Submitted Synopses

In this presentation, Tom will elaborate on the following aspects:

• Do’s & don’ts when creating a research community;
• How do you get consumers to talk, how do you make them share insights and mainly… how do you keep them interested for several months?
• The community moderator’s skills (as next gen qualitative researcher);
• How research can suddenly become ‘fun’ or even ‘an experience’ for the participants if you apply the ‘gaming’ principles (gamifiaction) to community research;
• How to present research results to an entire company without using PowerPoint;
• Community Research cases from the following companies will be presented: Unilever, ING, Philips, …

Yes they can if we abolish old paradigma’s and re-engineer our thinking.

River sampling means that sample recruitment takes place where respondents can be found and recruited when needed. In the case of “online river recruitment” this is an intercept of respondents during their activities on the web.

Now that nonresponse of RDD telephone surveys increases to levels above 80% the self-selection bias which is an inevitable part of online river sampling is becoming a lower hurdle for a widespread usage of this sampling method.

However we must learn more about the limitations of river sampling and find ways to deal with the inevitable research bias. We must adapt our way of thinking about measuring research validity and replace them by renewed validity criteria. We must educate research buyers to use part of the cost reductions in fieldwork to enhance and harness the reliability of research outcomes.

The presentation makes an inventory of the changes needed.

Current Position: Ombudsman Dutch Market Research Association

Education: PH.D. in Economics in 1987 at the University of Groningen on the topic of Management Decisions Support systems

I want to suggest that these two research methodologies are not always what they appear to be and that their proponents have often failed to do their due diligence or, if in a more generous mood, have yet to do their homework. As a result, research buyers are purchasing research and marketers are making decisions based on methodologies that are untested, unreliable, lack generalizability, and may well be misleading in their conclusions.

At a time when researchers are fighting for a seat at the table (and whining when they don’t get it), it is incumbent upon us to be doing good research. While we might look good selling in new, sexy trendy tools, when they fail, it will only hurt our position with management. Suppliers can’t afford to be selling bad work and our clients can’t afford to be buying bad research.

The paper is not meant to throw a wet blanket on innovation, but rather to provide some guidelines for tools that will truly help us do a better job at marketing research and gain that seat at the table we all covet. The paper will discuss the limitations of some of the industry’s more popular “innovative” endeavors and how these short-comings might be overcome.

His previous jobs included Vice President for Product Development and for Analytical Services at A.C. Nielsen, as well as head of the advanced analytical team at Information Resources. Earlier jobs included analytical roles at Burke Marketing Research and Quaker Oats and a lecturer at the University of Connecticut, where he received his doctorate in Social Psychology. He is a frequent speaker on topics such as virtual reality’s role in marketing research and on category management research. He has recently authored book chapters on assortment research and the role of consumer insights in marketing research.

Paul Dixon and Pip Stocks from BrandHook will present a best practise guide for using online communities for research purposes. They will touch on recent case studies of projects BrandHook has carried out in the UK and Australia, effectively demonstrating how continuously listening to customers can deliver business and commercial success.

Pip was educated in Australia but trained in the UK and has worked both client and agency sides of business. Before starting Brandhook and after 10 years in London, Pip fulfilled the role of Brand and Communications Strategy Director at Carat in Melbourne; a highly successful international communications company. There she undertook extensive consumer insight work and brand and communications planning for Cadbury Schweppes, Fonterra, Nintendo, Just Jeans, HBA, and GlaxoSmithKline brands. Pip is actually looking for a bigger house to accommodate for all the freebies she has gotten over the years.

She used to play the flute at school and occasionally gets it out after a few wines.

When the research goal is to understand the complexities, challenges and opportunities that occur during important interactions between intermediaries and consumers, a simulated conversation is an incredibly effective substitute for reality. A carefully researched and strategically designed simulated conversation (also known as a dyad) can reveal startlingly real representations of actual conversations. Those representations deliver actionable insights to empower and educate marketing and sales teams to better target and communicate directly with intermediaries and, ultimately, consumers.

Bronwen Clark will provide tips for designing simulated conversations that become the foundation for:

• Insightful talking points that facilitate effective conversations and overcome challenges for intermediaries/li>
• Valuable educational tools that inform consumers before, during and after intermediary conversations/li>
• Detailed recommendations that target particular segments of intermediaries and consumers more effectively

Bronwen has a wealth of experience, especially on the healthcare and health policy front, having conducted research for clients including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the American Association of Poison Control Centers, and the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare. Bronwen, a RIVA-trained moderator, has experience working with a variety of clients from Fortune 500 companies to local non-profits, engaging key stakeholders at all levels.

She is a respected expert on the topic of simulated conversations, including a recent podcast with Insurance Journal (with over 1300 listens by early July) and an article for Pharmaceutical Executive. Bronwen can quickly provide a wealth of valuable insight on this topic for the NewMR Festival.

SSI is completing a pan Asia Pacific study (the survey covers Australia, China, India, Japan and India) to learn the answers.

The key take aways from this presentation:

• Learn what people use social media for today, the frequency of their visits, and how much they trust and value their site of choice.
• Find out how their preferences and activities have changed—and what is driving these changes.
• Explore concerns around privacy—from companies “listening in” on sites to broadcasting locations—and what they mean for you.
• Discover how you can take advantage of the social media trend—how recruiting and engaging respondents can be done more effectively.
• Hear how people rate social media’s value as an information source.
• Learn how research respondents say they want you to communicate with them—and why.

This will help the Asia Pacific market research industry understand how to awaken the full research potential of the social media giant and increase market research effectiveness. This information shared will also be critical for anyone with international business in Asia Pacific who need to learn more about the local market.

Some of our reports are already in English:

• Mobile Internet usage in Moscow




• Mobile’Internet’Usage, Moscow,’Russia’–’Spring’2011′

By the end of Otober we’ll be able to present some more figures and approaches and advices about mobile polls in Russia.

Worked in research agencies in St. Petersburg (Gallup, RMC, ASI). In 2007-2008. was project manager of “Mobile County – Zelenograd”, “Mobile Portal Cabinet of Curiosities” and several other projects in Infon/ZED(leading mobile service and portal developer in Russia). Since December 2008 he worked in Moscow in CBOSS as lead manager of VAS products.

After winning the competition of business projects HSE {10K} in 2010 founded his own company – Mobiety specializing in mobile surveys.

Where have our old trade mark skills of applied curiosity, sceptical interrogation of data, and analysis got to, in this second decade of the 2000s?

This presentation will look at evidence that research and researchers (qual especially) are increasingly dependent on a (positivist) ‘acceptance’ of on-the-face-of-it findings because of current cultural obsessions with quantity/access/speed as opposed to quality/meaning/value.

Just as we strove to ‘justify’ and build the academic and business authority of qual in the face of the dominant quant paradigm in the 70s and 80s, I would argue that the seductiveness of such a feast of a new data via ever-widening access sources (and this renewed enthusiasm for quantity over quality) is depriving us of the time, and increasingly, the inclination, to question our material sufficiently. Our ‘raw data’ – as we used to categorise it – is too often relayed still uncooked; the skilled hand and gourmet mind of the researcher, increasingly, and worryingly, absent….

This piece is a plea for the restoration of old fashioned habits of curiosity and sound analysis before we become too hooked on ‘ordering our findings’ from a take out menu…

I was on the original committee which founded the thinktank Demos, have chaired AQR 2007-2010, am a Fellow of MRS and RSA and have an abiding academic and research inrterest in cultural analysis frames, discourse (and discourse analysis) and the effects implications and meaning for our industry, of Web-based and SM research.

I’ve given lots of papers at MRS, AQR, WARC, SRA and have won best paper at AQR/QRCA ‘Barcelona global conference 2009.. (and a couple of webinars, too, so familiar with this medium!)

I wish to present this idea and then suggest ways in which the data can be improved in terms of client reporting through benchmarking and qualitative splitting into more specific business themes e.g. marketing, branding, customer service, training etc.

In-depth understanding and practical experience of qualitative and quantitative research techniques, which has enabled successful delivery of a diverse range of projects. Marketing category developer, brand builder, planner.

Qualitative specialist; group discussions, workshop facilitation, visioning, brand target setting, perception studies, qualitative intelligence into marketing strategy. Excellent level of marketing and brand theory; emerging digital strategies and integrated platforms.

Would prefer to be walking up a mountain with his kids or playing guitar than doing any of this.

By looking at current trending data and emerging mobile device capabilities, combined with the trends from within our own industry, we can begin to glean what the market research landscape will look like five years from now. This presentation will cover the pressing issues and offer top predictions as to where the industry will be in 2016 – spanning the range from both qual and quant data collection practices and research methodologies, to penetration/uptake, social media, international research, routers and sampling frameworks, DIY impact, respondent engagement, and the underlying trends in advertising, marketing, and brand management.

Don’t miss this opportunity to prepare and strategize for the next phase of our collective market research odyssey!

Internet-based qualitative techniques took away the social pressures, eliminated the logistical complexity of research, and allowed consumers to share insights in a convenient setting. But it took online video to truly get into consumers’ lives, and capture serendipitous moments of thoughts, reactions, and real life product use that wasn’t just about data – it was about consumer truth.

Now Mobile Video Research has the potential to unleash entirely new paradigms in how brands find and interact with consumers. Brands can now connect with their audiences 24 hours a day, seven days a week, wherever they are, wherever they go, during whatever they’re doing. New mobile technologies are also empowering consumers, allowing them to easily impact the products they care about most through devices that they carry with them most of the day and night, and be rewarded in a virtual marketplace that recognizes the value of their personal video moments.

Key deliverables the audience will learn from this presentation:

• Learn about mobile video innovations in market research, and how video data can be quickly transformed into actionable intelligence
• See firsthand how, in the right setting, asynchronous video-based feedback delivers a deeper level of insights than even traditional live, face-to-face methods
• View examples of how consumers share candid moments while using products or services at home, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, while shopping, or anywhere their natural experiences take them
• See how mobile video dissolves the barriers of time, place, interpretation, memory, imprecise description and planned situations instead of spontaneous actions, resulting in more valuable research
• See the results from actual studies of how mobile video research is turning consumers into invaluable brand advisors

We are now offering a ground-breaking extension to our already well-regarded access panels of over 120,000 young people. We have been on an intellectual journey pver the last few months. Our mission: to filter and segment our young panellists in a way that makes commercial sense. Along the road, we have met industry experts and academics who have influenced our approach and complemented our methodology. The result is a complex questionnare and a unique scoring system that has enabled us to identify key groups across our panel.

Bright Young Things identifies ‘creatives’, ‘market mavens’, ‘highly connected’, ‘civic activists’ and ‘enquiring minds’. We have worked with a range of academics to develop this segmentation and we have tested and verified its accuracy for the ‘creative’ and ‘connected’ groups. Early results show it to be a highly powerful and predictive model. During one of the tasks we encouraged the ‘creatives’ to work together as a group to test their co-creation and ideation potential. All respondents were given the same instruction and yet we saw that the ‘creatives’ working together as a group generated a greater number of ideas, across more categories and the responses they gave were more original and exceptional than those in the alternative group. Likewise we analysed our ‘connecteds’ behaviour on Twitter and measured three main variables which included a) the number of followers someone has b) the number of people that are actively following updates and c) the number of updates someone leaves and discovered that scores for the ‘Connecteds’ on both Twitalyzer and Twitter Grader are significantly higher for this group than more typical young people.

Consumers are now more empowered than ever before in their relationship with brands. Our Bright Young Things tool has important implications for brands who are looking to develop their offerings. It could be a strategic brand audit, it could be idea generation, new packs, new designs, new functionality or new concepts.

Our pockets of sample could help clients gauge how the land lies among young people, ‘Bright Young Things’ can provide your clients with sample that offers access and reach to the most relevant people – frankly the brightest sparks in society – to co-develop ideas.

WHY? Market Research technology development is outpacing our understanding of how, and when to optimize the use of different onscreen survey options. We are also witnessing an increasing digital divide between research firms based on their relative adoption of “traditional”, “flash” and now “gamification” question types.

WHAT? The premise of this powerful presentation is that we can’t slow down the rate of adoption, nor the rate of technological advancement. Nor should we. But we SHOULD keep pace as an industry in understanding the new tools we’re using – from a point of view of how each of these can impact data consistency, and the all-important user experience.

WHO? Previous element54 research “Sexy Questions, Dangerous Results” and “Eyes Don’t Lie” have helped to shape industry consciousness around the significant impact of user interface on both respondent experience/engagement, and data quality/differences.
- Our latest research will explore how “Traditional, Flash and Gamification Online Interfaces”, can build global research community knowledge in how these differences impact respondent user experiences and engagement – and potential differences in the data.

Our previous work has demonstrated our ability to take a “methodologically-agnostic” position and to highlight key learning that can advance industry dialogue and best practices.

Bernie has spoken at a cross-section of high profile conferences in 2009/2010, including the MRIA (Toronto, Ottawa & Montreal), The Market Research Event (Las Vegas), Advertising Research Foundation (New York), CASRO (New York) and the MRA (Boston), and upcoming ESOMAR 3D (Miami – October 2011)

In 2010, Bernie was nominated for the Next Generation Marketing Research (NGMR) “Disruptive Innovation” Award. He is a Past-President of the MRIA Québec Chapter, and sessional lecturer at McGill University on Marketing and Research issues.

“Only shallow people don’t judge others based on appearances.” – Oscar Wilde

In short, humans have evolved to be emotionally aware creatures. We rely heavily on visual clues to gather data about our world. Facial expressions are a huge part of that process. With 43 facial muscles attached directly to the skin, the face is a billboard of emotional disposition. It lets us know how others feel without any dialogue whatsoever. And Sensory Logic has honed a unique set of tools that accurately measures a person’s nonverbal emotional response to stimuli.

We at Sensory Logic, Inc. – a scientific market research firm based out of Minneapolis – know that reading unconscious clues (i.e. nonverbal behavior), specifically facial expressions, is the best way to get at what people are feeling and thinking. During this brief presentation, Dan Hill would walk participants through the importance of being both on-message and on-emotion in marketing – and would discuss how and why the future of the market research world will be all about cutting through rational response to get to the emotional core of consumers. More specifically, Dan would illustrate the value of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), as created by Dr. Paul Ekman, in the field of market research. With over 13 years of experience in the field, national press appearances and a client list that includes dozens of Fortune 500 clients, Hill promises to give an enlightening and entertaining introduction to his facial coding system and the importance of science in market research.

sensorylogic.com

A frequent speaker at business conferences and seminars from coast to coast, as well as in Europe and Asia, Dan’s blue-chip clients have included Target, Toyota, Reebok, Whirlpool, American Express, Capital One, Hershey, Lego, Nokia, GlaxoSmithKline, among dozens of other major brands.

Dan has appeared on “The Today Show,” FOX, CNN, and MSNBC regarding his facial coding analysis of the 2008 Presidential Election. Other television appearances focused around baseball’s steroid scandal and various criminal cases. Dan and his company have also appeared in the The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, TIME.com, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, LA Times, Bloomberg, and others.

Dan’s books include Body of Truth: Leveraging What Consumers Can’t or Won’t Say (Beaver’s Pond Press, 2007) and Emotionomics: Leveraging Emotions for Business Success (Kogan Page Publishing, 2009), which was chosen by Ad Age as one of “10 Books You Should Have Read in 2009.” Dan’s latest book, About Face: Ten Secrets to Emotionally Effective Advertising, was released in October 2010 (Kogan Page Publishing).

Dan received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University following studies at Brown University, Oxford University, and St. Olaf College. Dan and his wife, Karen Bernthal, a clothing designer, live in St. Paul, MN.

This presentation will discuss a structured approach to producing short, concise presentations that provide the clear answers clients seek. It will cover the use of elevator speeches, one page executive summaries and 15-20 page reports (along with, as needed, voluminous appendices).

Also addressed will be organizational barriers to use of this approach.

Mike has spent time as a research user (P&G), provider (Synovate) and intermediary (McKinsey) during his over 30 year career. He has undergraduate degrees from the Wharton School and School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.

Mike has lived in Hong Kong since 1997, has worked in over 30 countries and traveled to almost 120 countries.

Many market research agencies place a heavy emphasis on metrics, analytics, and keyword definitions. However, these elements are often not accurate and outputs can leave a gap between the outcomes of the research and what needs to be undertaken to improve communication. The more we understand about what communication strategists need to tackle – including the tactical and strategic decisions they face – the more we can tailor social media monitoring and analytics to answer their questions rather than just focusing on the metrics.

In this presentation, Richard Kunzmann of FreshMinds discusses the factors a researcher needs to know about communication strategy to inform social media research design, answering a client’s needs around:

•What the metrics mean for their strategic and daily tactical decisions
•What they can do to improve the number of mentions they receive and the way people write about them
•How to use social media monitoring to maximise the penetration of a story or campaign

Aside from his work on social media monitoring projects at FreshMinds, he spent two years working for the South African office of the German communication strategy consultancy, Media Tenor, advising various blue-chip clients ranging from De Beers to Virgin Mobile on strategic and tactical decisions to support reputation management.

If you believe the answer is “yes” then please vote for this submission. We will undertake an exercise in mass collaboration – debating, discussing, formulating & refining a new set of terminology for new market research, utilising the wisdom of the crowd from both agency & client. Along the way we hope to uncover our own preconceptions about the words we use in every day discussions with our colleagues, our clients and our peers.

And hopefully we’ll be able to produce a really compelling answer to that age old question…”what is it you do?”

Extending my recent viewpoint piece on Radio New MR I will guide people through examples I believe demonstrate how as an industry we should be broadening our gaze to take inspiration from areas beyond market research.

Amongst other things, I will argue that…

•We can learn from how journalists work when reporting the stories in our data
•We can use compelling design & release our inner artist to stir the hearts & minds of our audience
•Writing great presentation isn’t that different to writing a great novel

•A lack of connection to our clients’ own metrics & frameworks significantly damages the credibility of our work
•The latest thinking in consumer psychology has significant implications for researchers of the future
•The rise of open data & hack culture will significantly impact the data available to us

And finally, I will show why, if we don’t start embracing these new ways of thinking, others will.

• E-commerce: online sales moving away from transaction and towards experience
• F-commerce: brands engaging and selling direct through social media
• M-commerce: price checking via bar/ QR codes, ordering direct via smartphone apps & paying in-store using mobiles
• ‘V-commerce’: merging of bricks and clicks using virtual displays & augmented reality in-store

For the consumer this multi-channel approach provides options & flexibility, whilst for the retailer it provides both opportunities to engage & complexities.

And as consumers and retailers alike embrace these new channels, we as researchers must look to evolve the way we measure, monitor and understand this behaviour.

By engaging consumers through the same channels they choose to ‘shop’ we can improve participation, engagement and insight – be that in-home, in-store, on-line, on-phone… or even virtually.

This presentation will:

1. Discuss how the shopper journey is changing in the world of digital retail & bring this trend to life with insights taken from recent case- studies

2. Demonstrate how tools such as shopper blogs, mobile ethnography and smartphone app-surveys can work alongside more traditional research techniques to understand the ‘digital shopper

With 15 years experience in the technology sectors Ian has an in-depth knowledge of the mobile market which he has been turning to the challenge of applying research methods to the new world of the digital shopper.

Prior to joining Marketing Sciences Ian has held positions in the Technology divisions of both Research International and GfK.

Ian presented a paper on mobile qualitative research at last year’s NewMR conference with Steve August of Revelation – ‘Embracing the 3rd Screen’.

After decades of more importance being placed on cognitive decision processes as the key to planning around consumer behaviour, attention is starting to shift towards understanding the role of emotional processes. Driven by increasing neuroscientific understanding of how unconscious processes can impact on action, emotional components are now seen as the true key to driving behaviour change.

However, there are other factors at work than should not be forgotten in this context. Cognition and affect (emotion) are very important, but so is the motivation / will for the behaviour to be changed, the physical effort required to make the change and the cultural environment that any messages are being delivered in. It is through the interplay of all these factors and their overlap that actual behaviour is determined.

This presentation will provide a framework for the considering these different factors at work and how recent findings means they should be considered both in isolation and in context to each other.

Huw has worked with local, national and international clients on a wide range of different projects. In September 2009, Huw won the George Camakaris Best Paper by a Young Researcher at the AMSRS National Conference – the paper focused on the interplay of marketing, emotions and neuroscience.

Lederer is Editor & Publisher of the company’s four acclaimed MR industry newsletters, focused on business-oriented MR industry news and transferable information to help research agencies and research clients improve their performance. They offer a unique mix of revolutionary client-side MR strategies and technology-rocking supplier-side thinking and capabilities.

Lederer joined Keller Publishing in 1974, becoming Editor & Associate Publisher of Beverage World Magazine by 1979. In 1983, in an unparalleled career transition, he moved to Royal Crown Cola Co., serving as Assistant to the President and later Brand Manager and National Accounts Manager.

From mid-1985 to 1986, Lederer served as National Accounts Manager for The NutraSweet Co. At Actmedia, from 1987-1992, he eclipsed sales records within the business’ promotion products. In 1993, he started Marketplace Solutions, an in-store couponing & sampling company which was sold to Sunflower Co. in 1994.

RFL Communications incorporated in September 1994. It began publishing Research Business Report in January 1995. Research Conference Report was launched in May 1997. Research Department Report was introduced in 1998. In 2003, RFL’s Pharma Market Research Report became the world’s only publication devoted exclusively to MR interests and challenges facing the pharma, healthcare, life sciences and medical device industries.

Lederer has evolved into a respected industry personality and sought-after speaker.

He is credited with helping the research industry take a fresh look and action against long-standing industry problems. In 2006, he conceived and spearheaded “The Research Industry Summit: Improving Respondent Cooperation,” which led to renewed industry respondent cooperation efforts and inspired a broad review of research industry online data quality.

RFL Communications’ unorthodox data quality initiative was client-driven and MR vendor-supported. RFL’s September 2007 “Client Summit on Research Data Quality” induced immediate data quality action on multiple fronts. In 2008, RFL’s “Road to the Client Congress and Client Congress on Research Data Quality” generated the first documentation about problems with online data quality and myriad potential solutions.

In September 2008, RFL Communications’ published that document: “Platforms for Online Data Quality.” That booklet provided specific recommended questions and actions for research clients desiring to take action against their internal data quality. This compendium was created through the input of more than 50 research vendors/suppliers and the oversight of better than 50 client researchers. The booklet is available at no charge on the RFL Communications’ website (www.rflonline.com).

Lederer is a 1974 graduate of the State University of NY at Stony Brook (BA-Political Science).

For information about the newsletters, engaging Lederer as a speaker or RFL’s consulting services, please email rlederer@rflonline.com or call (847) 673-6284.

Often this works very well. Often there are teething problems along the way. But all of it, from the excited discovery of a potential new technique to the proud demonstrations and case studies, happens against a backdrop of feverish speculation over the ‘future of research’.

It seems clear to me that the future of research relies partly upon a deeper engagement with and understanding of digital culture. This is where we’re taking our best ideas from, this is where our competition for people’s time and opinions is coming from, this is what our clients are wrestling with. But our understanding of it is often terribly shallow – based on aggregated, top level statistics (mostly about Facebook!)

This presentation looks to go deeper, examining the key qualities of digital culture – the behaviour and qualities that make it genuinely new. Some of these qualities – like speed and collaboration – are already embedded in the practise of our more forward-thinking research companies.

But others – like iteration, imitation and emergence – inform a great deal of online culture and creativity but have far less of a foothold in MR approaches. What might a form of research that embraced digital culture look like? I’m going to try and answer that. Along the way I’ll talk about hashtags, Brian Eno, gaming, cat pictures, sports commentary, physics, question addiction and a lot of the other wonderful stuff which regularly distracts me and makes my work better.

Speaker: Michalis Michael – DigitalMR – Founder & Managing Director.

Format: PowerPoint presentation with embedded video examples

Overview

When FlexPaths wanted to explore what was constraining companies from embracing flexible work practices, they needed a research approach that would engage with an extremely hard- to-reach sample. They wanted participants to be able to brainstorm together and to exchange ideas and best practices.
This paper explores how DigitalMR worked with Linked-In to recruit and incentivise senior sample. It shows that by using the latest online research techniques, how time-poor senior executives can become active and willing participants in the research process.

Paper outline

Online Think Tanks case study with FlexPaths in conjunction with LinkedIn
In November 2010, DigitalMR conducted a series of online focus groups for FlexPaths, a global leader in flexible working solutions.
In conjunction with LinkedIn, FlexPaths wanted to explore what is holding companies back from embracing flexible work practices and to identify how they could overcome those obstacles with software.
A series of online “think tank” discussions took place among a large number CEOs, senior HR professionals, and Workspace decision makers. Participation was real-time, and the discussion centred on the practical realities of managing workers in the “new normal” of a flexible work culture.

Innovation
A key innovation in the process was that the online platform allowed participants to see/hear audiovisuals of the moderator, while being able to type answers to the moderator’s questions and chat among themselves in real time. This not only dramatically increased the speed of data capture and but also allowed multiple respondents to respond to questions simultaneously.

New approach to recruitment and retention
Participants in the think tank sessions were recruited via LinkedIn and incentivised with a free 12-month LinkedIn Professional subscription. Once the research had been conducted a Linkedin group was created by FlexPaths for further sharing among the think tank participants.

Key Benefits
The paper will explore the many major benefits of using this online qualitative approach, including cost, speed, accessibility, interaction and information. It will explore how the functionality allows for a more deliberative approach, with the sharing and discussion of other materials such websites, software, screen grabs etc and how respondents can be easily re-contacted for longitudinal research.

Contributions from the clients and partners
FlexPaths and LinkedIn were delighted with how the project progressed. They are now looking forward to extending the series in future, to enable the participants to continue their conversations and to provide others with the same opportunity.
Clare Flynn Levy, Managing Director, FlexPaths, LLC and LinkedIn will unveil key findings and show how they are being used.

Key Findings
The findings showed that the companies of all shapes and sizes, across many industries, want to make their workforces more flexible, but that there are a wide variety of (mostly cultural) obstacles to overcome first.
The participants felt they gained knowledge and insight from sharing ideas and perspectives with peers across industries and geographies, and from using the online collaboration platform, a clear demonstration of the value of this sort of virtual collaboration
The online focus group approach was ideal for reaching senior decision makers across the US, UK and rest of world. These virtual peer group knowledge exchanges served as a powerful mechanism for participants to collaborate on the subject of flexible work. The feedback from the experience was overwhelmingly positive.
The nature of the online groups allowed several participants to share compelling stories and data to support the progress of their efforts toward a fully flexible working culture, which were inspiring to the others. Many (particularly CEOs) who joined the conversation with significant scepticism came away with modified views and remarked on intentions to put some of what they learned to work.

Previous Conferences
2010Main Speaker: GCC Cards Summit 2010, Bahrain
2010MRS Financial Services Research Conference – Insight into hard to reach customers
2010 Panelist at MRS Social Media Research Conference (London, UK)
2010 Main Speaker: ARF Webcast with the title: “Listening
to generate compelling customer insight: case studies from various sectors”
2010 Speaker: MRA annual conference in Boston with the title: “The Digital Marketing Research Firm: Opportunities For The Next Decade”

…The abundance of conversations online and the breadth of choice in both social media technology and partners can make the journey a difficult one to navigate through.

This presentation shows how agencies can reel in the most value from social media conversations. The analysis casts a wide net across productisation, operational and theoretical considerations.

Tom has over ten years of experience in research and advertising and started his career at Lowe Lintas as a graduate trainee in 2000. He spent six years at the brand and communications research agency Hall and Partners where he was both a qualitative researcher and more recently Director of Innovation.

He has written for a range of titles including the Financial Times, Marketing Week and Admap. And he has spoken at various MRS and APG conferences. Tom’s current clients include the BBC, UEFA and leading research and digital communications agencies.

It shows how ‘decision science’ led to the relaunch of the T-Mobile brand in Q1 2009, with significant market-place results.
The objective was to revitalise the brand but the scale of the task was enormous; during the worst recession since the 1930s, T-Mobile faced diminishing returns in a shrinking market; mobile phone usage was down by a third and T-Mobile languished in 4th place in the market in terms of brand share, consideration and equity measures.
T-Mobile and its consultancy, decode, employed techniques from neuroscience and psychology that cogently demonstrated the importance of understanding, accessing and measuring the implicit system in the human brain. They used the findings to derive the implicit drivers of purchase intent and customer satisfaction. These, in turn, were used to craft the brand proposition, ‘look & feel‘, communications platform (‘Life’s for sharing‘) and brief to the creative and media agencies. The first execution had unprecedented results; sales up 49%, share up 6%, out-paced market average revenue per user by 11%, more than halved the cost of customer acquisition, more than doubled footfall into the brand’s stores; with conversion up 20%, nearly trebled brand consideration from #4 to #2 in the market, reduced churn (customers leaving the network), has 30.3 million YouTube views, 68 Facebook groups and 88% recall. The most recent execution is, according to YouTube, the most successful viral campaign ever.

Please do not vote for this presentation unless you’re willing to have your prejudices and ways of working challenged.

Just when we have come to understand (somewhat) how Hierarchical Bayesian (HB) methods have vastly expanded the power and scope of methods including discrete choice, conjoint and forced trade-offs (notably the ubiquitous MaxDiff), we are encountering a new “Bayesian” method applicable to a host of research-related problems.

Central to the full use Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) is a diagram showing how variables influence or lead to each other. These models can even show cause and effect—although (sadly) this does not always happen with market research data.

BBN models appear similar to structural equation models (SEMs) or the models made by PLS path analysis. Variables are always connected by arrows. A variable shown at the start of an arrow leads to a variable at the end of the arrow. The arrows often terminate in a dependent or target variable.

These network can be entirely self-constructed, start with self-construction and be modified by the analyst, or be built based entirely on the judgment of the user. If that sounds confusing, perhaps that is because it genuinely is.

At one extreme, these models can solve problems in conditional logic that are entirely built by the user. The infamous Monty Hall “three door problem” (from Let’s Make a Deal) is elegantly and definitively solved by a simple Bayesian Network constructed of three “nodes” linked by directional arrows. (And, by the way, yes, you should switch doors.)

At the other extreme, these networks can mine data, screening hundreds or thousands of variables, finding the ones most closely related to the target, and showing how they are inter-related.

There are many methods of model construction, all the way from some rather weak ones dating to the early days of this method’s relatively brief history, to some that are remarkably sophisticated, and that virtually ensure that we do not miss the true, mathematically “optimal” solution. Many model construction methods actually “learn” their best model configuration from looking at the data in many ways.

BBNs use the entire distribution of each variable when determining how models fit together, thus surpassing traditional regression-based modeling methods, which are based on a single summary measure of linear fit for each variable. BBNs can easily fit any linear or non-linear relationship between variables.

Unlike regression models, which must assume “all other things remain constant” when determining the effects of a variable, BBNs show all effects in the context of how variables are connected. Changes anywhere in the network propagate throughout the network—so the interrelationships of all variables are counted when determining how much any given variable influences the target.

Bayesian networks show some salient strengths compared with other machine learning and artificial intelligence methods:
•The way they are constructed appears close to our way of reasoning—at least once we take the time to understand how the networks actually work. Everything appears in a diagram showing which variables lead to which others. We can see and understand intuitively the way that everything fits together in a Bayesian network;
•We do not need the long training needed to set up, for example, neural networks, unfeasible in many practical applications, and
•Bayesian learn by experience as soon as they start to receive data.
There is a great deal of research activity in this field, resulting in an ever-expanding set of abilities for these networks. They have become a central analytical tool in many other disciplines—from public safety to avionics, to determining the genetic causes of diseases. Perhaps it is the time that market research starts seeing their value.

He has conducted studies and taught methods in many areas, notably including: market segmentation, discrete choice modeling and conjoint analysis, price sensitivity and elasticity modeling, machine learning methods, data mining, Bayesian analytical methods, best-prospect or best-customer identification models, optimizing communications, and graphical display of complex data. He has written a book, Market Segmentation: An Overview and Review, as well as many articles on multivariate analysis, computer software, and psychology. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, a doctorate in psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, and MA and BA degrees from Boston University.

Online qualitative projects have become longitudinal and require effort to keep participants interested over the course of days, weeks or months. In order for an online qualitative project to be successful, it’s critical to find participants with strong written communication skills along with technology acumen. And of course, to find an incentive type, monetary level and distribution schedule that keeps everyone happy.

In this presentation, Rachel will:

1. Discuss techniques to use in online qualitative research screener development to ensure a strong recruit and techniques to incorporate for studies that use in-person research in conjunction with online or mobile tools.

2. Demonstrate how using online panel recruitment with other techniques can produce a strong, active group for online and mobile projects.

3. Offer communication techniques and incentive strategies that will hold participants’ interest in a study that takes place over time.

4. Show examples of projects of substantial length that have successfully kept participants engaged.

With experience in both online qualitative and quantitative research and recruitment, Rachel has an in-depth knowledge of how to engage people in an online market research environment.

Prior to Revelation, Rachel has held positions at Equation Research, Adweek Magazines and the Television Bureau of Advertising.

Rachel has presented at several market research conferences and webinars focusing on successful online and mobile qualitative research projects. She most recently presented at the QRCA 2010 Annual Conference.

It’s bizarre that we humanise animals (often by attributing to them feelings they don’t have) yet animalise humans. For example, we use ‘memory’ to describe both the process by which a dog locates his buried bone and the infinitely more complex one by which we weave together our past experiences into a self-narrative. Consciousness and a sense of self are the two faculties that most differentiate us from the rest of the animal kingdom, yet each remains strangely impervious to adequate explanation via neuroscience.

Neuroscience is a necessary rather than a sufficient explanation of our behaviour because our brains constantly interact with the culture in which they live. What results is a kind of shared human consciousness – a community of minds. The evidence is all around us, in the wonderful stuff we produce: in literature, in art and philosophy. We create this stuff through a combination of conscious reflection and imaginative intuition; though the application of reason and emotion; through neurons firing and through social influences.

Surely we can learn as much from culture as from an EEG trace or fMRI scan. For example, metaphors are a human (linguistic) construct that link emotion with the conscious mind – which makes them a wonderful and powerful tool for accessing and understanding emotion. Looking at neurons alone will never give us the answer. Treating people as humans might.

Before starting Conquest out of sheer frustration with what many research agencies had to offer, Penn amassed a wealth of experience in marketing and research spanning both client and agency sides of the business, honing his skills at Unilever and UB.

Tagging individuals by their geoTribes segment, on an online panel, using physical address and key demographics allows researchers to stratify the sample structure to represent the population on more than standard demographics like age, gender and state. This helps to ensure that the sample of the population that is interviewed or the target group is representative. When applied in weighting, geoTribes adds another layer of rigour.

In analyzing survey response data, all questions can be cross-tabbed by the 15 geoTribes segments, to identify differences by Tribe [we will present some real case study examples].

Because geoTribes can be readily applied to corporate databases, spatial regions and media planning systems as well as survey samples, the system provides an excellent basis for integration of research findings with insights from other knowledge sources.

All the results can be mapped to the geographic locations being represented in the survey [again, we will show some case study examples].

Utilizing this tool adds credibility and structure to the sampling, and additional value to the analysis of survey data. The results can be used in execution of target strategies by Tribe across multiple channels and delivery mechanisms.

Robert Dommett, RDA Research Technical Director of RDA Research a Sydney-based geodemographics consultancy and developer of the geoTribes segmentation system.

The two questions that behavioural economists keep hearing at MR conferences are:
1. Can you explain what it actually is?
2. Isn’t this just good research practice anyway?

It’s time to finally answer those questions. What parts of BE are just rehashes of what any good researcher or consumer marketer already knows; what parts are genuinely new; and does the field have a coherent theory behind it or is it just a collection of party tricks?

You can probably guess my answer to the last question, but tune in to find out more. (And you’ll get to see some party tricks too.)

His work is focused on the mathematical modelling of cognitive psychology and behavioural economics. He also spends far too much time on twitter (@leighblue), in an attempt to collect evidence about cognitive incentives and provide a real-life demonstration of the concept of addiction to small rewards.

About Tag-it: Tag-it is a tool where users can place digital Post-its on something you show them, and give extra input by typing in text. The comments appear in the form of smilies and can be dragged to the part of the screen the comment is about. By allowing people to place positive (green) smilies, neutral (yellow) smilies or negative (red) smilies on an ad, letter, website design or new logo, we get extremely valuable information about how they appreciate this material. We can combine all the tags that are placed on the research material in one big ‘smiley heatmap’. Through the use of Tag-it, we get a very detailed picture about what people think.

Recently, the attention and demand for this tool have sky-rocketed and we have successfully used it for many of our clients who want to evaluate their communication efforts. Given all this positive attention, we think the world is ready to hear the Tag-it story: What is Tag-it? And why is this the perfect solution for anybody interested in evaluative research?

Main advantages of using Tag-it:
- participant in control
- in-depth information
- co-creation
- visual reporting

About our presentation:
During our brief presentation, we will tell you about:
- Developing Tag-it, a brief introduction
- When to use Tag-it: a guide to the usage of Tag-it
- The Tag-it research tool: demonstration of how the tool works
- Case description: an example of research done with Tag-it
- The results: what we learned from the Tag-it research

In an attempt to answer this question, we constructed a study to confirm the practical application of these possibilities by testing whether a GPS-enabled mobile device could trigger a research opportunity when a respondent approached a particular point of interest. The results of this study exposed a number of technical limitations and practical barriers to adoption while also producing an encouraging amount of practical uses. This presentation seeks to share some of these lessons with the market research community.

Leveraging Brandon’s expertise in project management and data analysis, he was immediately tasked with driving the development of various mobile research initiatives and leading the charge in creating a viable B2B solution.

Together with his colleague Miles Wright, Brandon presented on this topic at the recent Market Research in the Mobile World Conference in Georgia, USA.

Brandon holds a J.D. from the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University.

How do community members from developing countries participate versus those from European or North American countries? What is driving these differences? And what can market researchers do to maximize engagement and quality?

In this presentation Manila will share highlights from a recent study of participation and engagement in multinational online communities.

In particular, Manila will:
•Share research about differences in participation by country, industry and other demographics •Identify what kinds of topics, activities (e.g., discussion boards, surveys), and community designs engage (or deter) members from different countries
•Describe what conditions are most likely to deliver high quality open-ended responses from multinational community members
•Suggest some implications for companies as they design and develop multinational forums for online engagement

Consumers distinguish between using social media for talking to brands vs. hearing from them, from advising them vs. promoting them. But do marketers and market researchers make those same distinctions?

As social marketing sites like VocalPoint or Café Mom or Kraft First Taste gain momentum, and as the great social networking empires like Facebook, Tumblr, Renren, and possibly Google + continue to grow, many brands are questioning whether posting polls and mining content from these types of venues is now a viable replacement, both for survey research, and for online insight communities.

In this presentation, Julie will:
•Share research about the different motives, expectations, and participation rates that people bring to their engagement with brands in different venues;
•Offer some hypotheses as to why;
•Suggest some implications for companies as they formulate their social marketing and research strategies.

Who will use social media as part of their football season experience this year – whether watching clips of matches on YouTube, receiving updates from broadcast experts via Twitter, posting goals and highlights on Facebook, or checking in to Old Trafford via Foursquare? Who will purchase tickets to this season’s matches? Which players do fans want to see gearing up for Team Great Britain at the London 2012 Olympic Games?

These are just some of the questions investigated further in a survey conducted via Research Now’s Smartphone application. Learn how the app, with full survey functionality linked to Research Now’s deeply profiled Valued Opinions™ Panel, opens new possibilities for collecting timely and quality data for today’s market research.

Martin brings over 15 years of experience in senior executive roles, building businesses in multicultural and multi-lingual international environments. Previously, he served as Managing Director for Europe at Redsheriff Ltd, where he was involved in the post merger process of the company after being acquired by Nielsen NetRatings in 2001. He was later involved in the post merger process of Citect to Schneider, where he served as Managing Director for Europe from 2005 to 2007. Martin most recently served as Director of Accelerated Solutions Environment at Capgemini before joining Research Now as Managing Director for Asia-Pacific in 2009.

Martin holds a degree in management from the University of Northampton.

Paired with a willing participant and enabling software, mobile phones become portals. Portals that let people share their lives, habits, opinions, beliefs and values with us in ways never before possible. So now, we can send the people we want to understand better out into the world armed with the ability to take a picture of something they love or hate and record audio telling you why right then, as they experience it. Share the first thoughts they have when they wake in the morning and screengrab the first sites and apps they use before their feet hit the ground. Send you a video of what it’s like to search out your product in the store and what the shelf looks like when they find it. See what they’re experiencing immediately and have an individual conversation with them to understand their behavior in real time.

That’s a big deal if you’re someone who wants to understand people’s reality. People you’re writing about, marketing to, designing for or trying to develop a relationship with.

This presentation talks about the emerging digital ethnography industry, what it’s making possible, and the opportunities and challenges it’s facing as it grows.

Ross’s day job is at Egg Strategy, driving the Over-the-Shoulder digital ethnography tool and keeping it the best way to use mobile phones to dig for powerful human truths on the market.

Prior to Egg, Ross spent fifteen years working as a strategic planner for advertising agencies on brands including Kraft Mac & Cheese, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Jell-O, Taco Bell, Motorola, and just about every beer and spirits brand you could name. Most recently, he was EVP, Group Planning Director at Draftfcb Chicago, where he was in charge of developing and training the planning department and the agency in the digital/social/mobile space.

An agent-based model is a computer simulation method that allows the modeling of consumers and firms at a micro-level. The influence of social networks, multi-media presentations and other environmental factors are easily modeled in an ABM to conduct ‘what-if’ exercises to look at the macro-level effect on the marketplace. This presentation will discuss what are agent-based models, what marketing managers should know about them, and when they can be useful. It will also present case studies on how firms are using ABMs in their customer insight programs.

Add to this the recent findings from the GRIT Report which stated: Major structural and systemic changes being faced by those in the marketing research industry, mirror much of what we have been seeing in the US economy as a whole. These structural changes have a multi-pronged effect, including
(1) more worrisome attitudes and beliefs about the marketing research profession,
(2) more concern about the ability to keep up with the rapid pace of technological innovation, and
(3) a growing tension between quality of work output and the demand for speed.

Part of the increased pessimism in the marketing research industry is fuelled by “systemic stressors” that make it increasingly difficult to deliver on the shared goal of high quality, highly valued research. Attitudinally, two-thirds feel that research buyers are less able to tell the difference between high quality and mediocre research now.

Further reading evidences that we are living through times of unprecedented change, economic and social in nature, frequently driven by technological innovations. The advent of online research and the internet has brought about an over-abundance of data, which both presents an opportunity for market researchers, but also a threat from new competitors, DIY research, the blurring of the definition of what is Market Research and possibly a lowering of perceived value and ‘commoditisation’. Against this background we determined to conduct our own research to get a client perspective on the MR industry – to determine how relevant and fit for purpose it is, how it contributes to client decision-making, and how it shapes up against current consulting competitors – now and into the future. Over 180 responses were gathered during March-April 2011, from senior decision-making clients in Australia, the UK and the USA in a brief quantitative survey; once these results were understood, additional in-depth conversations were had with a number of senior Insights Directors in Australia and overseas. This paper shares our findings from the research and our thoughts for the future of our industry.

Having grown Direction First from an agency of one to 25 people, she places innovation, continuous learning, team work and culture at the centre of the business in order to consistently produce the best quality outcomes for clients and building strong relationships that have endured for over 10 years. With her adventurous spirit, Erica continues to explore techniques, methods and structures that will provide even better strategic advice in the future.

Much has been made about the mobile revolution that is poised to dominate the market research world. Some see it as the future, while others see it as simply a new tool. Others still have a very skeptical view of the good it can do. While not a threat to our planet like seen in a 50’s sci-fi movie, most can’t deny the significant impact mobile is having on our rapidly changing world.

This presentation first highlights key developments in mobile research. Following that, a research-on-research case study will be reviewed detailing interesting comparisons between data collected on phones versus computers. Questions to be answered in this session include:
-How does data collected on mobile devices compare to that collected via a traditional computer-based online survey?
-If sample characteristics are held constant, what impact (if any) do the devices have on collected data?
-What happens to the data when question type presentation varies given the display space available on phones and computers?
-Are phones simply clones of computers when collecting data? If not, of what should researchers be aware?

Given the growth of mobile use globally, the time is now for researchers to better evaluate mobile interviewing capabilities. Like the 50’s, today we have dreams (and fears) that technology is quickly making the world a different place.

Mobile devices… are they digital clones, here to take over the world? Are they friend, or are they foe? Tune-in to find out.

Chuck is a senior insights executive and business owner with expert knowledge of the online industry. A former AOL and Time Warner vice president, his specialties span the digital space and all things geeky related to data. Miller has held a variety of analytics and technology positions on both the client and provider sides of marketing research.

A recognized online marketing research expert, Miller publishes, speaks and leads many research industry initiatives. Chuck co-founded the EXPLOR Awards, presented annually for the most innovative research applications. For his pioneering work in online research, Miller was named Inventor of a U.S. patent.

Con is a quantitative researcher and modeller in advanced analytics and marketing research. His background is in Insights, Analytics, Quantitative Modelling and Strategic Marketing. Con has held national senior positions at Woolworths Ltd, Integral Energy Australia, American Express Australia and AMR Interactive and UTS’s Market Research Consulting Arm. His Modelling solutions derived in these roles include consumer preference, market segmentation using parametric and non-parametric methods, predictive data mining for consumer needs and new product development and a host of modelling solutions designed to understand the way consumers interact with goods, services and marketing information and make choices.

Con lectures in statistics, pricing, decision modelling and marketing strategy for consumer and B2B at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Con’s PhD contributes to research methodology on how to measure and control brand equity. His academic work focuses on explore and theorizing how consumers interact with market information to evaluate the equity of brands. Con has published in well respected academic journals and presented his work in global conferences which has resulted in numerous excellence awards across branding, human machine learning, research methods, health care, psychopathy and the measurement of brand equity.

This “mind and mouse” methodology enabled detailed exploration of actual consumer web behaviours via clickstream. This provided similar depth to online observation methods such as ethnography or online clinics, however across a much larger, quantitative sample. By overlaying clickstream data against attitudinal information, we were able to understand the tremendous variation in terms of how consumers use online touch-points, as well as provide detailed information on how different groups of consumers approach the online path to purchase. We also learnt that different types of web properties serve very different needs and attract very different audiences

One of the most critical requirements facing businesses today is understanding the journey their customers undertake when researching and buying products or services. With an increasing proliferation of both on and off line touch-points, this journey is becoming even more complex. Our paper will:

• Identify key customer needs and behaviours for effectively activating a multi-channel marketing strategy
• Prove the importance of gathering data from across both clickstream and survey sources, to accurately describe the online path to purchase and therefore gain a major source of competitive advantage for organisations
• Show how the integration of these sources against a defined business question makes these insights so powerful and establish a research archetype from which other studies will follow

Mary-Ann has also been involved in a number of innovative TNS initiatives around understanding the Digital consumer. Mary-Ann’s particular interest lies in passive measurement – clickstream data – its application as well as the opportunity it will provide to transform research.

This session will outline the concept of open innovation, as well as how it contrasts to traditional innovation models. We will present one case study outlining how one leading global company has embraced open innovation, and then discuss the implication for market research.

Prior to joining Affinnova, Ms. Barber served as a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, where she advised market insights professionals on the changing landscape of research methodologies and technologies. While at Forrester, she was a frequent public speaker and writer about the strategic and tactical issues affecting marketing and customer insights.

Prior to working at Forrester, Barber worked for CANIETI, Mexico’s chamber of commerce for the telecom, electronics, and IT industry, as a survey researcher. Before that, she was a Public Relations Program Manager for Apple.

One way to evaluate a routing approach is to determine to what degree a sample composed of respondents who are re-allocated to a survey would differ in their survey responses from respondents who were recruited directly to the survey. In practice, the answer to this question would likely depend on the mix of screening requirements for the surveys in the router at the time, along with factors such as the number of surveys and the router rules controlling re-allocation.

We fielded an experiment with a realistic mix of surveys and compared samples of respondents recruited directly vs. samples of respondents who had been re-allocated after previous screening. In addition, we examined additional controls that might be considered for re-allocation. We also used simulation techniques on the data collected to determine how sensitive the results would be to various factors, such as the number of surveys in the router and the router rules controlling re-allocation.

We will share the results of our findings so that you can gain a clear understanding of how routers stack up against traditional surveys.