Archive for the ‘Online Research’ Category
Friday, November 16th, 2007
Top names from the world of market research will reveal their latest findings about consumers, brand and business at this year’s Insight Show.
With 150 exhibitors, two days of conference talks and a series of free sessions in the Showcase Theatre, Insight Show 2007 will provide invaluable market intelligence to clients and researchers alike. The exhibition will showcase some of the hottest new research methods around, while the conference debates will cover many of the industry’s most pressing issues.
Amongst other topics, there will be an in-depth discussion of the future of online research – in particular making greater use of Web 2.0 technologies to create online communities that can be mined for insights.
The Insight show is in its 12th year and has become an essential date in the market research diary. Previous shows have consistently received positive feedback from those attending.
As the UK’s only dedicated exhibition and conference for the research industry, Insight Show 2007 provides a unique platform for the sharing of ideas throughout the industry. The show opens on Tuesday 20th November at Earls Court in London, and B2B International will be there – so feel free to drop by and have a chat with us if you’re planning on attending!
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Online Research, Market Research |
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Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
An interesting article from Seth Godin that discusses the differences in perceptions of very small samples compared with census surveys:
Thanks to the internet, surveys are a lot cheaper than they used to be. And the prevalence of roll-your-own amateur surveys means that we all have a lot to learn.
A survey can teach your customers or it can help you learn from them.
And it might be a real survey, or it could be a census.
The traditional understanding of a survey is that the goal is to LEARN from your population and that you will ask a scientific sampling, not everyone.
You can TEACH people with a survey, though, simply by asking them questions that help them notice things they never noticed before. “Do your prefer option A or option B,” might just be a way of getting people to notice that you even have an option B.
The very act of asking a question may change the experience for the customer. One small firm I know shows prospects a book of testimonials. Then they say, “I hope that when we’ve completed our job for you, you’ll be willing to write one too.” That seed increases the likelihood that people are going to be looking for something good to say, which increases the likelihood that they’ll enjoy the event.
Of course, this can spiral out of control pretty quickly. Push polling, in which faux pollsters call people up and ask them questions with patently false assumptions about competing candidates, for example, is just wrong.
But don’t forget the hybrid solution, which I call a Trident survey. “4 out of 5 dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum…” Hardly scientific, but publishing the results made dentists feel better about recommending the gum and made people with teeth happier about chewing it.
Which leads to the question of how many people you’re going to ask. Professional surveyors almost never ask everyone. They carefully select a representative sample (not so easy) and invest in each interview, thus scaling the results for the whole population. That’s how Nielsen works.
There are plenty of inexpensive ways to ask EVERYONE your question, though. That turns your survey into a census. A census only works, of course, when the response rate is close to 100%, because uneven response rates are going to skew your results.
Analytics is a form of census survey. You can track how everyone who visits your website behaves. Focus groups, on the other hand, are a poor use of just about anyone’s resources, because they are inherently not surveys at all. Without a skilled moderator, all you get is useless (but extremely vivid) data.
So, I guess I’d summarize the survey question by identifying four kinds of surveys that are worth doing:
Census surveys designed to teach your market, not you. The act of asking the question is a marketing tactic.
Public non-scientific surveys (or census surveys) in which publishing your results to the group helps change the group’s behavior.
Professional surveys designed to extract really meaningful data from a small group.
Census-based analytics in which you are extracting data about behavior from the entire group.
One last warning: round off. 98.2% is a bogus result. “Most” is a lot more accurate. The ultimate purpose of most traditional surveys is to make decisions. Alas, your audience is often the very worst group to help you make a decision. When you let a survey be presented as accurate, it becomes the silent decision maker in the room and leads, often, to mediocre products for the middle of the market.
For more information on sampling click here.
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Quantitative Research, Online Research, Market Research |
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Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
Continuing our post from yesterday, we look in further detail at current issues in Indian market research. This concluding part examines the role of technology as well as what the future holds for the industry in the country:
TechTalk
Ironically, India is a software powerhouse - but Indian market research has yet to catch up on the technological front. Markey research firms still use basic software tools, and that too is only on a need-to basis.
India is still face-to-face dependent, but that is changing gradually. CATI is prevalent but online is still a nascent area as internet penetration is low. Panel firms are already entering India in a big way, setting the stage for the e-wave to sweep across in due course.
The needs of market research agencies are still evolving in terms of newer applications; there seems to be no significant difference in the use of technology in the past and the present; evolution in technology is seen more in terms of version upgrades, automation and processing speed. The bulk of small and medium sized market research firms are still tied to the traditional tech tools and are yet to experiment with new modes, though a few have dabbled with the online platform. The big players on the other hand are moving forward with handheld terminals and mobile surveys.
The trend in technology in client organisations seem to have undergone a sea change; they are looking at shorter innovation cycles, real-time service of queries, transparent status reading systems, end-to-end interaction with consumers using enhanced technology; and technology is expected to take them a step ahead - from analysis to modelling.
Boom Boom: The way ahead
Client organisations are more receptive to applying DW & BI and Data Mining. These services will soon be embraced by the research organisations, leveraging on the availability of a good education pool. Just as product companies go through the evolution lifecycle, the research service industry also needs to upgrade and come up with newer client servicing options - like branded market research agencies setting up in-house research divisions for larger corporations (this will ensure data security, real time data available at every stage).
The future of Indian research from a market opportunity point of view is very bright simply given the growth in economy and the increasing need for consumer insights for sound decision-making. This includes Multinational corporations and the new Indian ventures on the retail, realty and hospitality front. What will determine success or failure is how the agencies can transition themselves and put in structures and technology in place to tap the opportunity.
Globalisation will continue to drive the research standardisation wave and the time to get involved with Indian research is… NOW.
This article originally appeared in the Oct/Nov issue of BIG times
Further details about conducting market research in Asian markets such as India can be found at the website of our Asian office, at www.b2binternational.com.cn.
Posted in
Online Research, Market Research India, Market Research China, International Market Research, Market Research, Esurveys, Articles |
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Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
Team playing, social networking, interactive virtual worlds and now…the avatar.
There is a sub-culture which is becoming main stream. A segment of the population who are currently spending as much time living in the virtual world as they previously did watching TV.
It starts with video games. They are becoming so realistic that they challenge Hollywood in entertainment quality and worldwide turnover. No longer are they restricted to being packaged goods. They can be downloaded from the net. Game playing on the net is enhanced by team playing. Like in the play ground, players have the opportunity to select their team and the opposition.
This has given birth to social networking. Participants who have a shared interest in the game can play with each other and against each other. It needs organisation and communication. They don’t have to live in the same country.
The power of the net has given rise to specific social networking sites. Bebo, Space Book and Facebook are examples. Facebook (www.facebook.com), because of interest from Microsoft, is now valued at $10 billion. 25 million now use Facebook to communicate with each other and share their experiences. It is a platform for good and evil.
Out of video games, their realism and social networking, we have the development of virtual worlds that are interactive. The key example is Second Life (Your World. Your Imagination at www.secondlife.com). A world in which you can determine your persona and demonstrate your desires without the constraints of the real world. You can be thin, sexy and an entrepreneur. Participants can buy and sell land, buildings and consumables using a currency called “Lindens” exchangeable with the US dollar. There are currently 10 million residents in Second Life and in the USA some have become “Linden” millionaires.
This development has not escaped the attention of branded goods manufactures. Nike, Adidas and advertising agencies such as Bartle Bogle and Hegarty in London are actively marketing in the virtual world.
This is not an activity restricted to teenagers or “nerds”. Anyone can participate and the mainstream population is engaging. Here in the UK there is a web based “soap opera” produced by Channel 4 (www.channel4/second_lives.com) using Second Life as a vehicle for entertainment.
A product of this world is the Avatar, an internet user’s representation of himself or herself whether in the form of a 3 dimensional model or a 2 dimensional icon. E-Box Software in the UK is developing an Avatar to represent a research interviewer and moderator. They not only ask questions but have a conversation with the respondent through the interview or discussion, it makes the on-line dialogue more human and inviting. In Second Life the Avatar can recruit as well as research.
We are now on the brink of research opportunities that we could not have imagined three years ago. Who knows where it will take us?
You can view the full article at www.aimri.net.
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Online Research, Market Research, Industry News |
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Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007
The B2B Blog has been live for around 18 months now. Although many blogs have been around a lot longer, it is the past 2 years that have seen the biggest increase in the number of blogs, as web 2.0 grows at a phenomenal rate. This article from Research World magazine, written by Poornima Vijayan, looks at different types of blogs that are out their.
Mining For A Living
Poornima Vijayan
Market Research World – May 2007-05-22
The inundation of facts, data, figures, opinions and insights that blogs deliver daily are unsystematic and chaotic, yet immensely valuable in the right context. To monitor and capture information from this chaos, we can use a combination of text mining, data mining, linguistic and statistical analysis, and latent semantic indexing techniques. A computer program hunts out blogs and explores the relevant content such as content and social network information, product likes and dislikes, recent purchases, opinions and attitudes which we can structure for more systematic insights.
Blogs give us a source of real-time information, but this means that market research firms need to develop an internal structure that can react at the same speed.
Here are some examples of the most popular blog models:
Advertising: as a general revenue model it’s clearly the most popular. Adsense has made it possible for even the most low-traffic, un-commercial blog to make money, but professional bloggers have taken contextual advertising to new heights with seriously targeted blogs and well integrated ads.
Affiliate Marketing: almost a subset of advertising but when well implemented this is marketing not advertising! A typical affiliate-marketing-based blog will either be a niche product/product groups or specialised audience blog and can generate sales by sending traffic to selected merchants via in-post text links, banners and special offers.
Consultancy: gurus in fields relevant to market research and consultancy can extend their reach and generate leads for their consultancy offerings by blogging on their areas of expertise. Pr, market research and marketing agencies as well as web-based services providers offer business blog consulting.
PR vehicle: Usually compliments existing models. Spreading the name of your company or products on a blog can create a great way for customers, potential customers, other bloggers and the press to interact with your company, its products or services.
Subscription: Market researchers can publish an ‘expert blog’, luring in subscribers by publishing a teaser with more detailed blog posts/reports or sections of the site available by subscription only.
Traffic: Make sure your titles and headlines convey what you want to say, and make it search-engine-friendly. Ways to drive more traffic are to comment on other successful blogs in similar or related areas, or to use incentives to encourage people to participate.
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Online Research, Market Monitoring / Tracking |
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