Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

A Spotlight on Social Networking Services

ESOMAR’s report on Global Market Research 2009 is no out and if you are an ESOMAR member you may download it free here.

This year I was asked to write the chapter on technological developments. I chose to focus on what I think is more interesting than anything else happening in market research, and that is how we as an industry will leverage social network services.

I kept the article very short but did include some thoughts from conversations I’ve had with researchers at Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

In terms of why it’s so important, I think Meg Sloan, market research lead at Facebook said it nicely in a recent conversation,

“More and more people are living part of their lives online and sites like Facebook provide a way for brands and researchers to move beyond traditional one-way observation and dialogs”.

How do we leverage social media and social networks specifically? I have long felt that text mining is the key. Judit Nagy, VP Consumer Insights of MySpace/Fox Interactive agreed with me and said that

“[Text mining] is definitely on our priority list… one of our core opportunities is to truly capture conversations and insights/opinions at a point in time when the customer feels very comfortable”

Read the report for more, or for those of you who will be at ESOMAR Online in Chicago this October, I will be moderating a panel discussion with Dan Shapero from LinkedIn and Sean Bruich of Facebook. If you’d like to listen in to a call I had with them recently please see this post.

@TomHCAnderson