Advertising best practice, evidence and insights

Return to intimacy: Why it took a global pandemic to rekindle our love of insight

Opinion • Stuart Sullivan-Martin, Camilla Bruggen and Elif Pulcu, September 2020

COVID-19 offers advertising strategists an opportunity to revive and renew the methods by which they acquire real human insights.

Behavioural economics: Immersive research, decisions and comms challenges

Article • Anna Miley, John Kenny and Sonia Misak, WARC Webinars, April 2020

Discusses how companies are outperforming their peers by applying behavioural economics to their marketing strategy.

Market basket applications on short web links

Article • James Gallagher and Christopher M. Smith, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 62, No. 2, 2020, pp. 139-157

Market research is an indispensable part of an organization's ability to understand market dynamics. Over the past 20 years, data collection and analysis through Knowledge Discovery through Databases (KDD) has arisen to supplement the traditional methods of surveys and focus groups.

How Lloyds Banking Group got people to talk about money

Article • Brian Carruthers, Event Reports, QUAL360 Europe, February 2020

Banking is a notoriously difficult sector to research, but Lloyds Banking Group has found a way that offers promise.

Henkel’s route to faster, better – and cheaper – innovation

Article • Brian Carruthers, Event Reports, Qual360 Europe, February 2020

Looks at how Henkel created a “structural capability” that enables it to efficiently feed its innovation pipeline.

Insights from the BBC on researching ‘challenging’ markets

Article • Brian Carruthers, Event Reports, Qual360 Europe, February 2020

The BBC World Service has learned to make a small research budget go a long way in challenging markets.

The Marcel-ification of market research

Opinion • Sam Peña-Taylor, February 2020

Firms want professional-level advanced analytics, on a global scale and on a budget. But how brands know what they know is less of a discussion at IIeX as knowledge-sharing takes centre stage (and top sponsor billing), says Sam Peña-Taylor.

The changing role of the marketing researcher in the age of digital technology: Practitioner perspectives on the digitization of marketing research

Article • Robert Cluley, William Green and Richard Owen, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 62, No. 1, 2020, pp. 27-42

After years of hype, marketing researchers are now facing the challenge of integrating new digital technologies into their work.

Machine learning applied to pack classification

Article • Weiqiang Hang and Timothy Banks, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 61, No. 6, 2019, pp. 601-620

Pack or product classification is a quite common task in market research, particularly for sales tracking audits and related services.

The possible benefits of reporting percentage point effects

Article • George Terhanian, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 61, No. 6, 2019, pp. 635-650

Many academic researchers regard logistic regression as the preeminent analytic approach for modeling binary outcomes.

Dixons: Customer Matters – Impactful commercial insight at scale

Research Paper • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for Insight Management, 2019

Dixons Carphone, a multinational electrical and telecommunications retailer, created the Customer Matters programme in the UK, which uses digital first research to underpin decision-making.

World Animal Protection: When disasters strike, animals suffer

Research Paper • MRS Awards, Highly Commended, MRS Award for International Research, 2019

World Animal Protection, a non-profit animal welfare organisation, created a quant/qual study that provided it with hard evidence to encourage the protection of animals from government officials globally.

Macmillan Cancer Support: A truly sector-leading approach to insight management

Research Paper • MRS Awards, Winner, MRS Award for Insight Management, 2019

Macmillan Cancer Support, a charity, created an online synthesis of evidence that draws on a range of data to provide better insights on people living with cancer for its staff in the UK.

How many people consume BBC News content?

Research Paper • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for International Research, 2019

BBC World Service, an international broadcaster, uncovered how many people watch its content globally to help reach underserved audiences through its Global Audience Measure.

Moving from fission to fusion: helping Matalan flourish

Research Paper • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for Insight Management, 2019

Matalan, a fashion and homeware retailer, cut across data to uncover strategic insight into the omnichannel customer journey in the UK, which enabled Matalan to invest strategically in the areas of the business that will have most positive commercial impact.

Barclays UK: Customer Experience research programme

Research Paper • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for Insight Management, 2019

Barclays UK, a banking brand, built upon its existing customer experience research platform to revolutionise the insights it provides through customer feedback dashboards in the UK.

Shell Lubricants qualitative segmentation study

Research Paper • MRS Awards, Winner, MRS Award for Business-to-Business Research, 2019

Shell, an oil industry company, launched a large-scale ethnographic study to inform its global innovation and growth strategy, providing a new direction for redefining relationships with customers in the UK.

Quick qual manifesto: How to conduct quick qualitative research without compromising deep insights and losing the essence of research for design

Research Paper • Nasly Liliana Galindo Quiroga and Gabriel Escalante Sobrino, ESOMAR, Fusion, 2019

Proposes ten principles to help a design researcher to keep up with a rapidly changing marketplace, adapt and deliver relevant findings and insights quickly.

Impact not to be sniffed at: How one study changed the global culture of fragrance

Research Paper • Katell Maguet and Oliver Sweet, ESOMAR, Fusion, 2019

IFF, the fragrance solutions company, used ethnography to transform its culture in the US and create the Scent Styler, the company’s first internally developed consumer product and technology.

A ton of data and an ounce of emotion: Customer-centered CRM communication optimisation process

Research Paper • Leszek Haba and Piotr Idzik, ESOMAR, Fusion, 2019

Looks at optimising customer relationship management (CRM) communications with a focus on the bookmaking industry in Poland.

Unscripting the script: Re-thinking conversations with consumers and stakeholders

Research Paper • Manisha Dikshit, ESOMAR, Fusion, 2019

Presents a new model of insight generation for market researchers, by opening up research practice for imagination and creativity through a more facilitative approach.

Big data big debate: How to handle 5 million plus verbatims in just two weeks?

Research Paper • Bruno Jeanbart, ESOMAR, Fusion, 2019

OpinionWay, an institute for studies, marketing, communication and opinion polls, analysed the data collected on the online platform granddebat.fr, which allows French citizens to speak to their local mayors about their concerns.

How P&G plans to fix an “unsustainable” market-research ecosystem

Article • Geoffrey Precourt, Event Reports, The Market Research Event, November 2019

Procter & Gamble, the FMCG giant, is building a new kind of analytics and insights expertise as it seeks to keep up with consumers.

Talking to India’s farmers

Article • Brian Carruthers, Event Reports, Marketing Week Insight Show, March 2019

Outlines a project to set up the first continuous panel to help a pesticides company better understand India’s farmers.

Data analytics is the fastest growing area of market research

News • 10/09/2019

Traditionally defined market research is growing at a slower pace than data analytics and insights, according to the annual ESOMAR Global Market Research report.

Research management