Secret Santa or Secret Motivations?

As holiday parties kick into full gear, many of us are scrambling to find an appropriate “grab bag,” “Yankee Swap, ” or “Secret Santa” gift. Of the 29% of people planning to participate, we found that motivations varied. According to recent research conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey of 1000 consumers:

• 71% want their gift to be something they would like to get and maybe will end up with it


• 25% want their gift to be in high demand and the one that is stolen most often


• Only 4% want their gift to be the least desired and look forward to someone getting stuck with it

Just getting started on your holiday shopping? Recent research shows you’re not alone

My wife and I are seemingly crazy. We still care about buying thoughtful gifts and spend all year building up our pile so that we’re not wed to craziness at the local mall. But we’re clearly not normal. According to recent research conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey of 1000 consumers 19% of people (25% of males) don’t get started until December rolls around. In fact, when we asked people in October, 12% already knew they would wait until the last minute to buy all of their gifts (17% male, 6% female.)

So, as you finish shopping take comfort in knowing you’re not alone. And think of me sitting by the fire with a nice glass of wine. Happy Holidays!

1 Topic, 5 Blogs – “Interactive Questions in Market Research”

I am privileged to be one of 5 bloggers who, each 15th of the month – will produce a POV on an issue facing the Marketing Research industry. You’ll also be hearing from Annie Pettit (organizer), Bernie Malinoff, Joel Rubinson and Brandon Bertelsen. Links to their posts will follow.

I am also particularly excited about this first topic: interactive questioning and its impact on the research industry. A little background… I work at Chadwick Martin Bailey, a high end, mostly quantitative research firm with a focus on segmentation, brand, product development, and customer loyalty work. I have been here for most of the last decade, with a two year stint at Invoke Solutions in the middle. So I see the traditional angle and the non-traditional angle from an inside perspective.

Question: Is technology helping or hurting the research industry?

Answer: Yes.

That is to say that it is not a matter of helping or hurting, it’s about accepting and embracing the reality of technological advances and the evolving requirements of respondents and clients.

“We’re not in the entertainment industry.” – Anonymous market researcher

Recently, my friend Jen Drolet from iModerate presented findings to my firm from a research study conducted with eRewards and M/A/R/C that was presented at CASRO largely about interactive questions and their impact. After some questions about validity and cost a researcher in the audience stated, “That’s great, but we’re not in the entertainment industry.” I wasn’t shocked at all by this response. I have found researchers to be among the slowest to adopt new tools and techniques, especially ones that increase cost to the client or require extra work or training. But I disagree with her premise.

We are constantly asking people to fill out questionnaires or participate in a focus group for minimal incentives. Which is fine in a vacuum, but people don’t live a vacuum. They are choosing to give you their time over watching television, playing with their kids, listening to music, watching youtube videos, updating their Facebook profiles, or reading a good book. If research is too boring or feels too dated, they will simply stop participating.

“If it’s not fun, why do it?” –Ben and Jerry’s

The good news for advocates of interactive surveys is that most people agree with this Ben and Jerry’s motto. No one is suggesting we completely overhaul the way we conduct surveys, but as long as it doesn’t affect validity researchers need to look for opportunities to include interactive questions, open-ended questions, and images. It also means we need to get away from the academic, passive language that researchers are trained to use and make the research experience more conversational and reflective of the brands and target audiences involved. If all else is equal, make the experience more fun and engaging for respondents.

“There is a right time and place for everything.” – Josh Mendelsohn

This has always been my philosophy on beer and music, but it applies to research methods as well. Every audience and question has its own set of requirements. For example, older audiences need bigger font sizes, not gaming style imagery and younger audiences need to be able to interact with the survey and feel listened to. Insurance companies may need to be more professional in tone while “cool” consumer brands may want to adapt a casual language and visual style. Our job is to pick the best solution for the situation at hand and not blindly insist on using or not using the latest, greatest interactive question types.

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.” – Andy Dufresne

My favorite quote from “The Shawshank Redemption” applies to the state of the industry as a whole. There is no question that clients’ demands for speed, interactivity, and hybrid solutions will continue to grow, especially as the age of clients comes down. As research providers we have two options. Spend time adapting our methods to today’s business and cultural environment or find ourselves slowing being phased out. Without adapting, we’ll have a hard time differentiating ourselves from one another and from self service tools. It’s time to get busy living.

Read the other 4 blogs:

Joel Rubinson of the ARF: http://blog.joelrubinson.net/2009/12/getting-the-most-out-of-online-research/

Annie Petit of Lovestats: http://lovestats.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/1-topic-5-blogs-rich-media-in-surveys/

Bernie Malinoff of Element54: http://element-54.com/2009/12/1-topic-5-blogs-impact-of-rich-media-question-types-in-mr/

Brandon Bertelsen: link posted shortly

Why Market Researchers Struggle with Web Listening

In a recent blog post, Forrester's Brad Bortner lists three ways that researchers might want to consider utilizing social media:

1. Create a private Market Research Online Community.
2. Mine open communities for discussions of interest.
3. Harvest quantitative sample from social networks.

These are all completely valid ways of using available resources that live within the comfort zone for researchers - or at most, slightly outside it. But it misses a big opportunity to (in the words of Crimson Hexagon's Candace Fleming ) "listen to consumers in the wild."

With constantly improving tools that are tunable to answer specific questions it is now possible to really "hear" the online conversation and make sense of it all. By determining tone and level of influence you can glean tremendously valuable information that feeds other explorations and informs potential online strategies.

So why do researchers scratch their heads? We don't know who these people are, what they bought, or what panel they belong to... or any of the other screening criteria normally included in a research study.

But we do know that they are real or at least as real as people in the research panels we so vehemntly trust. Should essential decisions be mare this way? Probably not.
Should it be a key input to understanding brand health and customer experiences? Absolutely.

And as researchers we need to understand how to use it instead of how to discredit other people's use of it if we are going to thrive in this new world.

Holiday Travel in 2009: Leave the Lights On, Grab The Tylenol

We recently conducted some research on holiday travel plans for the 2009, finding that 39% of holiday travelers will stay with friends or family and43% of those traveling will drive instead of fly .

The study also found that over half of all Americans will still travel this holiday season, 85% are traveling to visit friends and family.

"We see this news as very positive for travel companies," comments Judy Melanson leader of Chadwick Martin Bailey’s Travel and Hospitality practice. "At least for the holiday season we are not seeing big drop-offs in actual travel or spending. People may be shifting their dollars but they are not simply staying home."

There’s also good news on the spending front. Most are spending the same or more on holiday travel this year than last. Many (43%) are choosing to drive instead of fly this holiday season, while 39% are staying with friends and family instead of staying in a hotel. All of these measures are helping consumers to still travel to see family and friends this holiday season despite the economy.

The outlook for 2010 looks equally positive with 85% expecting their personal financial situation to remain the same or get better over the next year.

Defending Market Research

An interesting post today over at Nigel Hollis' blog about academics at the 7th Annual Marketing Directors Conference in Athens, Greece minimizing the value of research in their speeches.

When probed further they stated that it was the literal interpretation and simple surveys they were referring to.

I think the big difference between quality research and simple data collection is the value proposition that all good custom research firms provide. We may write better questionnaires or more tightly manage projects, but the special sauce is generally in the interpretation of data, not the collection of it. And just as much in the evangelization of it (or at least facilitating evangelization).

As Andy Vranesic of GE Healthcare said in our joint webinar today (watch here) - 10% of it is the research, 90% is putting the research to work in a business context.

Thinking About Customer Service Strategies and Brand Detractors

Just last week I was reading a recent article by CMB's John Martin and Rob Davis, one of the CMB Advisory team members about how call centers and their corporate owners need to focus on fixing relationships, not just "resolving problems." (Read the article here)

It made intuitive sense to me, and even more so after having a first hand experience with a call center that was less than... brand complimentary. In the company's defense, I had already switched to another provider based on something they could offer that my previous provider could not (my beloved iPhone.) But the way I was treated and the fact that they summarily dismissed what another call center rep had told me as "mis-information" took me from brand neutral to brand detractor. And then the call ended with the always popular "is there anything else I can resolve for you today?" from the manager.

If the company's service strategies had been relationship focused they would have acted in a different way and tone. Their goal would have been on creating a non-customer advocate, not creating an angry lost customer.