Five Market Research Trends for 2017

At this time of year our thoughts turn to what will excite and challenge us in 2017. Here are my five top picks. Automation This has been one of the key trends for the last couple of years, although much of the action has been out of sight; taking place in the operational backrooms of clients and agencies. Earlier this year, Lenny Murphy and I published a report on Automation, and I see little reason to change our view on the scale and direction of change. Automation is going to underpin most success stories over the next few years. At its best it will reduce costs, increase speed, and provide an opportunity to provide more evidence-based decision making. In some cases automation will result in a less good product, but in may cases the standardisation will enhance quality, as will the ability to provide relevant answers at the speed and cost needed and the ability to scale things up. Insight Finding Data is getting cheaper and more abundant, but techniques for finding the story in the data have barely moved forward in the last thirty years. That is beginning to change, as evidenced by the popularity of our series on […]

Want to know more about Behavioural Economics?

This week, NewMR broadcast four webinars on Behavioural Economics (BE) – as part of our Research Innovation event. If you want to expand your knowledge of the theory and application of BE then you might find these presentations useful. Stephen Paton, Behavioral Economics – Is that a wolf at the door or opportunity knocking? In this 16 video Stephen give a great overview and introduction to BE and where it fits in the research picture. Leigh Caldwell & Lizzi Seear, Behavioural economics gets real: with behavioural conjoint In this 21 minute video Leigh and Lizzi start by making the case for implicit measurements and then go on to show, via a Holiday Inn case study, how conjoint analysis can be updated using behavioural economics. Colin Ho, The Connection Between Big Data and Behavioral Economics In this 14 minute video Colin shows how BE can be used as a lens when working with Big Data. Raj Sandhu, Behavioural Economics: Marketing’s latest shiny new thing, or a tipping point? In this 17 minute video Raj highlights the need to evaluate implicit measures and goes on to show how BE can be applied to the development and evaluation of snack foods. Note, the […]

Why Are Communities Taking Over The Insights World?

OK, let’s start with a clarification, when I say taking over the world, I mean they seem to be everywhere (like Starbucks or Uber) not that they have become masters of the world (as in War of the Worlds or Invasion of the Body Snatchers). For the last few years the GreenBook GRIT report has reported that, along with mobile surveys, research communities are the most widely adopted new research approach – making them more mainstream than new. This year’s ESOMAR Global Market Research Report shows that research communities account for about 5% of total global market research spend – that’s one dollar out of every twenty, and my own experience with most service brands, IT and information companies, most retailers, most media companies and many manufacturers is that in many verticals, using one or more research communities is the norm. Why? Why in a little over ten years have research communities gone from innovative idea to almost being ubiquitous? That is the topic of a webinar I am taking part in on December 14 with Dan Fleetwood of QuestionPro (click here to find out more), but here are a few thoughts. Because it was Possible: Back in 1999 the […]