussions into Insight

Brian Tarran of Research. captured another four sessions in blog form for us all:

• Hacky hacky joy joy
• Gamifying surveys – continue or quit?
• Digividuals going freeware in January
• Qual’s future’s bright, but is it online?

Additional coverage can be found via Nigel Legg’s collection of NewMR tweets,  a great summary of Day 1 by Eoghan O’Neill, and a blog post on his own serious gaming session by Tom Ewing. On Wednesday 15 December, 3pm GMT, Nigel is conducting a Webinar to talk about his findings, with a chance for Q&A at the end of the process. To register click HERE.

On a related note, Ray Poynter has suggested that anyone interested in the future of MR watch this video of interviews with attendees at the ESOMAR Annual Congress:

Moving from events into “research on research”, in order to get a handle on where the industry is heading we have two important initiatives in progress right now.

First is our own GreenBook Research Industry Trends study. For our 9th iteration of the oldest and largest tracking study of the global market research industry we’ve changed thing up a bit and are focusing on both new technology adoption and which companies participants consider to be the most innovative in our space. To participate in the study, please use the link below and help us help the industry by sharing your thoughts and experience!

https://survey56.datacollectionsite.com/mrIWeb/mrIWeb.dll?I.Project=A1011257&i.user1=1

We’ve also included a predictive market supplied by our co-sponsor infosurv, allowing our colleagues to test their prescience by predicting which technologies/methods will see the greatest adoption over the next 12 and 24 months. It’s still early in the field stage, but the results so far are interesting (if perhaps a tad conservative?), with mobile quantitative, social media analytics, and MROCs being at the head of the pack as most likely to experience the greatest growth. Click on the image to go to the reporting site.  

We’ll release the final results and report early next year; we think the whole industry will benefit from this important initiative! In the meantime, check back here regularly for special sneak peeks at the results!

Finally, the ResearchRockstar herself, Kathryn Korostoff’ has deployed a prediction site for everyone in the MR industry to post their own predictions for the future and vote on the predictions of others. There are some very interesting ideas here and it will be interesting to see who will be crowned the “Seer of Market Research” based on the accuracy of their prognostications!

To make your own predictions and vote on those already made click on the image below.

We hope that your avail yourselves of all of these wonderful resources for helping to drive the market research space forward, and you can count on all of us here at the GreenBook Blog to continue to keep you abreast of the latest developments in the industry!