Quantitative research is essential for business because it is robust, representative and 'real', but too often fails to engage with clients because of poor presentation. This paper discusses why this

The article argues that market research, to remain relevant, needs to embrace observation of the virtual world (cyberspace) and the areas where it is increasingly interacting with the real world, so a

The article argues that there is a general tendency to misunderstand online communities: they are seen as 'authentic', 'honest',' open', 'real people', in contrast to companies which are seen as disin

The article argues that that, although the function of e-groups remains roughly the same as their offline counterparts, a number of small evolutions at a technical level have produced a revolutionary

The article discusses the best ways to measure the effectiveness of online advertising. Click-through, an obsession with many advertisers, is inadequate and liable to bias: it only captures 1% of the

The article discusses what can be learnt from previous recessions to help cope with the current one. The paper has two parts: 1) a study of data from the recessions of 1974-75, 1980-81 and 1990-91, an

The article argues that self-report often does not accurately represent people's beliefs or behaviour. This is illustrated from a project carried out for Changing Faces, an organisation that supports

This paper argues that market research could learn from the film industry how to improve presentation and insights. The paper is based on a study for Warner Home Video to investigate how to communicat

The article describes the development of Mintel Inspire, a new approach to uncovering insights about trends. First, marketing's structure prevents it from generating new insights or seeing the bigger

Brand 'friending' is the process by which brands seek to engage and interact with users of social networks. Friending can take many forms, but within three broad approaches: 1) getting users to become

The article discusses co-creation of advertising, NPD etc., and questions the belief that co-creation is the only way for researchers to work with consumers and that direct experience with consumers -

This paper forecasts how technology will affect market research in the future. The paper is in two parts, by different authors. 1) Software as a service (SaaS), which depends on high-powered computers

The article describes how a longitudinal online qualitative research study was used to investigate how people respond to delivery of the news. The starting point was a series of questions concerning t

The article discusses online gaming and the effectiveness of advertising in that medium. The gaming market is huge and growing, especially among young men. Online gamers are likely to be in work (ther

The article discusses the rise of 'citizen journalism', and posits that market researchers are like journalists in that their job is to uncover and understand the truth by listening and asking questio

The idea of customer co-creation has been accelerated in recent years by 'mass customisation' made possible through the internet. The paper questions whether most consumers are able to co-create or ra

The article describes a research project for the bank HSBC into people's attitudes to the financial situation. The project, started in August 2008, was originally intended to look at the credit crunch

The article describes an attitudinal segmentation of parents and young people, conducted for the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF). The central question for the study was 'Which fact

The use of clichés in advertising is widespread and very hard to avoid. Advertising development research which seeks to identify what is new and different usually falls foul of the clichés embedded in

The article discusses the use of semiotics to predict future cultural trends. The development and nature of semiotic analysis is summarised: synchronic analysis looks at communications and culture at