Return on Investment - ROI revisted in the social mobile world...

Tim Phillips had a lengthy but very interesting column on Return On Investment in an article at Research-live.com. His overall theme is:

Buyers and suppliers are struggling to define the business impact of research. Is time running out for them to do so?

Highlights include:

• Richard Evensen, a senior analyst at Forrester Research states that businesses are being measured more, with an increased expectation from above that everything can be quantified in its contribution to the top line.
  
  • Evensen states that "other elements of marketing" can now be measured much more – for example the effectiveness of digital advertising and marketing campaigns.
  • Insights are now more of a differentiator for the business - but only if they fit the business objectives.
• Kennedy Consulting Research & Advisory tracks the management consultancy industry in the US, and they show that client spending on consulting services declined by 10 per cent in 2009, and did not start to grow again until the second half of 2010.
• Responsive research agencies are treating the current ROI debate as more than just the latest manifestation of an age-old strategy for squeezing price.
• Coca-Cola vice president of marketing strategy and insights Stan Sthanunathan recently announced plans to encourage Market Research suppliers to work on a pay-for-performance basis.
• My favorite quote, “We talk a lot about providing actionable insight. That’s what we need to deliver.”

See the full article at Research-live.com.

Neilson examines the impact of Social Media on Brand Marketing

We work very closely with Nielsen and one of its subsidiaries who are both leaders in consumer research. Among many innovations in consumer-focused marketing and media research, Nielsen was responsible for creating a unique retail-measurement technique that gave clients the first reliable, objective information about competitive performance and the impact of their marketing and sales programs on revenues and profits. Nielsen information gave practical meaning to the concept of market share and made it one of the critical measures of corporate performance. Like many in the industry today, Neilson has shifted its focus to Social Media. In this study "How Social Media Impacts Brand Marketing", Neilson takes at how "Consumers are spending more time than ever using social media."

"This report helps uncover what impacts social media may have for marketers trying to build their brands and connect with their audience more directly.

Social media plays an important role in how consumers discover, research, and share information about brands and products. In fact 60 percent of consumers researching products through multiple online sources learned about a specific brand or retailer through social networking sites. Active social media users are more likely to read product reviews online, and 3 out of 5 create their own reviews of products and services. Women are more likely than men to tell others about products that they like (81% of females vs. 72% of males). Overall, consumer-generated reviews and product ratings are the most preferred sources of product information among social media users."

See the full story and survey @ Neilson

Gartner - Mobile Advertising to Reach $3.3 Billion in 2011

Gartner put out a press release that worldwide mobile advertising revenue is forecast to reach $3.3 billion in 2011, more than double the $1.6 billion generated in 2010, according to Gartner, Inc.

North America mobile ad spending is expected to more than double from $304.3 million in 2010 to $701.7 million in 2011. By 2015, that’s expected to reach nearly $5.8 billion. Worldwide, Gartner pegs mobile ad spending in 2015 at $20.6 billion. The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1598915.

So what does this mean for Qualitative Research? With this growth in advertising comes the need for more qualitative research related to mobile usage. To date, many of Qualitative Research vendors have focused on mobile applications as an extention of existing methodologies. The next phase will likely be the actual implementation of mobile applications as a stand alone products.

Greenbook covers Social Media and Qualitative Research

Greenbook has had a numbers of articles on the trending of Qualitative Research to digital and social media platforms. Here is their latest article:

"Why (and How) the Growth of Social Media has Created Opportunities for Market Research"

The article by Paul Rubenstein of Accelerant Research social media usage has developed and become widespread very quickly. Social media marketing has reacted to this trend showing its own growth on a similar trajectory. What are the opportunities for online methodology in qualitative research? It is a long article with a strong bias towards online research, and the highlights include:

Social media marketing has reacted to this trend showing its own growth on a similar trajectory.  Research indicates that spending on social media and conversational marketing will outpace that of traditional marketing by 2012, according to a study conducted by TWI Surveys, Inc. on behalf of the Society for New Communications Research.  Forrester, too, echoes this claim in its own research findings in a recent study.

The Opportunity for Online Methodology in Qualitative Research

Now compare these blogging activities to those involved in qualitative research in which a moderator poses questions to study participants and receives answers to those questions from them.  A discussion ensues between the moderator and participant fueled by a series of questions and responses between parties.  Sometimes the moderator shows participants some “things” and has them provide their attitudes and opinions. Other times the moderator might require the participants to provide “things” to be seen, heard, and/or discussed.  Thus, there is parity between the typical activities involved in blogging and in qualitative research, and nowadays, the personal computer and Internet can facilitate the activities involved in qualitative research.

Imagine a shift from the traditional, face-to-face (F2F) methodology, which has dominated qualitative research for decades, to the Internet.  This shift should be a safe one given people’s general comfort level communicating within this medium.  But, would some part of the human condition be lost in the process?

Strengths and Weaknesses of In-person Qualitative Research

However, these tried-and-true qualitative methods, while effective for what they are designed to produce, do have their inherent flaws.  They are artificial and contrived because they require the respondent to be removed from the actual consumer behavior during interviewing, i.e., data are collected in a de-contextualized setting.  As such, this common byproduct of standard qualitative research designs attenuates the researcher’s ability to gather data in a natural setting.

The distinct advantages of the online method of qualitative research over in-person include:

• Computer-mediated interactions foster candidness, thoughtfulness, and essay-type responses
• Time is used efficiently and more data are collected
• Biasing effects due to the physical presence of others are eliminated
• Data can be collected in a naturalistic setting and at the time of the event under study
• Multi-media and text-based data are collected and integrated
• Data is better organized and easily sortable for subgroup analyses
• Automatic transcription
• Logistics are minimized
• Less expensive
• No travel, no time out of the office

There are still many limitations from not seeing your consumer live, but it is an interesting analysis of the direction if not the final direction of the qualitative research market.