ESOMAR Congress 2012 – Accelerating Excellence

Summary
This paper argues that traditional, structured research is becoming more and more difficult. People are 'always on' as they connect in a socially networked mobile environment, exchanging words, pictures and videos. The more they experience this dynamic, two-way engagement, the less they want to be involved in old and slow research methods. Shelley Zalis, of OTX Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange, argues that the future is about 'socialising' research so that consumers are engaged in ways that capitalise on and mimic their expectations in today's world.

Summary
This ESOMAR paper's authors present a view of what market research will look like in 2030. They discuss Big Data, facial expression recognition, experience immmersion rooms, customer insight facilitators, man-to-machine communications and instant infographics. In essence, it will make sense for the most adept researcher in the business to become the CEO.

Summary
This paper, from a team at Ipsos Marketing USA, argues that marketers are increasing their expertise at uncovering great consumer insights and truly understanding consumers' needs, but are failing to translate those insights into winning concepts and successful products. They contend that marketers need to ensure that the initial general insights gained are translated into product insights before being evaluated as part of concept screening and that insights should be measured throughout the development process.

Summary
In this paper Matt Kleinschmit and Andrew Reid, of US firm Vision Critical, review the latest innovations in virtual testing technologies and applications, such as virtual shopping, virtual banking, virtual mailbox. They examine the possibilities these offer and consider a future that features augmented reality and 3D capabilities. Comparisons to industries outside of market research, such as aviation and gaming, look to 2030 and beyond. They also dispel some myths on virtual research techniques.

Summary
This paper from TNS in South Africa looks at the disconnect between the respondent-level and aggregate-level behaviour of consumers in market research. The authors examine five years of actual purchase behaviour, with a focus on the consistency of consumers' purchasing, and find great variations in how much people spend with a brand over time. Overall, a large proportion of spending on a brand comes from people who only give it a small 'share of wallet'. So brands that employ holistic strategies to cater to different shoppers with different share of wallet values are likely to attract both more transient customers and loyal customers that stay with them longer.

Summary
This paper, from Randall Brandt and Michael House of US market research firm Maritz, considers the development of social media and asks whether the ratings and comments on these sites could ever replace traditional surveys as a research tool. Their findings indicate that there are clear similarities between the two data sources, but they caution against replacing surveys with web-based data. Sample sizes may be too small and previous ratings and comments may introduce bias into social media data. The conclusion is that multiple methods of capturing the voice of the consumer are needed.

Summary
This paper is an examination of the relative impact of survey design, panel quality and cross-cultural behaviour on the accuracy of data when conducting international online survey research. It contains results of a research project, studying all three of these general influences on data quality using seven specific quality improvement techniques in 15 different countries. The paper concludes with general recommendations for factors to think about when conducting international cross-market research.

Summary
Conducting market research in emerging economies can be difficult for many reasons, such as social inequality, violence, inefficient transportation or poor communications infrastructure. Helga Mora Santamaria and Catalina Mejía report on the work Colombian market research firm YanHaas carried out for the military forces there on perceptions of security. Researchers had to cope with travel restrictions imposed by unnamed individuals, intimidation and kidnap, all of which forced a re-appraisal of their methodology, in terms of sampling, questionnaire design, fieldwork and quality control.

Summary
This paper analyses two neuroscientific techniques and contains results of an academic evaluation of the ability of electroencephalography (EEG) and eye tracking (ET) to predict advertising effectiveness. The project involved scanning a group of primary household shoppers while they viewed a 60-minute documentary interspersed with five advertisement breaks each of five and a half minutes. Standout results include the fact that there are clearly limitations in terms of using EEG alone. Indeed, the additional insights gleaned using ET – that further refined the interpretation of EEG data – would seem to suggest that the most effective way forward lies in the integration of these two complementary tools.

Summary
This paper from Dave McCaughan, of McCann in Japan, uses the history of men's underwear to make a wider point about market research generally. He argues that marketers and researchers are good at asking a lot of questions about current activities but are poor at considering that the reasons products are segmented, marketed and purchased have more to do with technology and social history. Categories don't exist on their own and he suggests the industry might want to spend more time thinking about their histories and their evolution in popular culture.