The Future Place Blog

The implication for the exposome for market research?

The Christmas edition of New Scientist and my attention was drawn to an article on the exposome [you can access it for free if you register at http://www.newscientist.com/]. The point of the article was that in terms of disease nurture appears to trump nature in most cases. Whilst the genes we are dealt have an impact on susceptibility, the environmental triggers may have a much bigger say in whether we are going suffer from conditions such as cancer.

Over the last few years the amount we know about the genome has increased massively, but attempts to predict health outcomes from genes has been much less successful than was hoped for. Whilst the knowledge of the genome has expanded, the knowledge of the environmental factors has hardly changed. However, this may all be about to change with a variety of wearable devices being developed that will monitor air, noise, pollution, radiation, temperature etc, with apps linking them to smartphones.

OK, I can see that the important use for these technologies will be in the area of human health and happiness, but I can also see that they might open some really interesting opportunities for market research. In addition to knowing about pollution and radiation, these devices may be able to collect brand related stimuli such as advertising, branding, messages etc.

I have felt for a long time that the days of asking people what they have done, for example in tracking studies, are numbered. I refer to this aspect of research as bean counting and expect that in the foreseeable future this information will be collected from a combination of loyalty card, credit card, smartphone, CCTV, geo-tagging, RFIDs, and the sorts of wearable devices being designed for exposome research (collectively I think of these as part of the electronic wake, the trail we leave behind us). These changes will be another nail in the coffin of the days of surveys (I have previously blogged that in the future there will be far fewer surveys, and I will be returning to this theme in the New Year).

The growth of analytics and the decline in MR

The chart below illustrates the level of interest in the terms market research and analytics.

This chart does not mean that market research is disappearing, nor that analytics is replacing market research, but it does illustrate a change in language and the focus of people searching the Internet via Google. Most established words and phrases show a decline over time on Google Insihts, a sort of entropy perhaps. The exceptions of those that grow rapidly, for example analytics in the chart above.

Amongst the key changes that have driven the growth in 'analytics' were Google  Analytics, Adsense, Adwords, Web Analytics, and Business Analytics.

Notes

1) Google Insights reports the volumes of specified search terms that people have entered into its search engine over the years.

2) The idea for the chart above came from a similar chart produced by Tom Anderson looking at Ngrams, Google's facility to search books.

Remember, the Internet is not safe!

Today I read a blog post talking about a new service from Toluna called SafeView, a method of reducing the risk of respondents copying and sharing information from market research studies. I think sensible measures to protect the intellectual property of clients are great, and the system from Toluna looks like a good addition to the tools available to discourage copying.

But I also think that at the same time we need to stress to clients that these approaches make it less easy copy, they do not prevent it. There is a constant battle between protection systems and copying systems, which tend to favour the copying technologies at any particular moment in time.

However, a more fundamental point is that most phones in the developed markets have cameras. Indeedm in the West about 50% of new phone sales are smartphones. The image below was taken on my iPhone and emailed within seconds to my blog. If it had been something really contentious I could have posted it to my Twitter account just as easily.

The big message for clients is that nothing on the Internet is truly safe. Major corporations and Governments do not seem able to keep their online stuff safe, so online market research will never be totally safe. If you need to test something truly confidential, do it face-to-face, put people through scanners to ensure they do not have phones or cameras (hand held scanners can be bought quite cheaply), check high quality photo-ID (such as drivers licences), pay them enough for it to count as a commercial contract to supply services, and get them to sign a form to say they will financially compensate you if they break their confidentiality contract. Then you would be pretty safe - the risk of your own staff leaking things would probably then be a bigger risk.

 

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PS I am not pretty much on leave until January 11, I will be checking things from time-to-time, and I will be working on my new book, but I will be staying off the net as much as I can.

Should the NewMR LinkedIn Group go Open?

LinkedIn have announced that LinkedIn groups can become open, see image below:

The question is whether this is a good idea for this group? My feeling is that it probably is suitable, with some doubts about whether non-member should be able to post. 

I have created a LinkedIn Poll to ask people what their views are.

What makes for a successful UK MR Agency?

Back in November the UK MRS published its highly respected annual league tables. The tables are very much a product of their time, they reflect a very difficult 2009 and the last full year of a Labour Government committed to spending large amounts of tax-payer’s money on market research (amongst other things).

The table below illustrates companies that showed a good level of growth from 2007 to 2008 AND good growth from 2008 to 2009, concentrating on the large and middle-sized agencies.

The last column are my observations (if you think I have described your agency wrongly, please let me know).

The following patterns seem to me to emerge from the results.

Data

The largest companies showing good growth were from data focused agencies. This reflects, IMO, a general trend in the MR industry, where the companies who work with loyalty data and other metrics are becoming bigger and bigger players in the MR business.

Government/Social

NatCen and Euromonitor have strong credentials in social research.

Specialists

Two of the largest growers specialise in pharma research, several of the other successful companies have clear areas of specialism.

People

The final group of agencies in my table I have called ‘People’. They tend to make a lot of fuss about their people, the awards they win, and they tend to position themselves as premium rather than as good value.

So What?

The first caveat is that any list of successes suffers from survivor bias. For example, there are plenty of data companies, or specialists, or social research specialists who did do well in the period from 2007 to 2009. Choosing a good niche is not enough to be successful.

The second caveat is that past success is no guarantee of future success. In 2010 a new Government were elected and they have embarked on the largest cuts in public spending in recent memory. This is likely to make times much more difficult for social research.

However, I do think that it is interesting that all the companies that had a good 2007 to 2009 were companies with a clear focus. I suspect that in difficult economic times it is the generalists who suffer most, and having a clear focus is one element (amongst many) of doing well.

However, to accept my analysis you will need to accept my definition of ‘People’ as being a specialism.

 

What can gaming teach market research?

“What can gaming teach market research?“ This was one of the questions that came out of the recent Festival of NewMR. At the Festival, two of the papers which elicited the greatest interest were on the topic of the potential of gaming for market research, namely Tom Ewing's Game On: How game mechanics are changing the consumer world, and how researchers can play and Brian Fine's "Serious Games" has a place in future MR-it will ensure respondent engagement, focus and therefore validity, and help with panelist retention. It will also increase participation from the elusive 18-24 year olds!

Since the Festival there has been a growing amount of discussion about what do we mean by gaming, is gaming relevant to all types of MR or just to gamers, what might the cost implications of gaming and MR be, and how many different ways might synergies be found? There has been a suggestion that there ought to be a conference on gaming and MR, perhaps a virtual conference and perhaps traditional event.

In order to gauge the interest in this field, and to assess the breadth of ideas, I am going to host a collaborative, virtual event on January 20, 2011. Rather than go for something structured, such as a conference, the idea is based on “bring and tell”. The event will be a discussion space of three hours, with up to ten people presenting their ideas briefly, combined with lots of discussion time.

If you have an idea you’d like to put forward at the Gaming and MR event, let me know by posting a comment on the NewMR.org page set up for this event. The first ten to register their interest will be allowed to present (subject to their ideas not being sales pitches and provided they can ensure that they will have the right sort of connection on the day).

If you would simply like to sign up for the event, visit the registration link here.

 

Statistics for Market Researchers - Introduction

I have started two new projects, a book looking at the how the "Public Sector can use Social Media to Engage and Consult", and a book on "Statistics for Market Researchers". Given the success I had in using a collaborative approach in writing The Handbook of Online and Social Media Research, I intend to adopt a similar approach with both of these books.

Initially, I shall be posting extracts here, as the project expands I shall adopt a more structure approach.

The first posting here set out the scope and vision for the book Statistics for Market Researchers.

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Introduction

Overview

This book is written specifically for market researchers. There are books on statistics for a wide range of purposes, for example for scientists, for managers, for biologists, for educational psychologists, and many more. This raises the questions why? Surely, you might think, there is only one set of statistics? However, there are very good reasons for  a book to be specific to a discipline and amongst the key benefits perhaps the two most important are:

• The many, many statistical techniques and tools, too many for most people to become familiar with and almost nobody can become skilled at all the possible options, so a specific discipline tends to focus on a sub-set of tools and techniques that match the needs of that discipline and which match the data that is typically available to practitioners in the field.

• In the ‘real’ world most practitioners have to make compromises between theory and practice. These compromises tend to vary by discipline, typically on pragmatic grounds. For example, quite often academic research the compromise is on the selection of research subjects (for example the large number of psychology and behavioural economics studies that use students as the subjects). Different compromises result in different techniques being selected and different rules of thumb being adopted.

In the light to of the views expressed above this book seeks to describe just those statistical and analytical techniques used by market researchers, and where appropriate flagging up where the technique is a mainstream approach (such factor analysis and cluster analysis) or only rarely used in market (such as the ANOVA).

Structure of the descriptions

For each of the techniques and tools covered in this book a template approach has been adopted, based on the following headings:

• What What is the technique seeking to do and (in an over-simplified way) how does it do it?
• Why What sort of problems might are resea4rchers using these technique typically seeking to solve with this technique?
• How Notes on how to set about using this technique?• Strengths and Weaknesses? A review of what the technique is good for, bad for.
• Theory What does the technique require in theory and how should its results be interpreted in theory.
• Practice How the technique is typically used, what compromises are commonly made by market researchers?
• Tips Suggestions about how to make the technique more likely to work, easier to use, and readily explained.

Structure of the Book

The book is divided into several Parts, covering:

1. Data. This part looks at the sort of data that are typically available to market researchers, such as proportions, counts, and scales, along with the descriptive statistics that are used with this sort of data.
2. Describing and Testing. This part looks at the ways that data are described, investigated, and tested by market researchers.
3. Analysis. This part looks at the various techniques used by market researchers to analyse data, for example factor analysis and cluster analysis.
4. Designing Fieldwork.This part of the book reviews the link between the problems a market researcher is seeking solve, the techniques the researcher plans to use, and the implications for the type of data that should be collected.
5. From Problems to Techniques. Most of the book looks at the statistical tools and techniques available to market researchers and shows how they can be applied to research problems. However, this section turns that process around and explores typical research problems and describes the techniques that are suitable to be used in solving them.

Caveat Emptor

Caveat emptor is a Latin phrase that means buyer beware. In the context of this book what it means is that the author is NOT saying that it is OK to break the rules, is NOT saying that mathematical assumptions can safely be disregarded, and is NOT saying that the techniques described in this book will reveal the truth. The book tends to concentrate not on ‘best practice’, but on typical practice. If you want know and understand best practice, it is probably necessary to enrol on a suitable course and learn about the underlying theory and mathematics.

 

 

Measuring the NewMR Buzz

During the Festival of NewMR, Nigel Legg of Trevanian Legg was monitoring the buzz and writing an update on his findings. You can access of copy of his report HERE.

Today Nigel gave a webinar which summarised his findings and engaged in a Q&A session. You can see a recording of the webinar by clicking on the video below.

 

Festival of NewMR – Where Next?

Wow! What a week it was. If you were able to catch the events of last week, especially the 22 hour Main Stage Webinar, I am sure you would have found it fun, engaging, and thought provoking (if you did attend the webinar you should have receive a link and password to allow you to access the slides and the recordings of the presentations).

Other key highlights included

The winning Poster by Tanvi Gupta

The winning video by Alison Macleod

 

Last two events from the Festival
Two items have been carried over from last week.

Nigel Legg’s Webinar on the buzz about NewMR. Nigel Legg conducted a study measuring the discourse about NewMR (click HERE). Nigel had planned to produce a webinar last week to talk about his findings, but due to technical problem this was not possible, so he will now be holding his webinar at 3pm (GMT/London) Wednesday 15 December. You can sign up to the webinar HERE.

The HOSMR Website. The handbook of Online and Social Media Research was published in August, but it was mostly written about a year ago and parts of it of getting out of date. Therefore I am launching a website (HOSMR.com) to complement the book. I will be holding a webinar to explore the best way to develop the webisite at 3:30pm (GMT/London) Thursday 16 December. You can sign up to my webinar by clicking HERE.

What Next?

We are currently conducting the post event survey and engaging in discussions including via the NewMR LinkedIn group.

However, we have made a few decisions already, including:

1. There will be a Festival in 2011, and it will last a whole week.
2. We are moving the event forwards to avoid the Christmas party rush, the end-of-year crush, and the disappearance from the grid of the US during Thanksgiving week.
3. It is likely that the Festival will take place in the week commencing 7 November or 14 November and we are seeking thoughts and suggestion (for example, we have noted that in 2011 Eid al-Adha is on November 6, so the week commencing 14 November may be best).
4. The week will include free events, charged for events, and third-party events.
5. We will be preparing a pack for potential sponsors over Christmas and we expect to be able to circulate this in January. If you are interested in being involved in sponsoring the 2011 project, please email [email protected]
6. The programme will include a mixture of collaboration and design.
7. The event will be designed to reach a global audience, with one of the key target groups being people who cannot attend ‘regular’ events.
8. The NewMR paradigm is intended to work with existing MR structures, e.g. organisations, groups, and companies. If somebody is already doing something, we don’t need to.

We have created a discussion on NewMR.Org to help define and create the 2011 event, if you’d like to make a comment or suggestion please join us HERE.