Top 3 Questions You Must Ask in Doing Market Research

One big reason why many businesses fail is because of the lack of market research. Many companies believe that you only need to locate a hot product and promote it on the internet. A business can not succeed far if this methodology is implemented, instead companies should find out the needs of the market before entering to ensure that it is the right product for the market.

Since we started this week with a couple of lists, I’d figured I would keep the trend going. Shawn Lim has listed the top 3 questions a business must ask in doing market research in this post. Enjoy!

1. Is your market profitable? You have to locate a profitable market, if your market is not profitable; people in your market are not willing to spend. And if your market is not willing to spend, you will be having hard times making sales. Therefore, make sure that your market is a profitable market where the people in your market are ready to buy from you. You can find out your market’s profitability by looking at the numbers of advertisers in your market. The more advertisers there are, the more profitable your market will be. .

2. Is your market highly competitive? If you are a beginner in internet marketing, I suggest that you start from a less competitive market. This is because it is always easier to dominate a less competitive market than a highly competitive one. Think about it, if you are still new and you have to compete with the big boys in the market, do you think you will have advantage over them? That is why it is always a wise choice to go for a less competitive market. Of course there are some exceptions for this, but do you think you are capable of doing this?

3. Is your market niche enough? In fact, niche marketing is the only marketing that works wonder in internet marketing. You have to focus your market very specifically in order to build much targeted prospects. Just like if you are targeting sport market, which sport are you targeting? Is it tennis? And even if it is tennis, you should still further focus your market, like woman’s tennis and so on.

What are some questions your company asks before entering a new market?

Market Research on a Shoestring Budget

One of the major complexities in the business realm includes executing an efficient market research strategy, but what happens if your company is on a shoestring budget? I came across this post on LEADSExplorer that lists 9 methods for market research on no budget. As budgets are tightening up due to the financial mess we are currently in, it might be a good idea to minimize spending on your research. Here’s the list:

1. Spying your competitors
2. Investigating the market
3. Listen in to webinars
4. Spy your customers and leads on your website
5. Blogging for reactions
6. Search social media and blogs
7. Generate responses on social media
8. Use RRS feed filtered using Yahoo pipes
9. Do not spend on industry analyst reports

All of these methods involve the internet in some shape or form. For industry reports, if you are able to come across one online for free, then better yet!

When Money is Tight and Time is Short

Sorry for the delay for this post. But I wanted to be sure I had captured as much detail as possible. I had attended another workshop before the end of The Market Research Event 2008. Speakers, Tina Bronkhorst, Vice President Digitas and Jennifer Drolet, Vice President, iModerate gave a compelling story for the benefits of a hybrid research approach.

"Current consumer demands and expectations for "real time" dialogue are changing the way we, as marketers, need to think about research", say Tina and Jen. Below is a bulleted summary of their reasoning:

• It’s harder to be heard : 20 years ago, just 3 exposures created awareness, now it takes 150
  
• Consumers have an amazing ability to multitask
  
• Consumers aren’t as overwhelmed by information as they used to be
  
• They trust their peers more than they trust marketers
  
• Real time dialogue is everywhere (myspace, facebook, blogger)
  
• They are coming together with common interests. One example of this is the Starbucks gossip site, which lets those who have a similar feeling toward the brand chat together.
  
• And there are a host of others: blog, microblog, online chat, RSS, widgets, social networks, social bookmarks, message boards, podcasts, video sharing sites, photo sharing sites, virtual worlds, wikis...and the list will be greater as we move forward.
  
• So, marketing doesn’t own the brand completely anymore
  
• And, consumers trust their ability to make smart choices and they aren’t afraid to trust their instincts (Yankelovich Monitor 2004/2005)
  
• Instead, they prefer to take a chance with a personal experience, instead of playing it safe
  
• Thus, we need to focus on listening more instead of shouting louder (active branding)
  
• Stop push marketing and start pull marketing

They gave practical examples of how to develop hybrid approaches, where qualitative and quantitative data are collected at the same time. These include conducting:

• Online survey with IM-like chat intercept (iModerate)
  
• Online focus group with closed ended, open ended, IM-like chat and redirects (Invoke)
  
• Online communities (Communispace, Passenger)
  

Watch here where Tina and Jen give a few tips from their workshop. Thank you both for a great workshop!

April Bell

The Market Research Event 2008--What Participants Thought

As I've continued to receive feedback on the conference, I thought it would be appropriate to share a quick interview I conducted with one of the delegates. Jason Archambault, Director of Insights at Red Lobster and I had a chance to chat during the conference and he is one of many who have been attending the conference for several years. His comments reflected what I heard from several others.

Here's what he had to say:





April Bell

Market Research and Online Communities

Matt Rhodes recently posted on the FreshNetworks Blog that the market research industry should embrace online communities. One of the reasons why he believes communities should be taken advantage by market research professionals is because of the staggering numbers of online community adoption. According to the latest report form Gartner, more than 60% of large US firms will have built an online community used to engage with clients by the year 2010.

With the growing number of people turning to social media, the market research industry can use these communities as a great source of insight. Communities provide a great platform on collecting data on demographics as well as feedback and information on products directly from clients and the consumer.

See you at Next Year’s Event!

I thought I’d leave you off this fair weekend on a light note. Make sure to check The Market Research Event homepage for clips on interviews with TMRE speakers, presentations from this year’s events, participant comments, and other spontaneous happenings. This year’s event was a great success and we look forward to seeing you nxt year on October 18-21, 2009 at the Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa in Las Vegas, Nevada. Check back on the blog and The Market Research Event homepage for regular updates!

TMRE 2008: Who Says Market Researchers Don't Know How to Have Fun

Vision Critical and iModerate both sponsors at The Market Research Event 2008 co-hosted an after-hour party for attendees showcasing this incredible breakdancing performance. Let me just say, having experienced it first-hand, Vision Critical and iModerate were great hosts, everyone had an excellent time, and we all certainly enjoyed the show. I can just imagine how much fun we'll have next year! Enjoy!

TMRE 2008: Some Final Interviews

Well a week has passed since this year's The Market Research Event, bringing together individuals from different professions and organizations throughout the industry. April has been a big help providing her updates that I hope gave you all an industry insider's perspective of the event as she attended many presentations. Overall I hope you were able to take away some interesting insights and going-ons at the event, the unique and excellent speakers that were on hand and the great information they discussed. I actually had a few more presenter interviews from the last day of the conference that I had not had the chance to prepare and post, so here are two interviews with presenters from TMRE 2008:

Jennifer Drolet, VP, Client and Moderating Services, of iModerate tells a little of her presentation at The Market Research Event 2008:



And then we sat down with both Tina Bronkhorst,Vice President, Group Director at Digitas and Jennifer Drolet of iModerate presented together at The Market Research Event 2008. Here they share some detail regarding their presentation.


Patrick Galloway, VP, Consulting Services, of Galloway Research Service, member of Group Net who also discuss some of what he presented on and discussed.




Without a doubt this year's The Market Research Event has been the largest so far. A great opportunity for everyone to network and participate in excellent presentations with some remarkable speakers. Planning for next year's event is already underway, and I hope to post soon a follow up interview with Krista Vazquez, Conference Director of TMRE 2008 about what she has learned coming out of this year's event, and what she is already thinking about doing for next year. Stay Tuned!

New Online Tool from MarketTools

MarketTools announced today that they've created an online platform, MarketTools.com, that will bring together survey tools, online panels and communities into one place.

Mark Frost, EVP and general manager, had this to say about the new site:

"With MarketTools.com, companies are now empowered to conduct the highest quality, professional research on their own and can also obtain support from our in-house team of leading research experts. Given the current state of the economy, we're delighted to provide our customers with an extremely efficient and cost-effective means of gaining an understanding of the needs of their customers or clients' customers."

SanDisk looks to target new musical market

Those who are time crunched will soon have a new way to buy music. Those who are now in a bind for time and are bogged down by putting music on their musical devices will have the new option of the slotMusic card. The slotMusic card is a card that will fit into adapters that are frequently appearing on phones and other digital music players. They've got a solution for an yet to be stated problem, but believe that the time consuming process of uploading music on to devices will prevail and find a market of its own. Find out more here at Mercury News.

The slotMusic card is a solution for an unknown problem. What other products have you seen companies bring to market before there's a problem?

Numbers from the spirits market

In 2007, 18.3 billion liters of spirits were sold throughout the world. The largest market was China, who sold 3.7 of those liters alone. Euromonitor International came out with these figures, and they were detailed in this article at Business Week. The most popular spirits around the world were vodka and whiskey. Vodka sold 3.7 billion liters world wide and whiskey sold 2.1 billion liters world wide.

There is also a huge push for western spirits in the emerging middle class of developing countries such as Eastern Europe, Russia and China. Scottish whiskey is the lead seller around the world now, however, in Great Britain and the United States, where vodka and rum are on the rise due to the current cocktail phase.

New Restaurant Concept

I was able to attend several incredible workshops last Wednesday at The Market Research Event and will be posting about those over the next few days.

One workshop, “Finding Billion Dollar New Opportunities” was presented by Roger Thompson, Senior Vice President of Darden Restaurants. He took us through his story of how they developed their restaurant concept, Seasons 52.

The majority of the presentation focused on Darden’s strategy of finding a new opportunity. With over 90,000 brands in the restaurant business, he mentioned it was one of their greatest challenges to find something that had not been done before. "What that means," he said, "is that you have to look around the corners. This gives you better peripheral vision, which helps you anticipate and lead to new opportunities.” Roger shared one approach they found to help them shift their perspective at Darden. By focusing on the “high potential arenas,” they began to determine where the possibilities lay. You can see by the slide below that mapping their brands against consumer needs created one area to pop, “Fresh and Healthy.”

Darden Restaurants (which used to be a part of the General Mills group until 1995) has a 8% share of the “Casual Dining” business. Some of these concepts include Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Long Horn Steakhouse and Bahama Breeze. And through their recent acquisition, The Capital Grille, they recently entered the “Fine Dining” business.

After developing 3 food positionings, then 9 healthful restaurant concepts, a new concept was developed, Seasons 52. I can’t wait until they open one in Dallas! Here's a small clip about the concept:



Check out a few highlights below from Roger Thompson, Senior VP of Darden Restaurants.

After the Fact

I made it back home to Texas late Thursday night and have had a chance to ponder a bit about my first Market Research Event conference. In a nutshell, it was great! I definitely enjoyed helping the IIR staff blog about the event. It was similar to an ethnography project about market researchers, and as a moderator/qualitative consultant, that's my favorite thing to do!

I came to the conference wanting to learn more about the industry, including the wants, needs, desires, and frustrations of those in market research.

And I left the conference learning so much.

So, for the next several days I will be posting snippets of my what I learned (including photos and videos) onto this site as well as my own blog at: aprilbellconsulting.blogspot.com.

And I hope you’ll join me in an online discussion— feel free to respond, ask questions, post comments. I think we NEED to start an online dialogue and continue to stay connected virtually. And this is the reason: One of my biggest takeaways is that the industry as a whole is wanting to understand more about “virtual connectedness.” In almost every workshop I attended, there was reference to it in some way: online communities, social networking, digital innovation, and the list goes on and on. How better to understand what many of our consumers want than to jump in and be a part of it! It's great that the conference had started the LinkedIn group as way for us to interact online throughout the year. Coming away from the event, I think it'll help many of us continue our discussions that began at the event.

Stay posted….

April Bell

Day 2: More keynotes, More Networking

We had another great with some excellent speakers, presentations, and opportunities to network and interact with everyone. Yesterday was our first day of keynotes, and we had diverse perspectives that challenged attendees to consider how they consider trends, demographic segments and how consumers communicate their perspective.

The morning began with E. Kinney Zalesne, Co-Author, Microtrends, The Small Forces behind tomorrow’s big changes who gave her overview of the different microtrends that while not of the size of larger trends and segments, are clearly defined and influencing the expectations of these consumers. She did a great job by framing the discussion around the concept of a 'Starbucks Economy' vs a 'Ford Economy,' where the expectations today are framed by the ability of consumers to receive, even expect to receive, every premutation of a product, today it is consumer-determined vs. manufacturer-determined. I had a chance to record a few minutes of her presentations, you can listen to it here.

Then this presentation was followed by Simon Uwins, Chief Marketing Officer, Fresh & Easy, who discussed Uncovering New Opportunities in Retail Through Research, as he outlined his experience in first taking the role of CMO of Fresh & Easy, moving to the United States and worked on developing plans to enter different markets in the US. I also had a chance to record some great insights from him, you can listen to here.

Next up, Lindsay Zaltman, Author, Marketing Metaphoria who discussed the different levels of meaning to consider as respondents use metaphors that can be capture for profound persepectives depending on how they are used. I had a chance to meet with him afterwards and speak to him about his work and some of the highlights of his presentations.

Then the morning concluded with Billy Beane, General Manager, Oakland A’s, who presented Transforming America's Pastime – and What You Can Learn From It. It was actually very fascinating as you consider how the amount of statistics that is captured in every aspect of the game for every individual playing on the field, and yet so many management decisions that are made regarding these players do not use that data to influence their decision-making process. It really was surprising, and I think it left everyone considering how critical it is to get that their research data to senior management.

Overall a great morning of keynote presentations. Later today, you'll see more updates from April as she gives her highlights of some of the presentations from yesterday. Now I'm off to cover today's great presentations.

Who's Drinking the Wine?

As you can imagine, the workshop about wine filled up quickly! Although we didn’t get sample tastings, this presentation proved to be quite satisfying!

Chris Bacon, Director of Consumer Insights & Strategy at E&J Gallo Winery led us through their occasion-based segmentation workshop.

As he discussed the segments that most consumers fall into, I began to worry that I identified with them ALL! A few of the segments he referenced include: “The Night is Young”, “Gather ‘Round the Table”, “You’re Invited”, “Unwind”, “Dinner for Two” and a few more….sound familiar to anyone?

He tells a little more about a couple of these segments here:


Great workshop!

It's a Small World

It’s a small world here at The Market Research Event. During Tuesday’s lunch, I reconnected with an old friend! As I was introducing myself to folks around the table, I did a double take. A friend I had not seen in over 2 years , Brooke Fagley, Vice President of Client Service at Directions Research, Inc. was sitting across from me! The last time we were together we were trying to make our way through Italian lessons at a mutual friend's house!

Here she is with a couple of other folks at our table, Beth Daush of Directions Research and John Delgado of Eastern Research:

We chatted for a few minutes catching up until the keynote speaker began his presentation. Marc Dresner, Executive Editor of RFL Communications, gave a compelling speech regarding their work to help improve data quality issues across the market research industry. Their publication, Platforms for Data Progress: The Client’s Guide to Rapid Improvement of Online Research, was distributed. His presentation gave a lively account regarding the history of its development.

Here are a few highlights of the speech.



For those of you who were unable to make it, he mentioned that the publication has been approved and is being distributed by the American Marketing Association. It can be found at www.marketingpower.org:

Really Cool Research Deliverables

We all want to learn more more about how to communicate research findings succinctly and with a flair so key stakeholders can easily grasp and “buy-in” to the learnings.

So, this workshop, Design-Driven Deliverables: Adding Dimension to Your Research, was not only relevant but also insightful because it gave useful tips and examples of how to expand reporting beyond the Power Point presentation. Speakers, Steve Kulp and Lisa Broome, discussed creating shadowboxes , murals and inspiration stations to pull together “experiential” learnings.

By using a variety of unusual deliverables, the broader audience will have the ability to learn more through all of their senses. Some examples of these are shown below:


It was a great session of questions, answers and idea sharing. One interesting thought brought up by Dean Macko of Hyundai was the possibility of using actual respondents at the end of a segmentation study to better personify the segment learnings. Cool stuff!

Entertainment Redefined

Betsy Frank, Chief Research & Insights Officer of Time Inc. gave an extremely compelling presentation in yesterday’s Media Research track, Multi-Platform Storytelling. As the workshop progressed, my perception of “entertainment” shifted a bit. In their research at Time, Inc., they have discovered that entertainment for most consumers includes “anything I’m not obliged to do.” In fact, 77% agree “I can find entertainment value in almost anything.”

She went further to say that the more stressed you are, the more important entertainment becomes. The benefits? To relax, feel less stress. It’s an escape. Entertainment is the antidote to anxiety.

However, they have discovered that entertainment is not only about escape, it also fulfills three other emotional needs, to: Connect, Create, and Share. She shared rich insights from a study of 30 (non-entertainment) brands. Here is an example of the model they developed as a result.

They found certain brands resonated on some of the spectrums while at least one brand (Target was the example given) was able to connect on all 4.


Betsy was kind enough to visit with me for a few minutes after the workshop. Here are a few highlights of the presentation:

What Women Want

“Tahiti is sexier than selling toilet paper.” Graceann Bennett from Ogilvy Chicago grabbed everyone’s attention in one of the early morning sessions yesterday. She, along with Debbie Solomon of MindShare and Beth Uyenco of Microsoft led an incredible workshop: From Dull to Delightful: Digital Paths to Filling the Shopping Cart! In their work for Kimberly-Clark, they knew consumers felt that shopping for toilet paper is the #1 most annoying thing to shop for. They wanted to know, "how do you create and build true brand management with a product that is annoying?"

Well, you guessed it, they conducted a LOT of research! It included 62 media diaries, 12 insight group discussions, ethnographies, idea stations (an online chat room), mindshare omnibus study, digital domain, digital trend analysis, and cultural deep dive. And they did this with women across all life stages. Whew!

They conducted the research with women across life stages…and they learned a lot about women, especially what women want in the “digital” arena.

During the workshop, they gave us a little quiz to test our female I.Q. Let’s see how you do…

• How many words does the average woman speak per day vs. men? (answer: 7000 vs. 2000)

• How many women have smart phones? (answer: 10 million and this number doubled in the past year)
• How many women are gamers? (answer: 59% of women are gamers and 70% of women played a PC game in the last month)

Through their research with these women, they found 3 distinct “digital segments: Digital Outliers (9%), Mainstream Users (75%) and Digital Divas (16%). And while they cited many life stage differences across the segments, they also noted several commonalities. Primarily, women like real content by real people. Women are not only trusting friends for advice on products, they are also using “advice from strangers” as a source for help. YouTube has become a primary source for getting “product advice” because of the high touch content it provides. This YouTube video was cited as a touching example of a father explaining to his daughter how to cut a mango. You can view it here.

Good example of online content women want.

It was interesting to note that when you’re selling products that are “annoying” such as toilet paper, you don’t necessarily have to be top of mind, you just have to make it easy for her and it is becoming critical to do that online. One consumer quote they gave says it best, “I actually have a subscription for my paper products and detergent on Amazon.com.”

So Many Presentations, So Little Time

April will certainly write up more about what a whirlwind TMRE can be. There is such an abundance of information and presentation, great speakers that focus on valuable content rather than simple sales-pitches. Unfortunately, there's just not enough time to meet with everyone and see their presentations. So I've tried to meet with a few and have them describe what their presenting on. I think you'll find each very fascinating.

So where to begin, well I had a chance to chat with Robert Miner, President, Sachs Insights, who was on hand to present on their recent study: The Arrival of the Milleni-Adults. He was good enough to share some detail about the study, all of which you can find detail here. Here is an opening clip to that study.

Here he is speaking with us and describing this remarkable study.

Then I had a chance to sit down and chat with Heather Kluter, Manager of Marketing Research & Consumer Insights with Hyundai, who was presenting on 'Learning to See and Finding Our Voice: Creating a Customer-Centric Product Development Process at Hyundai America.' She gave us some background on her presentation she'll be giving Thursday morning.





Finally, I was speaking with Brendan Light, SVP, Research & Development, of BuzzBack Market Research. He'll be presenting on 'Award-Winning Techniques for Gaining Deeper Insights Via The Internet.' Recently, he gave presented their unique eCollaging technique in a webinar presentation. We've archived it and have it available for you all here. I think once you see this archive, you'll be very interested in seeing Brendan's presentation on Thursday afternoon.

As you can see, even from just these few speakers, there are some great presentations at TMRE this year. I hope those of you who are here, will be able to share their impressions about the speakers and presenters. I'll meet with as many more speakers as possible so we can share for everyone some detail of the great information available. Check back soon!

What a First Day

I can't begin to tell you what a great day yesterday was. It was a busy day filled with excellent presentations, a lot of networking with familiar faces and new friends. It was a busy day filled with preparations and a day filled with constant activity. I spent most of the time watching everything come together until our big kick-off last night with Kelly Styring, Author, In Your Car: Road Trip Through the American Automobile who spoke on Hitting the Road to Uncover Innovation.

Kelley is an excellent speaker, warm, humorous, and very grounded in the goal of seeking valuable insights into consumer perspective that can help companies innovate their product offerings. In considering just how much consumer product goods have not met consumer needs, just some highlights from her research:

• 250 million vehicles in the United States - an almost 1:1 ration to American adults


• in reviewing all of the material people have in their vehicles, at least 25 consumer product groups represented

The problem she points out is how companies have not innovated their products to meet these consumers expectations when they use or store it in their cars. I had a chance to take an audio recording of a few minutes of her presentation. You can listen to it here.

Afterwards I spent a few minutes with Kelly to have discuss with April Bell and I some more background and detail into her recent ethnographic study. I thought I'd share it with you all here:

From there of course it was time to network. If you haven't seen the photos I've been uploading to our Flickr group on the event site as the exhibit hall came together, I thought I'd share with you some before and after




coming together

time for cocktails!

As Krista had mentioned leading up to this year's great event, we have over 800 attendees, over 90 exhibitors. It's great to see it all come together and everyone interacting, learning, and enjoying themselves. Stay tuned, we'll continue to keep you updated throughout the event.

Tomorrow's Agenda

I have a full agenda tomorrow with an early start at 8:15 a.m. for the first workshop. Still trying to decide on some of the workshop choices.

I will certainly be at Kelley Styring’s kick-off keynote at 5:15 p.m. where she will talk about her ethnographic journey learning about the “Archaeology of the American Handbag,” And I wouldn’t miss the cocktail reception at 6:00 so if you are also in attendance please keep an eye out for me and introduce yourself—I’ll be curious about your day here at The Market Research Event!


Shoot me a note at april@aprilbellconsulting.com if you want to give me a tip on what I should cover while here at the conference.

Day One Workshop Holistic Research Strategies

I was able to pop into another very cool workshop this afternoon.

And while the room was chilly, the speakers were more than warm when I entered their workshop. Presented by David Lundahl, President and CEO, and Greg Stucky, Vice President, of Insights Now were on hand to walk everyone through the material. One of the most interesting elements of the workshop was their in-depth explanation of quantifying free association. Here's just a small taste of the workshop here:



If you are in attendance, be sure and get some more information and a detailed map of their qual-quant mixed research strategy approach, by visiting them at their booth #315/317 in the Exhibit Hall.

April Bell
april@aprilbellconsulting.com

Day One Begins with Innovation Tips

I hurried over to the Disneyland hotel shortly after my arrival into Anaheim today. I knew I would be a bit late to the afternoon workshops but I really wanted to check them out.

As I entered, I could feel the energy in the room. The afternoon speaker, Holly O’Neill, was “Talking Business” about innovation and ideation techniques. She was discussing with participants on how to get the right people in the room. She suggested that it’s more important to get a creative administrative assistant in an ideation session than the ‘less than creative’ vice president.” One participant followed up to ask, “How do you know who is creative?” (which I found to be a great question) She quickly answered that if “you can give a quick test to get a read on creativity, it really helps. For example, as a pre-work exercise, have everyone list 10 things you can do with a brown paper bag? From that, you can gather a quick assessment on creativity level.

Some of her other tips included:
1) Bring in an expert. For example, if the category is regarding a new food concept, bring in a nutritionist or hire a professional ideator.
2) Have attendees do a homework assignment. For example, send everyone to the health food store and have them bring something unique and interesting into the session. Then, create an innovation table with everyone’s finds. This stimulates new thought from the onset of the session.
3) Make the room fun with toys, food and drinks as well as music.
4) Create a room set-up that includes using comfy seating, and extra space for exercises.

This 3-hour workshop managed to keep everyone on their toes with many ideation techniques, and we were all put on the spot with a starter activity called “Merry Names-Go-Round.”

Watch here for workshop highlights from Holly:



April Bell
Please feel free to email me at april@aprilbellconsulting.com if you’re here at The Market Research Event and know of something important I should cover on Tuesday’s blog.

Getting Ready for The Market Research Event 2008

Well its finally come and the team is actively preparing all the final details to create the best possible event for those of you attending. But to help bring a taste of TMRE 2008 to everyone, we'll be here covering as much as we can, capturing and recording different presentations, speaking with presenters and other delegates, and sharing as much detail as possible over the next few days. If you are attending, be sure and subscribe to our blog feed so you can easily review our latest updates. Also don't forget to create your own custom agenda to help you prepare for all the great speakers, presentations, and networking opportunities.

We'll also be emailing and posting to our LinkedIn group, so if you haven't joined the group yet, take advantage, use it as a networking tool if you are here at the conference, or to reach out to other colleagues who may not be in attendance but also have the expertise and desire to share and interact with their peers. We'll also use the discussion forums to invite attendees and those who aren't on hand to give their thoughts and impressions, begin discussions, as well as present questions for our speakers. I'll try and invite you all to submit your questions, and let us know what your thinking of and what you would like know from our great speakers.

Today are a few workshops, so I'll take the time to meet those attendees and speakers and share their thoughts as we gear up to launch TMRE 2008. As you'll see from the next post, we've brought in some friends to help give a great perspective on everything going on over the next few days. If you are attending, I hope you'll come up and introduce yourself. I'm excited to meet many of you, have the chance to get your impressions of the event and the great content you are interacting with.

A Good Problem to Have

Here we are at The Market Research Event, and what an event it will be. I've been posting a few times over the past few weeks as a way to prepare myself to come out and participate as document some of the presentations and speakers here. As I’ve looked at the schedule, I have had a difficult time choosing which workshops I want to attend. I am already torn on Tuesday’s 1:30 p.m. session. Should I attend Research for the Global Marketplace, which will give me insight into the “do’s” and “don’ts” of conducting global ethnographic research OR should I go to the Uber Snackers workshop, where Frito-Lay will tell about their new snacking community, which allows them to understand this rapidly-growing consumer space? Choices, choices, choices….

And so for the next few days, I will not only be attending workshops but also scouting around for the coolest conference happenings. So, if you’re attending, don’t be surprised if I stop you, introduce myself, and ask for your opinion. Together, with the IIR staff, I will focus on bringing the Market Research Event to life online. If you are not able to attend, you can check it out here because you never know who or what you might see on the online coverage we will provide you while at the conference.

So, no matter what choices I make on what to attend, I know it will be great! (Not a bad problem to have.) Signing off tonight from Texas…..

April Bell

p.s. If you’re attending the Market Research Event in Anaheim and want to make sure I'm able to cover something important, please email me at april@aprilbellconsulting.com or connect to me via LinkedIn(I’ll receive on my iPhone) and I’ll do my best to get to your location….

How to Reduce Respondent Fatigue In Online Survey Design

I came across a series of podcasts from Vision Critical in which Amir Bozorgzadeh, Vision Critical Account Manager, tells us about respondent fatigue and how to reduce it using two techniques. I’d thought this would be a great free resource to close out this holiday weekend. Also, don’t miss Vision Critical’s presentation “The Keys to Respondent Engagement” at The Market Research Event next week at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim California.

A Study on Aggregate Data and Social Network Design

I came across this video which explains the findings of a recent study done by Duncan Watts, a sociology professor at Columbia University, on how aggregate data and how it is presented can affect the way people make decisions on social networking sites.

For part of the experiment, two different groups viewed song lists on two different websites. Users were able to download and view songs on the first list, but there was no information or ratings on it. On the second website, the number of times each song was downloaded was displayed to users as aggregate data.

This is an interesting concept in terms of market research. How are consumer decisions affected when there a social influence is present? View the video below:

3 Market Research Tools on Facebook

Facebook is a great social network to utilize for market research, but just how exactly do get behind the facebook wall since all of this information isn’t publicized anywhere? I came across this post on About Results Marketing in which they list three market research tools available on the facebook platform. Here they are:

Facebook Lexicon
This service analyzes the amount of times a keyword has been mentioned on Facebook. It’s a great way to see if there is any buzz on a particular subject matter.

Facebook Pages
This is a great tool to get people to join a group around your business. The cool thing here is that once more than 10 people join the group, you’ll start getting “facebook insights” which is demographic details about people on your site.

Taking Demographic Data from Facebook Ads
This involves setting up an ad campaign on facebook, and by doing this you will be able to see how many people there are in a specific demographic that are interested in a subject matter. The post gives an example that you can search for how many 18-24 year olds have SEO or SEM in their profiles.

Take advantage of Facebook for your company’s market research methodologies!

Make Your Schedule Ahead of Time!

In my own experience, attending a conference can be quite hectic if you don’t have a preplanned schedule of sessions you want to attend. This year, The Market Research Event has put together a social scheduling app so that attendees can make their schedules ahead of time!

Attendees can create and save custom schedules, view mobile and print versions, search across the entire event schedule, view the most popular sessions, view a full list of other customer schedules, and easily add sessions that colleagues are attending with a click of your mouse. Start scheduling today! Here’s the link: http://tmre08.sched.org

A Podcast for the Market Research Event

In anticipation for this year’s event, we’ve recorded several podcasts with keynote speakers. In this podcast, Greg Heist and Bill Eisele discuss what they'll be addressing at this year's The Market Research Event. Listen to it here.

Kids' food market is expected to grow

Recent research in the kids' food industry expects it to grow from $16.4 billion in 2007 to $26.86 billion in 2011. New concerns over these obesity, hyperactivity, brain function and gut health are some of the maladies that are sources for the diet change in children.

According to the study detailed at Food Navigator, these are the some of the ways companies can innovate to capture use the growing market:

· Fortification: With vitamins and functional ingredients

· Taste: Which is “evolving and maturing”, and must be balanced with nutrition

· Packaging: Including portion size, convenience and shape

· Trust: Sought through organic, allergen free and additive free products

Could the environment affect consumer purchasing habits?

In a study done by Jonah Berger and Grainne Fitzsimons, a psychology professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, published a study on how consumers choices are affected by the subtle enviornmental factors they see every day. If companies can find a way to relate their products to things that are already in the environment, they can get an automatic boost.

One of the studies conducted showed that people who saw dogs on a daily basis were more likely to buy Puma shoes. This is a result of dogs relating to cats, and then consumers transferring this thought to seeing cougars on the shoes. Another study asked consumers to list types of candy both before the day of Halloween and then a week after. The day before Halloween, out of the 144 consumers questioned, they were half as likely to say candies that were colored orange. Read more about the survey here.

Have you seen results show up like this when it comes to selling your products? Are you more likely to sell more of something in the fall than the spring? Why?

Online retailers now have action points

A recent study by PayPal recently did a study looking into customer behavior when shopping online. They found that price was not the overall determining factor when customers bought items online. It is important that online services provide complete customer service before, during and after a purchase, including quick site speed, accessibility, after sales service and the ability to exchange goods. The research done by PayPal also found that customer registration requirement for small sites accounted for 68% of customers turning away from their purchase. There was an additional 57% of users who cited poor site experience and confusion when it came to navigation made people turn away from making purchases as well. Read more about this at Retail Bulletin.