Research management

Practical ethics in social media research: The greatest good for the greatest number?

Article • Tara Beard-Knowland, Steven Ginnis, Research on WARC, Ipsos MORI, August, 2019

With people laying out their everyday light-hearted views – and deepest darkest secrets – for all to see,the amount of data readily available to anyone inclined to look is staggering, which raises important questions around the principles and legitimacy of analysing individuals’ data.

Hearst spreads audience insights using an automated bot on Slack

Article • Stephen Whiteside, Event Reports, IAB NextGen Marketing Summit, June 2019

Hearst Magazines, the media company, has put Slack, a messaging and collaboration system for enterprises, at the heart of its efforts to spread audience insights.

How a Truth Set Can Power Data Accuracy Verification

Research Paper • Maria Domoslawska and Jake Moskowitz, ARF Experiential Learning, AUDIENCExSCIENCE, April 2019

Emodo, the software company, conducted research to determine if a simple, cost-effective method could be developed to assess data quality.

A comparison of scale attributes between interval-valued and semantic differential scales

Research Paper • Christos Themistocleous , Anastasios Pagiaslis, Andrew Smith and Christian Wagner, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 61, No. 4, 2019, pp. 394-407

This article presents the results of an exploratory study comparing interval-valued scales (IVSs) and semantic differential scales (SDSs).

Building automated survey coders via interactive machine learning

Article • Alejandro Moreo, Andrea Esuli and Fabrizio Sebastiani, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 61, No. 4, 2019, pp. 408-429

Software systems trained via machine learning to automatically classify open-ended answers (a.k.a. verbatims) are by now a reality.

How to demonstrate the value of investing in customer insight

Article • Joaquim Bretcha, WARC Webinars, June 2019

Discusses key differentiators, as well as key commonalities, in facilitating an optimal insights function.

Precise targeting foiled by imprecise data: Why weak data accuracy and coverage threaten advertising effectiveness

Article • Alice K. Sylvester and Jim Spaeth, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 59, No. 2, 2019, pp. 133-136

This article discusses the threat of weak data accuracy to targeting and advertising effectiveness in the United States.

Aditya Birla takes marketing lessons from Ricky Ponting

News • 06 June 2019

Indian businesses are more often seen tapping the popularity of cricketers than taking marketing lessons from them, but a top Aditya Birla executive believes they can learn from how top players approach the game.

Aditya Birla on connecting India’s online and offline consumers

Article • Anil Thakraney, Event Reports, Consumer Insights & Analytics Summit, May 2019

Gathering online and offline insights in a balanced way is crucial to brand growth, according to Fortune 500 India company Aditya Burla Group.

What Market Research Can Learn from Alexa & Siri: Exploring the ways Savvy Consumers have innovated in their lives and how market research practices can follow their lead

Research Paper • Young Ham, Jason Dodge and Rebecca Southern, ESOMAR, Asia Pacific, 2019

Kantar, a media company, shares tangible examples of ways researchers, marketers, and advertisers alike can tap into innovative consumers and leverage the ocean of data they are generating.

Philip Morris: Building Best in Class Insights Capabilities – From “strategic insights partner” to “source of competitive advantage”

Research Paper • Tony Li and Aruni Ghosh, ESOMAR, Asia Pacific, 2019

Phillip Morris International, a cigarette and tobacco manufacturing company, shares its journey towards making the continuous integration (CI) function a source of competitive advantage, the steps it undertook, and its impact.

Sequent Partners find faults in coverage, accuracy of multicultural-marketing data

Article • Geoffrey Precourt, Event Reports, ARF AUDIENCEXSCIENCE, April 2019

Research by Sequent Partners and the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM) found significant gaps in the data used to inform multicultural campaigns.

Forum: All work and no play – A text analysis

Research Paper • Kate Downer, Chrissie Wells and Charlotte Crichton, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 61, No. 3, 2019, pp. 236-251

Automated analysis of open-ended text survey data is an appealing prospect. It eliminates human error and human variability and can be used to create models that are easier to update over time than a manual approach to coding generally yields.

Viewpoint: Marketing research education in the Big Data era

Article • Leo Paas, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 61, No. 3, 2019, pp. 233-235

The excellent and timely Nunan and Di Domenico International Journal of Market Research (IJMR) paper addressed the stagnant state of many marketing research courses.

ARF slams Cambridge Analytica, drives toward new codes and standards for research

Article • Geoffrey Precourt, Event Reports, ARF AUDIENCExSCIENCE, April 2019

The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), the trade body, is pushing for ethics, transparency and best practices to drive the research industry forwards at a time of growing complexity.

ARF chief sees “tangible progress” in a chaotic marketing-research industry

Article • Geoffrey Precourt, Event Reports, ARF AUDIENCExSCIENCE, April 2019

The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), the industry body, believes that real progress is being made in tackling some of the biggest problems facing the research industry.

Implementing automation in LATAM: Learning from PepsiCo

Research Paper • Gabriel Velez and Fabio Paiva, ESOMAR, Latin America, 2019

Details how PepsiCo, a food, snack, and beverage corporation, changed the dynamic of how research is framed, analysed and applied through a partnership with market researcher Zappi.

Looking inside the Digi-Qual Toolbox: Tips and tricks to leverage the digital qualitative revolution

Research Paper • Garnette Weber, Cláudia Mota and Dalila Antonacachi, ESOMAR, Latin America, 2019

There are many options available for time-pressured people looking to adopt or expand their use of digital qualitative research and automation of processes in Latin America.

Building a pet-friendly omnichannel marketplace: Leapfrogging mass retail through Design Thinking

Research Paper • Adrian Kohan and Eduardo San Pietro, ESOMAR, Latin America, 2019

Royal Canin, a super-premium pet food brand, used the Design Thinking approach to re-shape Chile's pet food market.

VIVO Cannabis: How do you research a market that doesn’t exist?

Article • Sam Peña-Taylor, Event Reports, MRS Impact, March 2019

VIVO Cannabis, formerly ABcann, needed to transition its marketing out of a medical-prescription market and into a legal over-the-counter, wellness, and recreational offer – it needed to understand the Canadian cannabis market and launch brands to compete in it before it became legal.

Is your agency a hedgehog or a fox?

Article • Luke Perry, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 61, No. 2, 2019, pp. 127-129

This article compares “hedgehog” and “fox” thinking to see which is the superior for agencies. Hedgehogs focus on one central idea and attempt to exploit the full value of that idea.

Discriminant validity assessment in marketing research

Research Paper • Joseph M. Matthes and A. Dwayne Ball, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 61, No. 2, 2019, pp. 210-222

Establishing discriminant validity has been a keystone of measurement validity in empirical marketing research for many decades.

ARF launches new code of conduct

News • 03 April 2019

The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), the trade body, has released a “Member Code of Conduct” that aims to tackle ethical concerns in the research sector and deals with crucial issues like data collection.

Successful companies invest in 'intelligence capital'

News • 20 March 2019

The insights function needs to move centre stage within companies to perform a more strategic role where ‘intelligence capital’ is seen as an investment in future growth, according to Kantar.

Intelligence capital: an idea whose time has come?

Article • Brian Carruthers, Event Reports, MRS Impact, March 2019

Companies and brands need to become much better at using intelligence in today’s fast-moving business environment, research agency Kantar believes.