Kantar's Profiles Blog

The world of marketing research is constantly evolving – new technologies enable consumers to move onto the ‘next thing’ seconds after engaging with a survey today. Given the fast pace of change with our industry now, ESOMAR initiated a “Research Rally” series to challenge researchers and expand their ways of thinking, and designing.

The notion behind the event was simple – researchers would collectively evaluate local start-ups looking to improve their business model, product or services. Currently Britain is experiencing start-up fever: 80 new businesses were born each hour throughout 2016. However, these rosy statistics are tainted by the fact that 9 out of 10 start-ups fail. In today’s competitive marketplace, lucky guesses are no longer enough to create a successful innovation – the decision to invest in market research might determine a business’ survival.

Our four-part series from Lightspeed Financial Services Group continues with a look at credit card reward programs. Our first post highlighted consumers' views of daily dangerous driving activities, demonstrating how mobile enables risky behavior. Today, we focus on what rewards programs appeal to consumers and how the branded competition stacks up. 

Millennials are willing and eager to share personal content (as long as it's relevant) and ultimately crave authenticity. Yet with 83.1 million millennials in the United States, their voices are often underrepresented within typical marketing research forums. So, how do we win their trust and engage them into the marketing research process? 

While many consumers agree that using mobile phones while driving isn’t OK to do, the activity is perceived as only moderately dangerous compared to other distracted driving activities. According to a recent Lightspeed FSG study on Dangerous Driving Activities (2016), 45% of U.S. consumers agree completely that it’s never OK to use a mobile phone while driving (65% agree completely or slightly). More than half of respondents observed other drives using their phones while driving. And, older consumers are more likely to agree with this sentiment than younger consumers (37% of 25-34 year olds vs. 59% of those age 65+).

- Jamie Turner, 60SecondMarketer.com

Open ended questions generally serve a specific purpose:

• What products/brand/advertisements do you recall?
• You said X, why did you say that?
• Would you purchase/recommend X? Why/why not?

These open-ended questions generate a wider spectrum of codes than the usual standard close-ended questions, especially when the codeframe is kept to a small list, a key aspect in any mobile first survey. However, open-ended questions can also produce less impactful data (sometimes termed as gibberish data) when stock standard question wording is used, as illustrated above. The key to making an open ended question valuable is to frame the question wording to be thought-provoking, making it meaningful for the respondents and making them want to share their views fully, in an environment where this is easy to do.

In a recent blog post I presented a research use and technique framework. Today’s blog focuses on two of the applied research uses—strategic marketing management and marketing performance. Strategic marketing management involves getting the big picture by understanding opportunities, problems, and potential targets. Marketing performance is focused on assessing performance by monitoring and analyzing what is happening in market. 

Teaching marketing research has given me the opportunity to connect with people who could be future leaders in the marketing research industry, which I find to be an exciting extension of my ‘day job’ heading-up research methods and best practices for Lightspeed. I am currently teaching Consumer Insights at Northern Kentucky University. Teaching undergrads marketing research has made me reevaluate how we in the industry talk about various topics and try to come up with simple ways to explain what we do. One of my first challenges was coming up with a framework that summarizes the uses of marketing research and the specific research techniques tied to each use. I was thinking this should be simple; however, I quickly realized I couldn’t find what I wanted, so I created my own framework.

Primarily due to restricted cash flow across households, Q4 2016 in India had a major impact on the local durables market. Demonetization not only impacted households, but also retailers and manufacturers. However, the PC market had its own story.

According to a January 2017 Pew Research report, the vast majority of Americans – 95% – now own a cellphone of some kind; the share of Americans that own smartphones rose to 77%, up from just  35% in Pew Research Center’s first survey of smartphone ownership conducted just six years ago. And recently, MediaPost cited Cisco's Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast (2016 to 2021) which reported, “that by 2021, more members of the global population will use mobile phones -- 5.5 billion -- than have bank accounts at 5.4 billion, running water at 5.3 billion or landlines at 2.9 billion.” There’s no doubting that mobile is now mainstream, but online surveys still outrank mobile surveys in digital data collection methods according to the latest GRIT Report.