Free Web Seminar by SPSS - End User Analysis: The Power of Collaboration

Here's a free webinar that is being presented by Jennifer Galvan, manager of sales engineering for SPSS Inc. The webinar will demonstrate how users of SPSS Inc. software can easily create their own analysis and reports, and then share these results through a Web browser.

For organizations facing tight budgets and limited resources, this webcast offers valuable strategies for operating more efficiently and effectively.

Register below, make sure to mention priority code MWS0023BLOG
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/881549152

The Market Research Event: April LinkedIn Update

Click on the link below for this month's edition of the LinkedIn The Market Research Event Newsletter. If you haven't had a chance to join our TMRE LinkedIn Group, join us here!

http://www.iirusa.com/upload/wysiwyg/New%20Media/TMREAprilF.html

Market Research Shows Financial Phone Applications Will Attract Billions

According to Tabitha Berg at enewschannels.com, a study released by Insight Research predicts that financial phone applications will attract billions in the next few years. By studing the recession, the research organzation claims that “Our analysis suggests that the eight cell phone financial applications covered in this study will be part of the solution. When this recession ends, the global financial system will emerge stronger and more tightly integrated, and the cell phone’s new financial transaction capabilities will be a part of the foundation of that recovery,” Insight Research president Robert Rosenberg concluded.

For more information about this study, please see the original article here.

What other digital innovations might happen after the recession? How is market research helping companies to predict this changes?

Anonymity In Market Research

I came across this article from John Griffiths on the SigmaSurveys blog in which he stresses the importance of anonymity for participants in marketing research.

Here are two reasons for anonymity that stand out from the article:

The first is ethical – that a client company might treat a respondent differently and in a way that was prejudicial to the interests of that respondent if it were able to identify them. The second is methodological – respondents would not be forthcoming if they were asked the same question directly by a client.

Take a couple of minutes to read this informative article.
View the PDF of the article

Speaker Profile: Keynote Martin Lindstrom

We're excited to have Martin Lindstrom on board for The Market Research Event this year. Until then, though, Lindstrom, who is an expert in neuromarketing, has a few things around the web to keep the TMRE attendees satisfied until the conference.

Read an exerpt from Martin's book

Listen to Martin's podcast at NPR

An excerpt from the podcast:

Question: Comment on free will being subverted by old marketing methods and campaigns that employ these new techniques.

Lindstrom: ...... neuromarketing is a little bit like a hammer. You either hang up a beautiful painting on the wall and it’s pretty positive or you can use it as a weapon. That’s exactly the case here as well. When I decided to write the book and conduct this study, I wanted to do this study because people are fearful of neuromarketing. Can we place a Bible in consumers brains? Is this the next generation of manipulation? Can we get the best of consumers? I wanted to find out mainly because if we never find out (this may become a monster). We many not be aware of it and can’t stop it. Here’s the good news, none of those things are possible. The good news now is we can actually stop bad advertisers from doing bad things and one of the industries I’m attacking in a big way is the tobacco industry. In fact, now we’ve proven that from the biology is wrongly using subliminal advertising, which was banned in 1957. That means you are affected by subconscious signals around you every day. (Let’s use London Pops as an example.) They were using small red tiles in the bathrooms. They’re doing that funded by tobacco companies that make you want to smoke more on a subconscious level.

Market Research Key in this Financial Climate

Market research that throws more light on the various segments of the economy - from youngsters to seniors - can make a huge difference to a firm's prospects in a period when people are watching every dollar.
Elizabeth Wilmot of AsiaOne reports that at a recent Singapore summit, market research experts unanimously agreed that market research is key when deciding on consumer spending. Industry experts, Mr Till Vestring, managing partner of Bain & Company, SingTel chief executive Allen Lew and Leslie Fong, senior executive vice-president of SPH's marketing division were in attendenance. The group also expressed their belief in free digital information thats available for researchers.

For more information please see the original article here.

Market Research Online Communities

I came across this interesting presentation by PluggedIN Co., a specialist in online communities for market research and consumer insights, on slidehare. The presentation goes over how market research online communities provides cheaper, faster, and newer types of insights that today's focus groups don't provide. Take a couple of minutes to view it below.

Overview Of Market Research Online Communities

View more presentations from mattpluggedin.

Is your company continuing to do market research?

In a recent article at The Punch, they encourage companies to continue to do market research. Even though we're in one of the worst economic droughts in the past 20 years, market research should continue to be done. They believe some companies are cutting out their market research. If your company continues, you're going to benefit. Not only are you finding out what your customer wants, you're finding out what your competitors customers want. You can also benefit by finding benchmarks for the goals you've set or by realizing that you need to adjust your market strategy.

Have you seen some of the companies around you cut in market research? What have been the benefits for your company as you've continued to do market research?

A deeper look at the country music listener

The American Chronicle recently took an in-depth look at the country music consumer, with the goal of defining both the country music radio listener and consumer. Over 7,000 participants weighed in, giving the study a high statistical reliability.

They took these three things into consideration when trying to define the market:

1. Isolate, and if necessary, segment current core customers on relevant criteria
2. Among those remaining, segment on most relevant criteria to create various growth potential groups
3. Define and remove various groups of poor prospects

For the full report, read here.

Twitter 101: 5 Reasons Marketers should use Twitter

Twitter is all the rage right now, and is proving more and more to be the cutting edge way to market. Even though a recent Twitter user behavior survey, claims that only 15% use it for marketing purposes. The majority 28% is still using it as a social tool. But I think we should see this 15% go up, and here's why:

1. It's a Learning Tool. The mother ship of Twitter research is Twitter Search, where over 3 million messages are posted a day. It works much like a google search engine, except picks up peoples Tweets. This will allow you to see what people are saying about a particular brand or product. For example, if you want to see what people are saying about M&Ms, you can search the word, M&Ms, and it will pull up everyone who has twittered about M&Ms in realtime. And if a brand wants to get really brave, they can do like Skittles, and integrate the brand's twitter stream into their Website or blog.

2. Gives Professional Credibility. Although Twitter has been around for a few years now, it has yet to become a marketing norm, and people that are successfully using Twitter are still considered ahead of the curve. With Twitter, you can post interesting articles or videos that you find on the Internet, and the better your posts, the more relative followers you get. And the more relative followers you get, the more credible you become.

3. It creates Exposure. Twitter allows people from all over to see you, what you're doing, what you're into and what you're twittering about. It's an opportunity to get a message out to the masses to promote yourself and your business; whether it's a brand or a service.

4. A Chance to Connect to your Consumer. Not only does Twitter let you view what your consumers are into, but it can take customer service to another level, allowing you to personally connect with the consumer. For example, the other night my friend, Holly, was at a Mexican restaurant, where they give all the customers numbered tokens for a chance to win free queso dip on the "Wheel of Taco". Holly's token won, and she twittered about it. Then she immediately gets a message on Twitter from Eric Michaelson, the owner of the large restaurant group, congratulating her for winning on the "Wheel of Taco".

5. It's all about networking, networking, networking! We all know that in this biz, it's all about who you know, making those connections and being the first to know about the next big thing. Twitter is yet another way to network with other marketing professionals from across the globe. You can participate in online discussions with other professionals. You can see on Twitter Search live updates of the trendiest discussion topics at the moment and join the conversation if you'd like. Topics always have the "#" sign, like #markettrends, and you must use that in all your tweets for it to show up in the Twitter stream. It's like modern day chat room, but it's Twitter.

I'll admit, I've been slow to jump on the Twitter bandwagon, and am still learning the ins and outs, and the more I learn, the more I see what a valuable and essential tool it is becoming for marketing. And the more I learn, the more I'll share...so follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/aprilbell.

April Bell

Standing Out in a Commoditized World

We'd like to invite you to join us for a web seminar on Thursday:

Thursday, April 9, 2009
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT
Speakers: Jeneanne Rae & Tim Ogilvie

Service innovation has moved from the fringes to the forefront during the past three years, and Peer Insight has been at the leading edge of this revolution. In this seminar, the co-founders of Peer Insight will get under the hood to look at three big themes of service innovation in 2009:

(1) How to create a repeatable/systemic capability,
(2) Using service innovation to solve wicked social problems, and
(3) New tricks enabled by emerging IT and analytics.

Participants in this interactive web seminar will learn

• How large enterprises can place small bets fast (instead of the norm: placing large bets slowly)
• New methods of co-creation that reduce the risk and increase the impact of innovation
• Leading-edge methods to reframe wicked social problems to reveal potential service innovation platforms
• How design methods are enabling new approaches to prototype business models

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/774812025

Please mention code: G1M2122W1Blog

13.1 billion online videos watched in February

MediaPost reports that during the month February, US internet users watched 13.1 billion videos. This is a 12% decline from January, but that was probably due to the shorter month. Of these videos, 99% were watch at YouTube. Each viewer, which totals more than 145 million total, watch an average of 90 videos.

Do you reach your audience through video sources such as YouTube? How do you most effectivly reach this market?

Charmin and SitorSquat: nontraditional marketing at its finest

Ever find yourself on a road trip in the middle of nowheresville and needing a bathroom so bad that your teeth hurt? And let's face it (especially the ladies), we don't want just any bathroom, we want a clean bathroom. Well, no need to look futher than your phone, because the marketing geniuses at Charmin have signed on to sponsor a new app called SitorSquat that locates and records restrooms across the globe.

This is social networking at its finest...hunting for your hiney. SitorSquat greets you on the homepage with Charmin's brand image of a cute animated red Charmin bear wagging his behind that will make you laugh out loud. The app is a free download for iPhone and the BlackBerry, and allows users to locate bathrooms and also depends on users to post bathrooms and rate them.

So far, SitorSquat has logged more than 50,000 toilets in 10 countries, more than half a million unique visitors and 1,600 downloads of its mobile app. Charmin is capitalizing on the social media craze, and believes the continued growth of SitorSquat will bring growth to the brand.

According to the Charmin press release, this is the first time a toilet-paper brand has partnered with a downloadable mobile application. My prediction? Looks like Charmin is not only selling TP, they're TP'ing all over the market.

April Bell