Research management

How creatives and strategists should work with researchers

News • 13 December 2019

New research explores how creatives and strategists can bridge the gap with researchers for better advertising - here’s what you need to know.

Viewpoint: Making the case for context – Creating value from market research history

Article • Daniel Nunan and Anca C. Yallop, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 61, No. 6, 2019, pp. 585-587

This article examines the history of the market research sector and how it can provide value. There is increasing interest in the history of market research in the UK.

The possible benefits of reporting percentage point effects

Article • George Terhanian, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 61, No. 6, 2019, pp. 635-650

Many academic researchers regard logistic regression as the preeminent analytic approach for modeling binary outcomes.

Machine learning applied to pack classification

Article • Weiqiang Hang and Timothy Banks, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 61, No. 6, 2019, pp. 601-620

Pack or product classification is a quite common task in market research, particularly for sales tracking audits and related services.

Dixons: Customer Matters – Impactful commercial insight at scale

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for Insight Management, 2019

Dixons Carphone, a multinational electrical and telecommunications retailer, created the Customer Matters programme in the UK, which uses digital first research to underpin decision-making.

Shell Lubricants qualitative segmentation study

Case Study • MRS Awards, Winner, MRS Award for Business-to-Business Research, 2019

Shell, an oil industry company, launched a large-scale ethnographic study to inform its global innovation and growth strategy, providing a new direction for redefining relationships with customers in the UK.

Barclays UK: Customer Experience research programme

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for Insight Management, 2019

Barclays UK, a banking brand, built upon its existing customer experience research platform to revolutionise the insights it provides through customer feedback dashboards in the UK.

GSK: Targeting persistent pain sufferers

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for New Consumer Insights, 2019

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a pharmaceutical company, used deep ethnographic research to uncover what it is like to live with persistent pain, increasing empathy among clinical and market research professionals in the UK and Germany.

Open Banking: Power to the people

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for Financial Services Research, 2019

Open Banking, a government agency initiative, developed, launched and scaled Open Banking in the UK using a curated suite of research methodologies to inform customer experience guidelines.

PwC: The Future of Government

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for Public Policy/Social Research, 2019

PwC, a multinational professional services network, launched the Future of Government project, an ambitious effort to ask serious questions about what kind of a society we want Britain to be.

Macmillan Cancer Support: A truly sector-leading approach to insight management

Case Study • MRS Awards, Winner, MRS Award for Insight Management, 2019

Macmillan Cancer Support, a charity, created an online synthesis of evidence that draws on a range of data to provide better insights on people living with cancer for its staff in the UK.

Bayer: The Patient Empathy Workshop

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for Healthcare Research, 2019

Bayer, a pharmaceutical company, increased understanding of chronic pain sufferers in the UK by launching a Virtual Reality study and a Patient Empathy Workshop.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF): From ‘villain’ to ‘vulnerable’: re-writing the story of South Africa’s men and HIV

Case Study • MRS Awards, Winner, MRS Award for Healthcare Research, 2019

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, an American private foundation, helped cast a fresh light on young men in South Africa, demonstrating they are complex, vulnerable individuals in harsh circumstances.

Business banking switch - business unusual for RBS

Case Study • MRS Awards, Winner, MRS Award for Financial Services Research, 2019

RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland), a banking brand, launched real-time customer communication research in the UK to understand how it could get consumers to switch banks.

World Animal Protection: When disasters strike, animals suffer

Case Study • MRS Awards, Highly Commended, MRS Award for International Research, 2019

World Animal Protection, a non-profit animal welfare organisation, created a quant/qual study that provided it with hard evidence to encourage the protection of animals from government officials globally.

Moving from fission to fusion: helping Matalan flourish

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for Insight Management, 2019

Matalan, a fashion and homeware retailer, cut across data to uncover strategic insight into the omnichannel customer journey in the UK, which enabled Matalan to invest strategically in the areas of the business that will have most positive commercial impact.

Understanding patients’ needs with chatbot methodology

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for Healthcare Research, 2019

Examines the need for pharmaceutical companies to move to a more patient-centric approach to fully grasp patient needs through detailing a research project in the UK that used chatbots to better grasp such needs.

Public Health England’s Be Clear on Cancer Campaign

Case Study • MRS Awards, Winner, MRS Award for Public Policy/Social Research, 2019

Public Health England (PHE), the government agency, was able to uncover fresh insights in the UK that can be applied to any cancer charity or organisation.

The Power of Pledging: Helping Cancer Research unlock the potential of legacies

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, Jeremy Bullmore Award for Creative Development Research, 2019

Cancer Research UK, a charity, researched the complex and sensitive topic of wills and put supporters' voices at the core of CRUK's Legacy communication strategy.

BT Plus: Getting BT back in the game

Case Study • MRS Awards, Winner, MRS Award for Applications of Development, 2019

BT, a telecommunications company, strengthened its top market position in the UK by creating a customer retention proposition, BT Plus, which automatically unlocked benefits when people became a customer.

How many people consume BBC News content?

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for International Research, 2019

BBC World Service, an international broadcaster, uncovered how many people watch its content globally to help reach underserved audiences through its Global Audience Measure.

WWF: Enhanced brand reputation study using AI image analysis

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for New Consumer Insights, 2019

WWF, a non-governmental organisation for wilderness protection, used AI image analysis across social media to understand consumer attitudes towards the brand in the UK.

The role of empathy and efficacy in public service announcements: Using narratives to induce bystander intervention in domestic violence

Research Paper • Eunjin (Anna) Kim and Sidharth Muralidharan, Journal of Advertising Research, Digital First, November 2019

This research explores the understudied relationship between two crucial variables—empathy elicited by narratives and the degree of efficacy possessed by bystanders—by using narratives in public service announcements.

Enabling digital transformation: The insights function beyond data science and analytic tools

Research Paper • Jeff Mercer and Marian Anderson, ESOMAR, Fusion, 2019

Microsoft, the tech giant, adapted its market research team in the US to align with its new vision.

Big data big debate: How to handle 5 million plus verbatims in just two weeks?

Research Paper • Bruno Jeanbart, ESOMAR, Fusion, 2019

OpinionWay, an institute for studies, marketing, communication and opinion polls, analysed the data collected on the online platform granddebat.fr, which allows French citizens to speak to their local mayors about their concerns.