Kantar's Profiles Blog

Our main goal in research is to better understand the audiences that impact our business decisions. And to do this, it's important to reach a representative group of engaged people. 

Social media has caused a massive shift in the way people communicate, interact and share experiences and personal interests. Consumers are always on, always connected. Consumers build unique online relationships; they are connected to brands, athletes, teams, family, friends and co-workers on multiple channels. Sharing everything from political views to favorite products, social media users are leaking valuable information and insights for researchers to take advantage of.

Over recent years technology has changed what the marketing research industry is as well as what it does.  Because of this, agile research has become increasingly popular for researchers and clients who need on-demand data and broader insights. With the onset of technology and data analytics companies, we have found opportunities to couple third party data with panel survey results. Clients began asking us to make it easier to combine survey responses with other types of data to better understand their targets. Given we have more than 200 profile attributes stored for sampling and or appending, clients were eager for us to add second and third party marketing data that provided broader perspective. This has also allowed clients to shorten surveys and make them more engaging. The results have provided our clients deeper insights and better data quality.

It’s always risky to host Saturday Night Live (SNL); not everyone can do “funny.” For most politicians, spoofing pop culture with outrageous punchlines falls outside their wheelhouse. Add to this the broader reality of dropping poll numbers and a generally regarded unremarkable CNBC GOP debate recently, Donald Trump’s November 7^th SNL hosting gig has a lot riding on it.

What can the Trump brand do to capitalize on this opportunity? The more you know your audience and can anticipate their reactions, the better skilled you will be at crafting the best laughs. As part of Lightspeed GMI’s Election in Context project, we’ve pulled out some details that might help Trump make the most of this opportunity. 

Social media has come a long way since its humble beginnings. This evolution in consumer behavior is impacting the data collection process globally -- opinions are shared to an open network, unsolicited. The adoption of smartphones and tablets has happened seemingly overnight, yet the next big development could change things again in an instant. By measuring changes in user adoption and online behavior, businesses can stay on the pulse of their evolving consumers.

Multicultural consumers are of increasing importance in market research as they represent the fastest growing segment of buyers. Most of today’s market researchers understand the importance of multicultural research, but many of us struggle with the question of how and when to apply it. Evidence of that is research from The Center for Multicultural Science which estimates that, “Most syndicated research under-represents the size of Hispanic sales by ~20-60%.” To offer examples of how you can realize the value of multicultural research, we took a look at brand fans of two cosmetics industry leaders, Estee Lauder and L’Oreal.