The Talent Contest: ESOMAR Research Effectiveness Award Finalist.
Every time we try to predict the future, we naively try to imagine it from our point of view: with a lineal understanding of time as past-present-future. However, we've found out that sometimes our future is not within our own timeline but in someone else's, and even in the present or past of other brands and categories. That's why we worked with both research inputs and outputs in order to move from guessing the future to designing it. Our objective? To stop hoping that we are going to find an oracle or magic ball that can guess the future, and instead build tools and processes that foster the kind of thinking that led Verne and Da Vinci to design the future.
The paper shows that the development of market research in some segments of business-to-business can be drastically influenced by the development and production of syndicated/standard products. The authors show some definite indications about this new trend in business-to-business research and will show you some examples in this field.
Editorial Research carried out on behalf of a single publication or some publications belonging to the same publisher is well known. Syndicated research for advertising purposes - media planning and selling media space - is well known too, but the combination has only been tried in Denmark. Why? Presumably because the editors and the advertising people do not speak very good with each other, even when they are working in the same organisation and both dependant upon the total revenue of the publication(s) concerned. In Denmark syndicated media research has been carried out since 1968 and I tried rather early to declare to the editors that they might make use of the results too.
The paper will present findings extracted from an annual multi-country syndicated survey among new passenger car buyers. The purpose of this paper is to highlight and explore the attitudes of car buyers and their mode of screening and selecting new cars. Purchasing a new car is a highly intricate decision due to the nature of the product itself which is nowadays perceived to be more durable and relatively more costly than it used to be a few years ago. Many factors have contributed to the fierce competition among car manufacturers thus making the decision of the buyers even more difficult and selective. This paper will discuss how buyers make their choice of a new car, and will describe the process of gathering information, assess the screening criteria, explore the attitudes underlying the final choice, and will locate all these events within the time frame from the initial stimuli down to the purchase act.
As the Danish provincial papers are aware of the competition from the national dailies as well as from the magazines and the electronic media they have been willing to pay rather big amounts of money to be included in the syndicated media survey in a way comparable to the national media. When the editorial research is done in connection with the readership survey it can be done in a cheap way but the disadvantage is that we have to use the same questions and wordings for all the newspapers included .
This paper concerns the data which are available for Financial Services through the Target Group Index. Following a brief introduction - which covers the size and scope of the TGI - it illustrates the types of data which are available in the report, some trend data and data on media selection. Because the TGI covers many product fields other than financial services, it is possible to cross analyse savings or credit with activity in other areas. Some examples of the use of the data in this way are also shown. Finally, the advantages - and disadvantages - of the TGI are discussed and compared with the type of syndicated surveys which are more usually considered in specialised fields.
The UK is well served by data sources dealing with audience/readership and by others showing comparative sales performance. But most marketing companies look to advertising to perform in several intermediate areas, short of sales. They then measure campaign performance via do-it-yourself surveys. It is suggested that there should be added to the syndicated media research and syndicated sales research already in place a syndicated advertising performance monitor. This would simultaneously evaluate advertising performance on a brand by brand basis and measure the influence of different media patterns, both between brands and between areas within brands. The existence of a syndicated advertising performance monitor allows the researcher to be more efficient in measuring the contribution made by advertising to changing the image character.
This paper shows an example of the optimization and reduction of a research budget. In 1977 an important research took place, based on 700 telephone interviews, 300 complete descriptions of stores, 300 interviews with points of sale managers, and more than 80 in-depth interviews. It permitted the subscribers, producers of those goods which could be distributed by this chain work, to build efficient commercial policies. The results presented to the agricultural cooperatives gave them the opportunity to understand both themselves and the need to use unbiassed information on which to base their decisions. It permitted an important collaboration of the cooperatives, for establishing, in march 1978 a point of sale panel, which permitted a reduction in the cost of information collection.
This paper shows an example of the optimization and reduction of a research budget. In 1977 an important research took place, based on 700 telephone interviews, 300 complete descriptions of stores, 300 interviews with points of sale managers, and more than 80 in-depth interviews. It permitted the subscribers, producers of those goods which could be distributed by this chain work, to build efficient commercial policies. The results presented to the agricultural cooperatives gave them the opportunity to understand both themselves and the need to use unbiassed information on which to base their decisions. It permitted an important collaboration of the cooperatives, for establishing, in march 1978 a point of sale panel, which permitted a reduction in the cost of information collection.
Various qualitative media research conducted, mainly from 1972 give some insight about relevant variables to be considered in present media strategy and in future media research. Our experience in qualitative media research include two main pieces of research, one for the Television Authority and the other one as a part of the Syndicated program of research for advertisers, agencies and medias (Estudio General de Medios). We will mention the main objectives and specifications of these pieces of research.
It is often said that pharmaceutical market research is "different". I would prefer to look at it the other way round and say that as an industry we have certain needs and that certain types of agencies cater for those needs. We require, basically, two types of research. The first is what might be called syndicated continuous audit data based on panels and the second, ad hoc field surveys based primarily on interviews with members of the medical profession, but occasionally also with pharmacists and even on occasions with members of the public. This paper looks at the problem of choosing an agency and the importance of establishing a continuous working relationship, the level of expertise of the agency in relation specifically to pharmaceutical market research and finally the ability of the agency to conduct research internationally.