Author Archives: Kathleen Poulos

Real time data was the talk of TMRTE 2012

It’s been a week since The Market Research Technology Event ended and come last Wednesday evening I was officially in data overload. It’s taken me the past week to sort through my notes and give some deeper thought to the information presented. Overall I found the conference to be future looking; however it was not as eye opening or disruptive in thinking as what I heard at last year’s conference. Perhaps the unfamiliar ideas are becoming more mainstream?

Having now gone through my notes I did want to give an update to the 5 areas I had highlighted pre-conference. Here’s my take on what was presented:

  • Use of mobile in gathering market data
    • This was a big topic of focus; several companies shared their mobile research data along with the pros and cons of mobile as a viable research methodology.
    • I didn’t hear anything new related to mobile, there were simply more companies trying mobile on for size.
    • From my perspective, mobile has not been implemented as a methodology. Companies simply took traditional survey tools (streamlined them a bit) and pushed them to a mobile device for answering. I don’t see this as mobile market research. Some companies are getting closer to truly implementing mobile and did share their learnings. More on that in another post.
  • Big data – managing the overload
    • There seems to be no end to the data deluge, just expect it to grow
    • No real insights were given on how to manage TMD (too much data), if you have an answer I’m all ears.
    • There was a session on advanced computing for information visualization and analysis. Now I’m all for data visualization and creating a means of displaying data (lots of data) so people can quickly and easily get the point. That’s not what occurred in this session. It was cool and very future looking but so specialized and currently high level that the normal data shocked person walking around your city is not going to get anywhere near this visualization or analysis.
  • Gaming as a means of gathering data
    • This was interesting and surprising… I knew/believed gaming was a great way to engage and gain feedback. What I didn’t know were the statistics showing the positive impact of gaming. I found some of the behavioral stats a bit hard to believe but it’s easy to see the opportunity that exists in utilizing gaming to gain market intelligence.
    • Visit www.janemcgonigal.com for the rest of the story…
  • Social media and crowdsourcing in market research
    • The social aspects of market research were touched upon in several of the presentations and while interesting it was hard to apply to actually doing research on a daily basis.
    • Social media is a natural crowdsourcing tool and a great place to data mine – the difficulty is truly understanding the learnings you mine and acting on them in a timely manner.
    • In this very time compressed world in which we live, accessing market insights where people are actively engaged (i.e. Facebook, Twitter) will increasingly be your channel to their feedback.
  • Growth and adoption of real time data
    • This was by far my area of interest – how do we get real time data, do we need it, does it really exist?
    • Real time was touched upon in various ways during the conversations on mobile – what better way to access real time input than via a person’s mobile device?
    • I was surprised (last year and this year) by the resistance to mobile and the idea of data being real time. We live in an instant gratification world so how could real time not be an option?
    • Google Consumer Surveys was perhaps a rude awakening for some? I happen to think of them as a very SmartCrowd and was interested to hear their presentation – if this didn’t confirm the value of real time not sure what would. (Again in the interest of full disclosure, InCrowd provides real time data in the healthcare space)
    • Micro surveys deliver data that is just as reliable as data gathered by traditional market research – so why wait for data?

This post originally appeared on CROWDTalk.

Join me for a Cosmopolitan… Sound bites from day one of TMRTE

bigstock-Simple-Cosmopolitan-603289As the first day of The Market Research Technology Event drew to a close you could find 200+ market research professionals wandering around the Cosmopolitan Hotel with slightly dazed expressions. This had nothing to do with the conference being held in Las Vegas (I’ll leave those visuals to your imagination) and everything to do with the magnitude of change that technology is bringing to our lives – both personally and professionally.

Sound bites from Day One Intensives…

You might be wearing your ‘consumer voice cancelling headphones’ but regardless of how hard you push your brand agenda, the consumer knows… it’s not about you, it’s all about them.

Combine the ubertrend of time compression with the proliferation of our digital society and the result is a very fragmented consumer attention span. Don’t agree? Think of yoga, it’s adult baby-sitting in the simplest form. You pay someone $20 to keep you calm, quite and offline for 60 minutes.

Our vernacular is evolving to match our time strapped, digital society. I’m sure you’ve said OMG with your BFF but don’t let a FOMO drive you to do something that is a CWOT.

Anything you can’t swipe is useless. Don’t believe me? Give a 2-year-old an iPad and a magazine – they’ll let you know which one doesn’t work.

What does this mean for us as market research professionals?

Listen to the customer; it’s about adding value with your product, not being and intrusion.

Keep it simple; help your customer save time.

Developing a product, implementing changes or upgrades? Ask yourself WWJD… what would Jobs do (as in Steve Jobs)? Our brains connect based on experiences, not facts. What kind of experience does your product or service provide?

Anyone need a Cosmopolitan?

This post originally appeared on CROWDTalk.

The Market Research Technology Event… Big Data, Technology and the Future

The Market Research Technology Event kicks off tomorrow morning and I for one, am looking forward to three days of progressive thinking presentations and panels interspersed with some lively discussion and debate among those of us attending the conference. The over arching theme focuses on the changes we are seeing in the market research industry; changes resulting from the convergence of big data and new technologies. This is the second year of the event and if I can use the inaugural conference as a measuring stick, get ready for some unfamiliar ideas that will continue to move us away from the traditional research methods that seem to be the norm.

Reading through the final agenda I’ve created my focus list for the next three days…

  • Use of mobile in gathering market data
  • Big data – managing the overload
  • Gaming as a means of gathering data
  • Social media and crowdsourcing in market research
  • Growth and adoption of real time data

On another note, something that surprised me last year (and at other industry events over the past 12 months) is the resistance I’ve seen to trying new technologies for gathering market data. One would think that as technology evolves and changes so must the market research industry or we risk not being able to connect and engage with our audience. If we aren’t using the technologies and channels where our audience actively lives (and I do mean lives… as in where they communicate, shares their lives, seek information, basically connect 24/7) how can we expect to get their feedback?

I wonder, has a year made a difference? Is there more openness to new ideas or is the market research industry largely entrenched in the same place it was last year? It should be an interesting three days; I invite you to follow the discussion.  You can catch the highlights on Twitter using the hashtag #TMRTE and of course via my blog posts… more to come.