Kantar's Profiles Blog

Marketers are arguably in a better place than ever to communicate with their audience – whether through Facebook followers, Twitter addicts or the ever engrossed mobile population. Technology is producing a familiar and comfortable means of constant engagement.

This blog post is a short introduction to the science of prediction which is a topic that I have been totally immersed in over the last new months and recently presented about at the 2014 ESOMAR Congress with Hubertus Hofkirchner. I thought I would share some of what I have learned.

With all the talk about how market research is changing radically, it’s somewhat comforting when age-old debates come up again and again. Like the topic of representivity.

With mobile-cellular penetration approaching 90 percent of the world’s population, market researchers must adapt to reach the mobile respondent – quickly. This is both an opportunity and a threat. The door is open for the industry to leverage a broad based, quick and affordable data collection platform with many additional advantages of computer-based data collection, but we must adapt our interviewing methods to the medium. Many in Marketing Research want to embrace the opportunities afforded by mobile but few are willing to challenge the need for a long interview. Many have noted that in the transition from the telephone to online, practices were maintained that did not fit the new collection methodology and slowed the adoption. “This time we will do it right,” we all say, but change this time requires a revolution in survey design.

Was updating your tracking study on your list of New Year’s Resolutions, but you just haven’t been able to muster the courage to do it? We know that the mere thought of tackling this project can strike fear in the heart of even the bravest researcher. It may have taken you years to get your tracker right, and you have years of tracking data to deal with. Still, in many cases it is well worth the effort. If you find yourself in one of the situations discussed below, you should pluck up your valor and forge ahead.

This is an excerpt from an article that appeared on research-live.com on December 28, 2012.

There’s no doubt that it is tough out there, but our experience is one of evolution in how clients buy and conduct research so that even in these straitened economic times clients are not necessarily spending less, but they are becoming more discerning. Like anyone on a budget, clients want the best return on investment for their research spend. We see three clear trends emerging which we expect to continue and accelerate over the next few years.

Part 5 in our series, So Many Variables, So Little Time: A practical guide to what to worry about when conducting multi-country studies.

When it comes to conducting multi-country research studies, our research has shown that the way questions are posed to respondents can greatly influence the results of surveys. In fact, question design factors are the single most important means of improving the overall quality of data.

Part 4 in our series, So Many Variables, So Little Time: A practical guide to what to worry about when conducting multi-country studies

Part 3 in our series, So Many Variables, So Little Time: A practical guide to what to worry about when conducting multi-country studies

Part 2 in our series, So Many Variables, So Little Time: A practical guide to what to worry about when conducting multi-country studies