The motto 'the customer is always right' is a phrase pioneered by Harry GordonSelfridge, John Wanamaker and Marshall Field in the early 1900's. These men weresuccessful retailers who learned early in their careers that the success of their storesdepended on the happiness of their customers, and so the slogan has long beenregarded as the cornerstone of customer-centricity.More importantly, a happy customer continues to 'buy', and thus we must recognise thatit is the customers who drive innovation, change and evolution, as otherwise they wouldmove their spend and their budgets to other suppliers, or indeed, other sectors. This is astrue for Insights and Analytics as it is for Financial Services, FMCG or Healthcare.In a profession such as ours which has strong roots in science, rigour and ethics,the growing demand for speed, instant feedback, and digital solutions that we havewitnessed in recent years, has often relegated a more fundamental understanding of howour clients work and business needs are changing to a secondary importance; instead,the emphasis has tended to be on the 'now' and securing the budget available, not the'future' and how their needs may be evolving.Recognising the fundamentally important role that brand-owners play in determiningthe shape and structure of our profession, this study is the first in what we hope willbecome an annual monitor establishes a first benchmark of how insights are viewedand commissioned within brand-owning organisations, and the key criteria applied towhat is considered 'good' and 'successful' research.
It is the intention of ESOMAR to increase its value to Research Users. To this end, ESOMAR has created a "Users' Working Party". Since this group and its efforts are in their infancy, it seems advantageous to shortly review the "Background" birth before going into the "Current Status" and recommendations for the "Future" as developed by this years Users' Working Party.
This paper is addressing STMs from the users point-of-view; it starts working out which are the similarities and which are the important differences between the models. Two main types of models are then compared in more detail, and the paper ends with an outlook on the future of STMs.