Kantar's Profiles Blog

This is some general advice on how to make a good prediction.

1. Have an intelligent conversation with your gut instinct! 

Gut instincts are incredibly valuable when it comes to making a prediction, the best predictors often heavily rely on their gut instincts, but remember that your gut can be flawed. Your instinct is exactly that, an instinct, so any cognitive or emotional biases you have could impede your predictive success.

In February I attended MIE, the largest Marketing & Insights Event in the Netherlands. It was the 14^th time this event took place and once again it was very well attended with 2,800 visitors, from the marketing and market-research sector.

One of the main topics of MIE was Digital Analytics. Also defined as Big Data, it’s the passive form of online data-collection without the intervention of an interview tool.

Video is here.

The trends indicate that video is going to push the data traffic usage over the next big peak. First text was all the rage, then came the time of pictures and everyone was taking a ‘selfie’ and now we are moving into the next age of content – the video age. With the increased abilities of smartphones, tablets and webcam, video content is exploding around the internet.

According to a recent GRIT Sample Report* presented at SampleCon in January, 81% of industry buyers and sellers believe traditional panels are dying. At the same time, over half believe traditional panels are the gold standard. Traditional research panels do bring advantages that yield data quality; perhaps most important, they are not associated with loyalty programs. Rather, panelists are sequestered solely for the purpose of taking surveys which minimizes bias. Other important benefits include validation of people’s identities upon registration as well as extensive profiling that can be used not only for targeting, but also to shorten surveys by appending data. Double opt-in panels also facilitate the integration of behavioral and attitudinal data sets. 

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.

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. 

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? 

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.