Noticias
Don’t Just Trust Your Gut — Do ResearchEntrepreneurs often find themselves making decisions in uncertain situations when starting a business. Because of tight budgets, overconfidence or misconceptions about market research’s benefits and cost, they often resort to using emotions, intuition and mental shortcuts to make decisions.
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Mobile market reseach - hype or the next big thing?I’ve blogged before about the benefits and drawbacks of mobile MROCs, but an article today in Research by Reg Baker got me thinking about it once again. Reg has some great points in his article, so I thought I would share my thoughts here, and discuss the implications for mobile market research online communities (MROCs).
Boringness is BrandingIt is incomprehensible why some designers seem stuck in the gaudy days of 1980’s, and why young designers today cannot get enough of design experimentation. They are too into garish colors in awful contrasts, abstract lines and circles, and unfathomable gifs that have nothing to with the overall concept of the design. And if shoulder pads and mullet hairstyle can be embedded on the webpage, without any doubts, they will absolutely do it without hesitations.
the impact of hyperspecialization on research consultingI just read a really interesting article about The Age of Hyperspecialization on the Harvard Business Review. The article highlights that the central driver of economic progress has always been the division of labor and that labor is so subdivided today that we have reached an era of extreme specialization. While the writer uses the example of software development (which can now be easily subdivided into design, coding, testing), I couldn’t help but wonder about the impact of specialization on market research and specifically consulting.
A TRUE MEASURE OF INFLUENCEInfluence scores, as we know them today, are all based upon algorithms. Algorithms are commonly confused with formulae, but they are surely two different things. The volume of a circle is a formula – it’s math. That x number of retweets has y effect on your influence score, however, is an algorithm. There might be some math in there, but I like to think of algorithms as math plus assumptions.
Want to Engage Customers? Do Something that MattersFor years, there had been a very suffocating preconceived notion that if you have a social mission, you are not allowed to make profit. And, if you exist to make profit, it is not logical to waste your time and resources on the social missions. It had been assumed that customer satisfaction is more likely to come only from actual product or service and less likely to come from any other social mission. And, due to this preconceived notion, people were expected to keep their deep sense of purpose away from their business; and, assume that combining both these might complicate and undermine both. When someone tried to combine the both, people would accuse them for exploiting social mission for making money.
The Two Lenses of Market ResearchMarket research is often divided into two camps including qualitative and quantitative research. These two approaches vary widely in their data collection capacity and the depth of their results. The skills needed to effectively administer either branch also vary considerably. Qualitative researchers excel at interpersonal interaction, communication, and the ability to synthesize text and visuals into a meaningful dialog that decision makers can access. Quantitative researchers on the other hand ponder the world through the eyes of variables and constructs, survey design, and torturing data using techniques such as factor and cluster analysis, regression, CHAID and perceptual mapping.
8 Things I Would Do if I Were a Market Research CompanyAs I read today’s story about Harris Interactive‘s continued operating losses, I asked myself “what would I do if I were in their shoes.” Or any research vendor’s shoes, for that matter. I don’t envy them, nor would I look forward to the many changes in strategy inevitably required to return Harris to profitability. But change they must…change, we all must.
Retailers, Consumers & the Power of the Emotional ConnectionWith another month in the rear view mirror, retailers are beginning the push for the 2011 holiday season. Those retailers should take note of a study recently released by Motista. The findings reveal that only 18 percent of consumers have an emotional connection to their retailers. Moreover, only 24 percent of consumers said they would make their next relevant purchase with the retailers they frequent today. The findings also shed light on the different ways in which men and women interact and connect with retailers.
MARKET RESEARCH STRATEGY TRENDS IN THE FORTUNE 500Fortune 500 researchers often juggle the need to deliver fresh customer insights with the mandate to minimize research costs. How do they do it? By cutting costs where they can, and embracing cool new technologies when applicable. Here are three strategies currently being embraced by Fortune 500 market researchers.
LOCATION-BASED SERVICES AND THE CUSTOMER LIFECYCLEI’m currently sitting in an event in Boston called GeoM2, an afternoon of panels discussing the future of location-based marketing. It struck me that there are lots of players in this space focusing on a moment in time – the check-in, the conversion, the experience. So many LBS services are in fact focused on the offer – if you are in the neighborhood, come get some nachos.
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