And day two of IIeX 2022 in Amsterdam has come to a close! Though I’m sad to say good-bye to everyone, I am happy to return home with lots of intriguing ideas to ponder (plus a very lovely watercolour produced by Anna Wijnands). Have a read through and then feel free to get in touch with me or any of the speakers with your thoughts. See you on the road soon!
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Inclusive Communities Build on C-Creation, Equity and Collabs

Hayel Wartemberg, Co-Founder, Word on the Curb; Isabelle Cotton, Senior Research Manager, Word on the Curb

• Despite what the media keep on repeating, blanket generalizations about Gen Z are not accurate – not all young people are sustainability experts, not all are activists, and not all even know or agree on what Gen Z is. How much do 8 year olds really have in common with 20 year olds? Remember that cohorts are very broad brushstrokes that only explain a small piece of the puzzle.

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We Better Behave! Why Sustainability? Why Now?

Christian Niederauer, Global Head of Insights, Colgate-Palmolive; Michael Swaisland, Head of Insights & Analytics, Mattel; Andrea Gonçalves da Silva, Senior Market Intelligence Manager, Philips; Anders Bengtsson, Founder, Protobrand; Christian Dössel, SVP, Behaviorally

• Sustainability is not all or nothing. Brands can start small at any stage of the supply chain, energy usage, or packaging, and make bigger changes later. If you can’t reduce packaging, you can use different packaging and make it multi-purpose. Think about what you would do differently if you were starting from scratch and aim for those changes. And, go above and beyond legal requirements.

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We Better Behave! Being Sustainable & Living a Good Life: Can this Unite?

Edwin Taborda, Global Head of Insights, Electrolux; Anna Martynova, Research Manager and Analyst, Protobrand

• Brands can contribute to people having better lives by helping them gain more experiences rather than more stuff. People expect brands to have the minimum requirements (e.g., works well) so now brands can focus on longer lasting products that help people consumer less and live better. It can also include giving people the tools to change long-term habits into more sustainable behaviors (e.g., use more often, recycle more often).

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We Better Behave! 3 Pillars for Brands to Chart a New Course Towards Sustainability

Monica Tenorio, Vice President, Insights & Analytics, PepsiCo Europe; Crispin Beale, Group President, Behaviorally

• Brands that have a direct link to unhealthy lifestyles (e.g., sugary drinks) have a responsibility to help people do better. This can be by focusing on regenerative agriculture, ethically sourced and sustainable materials, and enabling a circular economy. These brands should offer positive choices for people and planet via a balanced portfolio.

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We Better Behave! Looking at the Future of Sustainability

Stephen Donajgrodzki, Director Behavioral Science, Kellogg Company; Philippe Coquelle, Head of Insights, Europe, Barilla; Alex Peters, Global Insights Lead, Purpose, Reckitt; Jennifer Picard, Head of Center of Excellence for Mix Optimization – Global Consumer Insights, Pernod-Ricard; Anders Bengtsson, Founder, Protobrand; Christian Dössel, SVP, Behaviorally

• Philippe Coquelle shared a fantastic story about sustainability. They wanted to switch from an all plastic package for their pasta to a paper package with a small plastic window. But consumers weren’t having it. They’ve always bought a solid plastic bag that let them see all the pasta and nothing else would do. Barilla knew they’d take a hit by moving to a paper package and lose market share. However, as a brand, you have to know what you stand for and what you want to achieve with your brand. Sometimes your insights will say one thing but your mission and vision will lead you in a different direction. And that’s ok. In fact, in this case, it’s great. (This shopper is immensely appreciative!)
  

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Real-Time CX Insights: How IKEA Listens, Understands, and Acts

Olga Smits-Mohlmann, Insights Professional, IKEA; Tim Stierman, Product Owner PulseCX, IKEA

• Dashboards offer massive cost savings over traditional surveys. Where a few people may review a report and then put it away, IKEA sees thousands of people use their dashboard every week. Imagine the equivalent costs of 1 million completes per month. They’re dashboard is a minimum viable product, and they expect to try and fail fast. As their founder says, “Only while sleeping, one makes no mistakes.”

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Kitchen Sink Dramas: Lifting a Veil on Food Hygiene

Daniel Clay, Managing Partner, Basis Social; Darren Bhattachary, CEO, Basis Social; Alice Rayner, Senior Social Science Research Officer, Food Standards Agency; Dan Jenkins, Senior Client Strategy Director, Lifestream; Helen Heard, Senior Social Science Research Officer, Food Standards Agency

• “Always on” video ethnography reveals human behaviors that would never otherwise be captured. People don’t know what their household members did in the room immediately before they did something, nor do they remember all the subtle behaviors that are 100% rote and unattended to. It makes it far easier to identify and consequently prevent safety issues, such as cross-contamination that you’re not even aware of. Obviously, this type of research requires extreme attention to ethics, privacy, and duty of care should dangerous behaviors be recorded.

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Learn more from our other blog posts

• Trackers Suck. Here’s how to fix them.
• 8 Reasons to Invest in a Hybrid DIY Market Research Team
• Everything You Need to Know about Conducting Effective Secondary Research

Hello from Amsterdam!

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I’m thrilled to be back at in-person conferences again. Amsterdam in the summertime is a hard to beat but IIeX offered lots of excellent sessions (and some tasty treats!) today. I’ve gathered just a few of my favourite takeaways below. Enjoy!

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Why Market Researchers Should Embrace the UX Research Opportunity

Mike Stevens, Insight Platforms; Helen Devine, The Economist

• UX research is somewhat different from market research in that it is faster and closer to the end product. The need to be agile is a good reminder that researchers can stray from the extreme structure of formal research and be less polished reports. Good research can use guerrilla recruiting and fast interactions.

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Why We Should Kill NPS (and What to Use Instead)

Nyssa Packard, Senior Director, Insights, Skyscanner

• NPS scores are used widely yet disliked even more widely. No one knows what a good score and those supposedly “good” are meaningless. The same number can be achieved from a multitude of good and bad scenarios, and can represent completely opposite outcomes depending on the cultural bias it was created within. You are far better to use a measure that has meaning for the stage in which your brand lies, e.g., purchase, loyalty, retention. Definitely a talk that is worth getting the paper!

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The New Creator Economy: How Data Inspires Ideas

Steve Phillips, CEO, Zappi; Amanda Seal, Global CMI Director, Mars Petcare

• As behavioural measures have become vastly easier to collect, store, and analyze, methodologies like questionnaires and groups have become less essential. However, there is a place for all types of research. Where transactional and loyalty data are fantastic for post-launch brands, questionnaires and groups are fantastic for pre-launch brands.

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Let’s Talk about the Elephant in the Brain: How Brands Can Tackle Diversity in their Communications

Christian Niederauer, Global Head of Insights, Colgate-Palmolive; Cristina de Balanzo, Board Director, Walnut Unlimited

• Incorporating people with disabilities in your advertising can increase sales and brand affinity. The trick is people feel compelled to say positive things even when they don’t like the ad. Sometimes, simply changing the narrative around the videos (rather than the videos themselves) is enough to shift weak perceptions into positive perceptions.

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The Perfect Glass of Wine: 7 Insights From a Parallel World

Kristin Hickey, Founder, CEO, Kubi Kalloo

• Be open to accidents – when things go wrong, look on the bright side and you’re sure to discover positive outcomes and learnings for next tie. Getting dirty into the details is good – it means you know every piece and can optimize the processes. And, even when you do know all the pieces of the process, let the experts tell the story – they know how to serve up a story that will generate excitement and action. (Plus several more insights. Ask for the paper 🙂

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Navigating the Crisis: Pricing Sensitivity Amid Inflationary Pressures

Joris de Bruyne, Partner, EyeSee; Anne-Lise Flaction, Head of Insights Cereal, Nestle

• Even with higher prices, people are more loyal to brands that touch their skin (e.g., skin cream, shampoo) or go inside their bodies (e.g., food, medication) because the risk (of wasting a disliked product) is too great to try other brands. Decreasing the volume of a package is an effective way to keep a price lower when all the competitive packages are a different size. Bacon is an anomaly because a higher price is associated with better quality.

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Learn more from our other blog posts

• NewMR Webinar with Annie Pettit: Statistics are dead. Long live statistics!
• Getting started with consumer, customer, and market segmentation
• 8 Engaging Question Types to Improve Participants’ Survey Taking Experience

By Satish Pai, MBA (pictured right) and Annie Pettit, PhD

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A few months ago, an academic tweeted about the lack of available learnings from market research agencies about predicting market behaviours. Surely, an agency that carried out dozens of econometric marketing mix modelling studies should have discovered and been able to share quantitative patterns and learnings by now.

This was a fair request, a valid claim, and a healthy discussion followed.

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To Share or Not To Share?

One perspective was that agencies such as Nielsen BASES, Millward Brown, and Kantar have already shared some of these learnings, though not necessarily in academic journals. Much of their research learnings could be found in their own internal publications, in industry journals, as white papers on association websites, and as part of industry conferences. Seek and ye shall find.

The other perspective addressed the lack of sharing as an appreciation for intellectual property, proprietary data, and client privilege and privacy. Almost all research conducted by industry requires significant investments in terms of time and talent, as well as participation from commercial clients who share their privileged data to help test and validate such research products.

Given the significant investments required to test and validate learnings, it makes sense to recover the financial investment as early as possible. Doing so requires the protection of intellectual property (IP) to ensure they maintain their unique selling proposition (USP). Pursuing publication in an academic journal could easily prevent this from happening.

For industry researchers, the true test and validation of commercial research is not publication in academic journals, but rather success in the market with measurable financial ROI across dozens of products and categories. This external validation is sufficient, particularly since prospective clients can witness research outcomes in the marketplace themselves or follow-up on testimonials from satisfied clients.

The academic researchers, however, felt that any research learnings should be subject to the academic process of peer review prior to publication in either academic or industry journals. Peer reviews require multiple experts within the field to scrutinize the methods and processes to ensure quality standards were upheld.  They argued that since agencies generally do not do this, their research isn’t validated and doesn’t pass academic rigour.

The conversation concluded as both perspectives had merit.

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Where Should Research Results Be Shared?

There soon followed another Twitter conversation wherein a media agency head wanted to share their agency’s learnings on marketing ROI. They asked for suggestions on how to share those findings in an academic journal.

Many academics pitched in with advice. The popular suggestion was that the agency should instead try out industry forums like ARF, ESOMAR, IIEX, and MRS. Those forums would be quick to publish and offered an excellent platform to reach the industry.

Despite the original request, there wasn’t much encouragement to publish in academic journals. The agency was warned that the process from submission to publication could take as long as 18 months (though with edits and revisions it could take up to 3 years). Further, journals seen as prestigious have rejection rates as high as 95% meaning that even great quality research may not be published. Along with these warnings to avoid academic publication, several journals that covered the areas of interest were suggested, along with ideas on how to go about submitting.

The contrast between these two discussions was striking. The first discussion was grounded in a premise that industry learnings fall short as the commercial vetting process isn’t the same as the academic vetting process. The second discussion was a realistic admission that sharing industry learnings via the academic route would entail several challenges and ultimately might lead to the learnings never being shared.

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Where Should Researchers Publish?

Stepping back, it’s interesting to see the variety of publication sources that marketing and affiliated industries use today. There is social media (e.g., Linkedin, Medium), dedicated media (e.g., Adweek, Admap, Marketing Week) as well as industry publications, dedicated channels, and conferences.

Mainstream media also offers considerable opportunity. Long-form columns in diverse publications such as The Guardian, New Yorker, and Financial Times can have greater impact and currency, and some would agree that they offer the best viewpoint on industry developments and learnings.

Further, there are a few publications, such as Harvard Business Review, that have bridged the gap and offer opportunity to both industry and academics. If an academic or industry researcher were to publish in such journals, they could be assured that a good number of projects from paying clients would ensue.

In the end, however, it would be fair to say that mainstream media dominates by far, and outdoes the limited impact that both academic journals and industry publications have on marketing and related industries.

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Where Do We Go From Here?

These discussions demonstrate an ongoing divide between the working lives of academic and industry researchers.

Is there one best vetting process to identify rigorous research studies that generate valid and reliable outcomes? Clearly, there is merit in both peer review and external validation.

Is a publication process with high Type 2 error rates (rejects many great papers) preferable to a process with low Type 1 errors (accepts some poor quality papers). Again, there is merit in both being assured that every result has been validated, and preventing the loss of potentially important findings.

Academic and industry researchers are on the same team. We strive to better understand the inner workings of consumers and markets but, we do so from within different contexts. Our target audiences are different – corporate end clients or other academics. Our definitions of prestigious career achievements are different – multiple Journal of Marketing publications or multiple ESOMAR awards. The KPIs that determine our raises and promotions are different – publish or perish, or monetize or perish.

Let’s continue the discussions and let’s keep the gate open.

Satish Pai, MBA is a freelance consultant, author, and PhD Candidate who specializes in advertising, branding, strategic management, and insights. He writes the Insights about Insights blog and can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Annie Pettit PhD CAIP FCRIC is the Chief Research Officer, North America, at E2E Research, an ISO 27001 certified, ESOMAR corporate member. Annie is a marketing research author, blogger, and regular conference speaker. She can be found on Linkedin and Twitter.