Using a Big Picture approach to understand the key trends in mobile market research

During the last week I have made three separate presentations in Tokyo on the topic of the key trends in mobile market research and I have found that creating a big picture has helped get my message across. I use the big picture as the first and last slide of the presentation to show where I am heading and to sum up the message. The audience seem to feel that a big picture makes the ideas clearer and helps provided an integrated understanding of what is happening and why. So, in this post I share my Big Picture of the Key Trends in Mobile Market Research. Why is mobile so interesting? The key reasons are all shown inside the phone. Ubiquity refers to the fact that about 70%-80% of the world’s adults have a mobile phone, and the penetration is growing. Mobile phones are the most widely owned device on the planet, and they are changing the way humans communicate. Because people have their phone with them all the time, 24/7, they provide a better way of contacting people. Better than waiting for people to answer the phone, open their email, or answer the door. The phone is with people […]

Customers are your last competitive advantage

Most companies claim to be customer centric, but when you look at what they do you will see that the customer is all too often treated as a cross between an outsider and an enemy – someone to be persuaded, entrapped, or smooched, not somebody in true partnership with the brand or organisation. I think there are two reasons why so many brands talk about being close to customer while at the same time failing to achieve it: They don’t realise that doing it right can make the business more profitable and more sustainable – so they just talk-the-talk. They don’t know how to operationalise a relationship with tens of millions of customers – so they don’t try. I think both of these positions are wrong and I have set out my observations and findings about how some companies are truly putting the customer into the decision making process in a new (short) book. In the book I highlight cases and show the tools they are using and the rewards they are achieving. The four main points I make are: 1. Customer engagement comes in three layers, Listening, Crowdsourcing, and Co-creation – and the best companies do all three, using […]

NewMR – The Big Picture

Sometimes when I run a workshop or training session people want detail, they want practical information about how to do stuff. However, there are times when what people want is a big picture, a method of orientating themselves in the context of the changing landscape around them. Tomorrow I am running a workshop for #JMRX in Tokyo and we are looking at emerging techniques, communities, and social media research – so a big picture is going to be really useful to help give an overview of the detail, and to help people see where things like gamification, big data, and communities all fit. So, here is my Big Picture of NewMR (click on it to see it full size), and I’d love to hear your thought and suggestions. The Big Picture has five elements The heart of the message is that we have reached an understanding that surveys won’t/can’t give us the answers to many of the things we are interested in. People’s memories are not good enough, many decision are automatic and opposed to thought through, and most decision are more emotion that fact. Change is needed, and the case for this has been growing over the last few […]

Market Research and Marketing Research mean the same thing

I am teaching a series of market research lessons in Tokyo at the moment (based on the ESOMAR book Answers to Contemporary Market Research Questions). At the first lesson one of the questions from the audience (who were all people with Japanese as their first language) was about the difference between Market Research and Marketing Research. I explained (and Tweeted) that there is no useful or meaningful difference between the two terms – which led to a few counter tweets. So, I thought I would set out my thoughts in more than 140 characters. To most business people, to most market/marketing researchers, to most users of marketing/market research the two terms are interchangeable. Whilst most people seem to have a preference for one over the other, a writer/speaker cannot expect an audience to draw a distinction between the two. There are some people who assert that there is a difference between the two words. However, these people tend to disagree with each other. For example a Qualtrics blog post in June 2010 asserts that Market Research is a subset of Marketing Research. Conversely Wikipedia says of Market Research (in the entry on Marketing Research) “Market research is broader in scope […]

If you want to learn how to present well, use PowerPoint

Well, to be more precise, if you want to present well, learn to be a good presenter using PowerPoint and then start experimenting with other options. If you are a good presenter, you can present with PowerPoint, Prezi, without a screen, with a flip chart, or with interactive graphics. If you are not a good presenter, you will not be any better if you use the latest 3D, sound-a-round, animated, virtual presence. The key to any presentation is the presenter. The reason that so many people give bad presentations with PowerPoint is that the presenter has not mastered the skills of presenting and has not created the right message/story. PowerPoint does not make you put too many words on the screen, it does not make you read every word, and it does not make you use bullet points. In a standard PowerPoint configuration there are 9 default layouts. Of those 9, only 4 have bullet points as a standard option. When bullet points are a standard option, so are 6 other elements, such as a table or chart. So, out of 33 options in the standard set of layouts, just 4 of them include bullets – so why are so […]