Kantar's Profiles Blog

A recent blog from Lisa Wilding-Brown likened panels to “the polar icecaps of the industry.” It referenced grabbing an ice cold beverage for the read and this was spot on - I found the article refreshing.

Why? Because another panel leader bluntly and accurately outlined the key issue for panels today - that surveys are no longer fit for purpose. We know more than 50 percent of panellists are engaging via their mobile devices, yet they complete only 2 percent of studies on these devices. What’s more, there is nearly double the drop off rate compared to PC users.

The Marketing Research Shared Interest Group (SIG) of the Cincinnati American Marketing Association meets monthly to discuss industry issues, growing trends, techniques and methodologies. During the February meeting, Brian Lamar from EMI Research Services led a great discussion across multiple industry topics. One common thread across all key points: clients.

Millennials now represent the largest segment in the workforce today surpassing GenXers and Baby Boomers. With this growing pool of talent, we need to step back and look at the marketing research industry. Millennials are known to be tech savvy, social media connected and diverse in their skills, but are we fully tapping into this generation to evolve?

Technology continues to shape the marketing research industry; we are more agile and efficient than ever. As a result, we can also carve out new opportunities and capture behavioral data like never before. Beyond traditional methods, mobile and social media tap into consumer insights. But what about taking it to the next level - collecting consumer emotions? We recently talked with Matt Celuszak, CEO of CrowdEmotion, on the role of emotion in consumer behavior, leveraging mobile and unmasking cultural differences.

Mixed Results across APAC; Australians Opt for a Hug & Kiss  

Before you stock up on flowers and chocolate, take note of what your significant other really wants this Valentine’s Day. Lightspeed GMI panelists across Asia Pacific revealed the majority of men want to forgo gift giving, instead opting for a hug and kiss. Results also revealed women in Singapore (34%) and Malaysia (31%) are hoping for a weekend getaway, while women in China (29%) and Hong Kong (21%) want jewelry.

Privacy and security of data make the news on a constant basis - the risks and the exposure to bad data security is a threat to brands and consumers. International laws are constantly updated or created to make sure privacy and data security cover the evolving needs of today's consumers. 

Combining Video and Mobile Responses for Cultural Insights

To explore cultural perceptions of the 2016 Lunar New Year, Lightspeed GMI recently conducted a mobile survey across China, Hong Kong and Singapore. By exploring new ways to augment data collection, we were able to gather in-depth responses through a combination of our mobile platform and VoxPopMe’s video component.

The necessary “evil” of the market research industry continues to be echoed at every industry conference and event: we need to change. Clients are leaning on us to provide more data with a creative edge, quicker than ever before. At the 2015 CASRO Technology & Innovation event in Philadelphia, quality through collaboration was a key topic. Instead of making sacrifices to expedite turnaround, we should use the technology at our disposal whether it is our own or another suppliers. You can’t make intelligent investments as an organization unless you fully understand how marketing research needs to change. Do we want to settle with being good enough, or strive to be great? 

Recently Lightspeed GMI added verified voter data to our list of panel profilers. We did this by partnering with a political data provider who maintains a national database of more than 190 million voting records, including past behavior in state and federal elections. By matching our U.S. panel against this database and making the results of those matches available for sampling, our clients benefit from improved targeting for political research. For example, with our panel it’s now much simpler to ask political questions to past or prospective voters:

This blog post was originally published on GreenBookBlog.org.

Are the best days of online research panels behind us?

Research fieldwork methodologies come and go. Postal panels, central location interviewing and CATI all had their moments, but are now outmoded. By all indications, the peak of online panel research was more than five years ago when we had large, responsive, deeply profiled panels. Today, panels are less responsive; respondents do not remain in panels as long and two key benefits of panels, sample selection and panel profiling processes, have largely been replaced by lower quality dynamic pre-screening and respondent allocation algorithms.