Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

Next Gen Market Research Group (NGMR) on LinkedIn hits 5,000 member mark!

Today the fastest growing market research group on LinkedIn, Next Gen Market Research (NGMR), will hit the 5,000 member mark. I’ve been moderating the group for quite some time and have been told by several members that it is by far the best market research group on LinkedIn, and one that they check in on daily.

As in all communities, value = quality content x volume. By keeping membership limited, encouraging open discussion on topics of interest to fellow market researchers, and minimizing posting of links and other promotional material the group continues to grow in both size and quality.

Currently the supplier/client side mix is about 88%/12%. As is the case in most established and popular discussion board communities, a smaller proportion of the membership tends to create most of the discussion thread starts. A slightly larger group regularly responds, and the remaining 80% of members prefer a more voyeuristic experience.

We’ll probably text mine this discussion at some point in the near future to understand what is of most interest to market researchers. In the meantime I thought I would post the Top-10 recent discussion threads in terms of activity:

Next Gen Market Researcher (NGMR) Top-10 List

1. Blog Scraping: Will it replace focus groups or is it mere hype?
   Started by Ted Kendall Partner/Owner - TripleScoop
   
2. I’d like to pick your wonderful brain! Three clever things a writer of questionnaires ought to consider.
   Duncan Stuart, Director at Kudos Organisational Dynamics Ltd
   
3. Have you ever seen or been asked a question, soooo badly worded, that you asked God never to have to work with that MR Agency???
   Canek Riestra Grijalva, Market Analyst
   
4. To weight or not to weight?
   Sarah Ramanauskas, Head of Customer Intelligence, Betfair
   
5. Can a multivariate data balancing approach solve the problem of data unrepresentativeness?
   Haren Ghosh, Vice President, Marketing & Analytics at Factor
   
6. Maximum Difference - The New Conjoint
   Michael Lieberman, President at Multivariate Solutions
   
7. What is the evolution of market research reporting (format, length, visuals, etc)? What you are doing differently now than you were years ago? What do you anticipate being able to do in the future?
   Cathy Harrison, Vice President, Market Research at ShesConnected Multimedia Corp.
   
8. Is neuromarketing a real trend in consumer insight?
   Ron Wright, Owner, Next Century Technologies, Inc.
   
9. Online focus groups…
   Chris Seidell, Senior Analyst, Marketing Research & Planning
   
10. Has any used social media for market research purposes (e.g. recruiting participants for focus groups, surveying) and if so, how well has it worked for you?
    Riva Kupritz, Owner, Outsource Marketing and Market Research Consultant

It’s been an honor and a pleasure to help facilitate and moderate this discussion among my colleagues. I’m wondering what effect social media like this will have on professional trade organizations like ESOMAR, ARF, MRA, AMA, SCIP etc.? Though some of these groups now have their own boards I haven’t really seen much interesting discussion on them.

@TomHCAnderson