This paper re-examines the role and management of Consumer Insights in major corporations. It tracks progress made in the intervening seven years towards more strategic, proactive role for research and analytics and ask why that progress appears to be so slow. What are the key drivers of success for a CI function and what are the barriers that are holding us back?
Over the last 12 months ESOMAR has been involved in a number of different research initiatives which have looked to define and quantify the future of the research industry. Join us for a short overview of the results of each of these initiatives and then join the discussion on what these results mean for the profession. Our first discussion will be on the next generation of researcher, and indeed, research company.
ESOMARs Director General Finn Raben has rightly pointed out the absolute critical role of client-side researchers in determining the future of our industry. Yet, how well do major corporations actually manage their consumer insights functions? Are they leveraging them for real competitive advantage or are they treating them as a necessary functional "add on"? How embedded are CI functions in their companies' strategic decision-making? How are they resourced? Where does the budget lie? Are we spending less or more on research post-recession? And how innovative are corporate researchers really? All of these questions, posed in the most comprehensive study of insights management ever undertaken, are answered in this paper. Plus we offer a brand new segmentation of the different types of consumer insights function.
The drumbeat of "change" in market research is everywhere. Wherever you look, whatever conference you attend and whatever you read, the message is the same: Change is here; change is real; and it is going to affect you and your business. Often, this leads to the question "What does this mean for talent?", which is frequently misinterpreted to mean "What type of new talent do we need and how do we train them?". But what if it's not about us searching for new talent, but new talent ?nding us? And what if it's not about us training them, but them training us? Ask yourself this: why did over 200 new entrepreneurs enter the research and analytics space in 2012 alone? Here we explore the research talent of the future and what that implies for research itself.
The drumbeat of "change" in market research is everywhere. Wherever you look, whatever conference you attend and whatever you read, the message is the same: Change is here; change is real; and it is going to affect you and your business. Often, this leads to the question "What does this mean for talent?", which is frequently misinterpreted to mean "What type of new talent do we need and how do we train them?". But what if it's not about us searching for new talent, but new talent ?nding us? And what if it's not about us training them, but them training us? Ask yourself this: why did over 200 new entrepreneurs enter the research and analytics space in 2012 alone? Here we explore the research talent of the future and what that implies for research itself.
A multitude of predictive systems have been developed for FMCG products, many with a fairly reliable track record. The same cannot be said for durables. In this paper, the authors discuss a range of factors that differentiate both the research process and the predictive systems in the two areas and suggest that in many cases the FMCG models cannot simply be adapted for durables. The paper concludes with some suggestions for successful durable modelling.
Deregulation in financial markets has led to explosive change in the structural make-up and marketing behaviour of financial institutions. This observation is critically important if we are to try to assess the future direction of marketing in this sector and hence, the issues up to which we as researchers will need to face in the short- and medium-term future. In particular, changes that have and are taking place are forcing all of us to take account of the consequential changes in attitude and behaviour on the part of the customer in terms of his or her decisions as to which institutions to use, which types of service or package to favour. In doing so, a radical re-appraisal is necessary of the approaches and techniques that market research can and indeed should bring to bear in meeting financial institutions' needs. In this paper, we wish to contribute to this process of reappraisal.
This paper takes as its thesis the argument that the dynamic changes taking place in agricultural markets and marketing offer agricultural market research a chance to enhance its worth and standing through the provision of advanced marketing aids developed in the world of fast moving consumer goods. It warns, however, of the dangers of adapting such techniques to agriculture without sufficient understanding of the special characteristics which affect each of our markets. In doing so, the paper takes a number of case studies involving decision-models, pricing models and product positioning techniques and investigates for each the special circumstances which need to be borne in mind for their adaptation whilst at the same time, highlighting their potential for widening our vision and understanding of the markets concerned.