There is an interesting management quote: Do not expect the output to change if the inputs remain the same. This is true for organisational transformation as well as transformation of the insights and analytics industry. This paper examines this aphorism in the context of volume forecasting for ecommerce launches, looked at in the specific context of a vitamin and mineral supplement launch.
Augmented Reality (AR) alters a person's perception by overlaying virtual images over the real-time environment while virtual reality (VR) replaces the real-time environment with a simulated environment. Increasingly, retailers and marketers are making use of AR and VR to market and improve customer experience. However, AR and VR are not only ways to market products and advertise. Embracing the technology, researchers are able to radically transform how the industry conducts research today, through gamification via AR and remarkably realistic simulation through VR environments. This presentation aims to provide some thoughts on how researchers are able to use new technology for gathering data and better understanding of consumer behaviour.
Conjoint analysis is one of the most important tools in market research, yet it neglects fundamental insights from 'Behavioural Economics' Hence, all conjoint results are subject to two inherent distortions: firstly, linear interpolation fails to depict the typically 'step-like' utility functions of quantitative attributes. Secondly, the effects of differing levels of product involvement are artificially evened out. An 'open source' correction algorithm that efficiently eliminates both problems and bridges the gap between the rationalistic conjoint analysis and the realistic insights from 'Behavioural Economics' has been developed. The algorithm sensitively captures these behavioural effects whilst simultaneously preserving the strengths of conjoint, namely its diverse simulation options.
At the 2002 ESOMAR Congress, a paper entitled The Future of Simulated Test Markets (by Joseph Willke, ACNielsen BASES) made predictions about what life would be like in 2010 and the implications for STM models. 2010 is here, and it is the perfect time to re-visit the predictions of 2002 and to develop new ones. The 2010 paper will identify which predictions came true, which did not, and which were missed, along with the reasons why. The current paper will explore new forecasting needs that have emerged based on interviews with market researchers at leading CPG companies and then make predictions about how forecasting will evolve over the next five years.
The effectiveness of three commonly used methodologies for market size estimation, as well as their accuracy in explaining the future behavior of the automobile market in Ecuador, is addressed in this presentation. These methodologies are Delphi forecast based on local expertise, Cross sectional linear regression, and Time series modeling of sales. Data of car sales ranging between 1990 and 2009 was used to compare the performance of these three methodologies. We found that Experto Forecast performs very well in the short term, while Time Series Modelling fits better the behavior of the market for medium term predictions.
Tipping points, viral marketing, the butterfly effect - Marketers today want to understand and take advantage of these 'emergent' phenomena. Outside of marketing research, innovative social and computer scientists have developed a new approach to understanding complex 'non-linear' phenomena. This approach is known as agent-based simulation.This presentation introduces agent-based models and explains the way they work, with examples of applications for marketing and marketing research.