Stats, More Stats, and Innovation!

Wrapping up a busy week of postings, here are a few interesting news items that were recently released. Click on the quotes to go to the original full article.

First, a hodgepodge of results from recent studies relating to trends in online adoption and consumer usage of the channel:

Social network usage continues to surge

Social networks now account for 22% of the total amount of time that consumers spend on the internet, according to figures covering nine major markets across the globe.

Nielsen, the research firm, assessed countries including Brazil, Germany, Japan, the UK and US, and found that 75% of netizens visited social networks and blog sites during April 2010.

This marked an increase of 24% year-on-year, in just one indication of the major impact that has been exerted by sites like Facebook and YouTube.

Consumers placing brands under scrutiny

EuroRSCG, the agency, surveyed 5,700 adults in Brazil, China, France, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

….As part of this process, 72% were “shopping more carefully”, 69% described themselves as “smarter shoppers” and 63% had become “more demanding”.

Buying fewer disposable goods was a strategy that found favour among 54% of respondents, with 43% paying greater attention to the colour, feel and design of the items available in stores.

Conducting research online was another widespread activity, and 62% of individuals featured in the results regularly searched for information on the web before picking between competing alternatives.

Online audience still growing in UK

The online population is continuing to increase in size in the UK, according to new figures from Kantar Media, the research firm.

Some 37 million consumers in the country accessed the internet during the first quarter of 2010, an expansion of nearly 2.5 million people year-on-year

And finally, two articles related to innovation, one on the topic in general and the other specifically for MR:

India becomes global innovation hub

A number of multinational companies are placing India at the heart of their global innovation programmes.

…For Navi Radjou, executive director of the Centre for India & Global Business at Cambridge University, India is a “living laboratory” for brand owners.

“Multinationals will have to rely on their next generation products and business models coming from emerging markets which deal a lot with scarcity,” he said.

“They have to have the ability to source their ideas from India and scale them up globally.”

Neuromarketing – Add it to the Marketing Toolbox

Neuromarketing is the latest marketing rock-star on the scene. It’s interesting, it’s effective, it’s controversial, and according to its proponents the ROI results are positive.  Interest in the techniques is growing rapidly.  CEOs are calling in neuromarketing experts to their business conventions.  Nobel prize winning neuroscientists are joining neuromarketing firm advisory boards.  Speakers on the topic are being called to present to standing room only audiences.

…Neuromarketing is not a discipline that can stand alone to craft a winning marketing strategy any more than design can stand without seo, or content can stand without usability.  It’s another tool in the box.

The same holds true for each “finding” from neuromarketing, or any other behavioral study.  Even if all the data says one thing, context matters. There are times when what works flies in the face of data, or maybe it works because it flies in the face of data.