Generation Y (aged 15-30) is the most marketing savvy generation ever. On a global scale, this new consumer cohort is much larger than the previous generation X and their impact on society will soon surpass the Babyboomer's largely documented influence. But what drives this fickle generation and how can global brands really connect with youth worldwide? This paper highlights the key dimensions behind cool brands derived from a research community connecting urban youth in 15 different cities around the globe.
With increasing access to high tech 'smart phones' by consumers from the developing world, qualitative research need no longer stay within the rigid confines of twentieth century definitions of in-group homogeneity, focus group interviews, in depth interviews, or even physically present ethnography. Using the example of water, this paper explores the potential of harnessing our end-consumer family members' ability to use available technology, and presents a live hands-on picture of behaviour and innovations.
For the generation born in this millennium, growing affluence, smaller family size and media proliferation has meant that Youth values today are very different from the past generation. Is the middle class Asian Youth today similar to his Western counterpart? Are these values similar across Asia - or do they differ in the more developed countries vs. the developing economies? Are we looking at a 'common Teen spirit' across the globe or is it going 'glocal'? This paper addresses these questions, and the implications of these societal changes for global marketers.
In the UK, 6,000 people take their own lives every year; 4,000 of them are men. Samaritans sought to develop an ad campaign aimed at reducing male suicide. The campaign was aimed at men in low income groups living in the most socially deprived areas of the UK. This paper showcases how powerful research can be in understanding a rarely researched part of the population and in turning that insight into compelling advertising.
Anyone looking to deploy their consumer insight and marketing campaigns internally can learn from well-established principles of consumer brand-building and marcomms. Using creative examples from their global insight and marketing best practice dissemination work with Nokia, the authors demonstrate the application of 10 classic marcomms principles to internal communication. This approach enables optimal value to be derived from insight department investment, and provides legacy infrastructure and comms equity which can be easily leveraged in the future resulting in 'total insight'
This paper critically discusses the status quo of consumer research in the sensory industry. Based on a case study in the oral care category, the presenters advocate a rethinking of current research paradigms in the industry and suggest an interdisciplinary and multi-perspective angle on 'researching the senses'. While criticising current sensory research, the presentation at the same time calls for 'researching with all senses' as the future leitmotif and concept of research at large.
Digital technologies have changed the way we live and work. However, we rarely consider the effects of technologies themselves on our brains and our working practices. Increasingly neuroscience is revealing our brains to have an extraordinary degree of 'plasticity' to be dynamic, connected and adaptive throughout life. This has an impact on the way we work. These findings are significant for society as a whole and for the qualitative research community. What is the evidence? What does it mean for our industry? What, if anything, should we be doing about it?
This paper envisions the future of insight and sees the walls between quantitative and qualitative research brought down thanks to new digital technologies. A project case study that catalysed decision-making and pushed new strategies within the world's largest record company, Universal Music is explored. The authors describe the project's context, methodologies and factors leading to success, discuss how it fuses quantitative and qualitative approaches and techniques, describe the steps taken to boost engagement with the consumer and the company, and indicate its strengths as an insight model for other companies working in fast-changing creative industries.
The collaboration of a multi-functional team, enabling marketers to connect with their key consumers in order to understand the role the NESTEA brand plays in consumer lives, is celebrated in this paper. Via applied ethnographic techniques, it was possible to bring these consumers to life, to understand the way they interact with NESTEA and the emotional connections they share with the brand. By cascading this knowledge through the company it was possible to have successfully informed and optimised the communication strategy, creating a platform to leverage in portfolio management and brand activation globally.
In global research, the notion of 'culture' often extends no further than 'understanding the quirks of a local market'. Yet it can be an inspiring and effective tool for developing brand strategy and innovation, especially when combined with more consumer centric methods. Market researchers are ideally placed to develop strong frameworks for cultural analysis and integrate this into their work with powerful impact, thus making cultural insight an important part of the qualitative toolkit.
This paper shares a business case showing how qualitative research, when properly interpreted, led to successful business results by finding the proper positioning for a newly launched brand in Sudan, a country with very challenging market dynamics. The case will show how qualitative research can lead to 'poor' decisions when the interpretation has been shallow, while on the contrary, when putting the analysis in the right context and connecting it with other relevant consumer knowledge it can lead to extracting meaningful insights.
A new insight framework based on four distinctive but overlapping types of insight: 'discovery' insights, 'predictive' insights, 'explanatory' insights and 'transformational' insights is explored in this presentation. Qual and quant techniques can generate each type of insight on their own, but the likelihood of generating insights increases exponentially when qual and quant are thoroughly integrated (as opposed to simply 'combined' in a research effort). Qual and quant methods have complementary strengths and weaknesses, and are subject to different interpretation biases. Qual and quant can learn something from each other about identifying and mitigating these biases.