InSites Blog

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)

Mid-September ESOMAR organizes their general Congress in Greece, Athens. The Congress theme is fully focused on the changing landscape in market research ‘Odyssey 2010 – the changing face of market research‘. The face of market research is changing and with it so are many of the approaches and methodologies we employ.

The R&D department at InSites Consulting continuously works on co-creating research solutions together with clients, suppliers, academics, consumers, and professional organizations. Probably one of the reasons we’ll be well-presented at this year’s general Congress.

First up are Annelies Verhaeghe and Niels Schillewaert on 13 September: User Generated Content and Research. While consumers participate less in traditional surveys, they generate more information than ever before. Consumers cache their lives online and are ubiquitously available via mobile devices. As researchers we have the chance now more than ever to fuse methods and generate more insights without actually asking questions. By observing consumers’ actions, becoming friends online, scraping publically available content and text-analyzing it, getting physiological measures like reaction times and mouse clicks we can come to a more full understanding of consumers through these neo-observational research.

On 14 September Tom De Ruyck and Annelies Verhaeghe will co-present ‘Exploring the world of water‘ with Michel Rogeaux of Danone Global R&D. A case on fusing contemporary research methods.

Joeri Van den Bergh will also attend the Congress, hopefully the collect an award for his paper on authenticity. And finally on 15 September Niels Schillewaert is one the chairmen.

Interested to attend the Congress? Sign up online!

Social Media Nethnography, a set of groundbreaking research techniques for discovering and applying insights from social media, has received recognition and praise from IBM with the award of this year’s IBM SPSS Insight Award. But the results of InSites Consulting’s application of nethnography have attracted attention and praise across the entire marketing and research industry.

• The Dutch association MWG awarded the Hans du Chatinier-Prize at the AMMA Awards 2010.
• UK digital think tank eConsultancy gave the idea its Innovation Award in 2009.
• MOA (Dutch Market Research Association) recognized the innovation of the technique by awarding it the 2009 Feedback Innovation Award.
• And by applying the analysis of user-generated content in social media to improve life for the elderly, InSites Consulting’s Senior R&D Manager Annelies Verhaeghe won ESOMAR’s 2009 Young Researcher of the Year Award.

These prizes follow several other awards for InSites Consulting (ESOMAR, AMA, ARF and MOA).

Social Media Nethnography combines InSites Consulting’s method, software and techniques with IBM’s predictive analytics to gather and analyse unstructured conversations and feedback from social media. Such insights can be fed back into product development, services and entertainment, and the results of changes can easily be measured.

Why study content of online conversations?

According to Annelies Verhaeghe, Senior R&D Manager, there are several reasons why market research should study the content of online conversations.

‘First of all in contrast to traditional market research where individual answers are not public, comments on social media can be read by everyone. Whether companies like it or not, social media are nowadays a full element of communication and advertising that influence people in their buying decision process. Secondly, at a time where response rates in traditional research are declining, these spontaneous answers are a welcome source of information.
And finally online buzz contains new, high quality information which is not easily available via traditional research. It creates the ability to go back in time, gives a glimpse of the moment of truth and makes it possible to discover blind spots which could lead to new market insights.’

As many of you know, ESOMAR is taking an important step to facilitate regional knowledge sharing via the ‘Best of ESOMAR’ local seminars.

Wed 19 May, the Vlerick School of Management hosted the inaugural Belgian chapter and I joined the researchers, marketeers and generally interested observers at the Vlerick ‘Chapel’, hoping to receive some divine wisdom.

For me, the overall message was listen, listen, listen whilst adapting and evolving our techniques as market researchers and marketeers. We need to move beyond the traditional paradigm of posing questions to one of listening and managing Web 2.0 conversations.

The opening session reflected on current challenges facing the MR Industry. Bert Weijters of Vlerick made the sobering observation that our brains are not ‘growing’ sufficiently fast to contend with the data explosion that surrounds us – new methods are needed to counter this inability.

Fittingly, Tom De Ruyck of InSites Consulting brought another analogy to the turn-table, suggesting that ‘we are not analysts…’ – the MR skillset now needs to add the plug-in of ‘DJ skills’.

Our MR ‘DJ’:

• Selects groovy and relevant sources from all the MR ‘playlist’. When to use which method or data source?
• Mixes all these together, potentially using new ‘fusion’ techniques of both quali and quant.
• Of course DJ’s are also sexy and admired and that’s where we (MR) want to be!

It’s about time a Belgian audience got to meet the Belgian ‘ESOMAR Young Researcher 2009’ so Annelies Verhaeghe from InSites presented ‘And they lived happily ever after’ – a clear example of fusion market research within the new marketing paradigm. Using Netnography combined with text analytics, the study attached sentiment and frequency mappings to over 81000 social media postings by elderly citizens to learn that (among other things…..):

• Don’t call the elderly ‘old’
• Supermarket experiences need a seniors overhaul
• TV programmes are too long

Laurent Florès of CRMETRIX finished the session and reinforced the new ‘listening’ and ‘conversations’ paradigm. Brands are still doing too much talking, the ratio of talking and listening is currently 50:1! (a bit frightening…). Laurent reminded us that so much potential market insight is out there amongst our ‘free’ Web 2.0 universe. Both Google Trends and Blogosphere proved good predictors for the 2008 US Presidential Candidate nomination and 2007 French election. The buzz volume of Hillary Clinton’s online discussions suggested her defeat, things got a little more conclusive when we looked at Google images attached to her versus Barack Obama.

Laurent concluded that passive listening is not enough in itself – we need to be conversation managers.

Finally, Niels Schillewaert, Belgian representative for ESOMAR outlined how the Belgian community can better leverage the value that ESOMAR offers its members. Participation at conferences is key, but more importantly submitting papers and sharing learnings. A ‘publish and share’ mentality. Let’s also motivate our dynamic young MR community (with advanced DJ skills). Less than 2% of ESOMAR’s membership is under 30!

So all-in-all a good kick-off for ‘Best of ESOMAR’ in Belgium. Till next year!

Over the last two days, I attended the SPSS Directions Conference in Rome (IT). As a speaker, I was invited to bring a case study on using text analytics on social media data and eager to learn what others were doing on this domain. Moreover, since SPSS was recently acquired by IBM, I was curious to see what the future would bring. So I headed to Rome…

SPSS is typically associated with number crunching. One theme that however kept on coming back was the importance of qualitative and contextual data. I was truly amazed by the number of speakers on text analytics. With about 80-90% of company data that are unstructured, it is no surprise that this analysis technology is taking up. Especially in the area of customer satisfaction research, more and more people are using open questions in surveys to explain the “why” behind the numbers. The usage of text in predictive analytics is augmenting and so far, text seems to add quite a lot in the predictive power of models.

Many presentations also stressed the importance of the context in data collection. People are less rational than we often assume. In order to predict behavior, we have therefore to make more use of data collected at the heat of the moment. Particularly interesting was the speech of Ravi Dhar, Director of Yale center for customer insights. With some vivid examples, he stressed the importance of integrating context variables in your survey. For example, in a study with P&G (the measurement of the most effective communication for washing powder). The results revealed that on TV, it is better to the cleanness of your laundry whereas on the shopping floor ‘colors’ were a more decisive element.

A final session that drew my attention was organized by Mark Jeffries on soft skills. Many statisticians prefer to stick to the safe environment of their computer. However, we also need to sell projects and present the results of studies in an impactful way. Here are some tips & tricks to make this process more smooth:

• Whenever you get a business card, do not immediately put it away. It is the story of the person in front of you. Instead make a remark about it. Everybody likes to hear about oneself.
• If you want to get a ‘yes’, start already nodding with your head when you are asking the favor. There is a big chance that the other person will mirror your behavior and you will get what you want.
• In networking events, have a look at the feet of the person you are talking to. If his feet point too much in the other direction than where you are standing, he probably finds the conversation boring.
• The power of three: make sure that you always mention 3 reasons if you want to make a point. People have a tendency to believe you more.

It was the first time that I attended the SPSS conference and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by its content. It seems that quantitative analysis is embracing qualitative data. At InSites Consulting, we believe in the fusion of methods and I can only consider it as a positive signal that companies like SPSS and IBM place this so high on the agenda.

However the industry needs to take even more steps. I wonder why there were no presentations where text analytics was applied on data from qualitative research. It seems that concepts like research communities, online discussion groups, blog research have not yet penetrated in this audience. Secondly, I appeared to be the only speaker who really showed how to embrace text analytics for nethnography. People were enthusiastic about the topic and I received the IBM- SPSS Insight Award 2010 for my submission. I hope this might inspire other researchers for next year’s conference! More information on the award will follow soon.

On May 19, ESOMAR organizes ESOMAR – BEST OF. An ESOMAR evening that will showcase the diversity and talent within the market research industry. Host for the evening is Niels Schillewaert, Managing Partner at InSites Consulting and ESOMAR Representative for Belgium.

The program hosts a dynamic agenda of speakers and topics and is open for all Belgium ESOMAR members. Of course the organization also welcomes anyone else who is active in the industry.

Program:

• 17h00 – 17h15: Welcome
• 17h15 – 17h45: MR Industry Challenges (by BAQMaR, Febelmar and ESOMAR)
• 17h45 – 18u05: And they lived happily ever after… (By Annelies Verhaeghe – InSites Consulting)
• 18h05 – 18h45: From Asking to Listening: the new research paradigm? (by Laurent Florès – CRMMETRIX)
• 18h45 – 20h00: Closing and drinks

Location:

The Vlerick School of Management – Reep 1, 9000 Ghent (BE)

This free evening is an excellent opportunity to network with some of the most influential names in the Marketing Research Industry. Spaces are limited so if you’re interested, sign up today by contacting Helen Parker (h.parker@esomar.org) with your name, e-mail and company name.

The Park Plaza, London was the setting for the 2010 MRS conference; “a festival of ideas, innovation, and inspiration”. There can be no doubt that all three of these were achieved through the clever mix of speakers from within and without the Research industry.

The first guest to take the chair was Academy Award nominee Armando Ianucci. Research magazine’s editor Marc Brenner successfully demonstrated his qual interview techniques, managing to persuade the “hardman of politicial satire” to admit that he did ask people what they thought of his work before finalising it; even if it was just family and friends. Armando, had you broadened the sample, you never know, you might have won that Oscar for the nevertheless excellent “In the loop”. Thus the scene was set for frequent, and frankly not unexpected, digressions to the upcoming UK election, including numerous references to the industry’s infamous blunder in 1992.

Social media and communities, of course, remained a central thread for the proceedings, with an array of job titles thrust forward, aimed at demonstrating an agency’s ability to tap into this exponentially growing data stream. Social Media Knowledge Leader was a personal favourite. Doron Meyassad (Promise Communities) presented a paper discussing the opportunity for communities to allow large companies to rejuvenate their innovation pipeline through iterative co-creation. This was inspiring for any researcher who shares the view that long-term agency-client partnerships are the future of research. A witty client-side presentation by Darren Cornish (Axa) followed, concerning his change of focus from a technically minded Operations Director to becoming a social media advocate. His vision helped develop an internal community that successfully raised employee satisfaction and improved products resulting in greater sales revenue. Case studies such as these provide clear justification for the swift move of social media research up the value chain. In these times of media revolution we have the opportunity to ensure market research is used beyond the marketing department; we must take it. On this very theme, InSites’ Annelies Verhaeghe presented a rousing limerick extolling the virtues of genuinely listening to customers using observational research.

Alongside such visions of the future of research and how we can harness the digital consumer, there were numerous opportunities for researchers of all levels to hone their craft by listening to the experiences of industry experts, as well as those with more diverse backgrounds. Valuably, not all skills discussions were related to the process of research. Aptly named ‘Hothouses’, held in a steaming, packed seminar room included a talk by Executive Coach Paul Vittles outlining the necessity to step back from one’s work and focus on wider issues such as colleague satisfaction.

One of the most insightful lessons reminded us researchers that we should practice more of what we preach – ironically provided by a journalist (Brian Cathcart), in collaboration with Neil Swann (SwanUpping). Five tenets of effective journalism were introduced, followed by their potential application to the market research environment. Despite ignoring 80% of them in this blog, I summarize the rules below and hope we can all learn from them in the future.

1. Get to the point: the punchline comes first and the background – why the man bit the dog – is woven in beneath
2. Humanise the message: think about people before policies – use case studies/typologies that allow the audience to relate
3. Hierarchy of information must be clear: Presentations must be client focused, not producer focused – each chart should do a small number of things very well, in a clear and logical order
4. Make every word count: The best words are plain words, short words – and few of them
5. Ration the numbers: where possible change numbers into pictures; 28% becomes just over one quarter

Join our Connected Smartees on Thursday 8 April 2010 in Rotterdam (NL) and meet the ‘contemporary’ consumer.

Tom De Ruyck (Senior R&D Manager) and Annelies Verhaeghe (Senior R&D Manager and ESOMAR Young Researcher 2009) will guide you on your way to grasp this new consumer. By using advanced research methods and a careful selection of research design, you’ll be able to reach your consumers.

Check out the full program online and sign up for free!

InSites Smartees are a chance to hear how marketers like you are innovating to solve research problems and gather more useful data. They’re informal, practical, and offer the chance to network with your colleagues.

Scandinavian countries are famous for their innovative and progressive ideas in the organization of their society. Wondering if they would make this reputation also true for market research, I headed to Stockholm where I attended the Scandinavian Marknadsundersökningens Dag.

My favorite presentation of the day was without doubt from Teo Härén, author of several books on creativity. According to Härén, the key to more creativity is breaking your patterns and this was clearly demonstrated in his speech: he decided to do the Q&A session in the middle of his presentation and challenged the public several times to find alternative solutions for a problem. Some concrete examples you can start with today are taking another way when driving to work or change the side of the bed you are used to sleep on.

I also enjoyed the presentation of Jonas Ydén, head of market research at Carlsberg Sweden who gave his vision on the role of market research in an organization. Market research should not only be applied to make tactical decisions on communication, pricing or packaging, but should also monitor uncovered consumer needs and translate them in new business. Because insights can be present in different reports and places throughout the organization, they made an internal knowledge platform to make the market intelligence easily available throughout the whole company. Ydén finished with some guidelines for market research agencies:

• Do not just present the results of the study. Share also other customer knowledge you have with your client
• Do not say that something is an insight if it is not. (An insight at Carlsberg is defined as a single discovery of something enlightening about consumers, shoppers or customers’ underlying needs and motivations that Carlsberg can address to create consumer value and competitive advantage)
• Tell a story during your presentations and please the eye!

Next to the local speakers, some international speakers were placed on the agenda (like myself speaking on social media netnography). Although it is hard to bring multivariate statistics in a entertaining way, I believe that Ray Poynter did a good job in explaining CBC and MaxDiff in a simple way. I was also triggered by the presentation of Anna Thomas who used a technique called creative conversations to investigate sexual health among teenagers in the UK.

The Swedish market research day was definitely interesting. Although I did not discover any radical new ideas, I would definitely call them progressive in terms of market research. In a country that has about the same number of inhabitants as Belgium but a much larger spread, they managed to bring over 100 market researchers together for a full day of presentations. The openness and vividness where the participants were discussing research between sessions clearly showed the involvement of the whole market research community in taking research forward.