Malcom De Leo of NetBase rounded out the presentations from Net Gain 6.0. The title of his talk was “Understanding Sentiment Analysis: Methodology and Relevance to Market Research.” And, to be fair, he did outline what sentiment analysis is and how NetBase does it. But, in my opinion, his greater contribution to the conference was his rallying cry to get on board with social media.
Malcom began by asking: how many attendees trust social media as a data source for market research?
Answer: 5 out of close to 100 people.
Yet, how many attendees go on the Internet to read reviews and do product research when we want to buy a new tech product? Ah, this is the cultural conundrum we face with social media in market research, he said. We use social media in our private lives for decision-making, but the industry at large is wary of using the data for business decisions.
Some of the requisite social media stats to consider:
- Today there are 200M tweets each day, 750 million Facebook users and 100 million reviews online.
- Furthermore, 53% of people on Twitter recommend companies or products in their tweets.
- And social network usage grows year-after-year for all age groups.
But the market research industry largely holds fast to the belief that this data is not representative of their consumer target. For, Malcolm, there is no such thing as bad data. Data is just data.
In the world of market research we’re used to picking panelists, and putting them in a room and talking to them and writing surveys and trying to remove the bias, but there is always bias there. With social media, the data is just there for the taking. People are telling us the why’s of their behavior without us even having to ask them.
Social media is changing how we understand consumers. We now live in a consumer-to-business world. And the proof can be seen in examples of major brands that have changed course due to social media feedback.
Instead of worrying whether it’s quantitative or qualitative, get comfortable with living in a quali-quant world. Market researchers need to take part in leading the charge around social media listening at their companies. Researchers who are not on board with social media market research are simply going to be left behind at a time when companies are taking up listening in different pockets of the organization, with or without market research being on board.
Change is inevitable. How will you take advantage of it?
See also our other coverage of Net Gain 6.0:
Mike Brown of The Brainzooming Group spoke at today’s AMA virtual event, “Changing the Game: Innovations for Future Success”. Innovation is “a fundamental, valuable improvement relative to the status quo”, yet – despite the importance of innovation – many organizations erect barriers to it.
Mike sees 10 common roadblocks. He polled the audience about which barrier was most prevalent within audience members’ organizations:
- No direction (19% said it was the most prevalent barrier) – There’s a desire for innovation but no clear direction from management on how to innovate.
- No rocking the boat (15%) – The organization doesn’t want you to mess up the status quo: “make sure you don’t break anything!”
- No resources for innovation (13%) – The organization lacks dollars and resources to invest in something new.
- No process for innovation (13%) – There’s an inclination towards ad hoc innovation but no system to make sure you are benefiting from new ideas and productizing them.
- No measures (12%) – The business lacks the metrics or ROI for past innovations.
- No tomorrow (10%) – Many organizations, especially in the past few years, have a short-term focus that removes interest in innovation.
- No motivation (6%) – Signals from management and a culture resistant to new ideas result in no motivation for employees to innovate.
- No knack for innovation (5%) – Some companies have enjoyed a protected place in the market place and simply haven’t focused on innovation.
- No implementation success (5%) – No track record of successful innovation.
- No talent pool (1%) – An organization hasn’t tried to recruit people who are creative and innovative.
In one of the nicest uses of a poll that I’ve seen in a webinar, Mike then reprioritized his presentation content to cover the five biggest barriers to innovation, as voted on by the audience.
No Direction
“Successful business strategy is about actively shaping the game you play, not just playing the game you find.” – Adam Brandenburger & Barry Nalebuff
The basic question is “What are we trying to achieve?” But that’s not enough – adding a constraint can free up creativity. Tesco wanted to become the number 1 grocery store in South Korea, without adding locations. That constraint suggested “virtual stores” – photographs on subway walls of products with QR codes, so that people could order from their mobile phones. NASA wants to replace the Space Shuttle, while using only existing technology. A fundamental question that rules out some approaches narrows the scope while spurring creativity.
No Rocking the Boat
“Every story starts with a problem.” – Jon Favreau
Some companies are afraid of upsetting the status quo. When working with such companies, Mike find two lines of questioning that help focus the discussion.
- Cash or crash? If your organization is widely successful in 36 months, how did it get there? If your organization is out of business in 36 months, what happened?
- Who competes with you for the benefits and value you create? Who has the skills but isn’t in the market today? Certainly, 10 years ago Blockbuster, Borders, CBS, Nokia, Sony and Tower Records wouldn’t have identified Apple as a competitive threat.
No Resources
“There’s no quote for ‘No Resources’ because we didn’t have any resources to find one!” – Mike Brown, comedian
One way to address the lack of resources is to free up resources by diverting them from tasks that your company should no longer be doing. Of course, getting people to admit they are spending time and money on tasks they shouldn’t be doing is hard. To arrive at this more tangentially, ask:
- What are we doing that creates little or no value for our external or internal customers?
- What is close to adding value? (The fundamentals are there but the resources or attention aren’t.)
- What are we doing that is creating incredible value?
No Process
“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” – Linus Pauling
Many criticize the value of brainstorming. A common criticism is that it is a low yield process and the majority of ideas never see the light of day. In Brainzooming’s work, they see that 8% to 15% of the ideas generated in ideation sessions have near-term value. While this sounds like an indictment, when you apply those percentages to fewer ideas, you’ll see that 5 ideas barely gets you 1 idea with value, while 100 ideas will get you 15. Addressing idea and innovation procedurally is key to success.
No Measures
“Be so good that they can’t ignore you.” – Steve Martin
Finally, make sure your metrics menu include both traditional quantitative measures (# of ideas, % sales, ROI) as well as qualitative measures (buzz, success stories, learnings).
Want to learn more? Mike will walk you through all 10 of the NOs to innovation in his free ebook.
At Net Gain 6.0, Adam diPaula of Sentis Market Research began his presentation with these two quotes:
- “It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.” – Steve Jobs
- “Most of the time people have no idea why they’re doing what they’re doing, so they’re going to try to make up something that makes sense.” – Clotaire Rapaille
Well, market research is largely about explicitly measuring attitudes, intentions and beliefs by directly asking about them. However, these measures are limited. They rely on conscious thought and deliberation, which are not actually good at predicting what people feel and do. Implicit measures, on the other hand, tap preferences and feelings indirectly, outside of conscious thought.
In fact, two modes of mental activity – called System 1 and System 2 – affect judgment and choice. System 1 is automatic and non-conscious, compared to System 2, which is deliberate and conscious. Implicit measures tap the automatic associations that we make between concepts (i.e., young and weak vs. youth and beauty). Many of our preferences and choices are the result of System 1 thinking. Yet, market research tends to rely on System 2 thinking to report on these preferences.
Some examples from academic literature:
- Divorce rates: John Gottman at the University of Washington predicted divorce rates using non-verbal measures, based on brief interactions between couples. The measures were indicators of contempt (eye rolling and sneering) as well as stonewalling (exhibited through periods of silence and monosyllabic mutterings).
- Malpractice litigation: Mahzarin Banaji predicted patient malpractice litigation based only on a surgeon’s tone of voice during 40-second audio clips of patient/surgeon interactions. Multiple judges rated the surgeons’ tones for characteristics such as dominance and lack of concern.
- Choosing a career and place to live: People’s names can predict career choice and home cities: people named Dennis or Denise are more likely to be dentists, while people named Louis are more likely to move to St. Louis! This is indicative of implicit egotism – the non-conscious tendency to prefer things associated with oneself.
- Choosing a political candidate: Bertram Gawronski of the University of Ontario used an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to predict candidate choice among undecided voters. In this exercise, voters categorized images of candidates together with good and bad words as quickly as possible. This type of test reports automatic mental associations, measured through the response time to categorization tasks (the faster the response, the more automatic the association).
Each of these studies predicted outcomes by measuring the influence of mental processes outside of conscious awareness rather than by asking direct questions.
Here are some situations in which implicit measures are useful:
- Making quick judgments and decisions (i.e., shopping in a hurry)
- Making choices when many alternative exist (i.e., many competitors in a product category)
- Identifying feelings and attitudes formed earlier in life (i.e., behavior toward social groups and brand attitudes)
- Determining whether System 1 or System 2 will have a stronger impact on formation of feelings and preferences (i.e., measuring the impact of appeals that target emotions)
Expect to see far more of implicit measurement in the future.
Of the 1,427 unique links shared on the #MRX community in the past two weeks, here are some of the stories that were most retweeted.
Social Media & MR
- How Should Social Media Be Used In Market Research? – Michaela Mora of Relevant Insights examines the accuracy, representativeness and applications of social media market research.
- How Authentic are We Online? – Edward Appleton examines some of the reasons consumers are more authentic and more calculating in their online activity, prompting interesting comments from Annie Petit, Tom Ewing and others.
Gamification & MR
- Gamification 101 - From Theory to Practice – Writing for Quirks, Jon Puleston of GMI provided a detailed introduction to his research on research into transforming survey questions by gamifying them. If you’ve yet to hear Jon present, this is a must-read.
- Taking MR to the Next Level – Brian Tarran of Research interviews Rajat Paharia, founder of gamification firm Bunchball, on how other industries are gamifying systems—and the lessons that research can learn from that.
Impact on the MR Occupation
Paul Dumbowsky of Idea Vibes discussed crowdsourcing for innovation at the Online Research Methods conference in London last week. Why is crowdsourcing important? Paul quoted Yochai Benkler of Harvard: “The world is becoming too fast, too complex and too networked for any organization to have all the answers inside.”
When does crowdsourcing work well?
- “When looking for expertise from a range of sources,” Paul said. Crowdsourcing and social product development open up innovation to internal and external input. Crowdsourcing is especially useful for reaching what Paul calls “the emerging expert”: people outside the organization who know a lot about a particular subject. Such people are often online community leaders, product advocates or heavy contributors to the conversations that happen on social networks, forums, blogs, wikis, news sites, communities and other less expected online sites.
- “When funds and/or time are limited.” Especially when time is limited. For instance, BMW’s Virtual Innovation Agency received over 4,000 submitted ideas for products and designs within its first week.
- “When your target audience is largely online.” Online participation is still less for older age groups, for example.
When it comes to developing product roadmaps, the discovery and exploration phases can be augmented by crowdsourcing and social media research. Some of the benefits:
- “Surfaces new perspectives”
- “Invites participation from nontraditional sources”
- “Infuses energy into the process of ideation”
- “Empowers people”
- “Builds engagement and relationships with new audiences”
Paul cited the traditional examples of idea communities – Salesforce IdeaExchange and Dell IdeaStorm – as sources of input for guiding product strategies, delighting existing customers and winning prospects over when they see the openness of the development process.
Paul went on to discuss two organizations that take their product roadmap to the ultimate end, sourcing the products themselves from the crowd. For instance, all the T-shirts on Threadless were designed by contributors—and voted for by the community. Quirky, an all-in-one product development shop for inventors, will take sourced inventions through research and development to manufacture and sales to their community (who votes on which ideas to develop).
Paul suggested the following best practices for using crowdsourcing and social media for innovation:
- “Research customers and prospects where they live.” Find the conversations that are already happening and join in.
- “Develop a culture of collaboration.” Employees and the crowd have distinct roles to play – you can’t replace employees with the crowd.
- “Implement the right social technology to get the job done.” Choices range from social networks like Facebook to proprietary idea communities from a range of vendors.
- “Offer the right incentive.” Idea communities need to be clear in their terms of service about what compensation will be provided for submitted ideas, if any. Most communities – including Salesforce and Dell – don’t provide any compensation: having better products is the reward for contributors. Both Threadless and Quirky are exceptions, taking the lion’s share of the revenue produced from the ideas they source.
- “Let conversations happen in the open.” However, don’t be afraid of moderation – monitor contributions to make sure nothing offensive is posted. Be a “benevolent dictator”—let the community self-police.
- “Be crowd friendly on an ongoing basis.” Make sure to support a diversity of participation and to make “outliers” feel welcome.
Do all this, Paul said, and you will “capitalize on valuable customer and prospect insight.”
Bernie Malinoff of Element54 presented on the “Yin and Yang of Gamification” at yesterday’s NetGain 6.0. Here’s a recap:
Most online surveys are boring. Survey grids are toxic for consumers and addictive for researchers. The first step, according to Bernie, is accepting that we have a problem!
In the era of the market research technology space race, there are a lot of shiny new technology toys that are tempting to use. But, says Bernie, it's one thing to embrace new technology; it's another to know how and when to use it.
For example, just because you can design flash question in your survey platform or trick out your survey with gamified questions doesn’t mean you should. When it comes to survey research, we as market researchers are well aware that asking the same question in different ways will result in different answers. In one example from his work, Bernie found 40% variance in answers based solely on how questions were worded. Welcome to the world of multiple realities.
What is a researcher to do? Approach survey gamification from the standpoint of purposeful innovation. Apply game mechanics – or any survey innovation – with a goal in mind. In a study in which he was exploring the effect of question formats on straightlining, Bernie discovered that, by changing a grid question on brand awareness to a flash question and adding in some feedback on whether respondents get the answer right can fully eradicate straightlining.
Gamification, when done right, increases enjoyment and engagement for consumers. But there are tradeoffs:
- Norms: Tracking studies are big business for large research agencies. But all you need to do is blow on a tracker, and the results will change. Do you really want to risk your tracker my introducing new question types? There is a practical reality around the types of surveys in which we can introduce gamification.
- Scalability: Survey programming at large research agencies is designed to be scalable – meaning, not a lot of variability in question and answer types. Gamification requires an investment that can be challenging for many firms to justify. Survey programmers are asked to be creative and think, but at the same time it’s a production process. Getting creative with a survey comes with an operational cost.
Can creativity and scalability co-exist? You can’t replace fundamentals with software. And this goes back to Lenny’s presentation on the future of market research. More creative surveys require more creative thinking from a traditionally analytical profession.
Here are opening statements from a discussion on research ethics and privacy at Online Research Methods in London this morning. (Quotes should be considered paraphrases.)
Arno Hummerston of Nurago: “Two main things that worry me: the first one is cookie legislation. I’m flabbergasted with how little people seem to be taking cookie legislation seriously, and I don’t see or hear anything about it, especially in the research industry. I did a straw poll in my company and got a resounding silence on the impact for research. Its unbelievable to me that people aren’t worrying about it. This legislation will mean you can’t use cookies across web sites, which means research won’t know if someone is taking a survey on a different site. It mandates opt in, and it will have a huge negative impact for advertising tracking. The second area that really worries me is that we have so many companies in the industry that seem to be playing fast and loose on privacy. We at our company observe how people use the Internet with their permission, but we are competing with companies tracking people without their consent. What worries me is that the press will get ahold of what other people do and that will taint what I do. TNS Gallup last year is where the press crucified the industry for no good reason. There are good reasons for them to crucify us that they haven’t found out about yet.”
Barry Ryan of MRS: “In the real world, ideas of consent and transparency and voluntary participation are easily observed when getting people to take surveys. But online people leave their moral compasses at the door, for some reason: for instance, researchers passing themselves off as patients on sites such as Patients Like Me. People would never do that in real life but because they can do it online they do. The law applies in ways that are unexpected online. We don’t inhabit a world of data (assuming this is not the Matrix and I’m not a brain in a jar!). In the real world, when we use observation, counting people in and counting people out, we do that without worry. In the Matrix, everything is data: when you see someone, you are not seeing someone, you are processing their personal data. So issues of ‘what is personal data’ become important. You can connect much online activity to real people. When monitoring online or collecting online you have to think about what information you are collecting, how long do you want to hold that data, can you remove people who want to be removed from your data set, and so on.”
Tom Ewing of Brainjuicer: “Having moved from a job that was more theoretical to one that is more client facing, what worries me practically speaking is when researchers are on a deadline, how do our guidelines carry over into the mindset of getting things done: what can we do, what can’t we do? Given this, how do we educate researchers? Pragmatically what are the ramifications for us of not observing the rules? Passive observation is a way to go instead of self-reported data for better quality on certain issues. We can’t let these concerns freeze our ability to innovate.”
Paul Child of Join the Dots presented an EasyJet case study at the Online Research Methods conference this morning in London. He began by quoting Claude Debussey: “Music is the space between the notes.” Similarly, a community is much more than the topics or questions you ask.
Communities of course are more than just asking questions: there’s deduction, observation and projection. For EasyJet, communities are part of a larger landscape of research. Join the Dots works with other agencies used by EasyJet to make connections between community insights and other data: CRM data, flight stats, sales data, online analytics, consumer attitudes and market trends.
The community helps in three main ways:
- What we already know – Join the Dots created imaginary postcards from consumers representing key trends. Rather than do a new study on the boarding process for a new services executive, for instance, Join the Dots leveraged past research to brief them.
- What we get with perspective – The community provides the ability to talk about the customer “in the round,” rather than just about isolated aspects. Join the Dots synthesized customer satisfaction data with information from the community to paint a picture of how consumers viewed the boarding process.
- What we observe – Join the Dots asked community members to simply record what they experienced on a flight and then contrasted it with observational data.
“We want to get off the hamster wheel of asking the same questions in the same way measuring things that don’t need to be measured again,” said Paul. “Let’s get off the hamster wheel and move forward across the open country!”
The community is four years old and Join the Dots and EasyJet still have much planned:
- Getting closer to the inflight experience, using mobile data capture and in-crew observation. This raises practical issues with airport security, flight safety (when you can’t use a mobile phone) and international roaming charges.
- Assessing changes regarding the brand. EasyJet has undergone a significant amount of change and has shifted marketing from pricing to a more emotional connection with its travelers, emphasizing the great things that happen in consumers’ lives after they step off the plane.
- Understanding needs for the EasyJet mobile application, used for shopping for flights.
- Adding customers from new countries, as EasyJet expands it service across Europe.
“We’ve reached a stage now with the Community that we’re able to leverage maximum value out of it by exploring beyond just asking questions. When I’m asked for the view of the customer the first port of call is the we already have the intelligence to hand, and the community is a key part of this,” according to Shaendel Hallett, head of insight at EasyJet.
In summary, whether for communities or any research process:
- “Look beyond the ‘research’ data you collect.”
- “Constantly revisit your assumptions…things change.”
- “Make sure you’re always connected to the people.”
Indivar (Indy) Kushari of Ipsos ASI presented “The Lizard Made You Do It! Uncovering Our Response To Ads Using Biometrics” at NetGain 6.0. Here’s a recap:
The lizard brain references our primitive brain, where our emotions live. Everything we do depends on the emotions that a stimulus generates. The difference between emotion and reason, according to neurologist Donald B. Caine: “emotion leads to action, while reason leads to conclusions.”
Ninety five percent of brain processing occurs below conscious awareness, and what we say in terms of how we feel about a stimulus is only 10% of how we actually feel about it. So, we need to better understand what we can’t say. One of the ways that Ipsos ASI is doing this is through neuroscience – a method that helps us understand the full emotional experience.
Four types of neuroscience:
- Facial coding: Scientifically breaks own people’s facial reactions into emotional reactions. These reactions may even be unknown to the respondent. However, the interpretation depends on who is coding the responses.
- fMRI: The full monty of neuroscience, in which your brain reactions are measured from all angles. However, an fMRI machine is not comfortable for respondents, and it’s not very scalable due to cost.
- EEG: Tries to understand the brain using nodes connected to the head. However, because this method largely delivers information about cognitive responses, which it what surveys already collect.
- Biometrics: Focuses on how emotions are experienced through the automatic nervous system of the body: skin, heart rate, breathing and motion. Every emotion is a combination of these four reactions, at a granular level.
Innerscope and Ipsos ASI use biometrics for ad testing research, in which responses for all four of these systems are coded at every second of watching an ad stimulus. The method involves wearing a belt around the solar plexis, as well as finger sensors; a stable sample requires about 30-35 respondents. The ads to be tested are embedded with other contemporary ads and movie trailers, as well as a mood reel – an emotional warm-up that allows researchers to calibrate responses prior to viewing the ad.
Case Study on the iPad 2 launch Ad
In May 2011, Ipsos ASI and Innerscope tested the iPad 2 launch ad as part of a study on tablet advertising. Ipsos did 200 interviews using its ad testing methodology of combined qualitative and quantitative research. The survey indicated that the ad was well-liked and appealed creatively to an audience. It did a great job of setting itself apart from other ads. However, shift in purchase intent as a result of seeing the ad was minimal, as was functional appeal (the feeling that the ad shared new and different information). Ipsos wanted to better understand the low performance on these measures, but consumers had a hard time articulating this in focus groups. Enter biometrics.
The biometrics data showed that consumer engagement in the ad went up when talking about people’s belief systems around technology, declined when discussing the specs of the technology (faster, better, lighter) and then sloped back up when discussing what the technology delivers (delight, magic, a leap forward). The “branding moment” at the end of the ad took place at the highest level of emotional engagement. And this is significant because the highest level of an engagement curve has been correlated to channel changing behavior and set-top box commercial ratings. Furthermore, the size of the largest area of the curve while engagement is going up indicates whether or not the ad generates an emotional journey, which has been correlated with predicting online buzz.
The conclusion: This ad talked about the emotional payoff more than any other ad, and the payoff was evident in the biometrics study. The low functional appeal of the ad helped reinforce a focus on emotional benefits and was actually a differentiator for the brand.
As for what this means for biometrics, this case study demonstrates that biometrics is a strong indicator of the holistic emotional power of the ad. However, it does not deliver brand-related metrics (purchase intent, functional appeal) by itself. Instead, biometrics can provide diagnostics to help understand the numbers.
Lenny Murphy of GreenBook kicked off today’s 6th Annual MRIA NetGain Conference, with his view of the future of market research. Here’s a recap:
From the book Leading Edge Market Research, published by Simon Chadwick and Ian Lewis, the new role of market research will have four parts: Consult, Synthesize, Tell a Story, Take a Stand. Currently, says Lenny, companies don't see this happening in the industry, citing insights leaders at leaders at PepsiCo, P&G, Coca-Cola, and Millward Brown.
Along with new technologies and the demand for cheaper, faster, better results, the drivers that will push this change include:
- New competitors: New competitors encompass a broad swath of companies, from marketing agencies, business intelligence, DIY and social media, to name a few. These are new players from outside market research that do what market research does in terms of data collection. Data collection is a commodity; lots of new entrants see that and offer low-cost alternatives to clients.
- Client demands: Clients want ROI, integration of insights across multiple data points, implications and outcomes. At the end of the day, they want suppliers to tell them how to buy more of what they are selling.
- Consumers: Consumers want to feel engaged and socialized. They want to feel valued and get rewards. The success of Zynga and Rovio (valued at 1 billion) tell us something about how hungry consumers are to engage.
- Human capital: The above drivers point to a demand for an evolved skill set. For example, there is a struggle to fill new roles for data analytics.
Lenny outlines three different stages of industry transition:
- Traditional business model for MR: Focus on data points, methodological rigor, objective reporting, low touch, production models, slow to adapt to technology, process vs. people, local market focus
- Transition model: Data Rivers, methodologically curious, narratives and implications, high touch, deep partnerships, embracing technologies, people vs. process, regional focus
- Future model: Data oceans, methodologically agnostic (it’s about finding the right data points to prove the value to our clients), narrative, implications and outcomes, high touch, integration with client organizations, leading technology, people driven, global focus starting at the big picture and drilling down to the local point of view.
A Sneak Peek at Forthcoming GRIT Findings
To back up his vision of the future, Lenny presented a sampling of findings from the latest GRIT study, which has not yet been released in full. The data show that MR firms are already well aware of the change that’s coming. Twenty five percent of the 268 suppliers in the study are positioning themselves as business consultants, and 35% are positioning themselves as strategic consultants. What remains to be seen is whether suppliers can deliver on this positioning. Further findings of interest:
- The biggest growth areas for the industry: Online communities, social media, eye tracking, mobile surveys and text analytics are the top emerging techniques that research suppliers say they use today. In 2012, two thirds say they’ll be using online communities and social media market research; over half will use mobile surveys.However, mobile is a ‘how,’ not a ‘why.’ It’s something that market research suppliers have to become comfortable with as a method for collecting data, but it’s not a sole differentiator that will get a deal with a client. Again, clients are looking for partners who can give strategic business guidance with the data, regardless of where it comes from.
- Recruiting trends: Living in the river of data will require becoming a data synthesizer rather than a project manager. This shift translates into substantial training and new job descriptions. For example: responsibilities will include mining a wide range of information sources, supplementing this data with research studies as needed, and then applying business skills and consulting knowledge to make it actionable.The researcher of the future is a futurist, journalist, strategic, analyst, consultant and anthropologist – all at the same time. In the GRIT study, social media experts, marketing strategists and data integration experts were at the top of the list that respondents in both the supplier and client side plan to hire in 2012.
- Defining the market research firm of the future: Lenny’s forecast: telephone and web-based surveys decline dramatically; surveys become shorter; social media MR and MROCs flourish. Overwhelmed by data, but lacking insight, corporations turn to data-insights consultants that analyze multiple data streams. MR firms will struggle to keep up with this new data-driven insights industry, as the lines between traditional MR and new entrants such as management consulting, CRM, strategic foresight and predictive analytics begin to merge.
The proof of this new paradigm? New entrants into the latest GRIT Top 50 Most Innovative Market Research Firms include companies that look, feel and act like agencies (FireFish, Flamingo, MESH planning, Join the Dots, Research through Gaming). Their positioning focuses on how to solve clients' issues first, but with the right stable of tools to accomplish that. They are not dependent upon data collection infrastructure or specific technologies overall. The strategic consulting and business implications drives the revenue.
This presentation was a great outline of what’s to come with the full release of the GRIT study. And, on a selfish note, I was pleased to see Affinnova move up in the rankings to 12th on the list!
