SAP, the German software unicorn, stunned the market research and financial markets in 2018 by acquiring Qualtrics for $8 billion in cash. No earnouts, no deferred compensation, no stock. Cash. Tableau was recently acquired by Salesforce for nearly $17B and Bain Capital has entered into an agreement to buy 60% of Kantar from WPP. Without a doubt, the competitive environment of the market research industry is changing rapidly and broadening from an old paradigm of traditional research to a new one that converges with both business intelligence and data analytics providers. With advertising spend continuing to increase (projected to reach $280B by 2021 in the US alone), data-driven insights across multiple paradigms (customer, business and third party data) is of increasing importance and of increasing interest to investors. This panel discussion of leaders actively driving M&A activity in the marketing insights and technology vertical will discuss the key industry trends that are driving investments and acquisitions, illuminate the key differentiators driving high valuations, as well as the impact acquisitions ultimately have on research buyers.
After the rapid and widespread emergence of online access panels, we are currently witnessing a new trend towards online custom panels that are specifically built, used and managed for research purposes of one company or its brand(s). This study compares the online access panel 'XL Online Panels' with a dedicated and branded online research panel from Heinz, generating conclusions on the relative advantages and disadvantages related to using either of them. Specific attention is paid to panel member conditioning (broadly defined as changes in response patterns over time due to learning) and quality. Differences in conditioning and quality in the Heinz and control panel are highlighted and the implications for online market research and panel management are discussed.
How can scores from a concept tested in Germany be reliably compared with those from the same concept tested in China? Measured and true concept scores can widely vary between countries due to e.g. cultural response behavior, response styles, time of measurement or consumer innovation profile. Based on a 14-country study covering Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific, the authors have developed a framework for assessing 'pure' concept performance independent of contextual or biasing factors, providing an alternative approach to the often criticized traditional benchmarking of concepts.
This paper sheds a first light on the question whether or not the recruitment type of access panel members as well as duplication (i.e. respondents belonging to multiple panels) really makes a difference in terms of the quality of the research data obtained. A first major implication of this study is that we should not be too concerned about the fact that people join multiple panels as their quality is not inferior to people who have only joined one panel. A second major out-take we can derive from our results is that multi-method recruitment for building online panels is not a necessary condition for building a good quality panel.
This paper focuses on two different strategies that companies can use in order to increase customer loyalty: a relationship strategy which is intended to build long-term relationships with individual customers and a reward strategy which is intended to reward customers with hard benefits for their loyalty. The paper delivers a better insight into the strategic importance that Belgian companies attribute to customer loyalty and into their perception of the influence of relationship and reward strategies on loyalty. Moreover, the research shows how many Belgian companies are currently using relationship and/or reward strategies and how they are implementing these strategies.