By Mario Flieger, Research Analyst      

The fundamental questions that are prominent in marketing research today have not changed in the last few decades.  Marketing researchers have continued to seek answers about what motivates customers to buy a product and how the intricacy of advertising works. The culmination of a marketing researcher’s work has also stayed the same; to have a clear understanding of the consumers’ perception of different products and brands.  The grasp of the consumer’s insight is subsequently used for deriving strategic recommendations for companies in competitive industries.   Fundamentally, the process has not changed, but has the age of the internet changed the spectrum on which marketing research is based?

The opportunities that the internet affords for companies and especially for market research companies has radically changed how companies communicate with their consumer.  With ease of internet access that 3G and Wi-Fi have given us, the internet has continued to become more important as a platform for market research in all industries.  Marketing Researchers have adapted by implementing their marketing process online. 

In the age of instant access to the internet, communications happen in a virtual universe with millions of variables deciding what ad will pop up on your screen next.  Each internet user can reach millions of people through the portal of social networking.  A television ad for a product or brand can find its way quickly around the globe and become a sensation.  The cost of this international marketing, nothing!  Viral videos are not made through outstanding production value or its celebrity cast; these videos are made popular because of social networking, which is the newest and most effective method of word-of-mouth marketing. These types of marketing campaigns give companies a new way to put their foot in the customer’s door.  Companies can use this type of marketing in concert with their brand message by creating a video that is quirky, catchy, cool, or just downright interesting.

The SIS team headed to Rome to share our perspectives and research to industry leaders and gain a barometer on industry conditions.  SIS Global Research Director Neal Sandin and I attended the 2010 AIMRI Online Market Research and Panel conference in Rome on behalf of SIS International Research on March 5, 2010. 

There, I delivered a presentation called “Harnessing Social Media” on an emerging field---social media market research.  The presentation focused on how researchers can harness social media to make conventional methodologies more robust, persuade clients of the need for this research and provide actionable ways for researchers to make their existing operations more efficient.  In the interest of disseminating our thought leadership, the presentation is available (here) for download.

During the conference, we observed the following trends and discussions occurring in the market research industry:

Customer Satisfaction/Unmet Needs: Matrix Analysis, Customer Loyalty Drivers or Stage Diagrams

Competitive Analysis: Competitive Issue Targeting Graphics, Loyalty Quadrants, Venn Diagrams

Winn/Loss Research: Win/Loss Factor Displays

Brand Awareness and Equity: Brand Equity Driver Diagram, Structural Equations Modeling, Regression Analysis

Brand Positioning: Correspondence Analysis, Multidimensional scaling, SWOT Display

Segmentation: Needs-based modeling, VOTE overview, Multidimensional Preference Map

The presentation also includes a client scorecard in choosing the most appropriate market research vendor.

We had the opportunity to chat with representatives of the Opinion Research Center of Afghanistan, the largest full-service Afghan survey research company.  At ESOMAR, the Opinion Research Center of Afghanistan provided a fascinating presentation here on conducting market research in Afghanistan.  The conversation was so fascinating that we decided to create a posting that exposes the challenges of conducting market research in Afghanistan--one of the hardest target research markets on the planet.

According to ORCA, one key challenge in research included an outdated census.  Although used by the government and international community and updated annually, the Census provides hurdles in verifying accuracy.  

Hamish Liu, Force Research

1.0 Introduction

After agreeing to the WTO's open door policy, the Chinese economy has grown at an ever increasing rate, attracting many foreign companies to invest in China, increasing the degree of competition among companies. The increasing competition made market research an important tool for companies, which has fueled the growth of the market research industry in China. In fact, within the last 5 years, the industry has experienced a constant growth rate of approx. 20-30%.

Worldwide market research budgets have been slashed.  Much of this is my own primary research in Asia, North America and Europe in the past 3 weeks speaking among colleagues and clients on-the-ground.  In the US, management has decimated their budgets often to zero; or US marketers have not released funds, even if they have been allocated budgets.  In Europe, budgets have been dramatically reduced, but not eliminated as in the US.  Asia and the Middle East have also reduced their market research budgets.  Clearly, corporate management has focused on survival in this horrific global recession.  But research shows that management should very closely look at when to resume their currently slashed and burned budgets.