Asia Pacific Predictions for 2017

The APAC (Asia Pacific) region’s two New Years are relatively close together this year, Western New Year on January 1 and Chinese New Year on January 28. So, this seems like a good moment to ask various people from the region to tell us what they think will be the key issues in APAC in 2017. Here are nine predictions focused on APAC, but embracing the world. Becki Southern Marketing Manager Asia Pacific, Lightspeed, Australia Automation will undeniably present opportunity to keep consumer data and understanding top of mind but, with systems replacing human decision making for marketers, Market Research will need to ensure its relevance and position within the planning process. Focus on creating stronger partnerships with clients will allow researchers to better understand this shift and act accordingly. This will mean acting differently, developing new ways of working and new solutions that fill the gaps for the 2017 marketer. This comes down to having the right technology to add to the consumer data brands already own. Harnessing this to complement strategy and build a deeper understanding is imperative to keep focus on agencies and suppliers outside the realm of their own data. As younger markets in APAC grow, […]

What can the Asia Pacific Region teach the MR world?

I think some of the best thinking about new market research comes from the Asia Pacific region and I want to share five examples that are helping re-shape the way we envisage and do market research. All five examples will be presented at the upcoming, all virtual, online Festival of NewMR – sharing ideas from Japan, Australia, India and both mainland and Hong Kong China. Shobha Prasad, Drshti Strategic Research Services, India The Fickle Mistress: Loyal consumers changing brands and the change-constancy conflict. Shobha highlights the impact of brand renovation on loyal consumers, and the role of the Change-Constancy Conflict in the loyal consumer’s response to such changes. By analysing multiple cases over the last decade Shobha has determined the stages and allied emotions that the consumer goes through, and has assessed how this plays out across different categories and consumer types. Sign up for our APAC Tuesday 28 February Webinar by clicking here. Mike Sherman, Marketing, Customer Insight & CRM/Big Consumer Data Expert, Hong Kong Big Consumer Data: the Promise, the Overpromise, the Opportunity Mike tackles the main criticism of Big Data, that it is all talk and no action. By looking at Big Data successes and failures Mike […]

Most Predictions Are Wrong, So Let’s Keep Making Them

Posted by Ray Poynter, 11 January 2017 The researcher and author Philip Tetlock has been researching predictions since the 1980s and has concluded that most predictions fail, that most experts do worse than a chimp with pin (i.e. worse than chance), and that predictions more than a few months out are particularly flaky. If you are interested in the topic of predicting and forecasting then I strongly recommend his book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, which illustrates the problems and shows why and how some people do better than experts. But despite the dismal record of most forecasters and predictors, we continue to make predictions, especially at this time of the year. Indeed, I recently published my “Five Market Research Trends for 2017” and was pleased to see that over 4000 people had read it. Why Predictions Can Be Useful I firmly believe that making predictions, and urging other people to make predictions, can be a really useful exercise, despite the poor track record that predictions have. In order to assess the ways predictions can be useful, we need to separate the different categories and motivations for forecasts and predictions. So, here are seven categories/motivations – and the […]

How did my predictions for 2016 fare?

I have just published Five Market Research Trends for 2017, covering issues that I think will be important over the next year. So, it seemed only fair to look back to this time last year to see how my previous predictions performed. A year ago I published “My Predictions for 2016”, which contained nine predictions. Here is an assessment of how I think those predictions performed. 1) Bigger Legal Problems for Facebook and Google. This has been true in the sense that they have faced a growing number of court cases, especially in Europe, along with investigations into their poor records in terms of paying tax. However, the problems they have faced have not markedly impacted their ability to grow or make money. 2) Automation. We saw lots of movement on Automation in 2016 and that trend looks likely to continue into 2017 (check out the NewMR Debate on Automation being held as part of the Festival of NewMR). 3) Surveys will continue to suffer. This is a slightly tricky one to judge. Each year for the last few years (according to the EOSMAR Global Market Research Report) surveys have become a smaller part of the total research mix, but […]