Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

Today I have the pleasure of interviewing a good friend and fellow Next Gen market Research entrepreneur Kristin Luck.

Many of you who attend the research industry conferences will already know her well. Kristin is President at Decipher, a firm I’ve had the pleasure of working with on a few recent occasions. Prior to Decipher Kristin was one of the original pioneers of the multi-media online research business when she joined ACNielsen to assist in the development of proprietary capabilities for testing full screen video and other multi-media materials securely online. She then went on to co-found the highly successful OTX (Online Testing Exchange) which became the fastest growing research company in the US in 2002 and 2003 (Advertising Age, Honomichl Report). OTX was acquired in January 2004 by Zelnick Media Group and Pilot Group for $30MM and again, in January 2010 by Ipsos for $65MM.which focused on the entertainment industry.

Kristin is a 2010 recipient of the American Marketing Association’s 4 Under 40 Award, a 2010 Stevie Awards finalist and was recently named to Oregon’s Accomplished Under 40. I asked Kristin a few questions about being an entrepreneur in marketing research, an area I know several in the Next Gen Market Research group are very interested in.

How did you get started in market research?

My first market research gig was in 1996 at Lieberman Research Worldwide. I’d been working at a social science research firm in Oregon after graduating from UO and decided to move to Los Angeles on a whim. I was really fortunate to land at LRW- it was like boot camp for market research. I think the three years I spent there were likely the most valuable of my career because I was able to get a grasp the entire research process and had the good fortune to work with a group of really smart people who not only loved what they did but took great pride in delivering exceptional research. I’m thankful that LRW gave me the opportunity to grow and learn so quickly in a fast paced environment- I’m not sure I would have had that experience at any other firm. This experience was vital as I continued my career and I still bring the same energy and ambition to my current role at Decipher.

I know what you mean, I had a similar experience with Nielsen and NFO. A good foundation is so important. Then in 2000 you founded your own company OTX, why?

I co-founded OTX with a fellow Nielsen employee as a response to a lack of online research solutions at the time for the entertainment research industry. Although there were definitely a lot of firms conducting online research at that time, no one had really addressed the unique needs of entertainment clients, who really required quick turnaround and secure multimedia surveys online. OTX evolved to embrace advertisers over time but our attention to innovation and our ability to push the research industry to embrace new technology solutions (in the face of much resistance!) really solidified us as a market leader in a very short period of time.

What were some of the major mile stones in starting OTX?

We had two major hurdles when we started the company - clients and technology. In 2000 there was a lot of reluctance in the entertainment research industry to embrace online methods and traditional firms like NRG were really doing their best to scare clients into thinking online couldn’t be a viable (and better) substitute for face to face research in malls. Dan Rosen at Warner Bros, was instrumental in supporting us by pushing his research online- he really took a risk because he believed online was the future of research and because of his leadership, all the other studios eventually followed suit.

Technology was challenging as well. In 2000 there weren’t a lot of online research platform options and we really struggled to work within the limited confines of an off the shelf platform. Making the decision to design and develop our own suite of tools (online survey platform, online reporting, etc.) cemented our ability to innovate and stay ahead of the pack. Our open site architecture and amazingly talented development team ensured that we were always one step ahead of the competition.

There were many other online providers at the time though, GreenfieldOnline, Harris Interactive, InsightExpress which was spun out of NFO are a few that come to mind. How did you differentiate yourselves?

I think we really managed to differentiate ourselves by being better, faster and cheaper - everyone was offering cheaper but not so much faster and better. 2000 was sort of the “wild west” of online research so we really excelled at offering all three to clients- and this was also before the day of the $2 respondent. Back then we were buying sample for $8 a pop which was considered a steal compared to phone or face to face. Obviously that strategy wouldn’t work today- the rule of thumb is that you have to pick two (quality, price or timing). Also there really wasn’t any online offering in the entertainment research space so we really just rolled in and owned it from day one.

How did you get the word out/market yourselves?

Amazingly we didn’t really market ourselves at all - there was no advertising or marketing plan or budget until a few years in. Initially we grew strictly by word of mouth. A few years in we started hosting think tanks and consortiums which generated attention around what we were doing but we steered clear of any traditional marketing spend (advertising, conferences, etc). We figured out that the best way to get more work was to do good work. Word of mouth is ultimately the most valuable (and inexpensive) advertising!

Thinking back now, what are two things you did that were especially critical in your success?

The team of engineers and client service people we hired were the most instrumental to our success. We had a vision for OTX but it would never have been executed without a tremendous amount of dedication from our staff who literally worked around the clock and had amazing passion for what we were building together.

There were a lot of challenges to what we were building and certainly some very discouraging setbacks but we never strayed from our vision and our team was exceptional at powering through.

I also can’t downplay how important it was for us to involve our team in product development. Rather than telling our team what to build, we gave them a general idea of what we wanted to accomplish and then let them come back to us with ideas. I’d say 9 out of 10 times they came back with something more unique and interesting than what we ever originally envisioned and I think blending the mindsets of researchers and technologists really gave us an edge in the space. I think most of my favorite conversations with our team during that time began with “I think your idea is great but what if we….”. Empowering our team to be creative thinkers and developers, not just order takers, had a huge impact on our success. I believe so strongly in this approach that we’ve really made it a core part of our corporate culture at Decipher, and it has made a huge difference in our business.

What are two specific things that you wish you would have done differently?

When we started the firm we were financed by IFILM.com which was basically a holding company- great source of support but didn’t really understand our business. I think in hindsight we could have self financed and not struggled so much with the IFILM management team who was really focused on their media/entertainment properties….but hey, getting a paycheck right out of the gate was nice.

While I was on my way out of the firm at the end of 2005 there was a push to drop our proprietary survey software and move to the Dimensions platform. I’m not sure the full transition over ever occurred but certainly I think a move to an “industry standard” platform diminished the customization and flexibility angle that OTX built its brand on. Certainly if we’d built out the interface for the platform and licensed it our valuation would have increased significantly during both acquisition events.

What three things would you suggest as a first step for an aspiring market research entrepreneur?

I see announcements every day of the week for new research firms but in many cases there’s no unique point of differentiation. Figure out your niche and how to effectively communicate that to clients. If you can’t explain how you’re different and what your offering is in under a minute you probably don’t have something sticky enough to really resonate with clients.

What are three things that you think many entrepreneurs do/invest in initially that aren’t really necessary? I know I can think of a few in retrospect, and it seems to be a question that’s rarely asked.

Office space (you can work from home initially). Staff (be prepared to do a lot of the grunt work yourself for the first year). Mini-fridges (just buy the full size refrigerator for Chrissakes…you’re going to need it eventually)- I know this sounds funny but it was literally the first tip someone gave me when I launched my consulting firm…naturally I ignored it but they were absolutely right!

In essence do anything you can to preserve capital. Most importantly, lose your ego. I did a lot of things in year 1 (both at OTX and my consulting firm) that I didn’t want to do simply because I was too cheap to pay someone else to do it. Just remember that there’s definitely a fine line though between spending too much time doing the grunt work and concentrating on the areas where you can really add value (i.e. I’m not sure cleaning the bathrooms myself was such a great use of time….but I did it).

What tips would you give market research entrepreneurs in regard to financing?

Take on as little money/financing as possible. The most valuable asset you have is your equity. Keep in mind that early money is expensive money and by that I mean, you’ll give up a lot of equity to get very little cash right out of the gate. If you can bootstrap and self finance short term until you have a proven track record you’ll be able to give up less to get more. The SBA is also an invaluable resource. If you have collateral (i.e. a house…which is what I pony’d up to get my loan) and good credit it’s relatively easy to get a loan or line of credit. I’d recommend a line of credit over a loan so you’re not paying interest on the full amount of a loan that you may not need from day one.

And how about harvesting/exiting? I find few of us think much about that up front.

Finding a buyer isn’t necessarily that hard- it’s finding the RIGHT buyer that can be challenging. Making sure your goals are aligned with the buyer is paramount. Are you selling with the intent of immediately exiting the business or are you planning on staying on for a period of time? Are you looking for cash, stock or a combination of both? If you’re staying on, are your goals for the company aligned with the new owners? There are also firms that specialize in M&A deals who will find potential buyers for you for a percentage of the sale price- not a bad way to go if you’re looking to lessen the legwork and maintain some degree of confidentiality in the marketplace.

A big thanks to Krisitn Luck for sharing her perspective on a much needed and often overlooked area of marketing research. I hope to have more discussions with other entrepreneurs and business innovators in the future, and feel free to let me know if there are any specific areas you’d like more information on.

@TomHCAnderson
@OdinText

Interesting Q&A about Social Media and Text Analytics

Text Analytics News just published an interesting panel interview on the Social Media Summit website with myself, Dana Jacob who is Sr. Manager of Social Media Insights & Analytics of Yahoo!, Judy Pastor who is Principal Operations Research Manager of American Airlines, Usher Lieberman Director of Corporate Communications at TheFind, and Marshall Sponder of WebMetricsGuru.

I think it’s great to hear how fellow market researchers on both the supplier and client side are leveraging social media with text analytics.

The four of us participated in the Q&A which is available on the Social Analytics Summit website (note: requires registration), but you can read part of the interview below. I understand this is the first part in a series of interviews Text Analytics News is doing. I strongly believe that we’re just skimming the tip of the social media iceberg when it comes to more serious analytics and insights and it’s important for those of us who have started taking deeper dives analytically to share some of what we have found, both good and bad.

Text Analytics News: What are the primary ways in which you leverage Social Media for your clients?

Pastor (American Airlines): American Airlines and our loyalty program, AAdvantage, have both Twitter accounts and Facebook pages to communicate with customers. Twitter is our first line of problem identification and is quickly becoming a major portal to our Customer Relations and Reservations departments for passengers on the “day of departure” (i.e. in the process of traveling).

Currently, we answer 700 tweets per day and that will increase as we ramp up our twitter agents to 24/7 by the end of first quarter, 2012. Inquiries and problems are also addressed on Facebook, though these tend to involve future travel plans. We also monitor the frequent flyer forums such as www.flyertalk.com and www.milepoint.com and reply to questions that may come up about our policies and procedures. Our Facebook pages also highlight fare sales, and special travel destinations and deals.

Anderson (OdinText): Anderson Analytics has been leveraging Text Analytics (now OdinText) to help our clients understand customer comments since 2005. Early on our focus was primarily on customer comments in survey open ends; this is still a key area for most of our clients. However since 2007 our clients have asked us to incorporate analysis of social media including discussions taking place on open forums such as Flyertalk.com. Twitter and other social networks are also a growing area of interest, however we try to help our clients to make educated decisions and prioritize all the unstructured data sources now available rather than trying to “boil the ocean”. We’ve found a deeper analysis and understanding of the relative importance of these sources makes for a better analytics ROI.

Sponder (WebMetricsGuru): I’m an analyst, so the lens I use to leverage social media is through an understanding of online conversations and how they can be best categorized. I don’t consider myself a marketer, and let other others do that for me, so I am not focused on marketing messages or how to best respond, but I do look at platforms that handle those functions for marketers and public relations.

As far as the particulars of how I leverage social media for clients, I look at the following categories

• Is it brand messaging?
• Is it non specific, but pertaining to the overall industry?
• Is it messaging pertain to a specific topic related to the client?
• Is the messaging online representative of offline sentiment (often, we’ve found, it’s not).

Lieberman (TheFind): TheFind is a shopping search engine with perhaps the only index of every online store and available product; roughly 500k stores and 500 million items for sale. We are increasingly using social media, specifically the social signals broadcast by the open graph, to influence our search results. Already, the most Liked stores and brands in your network are ranked higher and the products people Like are more visible. We expect the influence of social signals to accelerate as more stores and brands recognize the obvious SEO benefits of driving social signals such as Like and +1 down to the product level.

Text Analytics News: What kinds of social media analytics have you found most useful?

Jacob (Yahoo!): For our needs, text analytics is the foundation of social media analytics. Sentiment analysis is not sufficient as the bulk of social conversations convey a spectrum of emotions, therefore can’t really be categorized as positive or negative. In order to extract actionable insights, it is critical to sort, filter, analyze and code the conversations into quantifiable categories that are meaningful to specific business context.

Even for engagement metrics, text analytics are key to understanding the key drivers behind the engagement.

Anderson (OdinText): We’ve looked at and worked with many of the providers out there from social media monitoring to pure play text analytics vendors. What we have found is that there is no one tool out there for every situation. The needs differ tremendously by both data source as well as use case. Many of the social media monitoring tools out there have focused more on Twitter data and on the public relations use case, while the pure text analytics tools have taken an almost too broad of an approach. This is the reason we developed OdinText.com specifically for market research managers, however we make no claims about our own tools being the best tool for every use case and every type of data.

We’ve found a discussion about what client objectives are, what data is most suitable to answer these is the best approach. Sometimes this means recommending a provider like SalesForce’s Radian6 or other vendor, sometimes it means designing a custom ad-hoc study that may incorporate survey data, and other times OdinText is used. Regardless, in many cases we do find that further and deeper analysis is beneficial; these are usually conducted using one of the common statistical analysis packages out there whether it’s something as basic as Excel or something more advanced like IBM’s PASW Modeler, SAS, Latent Gold etc. It really depends on the need and the data.

Pastor (American Airlines): We track click through rates and referrals from our Facebook pages to our booking engine, www.AA.com, and attribute revenue to each. Number of issues solved via Twitter is also tracked. We are still looking for ways to quantify the softer side of SM - the good and the bad stories that our customers tell. We are currently working on tracking Likes, re-tweets, and shares…[Full Q&A on Social Analytics Summit site]

Thank you to Text Analytics News and Social Media Summit for organizing these Q&A panels. I’d love to hear how others are using social media in their insights programs.

@TomHCAnderson

The challenge for social media analytics is in going deeper not just broader

Business 2 Community did a short interview with me yesterday asking a few questions about social media and text analytics. It’s up on their site now in case you’re interested.

I think social media analytics has a lot of growing up to do. Now that both text analytics pure plays as well as market research firms including Anderson Analytics (OdinText.com) are starting to take a greater interest in social media monitoring than before. This greater interest from players with stronger analytics experience is evidenced in part by such events as the new Social Media Analytics Summit (organized by Text Analytics News), as well as the greater incorporation of social media in many other types of research such as customer satisfaction surveys. I think the thinning of the herd I predicted last month is definitely nigh.

We’re already starting to see survey respondents being allowed to share their positive text comments on their favorite social networks directly from within the Net Promoter (NPS) surveys. Conversely feedback from sites like TripAdvisor are being fed into the survey data for analysis by corporate analysts looking at their customer satisfaction data. For better or worse it seems traditional marketing research is becoming a 2-way public dialogue with our customers.

However I believe the challenge and skill, as I mentioned in the interview with B2C, does not lie in the amount of data you can incorporate, but rather in narrowing the data and deepening of the analysis. Something that we software and research firms will need educated clients to request, else only more and more data will be added with only cursory insights.

@TomHCAnderson
@OdinText

Market Research CEO’s NGMR predictions on what 2012 has in store

I want to thank everyone who responded to my call for predictions last week. Since then I’ve posted over 77 predictions! I had hoped to synthesize and summarize some of this, but the number and qualitative nature of these predictions makes it difficult. Instead, just like yesterday I have decided to add my own prediction at the end of today’s post.

How we deliver insights becomes as important as what we deliver. Creativity, visualisation, imagination are key to impact and we finally get to see some of the benefits of focusing on big data and of combining behavioural and attitudinal insights

Eric Salama
Chairman & CEO Kantar
CEO TNS

Traditional MR approaches and Social Media monitoring will converge as major brands continue to leverage platforms like Facebook fans pages and Google+. Progressive brands will continue to experiment with leveraging the social sphere but in 2012 more methods will be developed to test both the effectiveness of campaigns and measure the impact of these initiatives

Andrew Reid
Founder & CEO
Vision Critical

In 2012, data analytics and integration of primary and secondary research sources will be bigger than ever, with more innovation from established players, more client investment in solutions and more new companies looking to join the game

William E. Lipner
Chairman & CEO
InsightExpress

I think the big change In the next few years will be that our industry will have to develop new standards for the interpretation of data. Traditionally we use statistics to generalize personal opinions. We focused on the average customer and not on extremes. Social media for example shows us that the average customer is not the most interesting one. Euphoric or angry customers are creating movements. These movements are changing the world. This means that representativeness will no longer be the dominant paradigm. This will change much of the spectrum of the research industry. Conclusion: exciting times ahead of us!

Rijn Vogelaar
CEO Blauw Research

The macro-economic environment in the US and EU will not improve in a material way until after the election. Implications:
o This uncertainty will continue to depress MR hiring and spending growth especially in the custom research practice areas - pricing will continue to be depressed
o Levels of innovation will continue to accelerate across the data collection and interpretation / insights areas as folks look to lower the cost to serve and increase the quality of insights that drive decision-making — “necessity will continue to become the mother of invention”

Newer, non-traditional forms of primary research will continue to gain traction. Implications:
o Researchers will continue to experiment with both passive and active forms of collecting opinions - over the next year, these capabilities will continue to be supplemental to the primary research tools / methods used
o As normative data can be developed, traditional forms of research will become candidates for being replaced

The science of sampling will continue to evolve and loosen to acknowledge the massive amount of social media data that exists and is real time. Implications:
o Social media data will be integrated with traditional survey research to provide richer / broader findings
o The implications of the decisions to be made will play a bigger role in dictating “how much science is required” i.e. sampling frames and representative samples. Decisions of smaller to mid-sized consequences will require less science. In the end, someone is going to make the business decision and use whatever is available

Predictive analytics, automation and decision engine capabilities will continue to grow. Implications:
o Service providers will require their business systems to scale efficiently and their cost to serve to progressively go down.
o Integrating intellectual property, decision algorithms with business and work flow process will grow to increase the speed and quality of service

Respondent engagement will continue to evolve to acknowledge the impact of social media processes and respondent expectations with researchers need to authenticate, profile and target as well as engage. Implications:
o Big

Jim Follett
CEO Authentic Response

Methods convergence is going to be key in 2012. With mobile, tablets, online communities and social media research all growing exponentially, our challenge as researchers will be the integration of a suite of research tools that can meld all of these methods seamlessly. Whether we’re delivering surveys via social media sites, laptops, mobile web browsers or native apps, reaching respondents that are constantly connected will have a significant impact on our ability to collect relevant data in a timely manner- this isn’t just about teens or early adopters anymore. Blended and emerging research platforms also present a unique opportunity to improve research quality by requiring researchers to limit questionnaire length and refocus on respondent engagement (think gamified surveys which show early signs of shaking up stodgy surveys, even mobile surveys, in a significant way).

Kristin Luck
President
Decipher

Enterprise integration will become a priority. With social media analytics, CRM, BI, ERP, CMS, SMMS and data coming from all sides, there will be an increasing demand for more actionable analytics and insights to improve faster decision making. For market research departments, it means the need to collaborate with other parts of the organization, better integrating market/ consumer insights across the enterprise information supply chain. Also, disruptive technologies such as cloud computing, mobile devices, applications, big data and social media will continue facilitating the creation of evolving research methods and tools, and we’ll be moving beyond the era when market research was just about asking, processing and analyzing data

Adriana Rocha
CEO at eCGlobal Solutions

Dramatic increase of companies into the market research space that provide services that are not considered “traditional” market research. The definition of what constitutes market research appears to be changing and these companies are filling a need that “traditional” market research companies are, in many cases less equipped to handle, or are simply not addressing for one reason or another. Many of these services are programming heavy, have increased automation (decreasing labor involvement), and are much less intrusive to research participants by taking advantage of pre-existing or “course of life” data sources and collection methods. The application of market research techniques to business intelligence information, big data, and the introduction of intuitive software platforms by these providers will drive consumers of market research data to find alternative sources for acquiring business insights because the ways of gathering these insights have been simplified

Vaughn Mordecai
President
Discovery Research Group

I am very optimistic that 2012 will be a good year for quality and innovation. Big companies will have to look out for the smaller ones and the companies that do not innovate using mobile, MROC or/and neuroscience will be in trouble. Oh yes, and excellent customer service (consultation as well as operation) will be key

Mike Gadd
President
Gadd Research

1. Social media monitoring hits mainstream - businesses that succeed and grow are starting to listen to and partake in open conversations with consumers to pull in insight and control consumer sentiment.
2. Automated verbatim analysis becomes stronger, can determine context a lot better and lead to better triggers and notifications for businesses to respond to consumers.
3. Ad-hoc research is still used in the development of new products, so growth of online qualitative, online co-creation, online ethnography continues.
4. Smartphone ethnography starts to take the stage a couple of years from now, as penetration of these devices increases in BRIC etc…
5. There will still be online surveys (sorry Tom!) - but alternative methodologies will continue to take the place of many insight projects where in the past a quant survey was the norm.
6. Although this has already started, there is a disruptive shift in the way that online respondent recruitment is done, away from panels and directly from social networks via recruitment apps that people add to their profiles, making it more difficult to become a ‘professional respondent’. This is because of the ubiquity of social networks - and that recruitment apps will deeply analyse respondents social networks to determine a quality score for a potential respondent. The quality of online-only projects involving respondents who were also recruited online, will continue to increase

Andreiko Kerdemelidis
CEO at Visionslive

I think we’ll continue to see a blurring of the lines. As we get less and less able to achieve a random probability sample in quantitative, I believe we’ll see more “large scale” qualitative and immersive techniques get used in a dubious manner, as though they had some numerical viability. I think we’ll see more blurring of the lines with online sample (e.g. mixing river sample and access panel, panel blending, mixing panel sample and social media sample, etc.). And I think we’ll see more blurring of the lines between traditional and non-traditional techniques (e.g. the gamification of research debate, immersive and/or mobile MR mixed with traditional qualitative, data mining and/or social media analysis with or instead of traditional primary research techniques). We’re in the midst of change (as we were with the advent of RDD phone, the advent of online qual, the advent of online quant, etc.), but it’s more chaotic and varied than I’ve witnessed before, with multiple things trying to emerge at the same time and not always a clear view of how/whether each one truly provides upgraded value and reliability

Ron Sellers
President Grey Matter Research

A/B & Multivariate Conversion Testing Expecting Hockey-stick Growth in 2012

In 2011, we saw an unprecedented number of testing tech launches, many of them smaller SaaSs but some with multi-million dollar war-chests. And, testing services firms reported to us that they had fast-growing prospect lists… but, for both tech and services, converting marketers interested in testing into actual paying clients was achingly slow.

Then late this fall the dam broke. Services firms and tech platforms alike told our reporters they were suddenly landing lots of new clients. Most often these were longtime prospects who finally signed and returned the dusty, cobwebbed contract. Now at last they are ready to begin testing and they want to begin as of yesterday!

It’s not limited to a particular sector or type of marketer; more of an overall marketing trend. I can’t point to a specific factor that’s tipped the balance - the economy? The prevalence of GWO? The evangelism efforts of our own weekly or third party, national events such as Conversion Conference? In the end, it doesn’t matter why - just the fact that yes, it’s finally happening!

Anne Holland
Publisher WhichTestWon.com
(former founder Marketing Sherpa)

I’ll avoid the boring and obvious predictions like the increase of mobile, the rising obsession with analytics, and the need for global perspective.

I’d hope that this is the year when we talk less about “quant vs qual” and more about the distinction between “engaged vs ambivalent” consumers. There is so much bad data out there, generated by overcommitted, overtaxed, overemailed respondents who delete our requests for information, fill out surveys like zombies, and tell us what they think we want to hear. This happens with quant and qual. The challenge - and the fun - will be in finding ways to understand humans - and engage them — in ways that truly lead to new insights and breakthroughs. I am hopeful that 2012 will be the year we embrace this

Diane Hessan
President and Chief Executive Officer
Communispace

In 2012, we will witness a surge in the application of “Purpose-Based Innovation” within Market Research. That is, a more focused and relevant use of technology, when/where appropriate - to solve a business issue, rather than showing up with a shiny new toy to sell. How should you place your bet? Consider a more purposed-based application of Visual & Linguistic Gamification, Mobile/GPS & Social Insights, within the framework of specific, relevant and actioned client needs. Neuroscience will be come under attack, for being unreliable, too expensive & ‘off-strategy’ for broad-based MR industry focus/growth

Bernie Malinoff
President, element54

The 2012 future of MR is Social MR. I believe that we will see a shift towards offering respondents the opportunity to share their satisfaction to their friends. In simple numbers: A survey of 1000 interviews generate at least 500 satisfied customers out of which if 100 share their satisfaction on the social media reaching 50.000 people with a message that is worth in marketing spending more than the survey itself cost.
The impact of this kind of approach is huge, for more than one reason: first of all, customer reviews are an increasingly trustworthy source of information (several studies have shown that people have bought products after being influenced by other people’s reviews) and second, the cost of reaching 50.000 on traditional channels would be much higher. Let alone the fact that you can grasp the importance of the whole number, the importance of every customer and the huge impact of customer satisfaction in general.
This is a great opportunity for MR to start taking revenues from the marketing budget instead of fighting for the MR budgets. And as a result, the Market Research industry might just become truly Social

Andrei Postoaca
CEO
Clintelica

2012 will be an interesting time. On the one hand we will see a continued aggressive series of navel-gazing initiatives by the industry and on the other we will genuinely see a new force of data consolidators emerge. It will be the equivalent of the boiling frog but we will look back at the beginning of 2013 and wonder how that happened (a bit like the surprise with Survey Monkey). Many will be victims of, as Joan Lewis said, “The case study of an industry in disruption that did not realise it” (sic)

I also expect an as-yet-unknown Black Swan to come in and radically change things. What could that be? It will be something that makes us all sit up and say Wow! I am not prepared to share my thoughts on this one…

2013 will be a depressing time for the MR industry overall and then we will emerge slowly in 2014, much-changed and all the better for it.

There will continue to be several casualties but in the spirit of Darwin this will be for the greater good.

Oh, and also, China / Asia will continue to terrify us all!

Dan Foreman
CEO at Insight International

As mobile tools become more flexible, expect to see ethnography type studies expanding. The use of video in all forms of research will also continue to grow. Challenges facing researchers will be the management and reporting of massive amounts of data. Location based research will get a stronger foot hold as well as an expansion of longitudinal community type studies. As economy continues to sputter, budget restraints will keep research dollars tight. Expect lower margins and creative methods to be the norm

Dan Weber
CEO Itracks

1.I firmly predict the unpredictable. It’s chaos out there. Too many variables, too many possible tipping points in play. For MR firms this means that the ones that do best in 2012 will be the ones who have thought carefully about how to run a balanced business, and who’ll have a plan B ready for whenever what they were banking on going well in 2012 goes belly up instead.

2. Harder measures of the soft stuff. There’s a growing realization that standard MR is missing out on some key insights into subconscious drivers of behaviour. At the same time cost, time and resource constraints mean end users are getting impatient with some of the woolly, expensive and jargon laden alternatives offered. I think this the is the year where more and more clients clamour for simple to collect, hard measures of the soft subjects - emotions, feelings and motivations etc. I expect this demand to lead to a variety of solutions to being offered, some oddball, others very exciting indeed

Alastair Gordon
Managing Partner
Gordon & McCallum

An Appropriate Sense of Urgency - As we enter 2012, the discussion in our industry centers on the convergence of Traditional MR and New MR. That’s great and the way it should be.
However, most of my peers seem to feel that New MR (e.g. social media analytics, mobile, gamification, Crowdsourcing) simply represent new tools to the research arsenal. The usual caveat goes something like; “Although we are still very much in the early stages of adapting this new technology for MR, it is something you might consider for a future, appropriate opportunity”.
I don’t feel an appropriate sense of urgency in familiarizing ourselves with new MR is being presented. And I believe we risk being disingenuous to our colleagues. I’m not one for hyperbole, but I honestly feel a great number of researchers will find themselves downsized over the next ten years. Corporate clients will turn to new faster alternatives that can provide them with 80% confidence in a fraction of the time.
I’m hoping that in 2012, we’ll start to see industry leaders speak more forcefully on the need to embrace these new tools and thus help researchers retain their roles as conduit to the consumer

Kevin Lonnie
CEO and Founder
KL Communications

I predict more neuro-marketing companies going the way of Emsense (closing) as we fail to find significant value for purchasing decisions

Dr. Stephen Needel
Managing Partner
Advanced Simulations

I think that over the next two years, we’re going to continue to see a push towards DIY or consultative-DIY in Market Research. uSamp has been built around this future vision of DIY surveying and sampling. SurveyMonkey’s acquisition of MarketTools only further substantiates that vision. All the major sampling firms will become more aggressive in this space, as they already have software tools in place. But right now, these tools are just that, and will need to be strategically integrated to succeed. DIY adoption rates will rise with education and application

Matt Dusig
CEO and Co-founder
uSamp

I think we are going to see the lines blurred between market research and mobile marketing by finding “gamified” methods for capturing consumer insight and and consumer sentiment

Jason Cyr
CEO
Tiipz

2011 was the year in which ‘Power to the People’ became real. Just think about ‘occupy wall street’, the Arab spring and even the riots in London. Each of these events were fueled by people who combine their beliefs (positive or negative) with the opportunities of new (social) media.
All this has a major impact on the market research industry. There is a huge opportunity to include the power of the people in research. Empower consumers to share their beliefs about their favorite brands by using the possibilities of new media. Until now marketers have used social media in a rather limited way. The focus has been on building additional reach through facebook fans and twitter followers. This is great, but it does not fully use the power of the people. If you want to use the power of the people and social media in a stronger way, companies should start collaborating in a structural way with their consumers. Co-creation is NOT enough. The only way you can leverage the power of the people, is by involving them in everything your company does. In 2012, the best market researchers your company can hire, are probably its consumers. Involve them in a daily basis in the decision making process of your company

Steven Van Belleghem
Managing Partner
Insites Consulting

While not a traditional market research firm I’ve included a prediction from my friend Arjun, CEO of Retargeter as his is one of a few Next Gen firms such as RapLeaf which are progressive in the area od social media and therefore interest me. The data they collect could be extremely powerful

In 2012, I predict that we will see the various elements of the targeting ecosystem come together into a cohesive whole for the first time. Up until now, display advertisers have struggled to integrate demographic, contextual behavioral, and social graph insights to create precise audience segments to which they can serve targeted advertisements. Now, however, we have technology that allows us to weave these disparate data sources together to product a holistic advertising strategy that’s more relevant and more engaging than ever before. The result will be a higher ROI for advertisers and a more personalized web experience for users

Arjun Dev Arora
CEO and Founder
ReTargeter

In 2012 and beyond, we’ll see increasing demand for tools and services that are of the do-it-yourself (DIY) variety. Survey systems that enable users to select their own respondents, write their own questions, and view and analyze results in near real-time without having to interact directly with a single human being will become the norm, particularly among those who recognize that time can be a crucial component of competitive advantage. Off-the-shelf, plug-and-play websites, replete with qualitative and quantitative features that promote collective creativity, and facilitate the generation of new knowledge will begin to proliferate as well. Such tools and services will play a prominent role in the ongoing technological revolution that is continuing to transform the market research industry. Although the revolution will create some new opportunities, it will also make obsolete much of what we take for granted today. Market research buyers and sellers who embrace the changes this revolution brings, including the need to move far more quickly than ever before, will reap the rewards and be far more successful than those who do not

George Terhanian
President
Toluna North America

1. Online ad effectiveness research will continue to grow at a blistering pace Visibility will become a key metric in evaluating online ad effectiveness. This will measure whether the ad was ever visible to the Internet user.
2. Cross media measurement based on single source electronic TV and Internet data will emerge as an important media planning tool
3. We will gain valuable insights into how to improve the quality of online surveys as a result of the ARF Foundations of Quality 2.0 initiative

Gian Fulgoni
Chairman
comScore

Market Research seems to have been experiencing a fury of innovation this past year, or at least that’s what your conclusion may be if you follow much of the discussion on industry related social media channels. Technology is a good thing, but innovation simply for the sake of innovation is not the key to success. As an example, while I believe some ideas from games can be used to make traditional research tools somewhat more exciting, creating games for the sake of collecting useful data will not prove a worthwhile endeavor anytime soon. Creating entertaining games for profit is challenging enough.

The market research innovation that will stick as the social media bubble begins to mature is that which is based on sound methodology AND can prove its ROI. Specifically, I believe that which is related to big data (structured or unstructured/text) will certainly continue to become more important in 2012 (with more M&A’s in this area) - while at the same time the importance of smaller data sources and samples will decrease.

Surveys will not die in 2012, NOR EVER, and will always hold their place as a useful tool. Though obviously their piece of the total analytics pie will decrease. In the short term, first mover opportunities exist in better incorporating surveys with big data and social media in ways not seen before

Tom H. C. Anderson
Managing Partner
Anderson Analytics - OdinText

Again a big thanks to all of you who have responded, I think we will definitely repeat the NGMR predictions in 2013 as well.

@TomHCAnderson
@OdinText

NGMR Text Analytics Predictions for 2012

Though I’ve been posting predictions all week I haven’t made any myself yet. Today I added my own prediction (at the bottom of this post). I wrote it before reading any of the others I received.

Looking over all the thoughtful prognostications from the ‘who’s who of text analytics’ below, while they may differ in terms of technical solutions as well as broadness and depth of use case, what I believe many have in common, and more and more of those of us working in text analytics seem to agree on, is that we will need more users with a basic understanding and skill in the use text analytics to continue to move forward.

I think we will see next year a move from a “service” model that either produce reports or allow users to install, train, etc. software for performing text analytics on their data, to “applications” that would attempt to interpret the results obtained by means of text analysis into suggested action.

Perhaps it is more a hope than a prediction.

Gregory Yankelovich
Founder & CEO
Amplified Analytics

Over the past couple of years text and sentiment analytics have been applied to traditional and social feedback (surveys, review sites, social media) to track issues, trends, correlations of experiences to survey or experience outcomes - using a mix of statistical and quantitative analysis techniques. 2012 will see a continuation of these techniques, but with a greater degree of multichannel source fusion and integration as companies look to merge all identities of a customer together, and all feedback channels into a holistic view. Additionally - I expect to see innovative organizations blurring the lines between market research and customer engagement through the application of analytics to deduce issues, problems, and sales/churn events as they are developing, and take proactive means to either: 1) engage with a customer operationally on a 1:1 basis through solutions that integrate survey and social text/sentiment analytics with customer relationship management (CRM) and business process management (BPM) solutions, or 2) resolve an issue at a more macroscopic level by using text/sentiment analytics to identify and tracking growth rates of significant but quantitatively infrequent issues and fixing them before they create a material impact on customer sentiment.

Sid Banerjee
CEO
Clarabridge

The imperative to transform text into insight and action, utilizing the ever-increasing ocean of information in social media, CRM notes, surveys, and beyond in practical applications, is driving the future of text analytics. The growth of social media especially as a source for analysis has resulted in a two-fold challenge: managing the costs and technical challenges of ingesting and processing all of that data, as well as developing new ways to make sense of it. And, of course, in the small world in which we live, you need to be able to handle multiple languages and idioms equally well. Compounding these challenges is the fact that applying text analytics to the new generation of routing and other “process-based” applications means you need far greater accuracy. I believe this means we will see more specialization within the field - vendors specializing in particular verticals, use cases, or languages - which will fuel the growth of new platform players and application providers alike.

Catherine van Zuylen
Senior Leader of Product Management and Marketing
Attensity

Businesses who pay for sentiment analysis are going to start asking, “So what?”
It’s not that marketers don’t care how consumers feel about them, but that there’s not much they can do with a pie chart of percent positive, neutral or negative sentiment. The sharpest marketers will be looking for ways to make sentiment analysis pay.

Meta Brown
General Manager, Analytics
LinguaSys

2012 will be the year custom machine classifiers for unstructured text will become commonplace in corporate America. A new online, cloud-based marketplace for outstanding machine-learning classifiers will emerge.

Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
Founder & CEO
Texifter

Predictive analytics and text analytics start to merge into text predictive analytics. We will see use cases when both text and numerical analysis creates better predictions together than only looking at numerical predictions.

For instance when looking at predictions of sales volumes (or other economical data) the use of public text such as twitter could help. It’s not fiction since companies like Recorded Future do some stuff in this space and Saplo have projects where text predictive analytics have shown value.
This is one of the areas where we will see great value of text analytics on big data.

Mattias Tyrberg
Founder & CEO
Saplo

1.New applications of text analytics will center on business analysis
2. Marketers will outsource their social research and monitoring to third-parties skilled in listening, and use their own analysts for interpreting the data and drawing insights for brand strategy and tactics
3. The shortage of skilled text analysts remains

Stephen Rappaport
Knowledge Solutions Director
Advertising Research Foundation (ARF)

2012 will be the year of text analytics. It is now widely understood how much significant information is held in “unstructured data” and how important it is to be able to slice, dice, and mine it.

Key technologies such as entity recognition, sentiment analysis, and text classification are solid, and their benefits are now being recognized, while greater sophistication on the part of users is weeding out the snake-oil salesmen and raising the bar. The upcoming election season in the US will probably see wide deployment of text analytics for political analysis; this will raise awareness of the field even more.

We will see a rise in the variety and power of end-user applications, as vendors seek to reduce the heretofore large technical investments that have been needed to implement effective text analytics efforts.

An ongoing challenge will be to make text analytics more accessible while maintaining validity of analysis results. We will need a combination of better client education and more effective user interfaces to make this possible.

Shlomo (Sean) Engelson Argamon
CEO & Cofounder
Subtext3

Text analytics technology has matured over the past several years. In 2012, text analytics will become a known commodity for businesses that are still unaware of this crucial technology, and will continue to be adopted at a rapid pace for many different uses like social media monitoring, improving the customer experience, big data management, real-time search, and sentiment analysis. Expect large increases in text analytics use across the healthcare, insurance, finance, legal, and hospitality industries.

Ezra Steinberg
Chief Editor
Text Analytics News

This is the year that the text analytics market grows up. Smart people who always ask the margin of error for an election poll result somehow take text analytics claims at face value. I believe that buyers are becoming more sophisticated about both what text analytics can do and about how often it gets it wrong

Mike Moran
Chief Strategist
Converseon

The easiest prediction to make about 2012 text analytics is continued strong market growth — my estimate is 25% on a base that likely topped $1 billion globally in 2011 — as uptake expands throughout the enterprise and as the technology becomes a must-have value-booster for broad-market survey, social/media analytics, and CRM platforms.

With less certainty: We may look back on 2012 as the Year of Question Answering, of the deployment IBM Watson/Apple Siri-type technologies to respond to enterprise and consumer needs ranging from customer (self-)service to medical diagnosis, as a semanticized information-access replacement for tired old search.

And there are signs, from market leaders such as SAP and IBM and from innovative start-ups alike, that 2012 will be the year of *effective* data fusion across database and text (a.k.a. “unstructured”) sources.
Business can’t, won’t, wait for prescriptivist, rigid Semantic Web approaches but is instead applying analytics to the job, to discover the connections that make for truly rich data. You need analytics to operate in real time, to keep up with the data torrent. Many of those efforts will incorporate information mined from audio (speech), image, and video sources as a evolution from text analytics to content analytics picks up speed

Seth Grimes
President
Alta Plana

Social media is the elephant in the room - no decision management system will escape to the impact of social media. My prediction is that social media data, still analyzed in a silo, will be fully part of the 360 degrees view on customers, improving how to attract, retain new customers, sell them more stuff or identify and reduce risk and fraud.

Social Media Monitoring, including sentiment analysis, will become more and more a commodity and focus will be on integration with decision-based systems

Olivier Jouve
Director, Predictive Analytic Applications
IBM

I think that some of the more established players are targets for acquisition by companies that serve the enterprise market. Large companies have vast stores of data, plus get a lot of activity in social media, and its harder to make sense of it for meaningful business decisions. Enterprises want to make sense of their private as well as public social media data, and it doesn’t make sense to use a variety of platforms to do that.

I also think there will be a continuing drive to tune text analytics to create richer results within industry or market sectors (finance, pharma, CPG, etc) and to get away for more generic analysis

Robin Seidner
Director, Strategic Alliances, Insights
Radian6 (a salesforce.com company)

The gap between software developer promises and user expectations will narrow as consumers choose text analytics software designed for their specific use cases. More importantly, 2012 will be the year of text analytics user education. Clients will finally begin to understand that text analytics software is not a black box where any data goes in and finished reports magically appear. Just as with structured data analytics software, a skilled user is necessary to get the best actionable insights desired. Even software firms which previously marketed their wares primarily via an NLP-smoke-and-mirrors (you don’t know what it’s doing, just trust us)-wow factor will realize that a more aware and educated customer is a happier customer.

Tom H. C. Anderson
Managing Partner
OdinText (by Anderson Analytics)

Big thanks to all my fellow text analytics colleagues who responded with their predictions today.

Please check back tomorrow as I close the week out with predictions from some friends in the marketing research c-suite.

@TomHCAnderson
@OdinText

2012 NGMR Recruiter Predictions (Predictions Part III of V)

Continuing with the 2012 NGMR Prediction series I started on New Year’s Day, today I have predictions from a few of the many recruiters who are now active members of the Next Gen Market Research community. I believe they have an important/leading indicator perspective of the front lines in our industry.

I see continued growth in the demand for advanced analytics talent across industries as well as a deeper merger of custom market research suppliers with the database marketing industry. I believe there will be strong demand for the custom researcher who can also harness data to pinpoint targeting consumers down to nearly the individual level. True ROI measures of DB marketing efforts will be the value-added offering down the pike, at least as long as privacy fanatics don’t sink the ship!

John Marty
Principal, Managing Director
Zen Talent

We have experienced an increased demand for marketing research professionals in both 2010 and 2011. This increase was at all levels, from Associate Research Manager through VP levels, and in all areas, custom primary, analytics and shopper insights. Based on what we have heard from our clients, we expect to see a even stronger demand in marketing research positions throughout 2012. Since the majority of our clients are CPG companies (or companies that want CPG experience), we are coming from a perspective of what is happening in the CPG world. Currently, we have a very robust list of jobs within CPG companies at all levels.

In addition, we are seeing that while companies are definitely hiring market researchers, it’s not just about doing the research but being more strategic. The individuals that are able to translate insights into business results are ultimately the ones in high demand and the ones that companies are willing to wait for. This was true in 2011 and will continue into 2012. Another focus we have seen emerging in 2011 is an emphasis on digital/social media.

Joanne Abernathy
Vice President, CPC
O’Connell Group

I see companies saying Uncle when it comes to hiring. They are going to have to give up on the notion of paying less money for talented staff. The trend has been to hire 1 junior person to replace 2 or 3 senior researchers that were in the previous role.

I also believe you are going to see more researchers moving jobs as they have been over worked and underpaid for a long long time and are fed up. This will also likely result in companies trying to retain there employees with stay bonus and promises of raises as they give notice. I read this quote from a newsletter from MarketResearchCareers and think is says it all “For perhaps the first time in the MR industry, compensation will be based upon what a researcher can do rather than what they have done”

Philip Reeve
President
Reeve & Associates

There was in increase during 2011 for market researchers at all levels with skills in custom primary market research and analytics with demands from Manufacturers, Retailers and Suppliers.

In addition to the standard skill set, I have noticed a demand for strategic, branding and consultative skills. Working knowledge of Social Media and Digital Research is also something I am seeing more of. More than ever, candidates are required to be able to understand business issues in order to translate data into insights that bring about real results. Job applicants should expect to demonstrate what they can offer a potential employer in terms of creativity and initiative.

On the hiring side, I anticipate salaries will need to be increased if employers want to keep their top talent. I see a definite restlessness amongst people who have been employed at one place over the past few years - perhaps as a result of being over burdened with work and/or perhaps because the market is opening up.

All in all I look forward to an active and interesting 2012 with a continuing growth trend

Shirley Baron
Principal
Smith Hanley Associates

As I look back at 2011 and forward to 20212 and beyond I continue to see analytics growing in its importance to the decision making process. The past few years have been characterized by change in how analytics are used, new metrics and methodologies will continue to evolve to meet the new needs of clients. Digital, mobile and shopper analytics are in the forefront and will continue to be. Who is my shopper, what do they want and how do I get to them effectively and efficiently and measure my results, are the questions that everyone is asking.

I believe that the search for top analytic talent will continue into 2012 and beyond. Manufacturers, Suppliers and Retailers will continue to emphasize the consultative approach to working with and for them. The status quo is no longer acceptable. One must offer and provide the intellectual capital coupled with the analytic acumen that guides businesses to new and better levels.
Hiring companies and managers are and will continue to be more selective and rigorous in their interviewing process and in who they hire. Perspective candidates need to “up their game” and do homework on the company and their competition. Figure out the issues the company faces and what you offer -what sets you apart from others - Being prepared, asking great questions and being actively engaged in the conversation is essential. It’s about what you can offer to a perspective employer not just what the employer can offer you. That said companies should be able to articulate their point of difference and why someone would want to work there. Top talent is always hard to find and the competition for it is fierce.

Joan Segal
Senior Director
Stephen-Bradford Search

Global and U.S. spending in Marketing Research is up for 2010 and 2011 overall, although in the single digits (3% - 5%). Given a soft global economy and on the heels of the worst economic downturn since Leo Durocher was a Yankee, the industry is doing pretty well.

More specifically, the growth and excitement in market research is and will continue to be in the application of advanced analytics to measure consumer/audience behavior and in the application of all methods of analytics/insights to the Internet. In a world where the largest marketing research firms continue to devour each other and as a result, cut back people and deliverables, Digital Measurement is a true growth area for our industry

Philip Busone
Vice President/Partner
Smith Arnold Partners

Our shortest and most modest prediction comes from Data Mining Guru Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro, specifically in regard to data mining jobs.

For now I think it will be an even year

Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro
Editor
KDNuggets

A big than you to all who participated so far.

In case you missed it yesterday we had predictions from several client side NGMR members. Look for expert predictions specifically from leaders in the field of Text Analytics in tomorrow’s post.

@TomHCAnderson

@OdinText

Following up on the series of 2012 Next Gen Market Research Predictions I started on New Year’s Day I have below a few from Client Side NGMR Members.

Customer Transparency, fueled by Big Data, analytics, social media and device proliferation, will become the new CRM model

Dennis DeGregor
Chief CRM Evangelist
Hewlett-Packard

From my pov and from our experiences at Dannon, I can definitely say that 2012 will be a challenge for us. Our budget was cut in half (yet again) and every penny has to specifically lead to an action — one that we can unequivocally say is helping to move the business along. We are no longer thought of as an Insights department — but must also be an Action department. One that takes our insights and immediately applies them to creating new Innovations, to having a specific thought for a new Ad Campaign or to an idea for a Promotion or Shopper Marketing plan. Basically, the lines between Insights and Brand Marketing (and to our Ad Agency) will continue to blur even more at Dannon

Tracy Luckow
Sr. Director, Strategy, Insights & Innovation
Dannon

Most economic indicators for Western Europe point to a pretty flat 2012 - public and private debt is a drag, hindering growth in many sectors. This is, in my view, bound to impact business confidence. ROI is going to be the key question on discretionary expenditure - MR projects will be questioned vigoroulsy, do we need to do it, how will we measure impact? For me, the DIY trend is likely to continue, in one form or other. Disintermediation shifts will carry on, even if not so visible or even commmented on. Strategically important projects will continue to merit the best thinking, the most appropriate methodology - test and prove will continue sifting through all the myriad of new stuff out there. I think 2012 may be flat overall, but there’ll be a lot movement beneath the surface

Edward Appleton
Consumer Insights Manager
Avery Dennison

1) Social Media research will become a “need to do” vs. an emerging discipline to “watch and wait” on
2) I expect more #mrx depts will couple with other internal depts (marketing analytics, customer intelligence) to provide… …insights to the C-suite they’ve collaborated on. We started this 2 yrs ago = to great success!

Katie Clark
Custom Insights & Analytics Manager
Diversified Business Communications

Greater expansion of applying behavior economics and the decision sciences to marketing

William Leach
Director, Strategic Insights
PepsiCo

Mobile! And PROPER use of social

Christina Nathanson
VP Consumer & Market Intelligence
MasterCard

Again, big thanks to all who participated so far.

Check back for more 2012 predictions tomorrow from NGMR member Recruiters!

@TomHCAnderson

@OdinText

Best Blog Posts of 2011

I see a few other NGMR Bloggers are posting their Top 10 Blog Posts of 2011. Made me curious so looked up and posted the Top-10 most visited posts for this blog below.

Big thanks to my fellow research professionals for visiting and also for your engaging discussion in the NGMR LI group throughout the year!

2011 Most Read Posts

1. The New Face of Marketing Research Intelligence

2. The NGMR Top-5 HOT vs Top-5 NOT: Predictions From The Who’s Who of Future Research

3. Top-10 Most Innovative Research Firms

4. Snapshot of The Marketing Research Industry

5. MR Heretic Explained

6. 2011 NGMR Disruptive Innovation Finalists

7. The Future of Text Analytics

8. 2011 NGMR Innovation Awards

9. The Experts of Text!

10. 2011 NGMR Meme Winner!

Come back for the rest of the NGMR 2012 Predictions post later this week. I have a strong feeling they will be among the top posts next year

@TomHCAnderson

@OdinText

2012 Next Gen Market Research Predictions - Part I

Last week I put out the word that I was looking for a few industry predictions for 2012. As it turns out response was so great (Looks like I’ve already received over 50) that I’ve decided to break them out into multiple posts.

Today I’m posting the 2012 predictions mainly from the “#NGMR Twiteratti“, those 20 or so who responded most quickly with their predictions. If you sent me a prediction and don’t see it here please check back during the week as I continue this series.

Neuroscience will slow down even more and another neuro company [other than Emsense] will go belly-up…[i.e.] any of the facial coding businesses

@Mike_Rodenburgh
Mike Rodenburgh
VP Product Development
Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange

Social Media Research is not just qual! 2012 will see at least 5 prominent case studies on the use of predictive models based on social media data mining

@JHenning
Jeffrey Henning
CMO Affinnova

A continued convergence of marketing and market research, or as I like to say a cross pollination of the two disciplines. I believe that buyers are going to look for more research opportunities within their marketing activities to reduce costs. Seeing it with online communities already, but I also think that the online consumer is more available to be engaged…That and the collapse of ESOMAR

@SawchukMR
Derek Sawchuk
Senior Community Consultant at Passenger

For political/public affairs research which I do: More MROC using Facebook platform & more experimentation w/ social media methodologies. Also figuring out how to conduct political research (frequent, short) on mobile. Creating panel of voters willing to engage

@christinelmatt
Christine Matthews
President, Bellwether Research

Valuable insights in analyzing collective data from multiple sources - traditional, payment, social media, qualitative

@jebbing9
Jason Ebbing
Director, Data Services at MRSI

(1) The research companies who find ways to leverage and incorporate existing data/knowledge with their primary data collection skills will flourish
(2) Increased demand for short, digestible and creative ways of presenting information to assist in getting insights ‘out there’ -
video & design skills
(3) Qualitative recruitment about finding the ’sharp point’ rather than the representative - tight specs, creative, and category engaged
(4) Diversification of methods used to engage qualitatively. Mobile before the group, video, online + face-2-face to get a fuller picture of the consumer

@GambleGamble
Victoria Gamble
Founder & Researcher
WorkINProgress

1. In a year of the US election I predict a revolution in political polling techniques driven by mobile research and social media analytics
2. We will see the emergence of some new breeds of tracking studies more game like in nature
3. Some neuro science techniques will hit the high street
4. Will see a raft of new sexier text analytics techniques hitting the headlines

@JonPuleston
Jon Puleston
VP Innovation at GMI

2012 will be the year market research begins to see the power of geolocation apps. We no longer will rely on reported behavior…with online qual we now can know how and why. With geolocation we will know where the decision takes place

@LongoMR
Jim Longo
VP Marketing
Itracks

Folks will become more savvy in their social media monitoring to uncover unmet consumer needs, deeper understanding of brand meanings, and profitable attitudinal linkages to use in marketing their brands

@MarketingLetter
Angela Hausman
Associate Professor of Marketing
Howard University

Social media is going to be integrated in more quantitative research by informing attributes, messaging, etc. I think the traditional quant tracker could get a serious face lift with SM integration

@Blythegridley
Blythe Gridley McLean
Account Manager
Bellomy Research

In becoming more savvy, researchers will take a more purposeful approach to social media listening. Social media analysis has some excellent applications but it’s not appropriate for all product categories/brands and research objectives. I predict there will be less hype in 2012…

@VirtualMR
Cathy Lanigan Harrison
Social Media Research Manager
Chadwick Martin Bailey

Blurring of line between MR and management consultancy. At least for the highly paid MR professionals

Archana Gidwani
Chief Of Global Insights and Brand Strategy
Breakthrough Insights

Uptake in unique, opt-in behavioral tracking, like consumer RFID tags. Not merely in-store shopping but across stores (malls), experiences (tourist destinations), trade shows, etc.

@SBrudvig
Susan Brudvig
Marketing Professor
Ball State University

Text Analytics reads between the lines: Not only will advances in text analytics increase the efficacy of this approach, but look for text analytics to also emerge as a game changer in both online search and big data analytics. Processing power, depth and width of analysis protocols, and access to a vast corpus will dictate the winners and losers in this race. Simple sentiment analysis and sampling of limited data channels will be overwhelmed by the ability to apply multiple algorithms to gain different levels of insight from text, including emotional affect. The application within research will be profound; applying text analytics to communities, group transcripts, social discourse, CRM data, EFM platforms, survey verbatims, etc.. will just be the start: the merging of unstructured with structured data sets with other data models will be utterly transformative to many industries, but especially to market research

@Lennyism
Lenny Murphy
Greenbook
BrandScan360
Decooda
Kontrol
Pureprofile
InsightPool

MROCs will go mainstream, everybody will start offering them in a certain way…

@Tomderuyck
Tom De Ruyck
Head of Research Communities
Insites Consulting

1. Brand positionings will make their way into more messaging as marketing goes into more communications channels.
2. Content marketing will have a place in more marketing plans, especially B2B.
3. The phrase, “have we optimized this program for mobile,” will be used with greater frequency.
4. More measurement tools that claim to provide some equivalency for social media versus traditional media will be available
5. Brand marketers will increase the use of video for their content.
6. Companies will be looking to build brand communities in a variety of places, but more for marketing than market research
7. The shopper decision process will be dissected in greater detail both online and in-store
8. More quantification tools to measure the influence of social media recommendations will be made available.
9. Mobile apps will reach a saturation point
10. Data management will reach a tipping point with too much data to manage and not enough resources and budget to allocate to it

@RobPetersen
Rob Petersen
President and Founder
BarnRaisers

In 2012, I predict we’ll see a call for more reliable and valid nontraditional methodologies. Sure researchers are using games and apps, but I believe clients will want more scientific backing for anything that goes beyond “traditional” market research. Look for a rise in gamification, savvier social media analytics and unique consumer feedback opportunities.

Of course, these may all take a back seat if we spend the majority of the year trying to find the rest of the Mayan calendar…

@DrTaitMartin
Tait J. Martin, Ph.D.,
President & Chief iNSiGHT Officer
The iNSiGHT Cooperative

In 2012 we will learn the answer to life, the universe and everything, but it will be immediately dissmissed because it came from a survey. (apologies to Doug Adams)

@Rhobber
Rick Hobbs
National Board of Directors
MRIA

The word that keeps coming to my mind is “tangible”. People will increasingly value what they can touch and understand. The more life moves “into the cloud”, the more value will be attached to real objects and activities. Vinyl records are increasing in popularity. Jobs that have a real outcome (plumbing, engineering, etc.) outrank those that involve pushing paper around.

@frankie_johnson
Frankie Johnson
Founder
Research Arts

Countdown to consolidation?

@MRBonline
Jon Leiman
Founder MRB

1. For most researchers mobile methods will move out of experimental phase and become a regular part of the methodological mix

2. There will be a dramatic increase in offline recruitment of panel communities, most notably via QR codes.

3. One of the following companies will experiment in a more serious way in the online sample business: Twitter, Facebook or Google. I wish I knew which one

3. Ninety percent or more of the Honomichl 50 companies will experiment with gamification.

5. Both the number of market research blogs and the number of tweets using the #mrx hashtag will more than double relative to 2011

@DanaMStanley
Dana Stanley
Editor
Research Access

I don’t think 2012 will be a year of stability for providers -that may not arrive until 2013 or later. I think we will continue to see DIY tools expand and also the use of large data streams. These continuing trends are changing the role of corporate researcher to a manager of data and an educator– as research responsibilities are dispersed. As data becomes more of a commodity the research companies that have a highly specialized approach (or patent) or strong brand will be in the best position to prosper

@QuirksMR
Dan Quirk
VP Marketing
Quirk’s Marketing Research Review

A big thanks to everyone who responded so far!

Remember to check back again as I post more of the predictions - hopefully by category. Of course please feel free to post your own prediction here or comment on any agree or disagree with.

@TomHCAnderson

@OdinText

Next Week’s 2012 Market Research Predictions

Each year I enjoy participating in and then reading RFL Communications‘ ‘Annual Market Research Predictions’ issue. Unfortunately this year I didn’t have time to respond with a prediction before the deadline.

However, now that there is a holiday lull in activity I thought I would take a moment and reach out to a few friends as well as the general NGMR community and ask for a few predictions related to next gen research and analytics.

Stay tuned next week as I post some of these here on the blog.

Till then, if you have a hunch what 2012 has in store for us feel free to ping me with your prediction.

@TomHCAnderson

Predictions posted over five days by category:

#NGMR Twitterati

NGMR Client Side Researchers

NGMR Recruiters

NGMR Text Analytics Professionals

NGMR Market Research C-Suite

A talk with BAQMaR’s Tom De Ruyck

After the annual BAQMaR conference I asked my friend Tom De Ruyck, who is a co-founder of the organization and serves as its President, a few questions about BAQMaR and his thoughts on Next Gen Market Research. Tom is also Head of Research Communities at Belgian research firm InSites Consulting, and serves on the FTO Board of Directors. In 2010 Tom was recognized by the American Marketing Association’s in their Inaugural 4 Under 40 list of market research leaders.

Q. Tom, tell us a little about BAQMaR, what is it and what does it stand for?

De Ruyck: BAQMaR wants to make marketing research ‘COOL’ again: ‘well-known’, ‘popular’ and ‘unique’. Within our industry, but also among end-clients and young - talented - students. This, through our website and the events we organize ourselves or in close collaboration with our ‘official partners’ and ‘friends’. Additionally, we strive to be the glue between the industry and academia. Promoting academic research to the research industry and stimulating collaboration/partnerships between both worlds. We strongly believe that by ‘sharing bright ideas’ across company borders, we will take our profession forward.

“The research world is changing very fast, associations need to evolve too… Over and over again!”

Q. How do you go about starting an organization like BAQMaR?

De Ruyck: We started the organization 5 years ago with 5 young researchers. ‘Angry young men’, who came to the conclusion that almost all ‘research associations’ where a bit dull and not really up to speed with the online and social media revolution that was going on. They weren’t very good in promoting the research profession towards young graduates. They weren’t showcasing the newer, cool and more than ever - oh so relevant, online techniques. We wanted to change that!

In the very beginning we were investing our own money and time to bring a rather basic website online. On that website we shared our vision on the future of research. The movement is a truly 21st century one: born online and grown via ‘word of mouth’ and basic social media marketing. Once we had a base of ‘fans and followers’ online, we started organizing offline events. The combination between both is very powerful: it creates a vibrant community of engaged people between whom ideas and visions are shared and discussed.

But, as with everything, it’s a matter of keeping it fresh. At our Annual Conference on the 8th of December we celebrated our 5th anniversary. And, although we’ve only existed for 5 years, we will soon (January 2012) launch our second website redesign with a renewed mission for our association. The research world is changing very fast, associations need to evolve too… Over and over again!

“Quality is more important than the quantity. Inspiring people, stimulating discussion and bringing potential ‘partners in crime’ together is what’s really important to us…”

Q. Well BAQMaR’s success has certainly been quite impressive. How many members do you currently have?

De Ruyck: We don’t have members! We believe that memberships are something from the past… It should be possible to get involved with just ‘a click’, and today there are other creative ways to fund your organization. But to give some numbers, on a monthly basis we interact with over 2,000 market researchers and analysts through our website, video’s and offline events… The quality is more important than the quantity. Inspiring people, stimulating discussion and bringing potential ‘partners in crime’ together is what’s really important to us…

Q. So BAQMaR was started because the traditional trade orgs weren’t ‘cool’ enough and were ignoring younger researchers. This certainly is the case in many places, not just Belgium. What are your growth plans for BAQMaR?

De Ruyck: First of all, a lot of the existing associations are really adapting and some of them already do quite a good job now. We can only be very happy about that! We have good relationships with a couple of the traditional research associations: we exchange ideas and organize joint events. Secondly, in today’s world, if you are publishing in English as we do, country boarders no longer exist. The majority of the researchers we interact with today are outside of Belgium. They work in the Netherlands, the UK, France, Germany and even the US and Russia. When it comes to our short term plans for growth, it’s about more focus on bringing short - high quality - video clips and articles on the trending topics in marketing research and analytics online, featuring the people that are experts in those specific areas.

Q. What have you learned about engaging market researchers online these past few years?

De Ruyck: That it’s very hard! Take a closer look at the #mrx community for example. It consists of a rather small group of very active people, next to a larger group of professionals who dip in and out. A lot of the researchers are still focused on a few of the large offline events, especially those on the client side.

“Clients are less involved in (online) discussions about research. Why? We only talk about ourselves and our methods all the time. They want to talk ‘business’. That’s the real problem here!”

Q. I think you’re talking about Twitter now, and I agree with you, that is a rather small group. Client side researchers are most definitely different. In my experience I notice a lot of them online are more voyeuristic and likely to follow a specific blog or LinkedIn discussion from time to time without commenting directly. How can we be more inclusive?

De Ruyck: We are too focused on what we consider ‘marketing research’ and the research methodologies we use: the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of it. Client side researchers have broader interests. They want to talk business: what’s the real impact of all the ‘cool’ stuff we try to offer them? In fact, we only talk about ourselves all the time. That’s the problem here. Most of the blogs and LinkedIn groups are started by people on the agency side, probably that’s why they are so focused on methodology. What our clients really need online, is a forum where they can share the issues they are struggling with on a daily basis. In such a forum we as agency side researchers, need to listen and learn.

“While I was studying, I always said: If there is one thing I never want to do, it’s ‘market research’. That’s sooooo boring!”

Q. How about you, how did you first get into market research? Was it something you were passionate about from the start?

De Ruyck: Not really. While I was studying, I always said: ‘If there is one thing I never want to do, it’s ‘market research’. That’s sooooo boring!’. But, I found my current company (InSites Consulting) which had a totally different approach and culture: online research methods combined with the possibility for young talent to help change the face of the research industry in a very active way. So I thought, let me take on the challenge, try to make research ‘COOL’ again! If you take a closer look at it, via BAQMaR and my work as an Adjunct Professor at 2 business schools, it’s all about that: showing to people, especially students, that market research today is evolving and that it’s much more fun and a lot sexier than they had ever thought it was.

Q. What are some ‘cool’ techniques and what are some ‘uncool’ techniques?

De Ruyck: Social Media Research & Market Research Online Communities are definitely among the coolest techniques at the moment. Researchers, participants and clients seem to really like them a lot. MROCs involve all stakeholders in the research process and business decision making in a totally new way. For students these techniques are ‘cool’ because they make use of social media tools and they are very consumer-centric. It all about listening and collaborating with consumers in a different way. For them, ‘uncool’ researchers are those who are not able to tell an impactful story to clients and who are just trying to knock marketing people down with tons of slides, graphs and statics!

Q. BAQMaR was an early friend of #NGMR (Next Gen Market Research group), what does ‘Next Gen Market Research’ mean to you?

De Ruyck: For me, it’s about using social technologies to get the best data and get the most out of the data. It’s also about the new relationship between clients, researchers and participants (a closer relationship) and the more active role for participants in the research process. Two trends that are changing the face of our profession.

“Give young researchers one day a week in which they can do their thing and experiment. It will pay off!”

Q. There are relatively few researchers under 40 expressing their thoughts online, why do you think this is?

De Ruyck: Not every young researcher has the possibility to express him or herself. In larger agencies, young researchers don’t get the stage. They are too busy with their day-to-day jobs. They don’t get the chance to experiment with new methodologies, which means that they don’t have that much to talk about online or at conferences. Maybe, we need to learn from Google here. In this age, where conducting market research involves more technology and online skills than ever before, give young researchers - the ones who master both - one day a week in which they can do their thing and experiment. It will pay off!

Q. Partly due to social media the research community has become much more global. You and I both participate in many industry events both online and offline. What would you say are some of the common differences you have noticed between US and European researchers/firms?

De Ruyck: Difficult question… Some say that a lot of the recent, more exciting, developments are coming from Europe now. The continent where a group of new-style mid-sized research agencies have their roots. One by one they are crossing the Ocean to bring that contemporary flavor to the US. Of course, that’s putting it very black and white. The States also have great research minds who are pushing things forward every day. I just have the feeling that the ‘climate’ in which change can happen, is better in Europe. European clients are more willing to try new things, while US clients are a bit more conservative when it comes to new methods and techniques. Probably because markets in European countries, markets are smaller and there is less to lose for them when trying something new in a project? An interesting one to discuss in more detail in the future…

“The biggest threat to market research is that we would ignore the rapid change in the world we live in”

Q. There’s been a lot of talk in market research during the past few years about threats to our industry. In your opinion, what do you think some of the biggest threats are?

De Ruyck: The biggest threat is that we as an industry (associations, agencies and researchers), will ignore the rapid change in the world we live in. If we don’t evolve fast enough, we will not find consumers anymore who are willing to participate in our research projects. If we don’t rethink what we do and how we do it, there is a chance that we make ourselves irrelevant as an industry, even in the short run! So, let’s try to make research ‘cool’ again: well-know, popular among talented young graduates and participants & unique, contemporary and relevant to our clients. Let’s do it now and let’s do it together!