InSites Blog

Media Marketing (Belgian Marketing and Communication magazine) is searching for the most innovative companies in Belgium. Yesterday they announced their nominees and InSites Consulting is one of them!

The MM Marcom Innovation Ranking composes a top 10 of the most innovative companies and initiatives. These are the 9 other nominees (in alphabetical order) next to InSites: Alfacam, Bananas, Boondoggle, Brandialog, Deepblue, Good Deal (SBS), Kinepolis, mortierbrigade, Netlog.

Don’t miss the magazine’s September issue on September 15, where they will publish the number one. We’ll of course keep you posted on the final ranking.

The Rotterdam branch of InSites Consulting is conquering space with a September move to larger premises. The change of address is the result of our rapid growth in the Netherlands. The new office has capacity for over twenty staff and includes space to hold events for 100 attendees.

Space for work and events
Since opening in August 2008, InSites Consulting’s Rotterdam office has expanded from two to ten members of staff. The new site will let the team breathe again, since it creates room for over twenty people and provides an ideal location for our seminars and workshops.

On the opening night on 9 September we invite contacts across the industry to celebrate the move. The Director General of ESOMAR, Finn Raben is one of the confirmed speakers to welcome the attendees. (More information on http://www.insites.eu/newoffice)

“Since opening in Rotterdam, we’ve been running just to keep up with demand for research and consultancy” says Kristof De Wulf, Managing Partner. “The new office will give us space to work efficiently and gives us the capacity to continue recruiting in future”.

On a mission to teach
The features of the new office are intended to benefit the entire Netherlands research community, Ramon Pardo, Research Director points out. “An important part of our mission is to help researchers learn new approaches and practices they can use in their work. Our events are a vital aspect of that work, and the new office, with its large auditorium, will allow us to hold bigger and better events”.

The new office is just off the main A20 highway, giving easy access from the rest of the Netherlands.

New address:
InSites Consulting
Barbizonlaan 45
2908ME Capelle a/d IJssel
The Netherlands

Tom De Ruyck, Senior R&D Manager at InSites Consulting has been accepted for the ESOMAR Research Superstar. On Tuesday 14 September Tom will present his submission at the ESOMAR General Conference.

The ESOMAR Research Superstar is a chance for researchers to show they can present themselves in an engaging, fun, entertaining and passionate way, getting their message across succinctly and in an easy to understand manner.

Tom’s outline will talk on why researchers should become dj’s. Got you triggered? Find out more about the Research Superstar at the ESOMAR website or contact Tom De Ruyck.

…the Mappiness iPhone App, created by George MacKerron and Susana Mourato of the Department of Geography & Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

The main aim of the application is to be able to link happiness to location. Concretely, the app ‘beeps’ you as a user once (or more) a day to ask how you feel, and additionally the people you’re with, and what you are doing. Using the GPS data from your iPhone, your happiness scores are linked to a location. Also, the noise level in your surroundings is measured by using the built-in microphone in your iPhone. All this data is then sent to the database for analysis by the researchers.

So why am I so enthusiastic about this?

• Because happiness and location are straightforward variables. They are easy to understand, and the ins & outs are explained in a fool-proof manner.
• Because I’d like to know this too! In the list of questions that have puzzled humanity for ages, the question “what makes one happy” is probably right on top. Every step in the direction of an answer is one I’d like to witness. Furthermore, knowing the answer on my individual level (what context makes me happy) is extremely relevant for me. This app provides me an experience, a very relevant issue for the market researcher of the future.
• Because they clearly explain what’s in it for them too. The communication on their website is top notch. These people are trying to take research about happiness forward, and give me a comfortable feeling about my privacy. I can get out whenever I want, and can even get my data erased upon request. The way they communicate on their website is an example for all research agencies.
• Because it’s easy data collection. Every single response is valid, as data is aggregated. Easy in, easy out, and every single piece of data is useful, unlike traditional research where a whole questionnaire needs to be completed before the respondent’s data is included.
• Because context is key. As stated in a previous post, context is an indispensable part of research in the future. This app shifts the balance almost completely from content to context; 1 key variable (happiness) with a lot of interesting context variables around it. I especially like the noise level idea.
• Because the possibilities for ‘upscaling’ this are endless. Once we know who people are with and where they are, why not ask which brands they interact with? What clothes they wear? What the weather is like? How much money they have in their wallet? …

To sum it up, this app is simple, relevant, credible, easy, gives contextual information and has a large potential for future growth. This is one application I will keep in mind when discussing observational research here at InSites Consulting.

Follow me on twitter via @eliasveris

Having almost three years of experience in offline qualitative research I have to say I was curious, but also a bit wary, to do focus groups online when I started working for InSites Consulting a few months ago.

Would the people that participated be as open?
Would the insights be as deep?
And would the client feel as satisfied with the output?

It came out that all these questions could be answered with a definite YES.

1. Participants appeared to be very open and spontaneous in their answers. Perhaps it’s the relaxed setting of being at home and the anonymity that causes people to really open up and share their views on things.
2. The depth of the learnings also doesn’t suffer by doing group discussions online. You can use exactly the same projective techniques and the same exercises to stimulate imagination and creativity. We use a special online platform that allows showing all kinds of visual stimuli to participants to enable these techniques. Next to that we work with 8 participants in each session which is surprisingly easy to manage online. This of course generates additional input.
3. Finally, as for the clients, I have been pleasantly surprised by their enthusiasm about our approach and our platform. They are able to follow the sessions from home and post additional questions to me to ask the participants if needed.

Is it then really such a success story? Well… I would say yes. In my opinion there is actually hardly any difference between offline and online research and next to that, all ages (young and old) can participate and geographical boundaries are crossed effortlessly.
Of course I cannot unravel facial expressions from consumers, but smiley’s appear to do the job just as well. I don’t have a flip chart to write on, but now I just use the white board for that purpose and to show all kinds of material.

For me it’s been a great experience so far, that’s why I’m planning to take online qualitative research forward…

Want to read more? Check out our ESOMAR award winning paper.

The information for generating good consumer insights is out there! The challenge for researchers and clients is to adequately tap into this vast amount of data. New methods bring a lot of uncertainty and debate. Many incumbent researchers have talent but lack the contemporary skills to make the best out of the new information world. They revert to breaking down whatever touches the fundamentals of what they are used to. If both client and agency researchers want to keep pace with the latest developments in gaining consumer insights they need to adapt their skills at several levels:

1. Design & data generation. Consumers generate most information from experiences which are relevant to them. Establishing rapport, being good entertainers, journalists, ethnographers … are becoming at least as important as interviewing.
2. Technical & analytical understanding. Of course it does not mean statistics are no longer valuable. In this era of data overload the researcher of the future will actually need good statistical, software and database understandings.
3. Consultative research. The ultimate goal of research not changed though: insight generation for better decisions. But the story told through research needs to be an experience for decision makers as well. Triangulation, multi-medial and short powerful messages are key!

A lot of the evolution of our skills is in triggering, observing and sensing the information consumers self-generate daily. That’s why researchers have to become DeeJays! DJ’s play and select songs for an audience from their wealthy music collection. The successful ones provide a creative mix, fit to the mood which makes the crowd go wild. They are the cool new super stars, not necessarily the original musicians. What makes DJ’s successful is that they feel the audience and have the guts to experiment without forgetting tradition: they re-use old riffs and blend it with contemporary elements.

So how can researchers take advantage?

• Involve the young. Surround yourself with ambitious digital natives or Gen Y’ers. They will prevent foreign thinking and take things forward.
• Develop partnerships between research agencies, suppliers and end-clients that share a passion for innovation. Experiment with new methods via R&D projects and explore the limits and possibilities of the new.
• Publish and share the results and experiences in all openness. Instead of bluntly downplaying the new, all stakeholders learn much more from directness and the young talent will be seduced by what we do as an industry too.
• Develop a major and a minor specialization in your skill set. The contemporary researcher will be less of a specialist over the course of his/her career, but a fusion researcher blending different skills.

As such, we will build end-client expertise as well as research agency knowledge and prevent from becoming a mere product of the past. It means we need to take a risk, but if we do it jointly it will hamper any unrealistic expectations. Only by adhering to such principles we can make true improvements, develop talent and ultimately prevent the crowd wants to “hang the DJ”.

(Article by Prof. Dr. Niels Schillewaert and Tom De Ruyck, featured in Research World – Issue 22)

Next month ESOMAR will reward their ESOMAR Excellence Award for Best Paper at the General Conference in Athens. The award is given to the best paper from ESOMAR conferences throughout the year that best reflects the broad aspects and challenges faced by the market research industry today.

This year InSites got nominated with no less than three papers!

• Health 2.0: Social media as the central nervous system for learning about epilepsy (by Prof. Dr. Niels Schillewaert)
• Even better than the real thing: Understanding generation Y’s definition of ‘authenticity’ for the Levi’s brand (by Joeri Van den Bergh and Tom De Ruyck)
• The Longest day: Cultural differences in CSR (by Tom De Ruyck, Niels Schillewaert, Michael Friedman and Annelies Verhaeghe)

We’re already looking forward to the award ceremony.

Want to find out more about the nominated papers? Contact our Marketing department at Marketing@insites.eu

The world is in constant evolution… consumer behavior is evolving rapidly… but are our methods, techniques, research designs and skills evolving accordingly?

Contemporary Consumers demand for Contemporary Research Methods
Response rates in traditional research projects are in decline, as well as the good image of our work among research participants. As an answer to this trend, the market research industry wishes to move from ‘transactional’ to more ‘relational’ types of research. Researchers need to (re)bond companies with consumers (our participants) through more ‘connected’ research methodologies.

Additionally, we may state that the context in which consumers live has changed drastically during the last decade. It has affected their behavior accordingly. The contemporary consumer is:

• Empowered – Today’s consumers are more eager to declare their opinion (even if not asked for it) and make or break brands and products on a scale never seen before. They also choose their own tools and moments to do so.

• Cosmopolitan – Consumers’ online and offline lifes are blending, they use different multi-media interchangeably (cfr. life caching), are always on the go and create their very own ‘cocktail’ of attitudes. That’s why they have become more difficult to grasp!

• a Co-creator – Today, consumers want to interact with marketing professionals. More than half of the Europeans want to co-create products/services with companies.

• Emotional – For far too long, emotions and social behavior have been concealed behind closed doors and ignored in favor of rationality and efficiency (Hill, 2009). Today we are more aware of this & tapping into these dynamics has become ‘easier’ through new media (e.g. social networks & communities) and research technologies (e.g. text analytics & implicit measurement tools).

Taking into account this new reality, we are convinced that the way we do research, in terms of skills, research methods and techniques, needs to be adapted. As Kim Dedeker stated during the 2008 edition of the ARF Leadership Forum: “My call to action is that we would figure out the way to return to the consumer’s backyard. We have to rebuild that trust. We need to listen to them on their time and in the ways they want to communicate with us.”

We summarized our vision on the future in our ‘10 commandments of contemporary market research’:

1. Conversations and stories of consumers should be at the heart of our marketing and research thinking as they are key in generating insights; and it is the main way innovations, customer experiences and marketing campaigns are being spread.
2. Researchers need to create more opportunities for participants to say what is on their minds, even if it is not directly part of the survey or topic guide.
3. Research should give participants a more active role throughout the whole research process not only during the interviewing phase. They like it and it will deliver us richer and better insights.
4. Research methodologies should be adapted so they are able to grasp fragmented consumer behaviour (both over time as on the go).
5. Methods should be combined to fusion designs in order to capture the whole picture and create a 360 degree view on the consumer (Blades, 2009).
6. We should unveil the goals of a research project and clients should show their ‘faces’ more to research participants.
7. Researchers should feedback intermediate results to research participants so they can influence the final outcome of the study if desired. Next to that it will motivate them to keep participating.
8. Participants should not be asked to provide us with new information if we can obtain the same information indirectly. We should therefore recycle our data if possible. Tons of data is available on the web or in customer databases.
9. We should stimulate rapport and trust between participants and researchers, next to bonding among peers in order to obtain higher quality data and more emotional insights.
10. Contemporary market researchers need DJ skills. They are responsible for keeping research participants enthusiast. They need to have the ability to choose the right methods and data sources and throw them in the right mix. Last but not least, they need to perform well in the boardroom by playing the most relevant tunes to management.

Want to find out more? Read our white papers or Steven Van Belleghem‘s book The Conversation Manager. Or contact one of the authors.

(Article submitted by Annelies Verhaeghe and Tom De Ruyck)

Let me start with this: I LOVE MARKET RESEARCH ONLINE COMMUNITIES! It is my favorite research methodology… And I truly believe that they are a big part of the future of market research! To be honest, I hate the term MROC’s as it sounds like an angry, hungry, hairy beast! I like ‘Insight Communities’ better. That’s what they really are!

But, don’t over-use the method. You have to be careful and wise in when and how to use it. To fully understand this, let’s take a look at some characteristics of insight communities:

• By definition, they are NOT representative, as they work best with participants who identify with the topic or the brand hosting the platform.
• Secondly, 150 people are the maximum number of participants a moderator can build a real relationship with. And, in my opinion, no relationship = no community!

Conclusion: This makes that they are qualitative of nature! OK, you can do some basic quant on them, but only to have first feelings. So, if validation of insights afterwards is necessary, it needs to be done through a traditional survey! And we have not even spoken about tracking studies…

Let’s say that every method has its place. It’s all about fusing methods! Researchers have to become more like DJ’s:

DJ’s play and select songs for an audience from their wealthy music collection. The successful ones provide a creative mix that makes the crowd go wild. They are the cool new super stars! What makes DJ’s also successful is that they have the guts to experiment without forgetting tradition: they re-use old riffs and blend it with contemporary elements.

This is the real future of research!

This month the QRCA (Qualitative Research Consultants Association) rewarded the 2010 QRCA Global Scholarship to Sophie Van Neck, Senior Research Consultant at InSites Consulting. The scholarship is a great opportunity for Sophie.

With this scholarship Sophie gets the opportunity to attend the QRCA International Annual Conference.

“This will be one of the most exciting experiences of the year and it will be a perfect start of going to international conferences. I’m really looking forward to meeting the QRCA members at the QRCA Annual Conference in Philadelphia in October.” says Sophie.

Find out more about the scholarship online or contact Sophie Van Neck.