Insight Innovation Exchange: The Future of the Market Research Industry
Recently GreenBook presented the first North American Insight Innovation Exchange in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This conference brought together innovators in the industry to dig deep into the future of Market Research. They explored ideas for new technological advancements in research that will replace traditional methods. Each brilliant presentation offered the audience a view into the future of the market research industry.
One of the major topics of discussion was the move to mobile research. This includes changing from long online surveys to mobile micro surveys and from in-person interviews to mobile focus groups. Jasmeet Sethi from Ericsson ConsumerLab presented “Frugal by Necessity or Choice,” where he discussed the idea of using a mobile app, What’s App, in this particular study to gain real time feedback from a selection of consumers. Mr. Sethi explained that using a mobile app as a focus group facilitator is a much more frugal and effective method for conducting research especially in African countries where a mobile phone connection is more dependable than a wireless internet connection.
Another concept of new market research methods is gamification. Everyone has played a game at some point in their life regardless of age or gender. In his presentation, Jason Anderson of Insights Meta discussed the idea of conducting research through online gaming. Using games to conduct research within your audience allows you to achieve a higher engagement rate and accurate, relevant results. Mr. Anderson went on to explain that research gamification has psychological rewards and provides the player with satisfaction, recognition and achievement. So how will gamification be used? Anderson suggests the future of gaming in research will be seen in story-based surveys, Pictionary-style qualitative groups and live-action MaxDiff games.
A third new – and especially interesting – market research method came from Olga Churkina of Fresh Intelligence, who presented on “Glocalization”. According to Richard Tiplady, glocalization is “the way in which ideas and structures that circulate globally are adapted and changed by local realities.” It is important for brands to do research about the values and cultural differences between countries before putting new products into the market. How to localize content for different cultures can be determined by the glocalization score of each country. The glocalization score is the correlation of the brand’s perception to the local cultural values. Ms. Churkina’s research showed that glocalization is responsible for 55% of a brand’s success in different countries; in order to achieve glocalization a country’s overall culture must be a leading factor in the brand messaging.
At the Insight Innovation Exchange, market researchers from different industries worked together to explore ways to bring change to the market research industry. Over the next five years, technological advances such as survey apps, game-based research and glocalization will have a major effect on market research methods, connecting consumers to brands more easily than ever before.
