Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research™

Next Gen Market Research Expert Panel Day 3 at The Market Research Event with 3M, Communispace, Ipsos and Techneos

NGMR’s Disruptive Innovation Award winners met for a panel discussion in front of a full room at The Market Research Event (TMRE) yesterday. Possibly interest level in the discussion was best attested to by the fact that not a single person left early even though we ran a bit over our 45 minute schedule on the last day of the conference.

The beginning of the session focused more on what the winners have been working on. Sandra Kelly from 3M, when asked whether if offshoring had been considered, since a large part of motivation of doing DIY with contract employees was obviously for cost cutting purposes (3M had shared in refreshing detail financials related to this initiative the day before). Sandra said offshoring was never considered, and that just as important as cost cutting in the initiative was maintaining high quality research and gaining control of rogue ’survey monkey’ initiatives. Contract employees also provide added benefit of being able to meet in person with 3M internal customers.

When discussing social media research, especially Facebook and Twitter, Diane Hessan of Communispace made interesting assertion, that in the future engagement will be even more important than sampling as it will be harder and harder to find ‘normal’ people willing to take surveys.

Group including 3M agreed that people give feedback not because of monetary incentives, but because they like the product and especially the company brand (as evidenced by response rates when study is blinded).

Sean Conry of Techneos and AJ Johnson of Ipsos discussed benefits and opportunities surrounding hybrid studies and mobil data. The discussion then turned from more specific questions surrounding their work to the future of research in general.

The group agreed that privacy, especially online, is a difficult issue, and also agreed that perception of privacy is different among different age groups as well as cultures, and that legal issues related to privacy are also quite different across countries.

NGMR Advisory Board and myself would like to again congratulate all the winners and thank them for their participation at The Market Research Event.

I’m very happy with the difficult decisions made by the nomination committee in selecting the finalists and winners. I also plan to follow up with each of the winners in the coming weeks and interview them a bit about the work they’ve been doing in order to share more here on the blog with NGMR members who were not able to attend the award ceremony and panel discussion in San Diego CA this week.

@TomHCAnderson