This paper identifies how the tools and languages behind the World Wide Web can be used to standardise the reporting and dissemination process. In particular, the paper shows how one set of standards can be used for live, electronic, and distributed presentations. The paper identifies the technologies which will provide competitive advantages to the companies which master them first.
The lines are blurring among four huge industries: computers, consumer electronics, communications and entertainment. The relentless spread of digital electronics-converting information, sound, video, text, and images into a single stream of ones and zeros that can be decoded by similar electronic hardware is setting up competition, forcing strange alliances and undermining once lucrative businesses. The Wall Street Journal, February 18,1992
This paper reviews the impact of new technologies in the research process over the past five years and the incoming new technologies up to the next millennium. The main focus, the effect of speech-to-text Voice Recognition technology - upon the industry in general, processing, research enablement, artificial intelligence and linguistic modelling. In general the effect of speech dictation will first be seen in terms of accuracy, increased response and quality, particularly in difficult and international markets, with the ability to combine use with tele and video conferencing, telecommunications. This new IT will have a significant affect on accuracy, reliability and incisiveness of qualitative research, its interpretation and analysis. While negating traditional bias, this should bring wider use. The paper also looks at how the idea of evolutionary behaviour and psychology may be introduced into todays research.
The Internet reminds me of Las Vegas, said one of the developers I interviewed when researching this paper. He was right. Like Las Vegas, the world wide web offers stunning shows of human invention and mind-boggling choices mixed with crass commercialism, gaudiness and a myriad of strange glittering things. On the web like in Las Vegas anything goes - and theres no such thing as a free lunch. But most of all, on the web just as in Las Vegas a lot of time and money is wasted. How many commercial sites are just vanity sites - useless on-line brochures which hardly anyone except the company's management and competitors bother to look up? How many corporate sites have been announced with fanfare only to be discontinued or half-frozen in still life a few months later, after some high-level executive asked in a board meeting: But whose idea was it to start this web site, anyway? And what are we getting out of it? As in Las Vegas, one can find the good, the bad and the ugly in web marketing and communications: the triumph of a Federal Express site, and countless failed attempts at harnessing this new media. Thus the question: What makes a commercial web site work? How can marketers get the most of the Internet? Answering this simple question is the simple purpose of this simple paper.
In general, the telecom industry is about to lose its power to individual consumers. Given the intensified competition in the field of telecommunications, it is consumer buying power that increasingly determines the rules of the business. However, individual consumers behaviour differs, and dynamic Asian consumers may very well show behaviour patterns quite different to those found in Western markets. In fact, the Asian-Pacific Region may well lead the way in showing the rest of the world how to benefit from IT. In all markets, suppliers survival is based on creating value for the consumer by delivering the right service at the right time and at the right price. To accomplish this, it is vital that we possess a deep understanding of consumers and their preferences in Asia as well as in our other markets. It is indeed the consumer who pays for the developments that take place in every link of the traditional telecom value chain. It is also consumer power that forces the actors in the telecom industry to focus on creating value as such, rather than on upholding the structures of the traditional value chain.
The purpose of this paper is to make an appraisal of the new questions that are being raised by on-line services with regard to the measurement of their audience and site visits. It will also aim to provide concrete answers in terms of systems, indicators and methods. To have a fuller understanding of the challenges involved in measuring on-line services, it is important first to understand and appreciate the innovations they bring compared with conventional media, both with regard to the original possibilities they offer and the unique behaviour patterns of those who use them. It is these new dimensions of the medium and these alone which are leading to changes and shifts in the forms that advertising takes at present. They result in creating new needs in terms of measurement and therefore in the development of new methods. All these issues are covered in this paper, whose author has been leading a working group at Mediametrie over the past few months composed of the major players in the profession in France. The observations and conclusions that follow are the result of this collective thinking.
This paper gives an overview of the key on-line research techniques that are currently available and how they may be applied in mainstream market research. In addition, it examines the results of a brief survey of leading research organisations in the United Kingdom, United States and Germany, looking at current use and perceptions of on-line research and how it might be used in the future.
This paper examines the theoretical and practical principles of on-line advertising via the Internet. It addresses fundamental issues raised by this increasingly consequential, emerging area of business and presents solutions developed by a European full-service agency for new media and marketing. Specifically, this paper delineates the chief concerns which must be taken into consideration for determining and ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of placing and controlling on-line advertising.
Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. (Vernor Vinger, 1993 The Coming Technological Singularity..,), Impatiently looking forward to this event even today we can watch some examples of the development of more inferior human intelligence - one example of this is market research about the Internet and market research via the Internet.
CAPI is becoming a must to survive for organisations offering face-to- face fieldwork. Hardware investments constitute at least 75% of the total out of pocket initial CAPI investments. Two hardware alternatives are common in market research: the laptop with keyboard and the pen PC. In this paper a comparison is made between laptop and pen PC with the objective to support decision making about hardware for CAPI. Results were compared of interviewers using a pen PC and interviewers using a laptop to collect data. Interviews with IT decision makers across western Europe and the pen PC interviewers involved in the field test were conducted to gain insight in their experiences and preferences. Analysis concentrated on open answers, spontaneous and aided awareness, response on privacy sensitive questions and duration of the interviews. No major differences were found between CAPI interviews conducted by laptop or pen PC, although there is an indication that open answers are longer on pen PCs. Therefore there seems to be no reason to choose a type of machine on the grounds of better data quality or higher speed. It appears that the choice for a type of machine can best be made on the basis of costs, the situation in which the interviewer has to work (indoors, outdoors, standing, sitting), efficiency of coding open answers after fieldwork and future possibiities like multi media.
This paper describes the authors point of view about the importance of Qualitative Research in terms of creating new analysis tools for the understanding of the Internet consumer. The paper also describes the major findings about this issue from the authors consulting and market research experience. Particular emphasis is given to the main mental representations and profiles detected during the Internet Qualitative Research Program presently being conducted in Portugal by APEME in order to evaluate the habits and psycho- sociological attitudes of the Portuguese consumer towards the Internet. A reference is also made to what it seems to be methodological challenges and innovations (namely the Trio Interview concept) launched by this Research Program, though we feel this is just a slight beginning. The paper is accompanied by some reflections on the above mentioned findings regarding Internet as a medium or advertising vehicle, its relevant marketing usage characteristics and the need of a qualitative approach to deal with the new emerging communication model.
This paper describes the potential effects of the advent of the network computer on computing in quantitative market research. These effects may be expected to be beneficial, both for the activities of data collection and data analysis. Not the least of these should be an emancipation of the researcher from commitment to particular IT vendors. Best of breed applications may be used for all research requirements because the cost of selecting and using alternative applications will be minimal. The attractiveness of this objective will stimulate researchers to demand standards for the efficient transmission of data between the various survey applications. The reader is assumed to be familiar with the concept of World Wide Web servers and browsers, and their disposition on the public Internet and private Intranets.