Focus group numbers on the up, says FocusVision

But survey finds moderate shift to online qual in US, and growing price competition

US-- The number of focus groups held each year continues to grow with global sessions up 3.5% to 537,000 in 2007, according to a survey by FocusVision.

But the global figures mask a slowdown in growth in the US, where there has been a “moderate shift” in spend to other qual methodologies such as online bulletin boards and ethnographic studies.

FocusVision said focus group facilities in the US were also reporting declining average billable amounts due to aggressive price competition and direct involvement from end-client procurement departments.

But still no sign yet of the “shock” predicted by Forrester Research yesterday in its report on how online communities would shake up the qual industry.

Outside of the US, focus group activity was up 4.1%, which FocusVision says is in line with estimates of growth in research spend.


Author: Brian Tarran

The Future of Qualitative Market Research

By Philly Desai

The research world is changing fast and we are under threat from all sides – at least, according to several recent articles in Research Magazine. Management consultants and direct marketing agencies are muscling in on traditional research ground. Consolidation, mergers and acquisitions are constant features of the industry. We are subjected to reminders about the poor public image of market research and the difficulties of getting "into the boardroom". And eminent practitioners such as David Smith and Clive Nancarrow warn that if we don’t radically change the way we work, market researchers risk becoming marginalized from serious business decision making.

Qualitative research is not immune from this self criticism. Even gurus such as Wendy Gordon and Roy Langmaid, both now standing to one side of the industry, criticise us for churning out the same tired old methods. So, are we really in such a poor state? Or are suffering from a collective neurosis, and failing to see how well positioned we are to take advantage of recent changes in business and social policy? Judith Wardle, Joint Managing Director of qualitative agency Wardle McLean, suggests things are not nearly as bad as some might think. "Judging by the quality of people entering the business, the mainstreaming of qualitative research in client companies, and its spread to an ever increasing range of organisations, it is a success story."

So, why all this soul searching and self flagellation? Although it’s too early to write the obituary of the "focus group", there are certainly important changes in the business context which mean qualitative research needs to expand its toolkit. Firstly, markets change very quickly now. Global media allows brands, imagery and aspirations to travel the world almost instantaneously, and the pace of technological change shows no signs of slowing. So qual needs to develop a more direct line between the consumer and the client. Linked to this, many companies now place innovation at the heart of their business, believing that a failure to produce regular new products will result in the fickle consumer going somewhere else. Thus, they want research agencies to help them come up with new ideas, not just evaluate the old ones. Consumers don’t buy one product or brand now, but rather a range of brands depending on their moods – New World Wines for dinner parties, Budweiser for the pub, Bacardi Breezer for night clubs. Qualitative research needs to get nearer to these different contexts of consumption to understand these needs. And finally, there are significant legislative changes and a new consumerist agenda in the public sector. These mean that central and local government, police forces, health authorities, fire brigades, museums and art galleries all use qualitative research – but conventional commercial methods are not always appropriate for their different needs.

So, whilst Wardle is right that we shouldn’t write off current methods, the changing marketing landscape requires a wider range of approaches from qualitative practitioners. If we can take the lead, qualitative researchers could play a central role in shaping the emerging discipline of Knowledge Management. If we are dragged kicking and screaming into the future, we may find the brand strategists, design agencies and management consultants have already got their towels on the best deck chairs.

There are six major trends which, I believe, will influence the future of qualitative research. The six trends are:

1) From talk to actions

Researchers will have to pay more attention to what people actually do, rather than what they say they do. We’ll need to research products at the places and times where they are actually used, not ask people to reconstruct their memory of it weeks later. The need to understand what actually happens at the Point of Sale – the moment of truth – will force us out of the viewing facility and back into the real world. As Siamack Salari of Everyday Lives comments, "Instead of focusing on an activity like it’s a discrete event, it’s being able to put it into an overall picture, to see how it fits in. It puts it into context and it totally changes the way that you think about your product." This means more use of observational and ethnographic methods – exploring consumer behaviour where it actually happens. If we’re researching shoes, let’s look under the bed; if it’s toothpaste, get in the bathroom!

2) From reporting to experiencing

The importance of direct experience of the consumer has been recognised by a wide range of manufacturers and retailers. Companies like Unilever Bestfoods, Asda, Kraft Foods and Microsoft have programmes to allow their personnel direct consumer contact, rather than relying on researchers as intermediaries. As Bill Parton, Research Manager of Kraft Foods comments, conventional research can sometimes distance the marketer from the target audience, but direct contact overcomes this. "Your average marketer is a long way off your target group. So, it’s all about empathy and liking, understanding your consumers in the round and understanding the context in which you’re operating."

Thus, qualitative researchers will increasingly be facilitators of contact with the consumer, rather than messengers from the frontline. But this means researchers will need to advise clients on how to understand what they’re hearing and seeing, and help them integrate these insights into their daily work. It also means clients will need to be careful that biases don’t enter into the system, with marketing people or brand managers justifying their own decisions. The desire to get "closer to the consumer" also implies different presentation methods. Purely verbal debriefs may give way to video based presentation and reporting, role play workshops, or even bringing respondents directly into the debrief to explain their feelings and motivations.

3) From the past to the future

Understanding the past was never enough, but the fast pace of change means that researchers are increasingly asked to focus on future possibilities for brands, products or advertising. Our clients will want our opinion on what might happen, not what has already happened, in their markets. We’ll be asked to help plan future scenarios, spot possible trends, and advise on where opportunities may lie. This means moving away from working with mainstream consumers towards the so-called "leading edge" – the consumer who, according to Kirsty Fuller and Maggie Collier of Flamingo, "represents the consumer of the future".

It means widening our field of vision to include popular culture, and it also means living with a greater degree of uncertainty than we, as researchers, are used to – there are no certainties in the future, only educated guesses. Indeed, it’s not at all clear that these activities are research at all – they are a form of research based consultancy which require a far greater degree of trust in the judgement of the individual researcher, rather than their technical research skills.

4) From understanding to innovation

Qualitative researchers are increasingly being asked to generate, rather than evaluate, new ideas. These may be product innovations, brand extensions, service developments or advertising routes. In these projects, although researchers use qualitative skills – managing group dynamics and interactions, analysing meanings, and building new ideas through dialogue with consumers – they are not doing research. The desired outcome is not a rigorous understanding of the market, but rather an exciting new idea or solution to a problem. This may mean conducting several groups in quick succession to refine an idea, with the creative people present to make on the spot changes.

Stephen Donaldson, Group Insight Manager at Unilever Bestfoods, emphasises the importance of separating the process of creation from that of evaluation – processes which qualitative research has often confused: "You may stagger groups on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And then allow yourself to build your ideas and change the stimulus materials. Then you play around with different things to see if you can unlock what the problem is." But we need to change the way we do groups if we want new ideas to come out – bringing together contrasting points of view, adopting a more dynamic facilitation style, using more diverse stimuli, and focusing on tasks rather than discussion.

As Greg Rowland from Semiotics for Brands points out "It’s very difficult to ask consumers to imagine things that aren’t there, like with projects which ask, ‘where should the brand go next?’ If qualitative research hasn’t quite uncovered things, that’s because qualitative research has become very stretched in the last few years." The old methods won’t deliver new insights, because they weren’t designed for that.

5) From respondents to partners

These shifts in what clients want also require a different relationship with the respondent. No longer will the norm be passive "respondents", kept in the dark about the marketing objectives and waiting for the next question. This is particular important in public sector research, where the issues involved are often complex and difficult to grasp – prioritising council budgets or health care, or exploring how best to dispose of nuclear waste – and informed reactions are of limited value. If researchers want a meaningful response they need to tell respondents the facts, and give them time to come to an informed opinion. As Robin Clarke, head of the Public Involvement Programme at the Institute for Public Policy Research, points out, "local authorities want something that is useful, that can add to policy. You don’t want something that just says, ‘well, the public don’t know anything about that.’ "

This may mean using methods such as Citizen’s Juries, where a diverse group of people are brought together for several days, provided with information and access to expert opinion, and given time to form a view once they feel they understand the issues. Also, public sector research is often part of a broader consultation process, involving public meetings or local exhibitions with a remit to include everyone and develop a relationship with local people. Thus, researchers will need to be more eclectic, able to interpret the outcomes of a survey, series of group discussions, public meeting and political lobbying, if they are to be really valuable to public sector clients.

6) From interviews to eclecticism

Finally, qualitative research will need to use a wider range of data sources and research methods if it is to avoid being marginalized from business decision making. As independent researchers Gill Ereaut and Mike Imms point out, "Interviewing is the default mode in qualitative research, but this has prevented us from using broader methods, techniques and thinking as part of our everyday work." They recommend a more eclectic approach, sometimes called "bricolage." If we are to play a central role in providing information and insight, we can’t restrict ourselves to interviews and groups.

We need to be able to analyse and interpret consumer culture in all its forms – advertising, packaging, film and television, as well as magazines, music and fashion. This means using analytical frameworks from disciplines such as semiotics, anthropology and sociology, and moving away from our reliance on psychological approaches to the consumer. And, quite radically, it involves a shift away from defining qualitative research on the basis of methods – groups, depths, observations – towards a definition based on analytical skills. The uniqueness of qualitative research in this framework would lie not in how we talk to consumers, but how we make sense of consumer culture.

But do we have the skills and knowledge to adopt this approach? Or we merely dabbling in half digested bits of academic theory and giving it a new name? And even if we can adopt a truly rigorous analytical approach, can we explain to our clients how we do it, and make sure we’re not open to accusations of charging a fat fee for watching Eastenders or reading FHM? We can only do this if we develop clear and rigorous analytical frameworks to integrate and make sense of these different sources of data – and who is going to take on that task?

To read the conclusions, follow this link to the original post:

http://www.turnstone-research.co.uk/clientUpload/pdf/14.pdf

Banking on the Hispanic dollar

How US banks are courting Hispanic consumers

By Ivan Castano

Not long ago US banks targeted Hispanic savers with half-hearted bilingual brochures and poorly-managed Spanish-language call centres. More recently they have courted this fast-growing demographic with integrated and more culturally-sensitive marketing campaigns. How have they changed and why?

The Market Opportunity

It's easy to see why banks are chasing the Hispanic dollar.

First, the target audience is large and growing:

Some 41 million or 14 percent of the US population are Hispanic. By 2020, that percentage is expected to reach 18 per cent. According to Harris Bank, one of the US providers chasing the Latino market, there were already six US states with a critical mass of Hispanics in 2004: Arizona, Illinois, Texas, California, Metro New York and Florida. In total, US-based Hispanics (also referred to as Latinos) wield an annual estimated spending power of $600 billion.

Second, it is undeveloped:

Only half of US Hispanics bank. Some 40 per cent have credit cards and a mere third have mortgages, according to Mintel Research. US Hispanics have historically been sceptical of banks. They often have first hand experience of banking volatility from Latin American economies and faced barriers to use US banking services. Rather than putting savings in a US domestic bank, many continue a tradition of remitting cash back to home countries. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, a non-profit US research body, US remittances to central and Latin America accounted for an estimated US$18bn outflow of cash from the US in 2005. According to Harris, bank industry moves towards online and telephone banking may also not suit Hispanics who prefer using face to face counter service.

The complex nature of Hispanics - a term which encompasses US-based people with roots in Mexico, Cuba and Puerto Rico as well as other Latin American countries - has lead marketers in recent years to discuss them using theories of acculturation. Acculturation is the belief the immigrant and indigenous cultures can interact and be changed by this contact whilst both remaining distinct. It has been used to distinguish between long-standing and newly-arrived US-based Hispanics, and between those with different degrees of bilingualism - factor strongly correlated with their income levels and financial requirements. For instance, in 2006 Pew estimated that foreign-born Hispanic heads of households who had been in the US since 1990 or earlier were almost four times more likely to own their homes than those arriving after 2000 (60.4 per cent versus 16.7 per cent). According to the same source, native-born US Hispanics also had a median income which was almost 14 per cent higher than their foreign born Hispanic US peers, and they were 50 per cent more likely to be in the group of workers earning at least $50,000 a year.

To continue reading: WARC Online Exclusive

http://www.warc.com/Tracking/ArticleLink.asp?ID=87836&M=WARC-S-Apr08

INSULTOS CUALI-ETNO: Un estudio lingüístico revela las preferencias de cada país a la hora de insultar

Esta nota de Clarin ("Ñ") me hizo pensar en las ocasiones en las que he escuchado insultos en mi rol de investigador cuali-etno... sutiles, explícitos, directos, relativos a terceros, relativos a una marca, en juegos proyectivos, etc.

Y me pregunto: ¿Cómo sacar provecho de los insultos para comprender las culturas de consumo? ¿Es deseable o esperable que se pronuncien insultos en sesiones de grupo, entrevistas uno-a-uno y trabajo de campo etnográfico? ¿Qué insultos son los más comunes en un contexto de investigación de culturas de consumo en Latinoamérica? ¿Qué valores y prejuicios nos enseñan los insultos sobre los consumidores, sus sub-culturas y relación con las marcas?

Un estudio lingüístico realizado en 11 países clasificó 12 mil insultos proferidos por 3 mil estudiantes universitarios. El particular análisis pretende explicar qué agravio prefieren las personas según el sexo y la nacionalidad, entre otras categorías.

Por: Alessandro Oppes

Cuando estén a punto de acordarse de la familia y de los quehaceres non sanctos de la madre o la hermana de algún ocasional enemigo, recuerden que ninguna de las barbaridades que se les ocurran es injustificable. Cada monstruosidad que sale de nuestras bocas tiene una razón de ser, aunque sea aberrante. Si los italianos son el pueblo del "vaffanculo" desde siempre, esto depende de su acentuada tendencia a insistir sobre los órganos genitales y las relaciones sexuales es fruto de una cultura construida sobre la supuesta masculinidad y virilidad.

Acaso eso explique, por ejemplo, el ya celebérrimo cabezazo del astro francés Zinedine Zidane contra el defensor italiano Marco Materazzi durante la final de la pasado mundial de fútbol. Cuando el segundo se acordó de la madre y de la hermana de Zizou, el último gran número 10 hizo justicia por mano (cabeza) propia. El ejemplo recién citado es uno de los elementos de estudio en el estudio sociológico sobre la vulgaridad del mundo occidental publicado por la "International Journal of Intercultural Relations".

La tesis, coordinada por le profesor holandés Jan Pieter Van Oudenhoven, fue realizado en 10 universidades europeas y de los Estados Unidos y recoge los testimonios de casi 3 mil estudiantes de los 11 países. El resultado del experimento fue una lista casi infinita de 12 mil insultos, que los investigadores intentaron dividir en 16 grandes grupos. Hay para todos los gustos. Desde "imbecile" italiano al "cabrón" español, desde el inglés "asshole" al francés "putain".

Pero, sobre todo, hay algunas tendencias que emergen con claridad según el análisis específico de cada país. Por ejemplo, los términos ligados a la virilidad, prevalecen en los países mediterráneos como Grecia y –todavía más- en España, donde la herencia de la cultura machista parece casi insuperable. En cambio, las referencias a los órganos sexuales parecen típicas de los británicos, holandeses, franceses e italianos, pero son muy poco utilizadas por los polacos y los norteamericanos. Por otra parte, el insulto basado en los términos ligados al acto sexual está difundido en todos los países, pero sobre todo en Croacia y en Estados Unidos, mientras que es utilizado muy poco en Francia y Holanda.

Una de las coincidencias multiculturales se dio al observar que en todas partes se encuentran eufemismos agresivos sobre la prostitución. Holanda y Francia, sin embargo, son los más enquistados con las trabajadoras del oficio más antiguo del mundo. Alemania tiene la particularidad de la repetición de voces escatológicas para nombrar los excrementos de humanos y animales. Los expertos creyeron encontrar la explicación en la preocupación obsesiva de los alemanes por la higiene.

En tanto, la falta de educación es un tema recurrente en los insultos que se pronuncian en los países mediterráneos como Italia, España, Francia y Grecia. Y el único país donde el diablo participa de gran cantidad de insultos es Noruega. Insulto y género Otra de las hipótesis probadas en el peculiar estudio es que en los países occidentales, las mujeres quedan a salvo de la mayoría de los insultos, sobre todo en los Estados mediterráneos.

Aunque Croacia y en Alemania son la excepción a la regla y las damas reciben más insultos que los caballeros. Sin embargo, las mujeres no se quedan atrás y también saben cómo exhibir la vulgaridad del léxico, pero hacen especial hincapié en la (falta de) inteligencia humana. El 52% de las mujeres encuestadas prefieren "idiota" o "estúpido" sobre cualquier otro agravio. En cambio, sólo el 30% de los hombres parece inclinarse por esas cualidades. La enorme mayoría parece obsesionada con el aspecto físico.

(c) La Repubblica y Clarín

A (RE)EVOLUTION IN FOCUS GROUP FACILITIES©: TRANSITIONING TO AN UBER-FACILITY

By Carlos Montoya

It’s well known that inspiration and creativity are at the heart of innovation. That’s why today’s qualitative market research projects increasingly tap into resources that inspire creativity, ease and expression in respondents. Ideal research settings are those that adapt and adjust, improvise and innovate, and literally transform themselves into environments where organic qualitative studies can be carried out. These customized research solutions allow qualitative research to activate demographic/consumer responsiveness by designing environments that inspire spontaneity and disinhibition in conversations about existing elements, ideas, and/or products.

Powerful market research efforts can now look at how people interface in the real world with the ideas and products being examined by experimenting with behavioral indicators and simulating real world experiences or environments for respondents. It’s equally critical that the open communication generated by creative research methods be captured with audio-visual technology that allows clients to walk away with a virtual birds-eye view of even the subtlest respondent reaction or gesture… documenting every wink of the consumer’s eye.

Research facilities, in their never-ending quest to meet the needs of their customers, will need to evolve into something quite different from the traditional qualitative interview suites of the past. This transformation will be necessary to ensure that researchers competently and efficiently utilize the novel, increasingly sophisticated qualitative research tools and techniques that are continually emerging.

The key question for research facilities is the following: within the confines of their existing facilities, what types of structural and process-oriented modifications will literally make life easier for researchers employing these sophisticated techniques, and ultimately result in new business. For example, with projective techniques, the researcher hands out a variety of materials ranging from objects to photographs then requests that respondents make a choice (often with emotion as the overriding determinant factor).

The researcher notes the respondent choices before querying each of these on their specific choice process. The materials are collected, and the process begins again with different materials. Is there a way in which the facility by design and by process can be better suited to facilitate the overall process and increase the amount of information flowing to the researcher in the time allotted?

At LexPark Studio we have been grappling with the issue of market research innovation for the past several years. We are focused on continually anticipating and meeting the evolving needs of our research customer base with innovative solutions that promote efficiency and accuracy. The vision behind this blog is that this issue, and those that spin off from it, should be addressed in a step-wise fashion, beginning with general problem identification, and progressing through a series of steps leading to the ultimate design of the Uber-facility. So, first some general problem-id questions for the audience:

Have you had a research project that would have been better served by some modification in the research environment or the processes associated with that environment?

Do you currently choose a facility based on its ability to customize the research environment in a way that optimizes your research process and research outcomes?

Thinking out of the box: Would you modify your current research processes with suitable flexibility in the research environment, and if so, how?

To reiterate, if at all possible, we would like to focus at least initially with your comments on the area of general problem definition, and gap analysis - that is, the determination of unmet and anticipated needs. Let’s try to avoid at this stage the practice of jumping to solutions.

In future issues, the focus will be on specific problem areas (like projective techniques) and related unmet research needs.

Eventually, with enough “out of the box” thinking, we will be able to address the design, composition and processes associated with the Uber-facility and thereby address the majority of these most important unmet and anticipated needs.

Key Skills in Qualitative Market Research

By Joanna Chrzanowska

Genesis Consulting
http://www.genesis.users.gxn.net/Downloads.htm
Contact: tel. +44 (0)1403-785-057
email: joanna@genesisresearch.co.uk

Nuevas Tecnologías, Viejas Etnografías. Objeto y método de la antropología del ciberespacio

Por: Joan Mayans i Planells*

INTRODUCCIÓN / RESUMEN

El presente texto pretende ser una presentación de un área de trabajo en antropología al que podríamos denominar 'ciberantropología' o 'antropología del ciberespacio' de aún escasa trayectoria en lengua castellana, a pesar de su indudable interés socio-antropológico. En él, se abordan diversas problemáticas teóricas y metodológicas al respecto de la 'ciberantropología'. Concretamente, y después de unas líneas introductorias, discutimos aspectos referentes al 'Objeto' y la definición de la 'antropología del ciberespacio'. En un segundo bloque, se presentan algunas consideraciones referentes al método y las técnicas a utilizar en la práctica de la 'etnografía del ciberespacio'.

Definir la Antropología como la disciplina (quizá incluso ciencia) que se ocupa del Otro podría ser una de aquellas pocas afirmaciones de consenso hallables en el interior del gremio. En esa carrera en pos del Otro, le hemos imaginado, construido, destruido e incluso deconstruido de mil modos distintos, en una relación un tanto esquizofrénica.

Al Otro Distante lo exotizaron los exploradores y lo blanquearon los misioneros. Lo inventó el funcionalismo, lo esencializó el culturalismo y lo lloró Lévi-Strauss. Los post-modernos celebraron ese llanto y los anti-post-modernos denostaron la celebración del llanto, enredándose en una madeja de cada vez mayor ensimismamiento.

La globalización, el FMI y demás instituciones y multinacionales acólitas han tamizado al Otro para su conversión a la sociedad del consumo. Las ONGs y similares le han convertido en el Prójimo (reeditando la vieja tradición catequizante de la antropología) y, de paso, lo han barnizado de un nuevo exotismo kitsch, al imprimir su rostro en millones de camisetas, llaveros y otras chucherías. La Antropología jamás ha sabido muy bien qué hacer con el Otro, aparte de ocuparse de Él.

La Escuela de Chicago tuvo el mérito de descubrir al Otro deambulando por sus calles y agolpándose tras los escaparates del centro comercial de la esquina. Abrió la veda del Otro Próximo; Goffman y los etnometodólogos llevaron la cacería a sus límites lógicos, al enfocar al Otro que reside en cada uno de Nosotros (2).

Hay quien piensa que la Escuela de Chicago tan sólo se aprestó a observar la realidad social que le circundaba. Y que lo hizo porque lo que tenía ante sus ojos era, hasta cierto punto, sorprendente y novedoso: el cóctel de 'culturas' que la Revolución Industrial había llevado la 'ciudad ventosa'. Así, fueron las palpitantes transformaciones sociales (más que ningún tipo de 'avance' epistemológico) que tenían lugar a las puertas mismas de la Universidad de Chicago las que provocaron el cambio de paradigma socio-antropológico que supuso el descubrimiento del Otro Próximo.

La antropología no debería avergonzarse de ser una disciplina parásita de la realidad y las transformaciones sociales. En los últimos años estamos asistiendo a una nueva revolución tecnológica masiva. Internet y las comunicaciones mediadas por ordenador (CMO) han alterado, en menos de un decenio, las costumbres comunicativas, expresivas, lúdicas, laborales, económicas, políticas y culturales de un gran segmento de la población (occidental).

Entrar en valoraciones sobre el alcance de esta revolución tecnológica o sobre la pertinencia misma de considerarlo una 'revolución' es tan complicado como polémico, además de estar cojo de la necesaria perspectiva histórica que toda valoración de este tipo requiere. Las diatribas al respecto son abundantes y encarnizadas. Apologetas (3) y denostadores (4) del impacto social que suponen/supondrán las CMO se atacan y desprestigian sin cesar, arrojándose mutuamente promesas milenaristas y temores milenarios.

También hay, aunque cada vez menos, quienes piensan que todo esto no es más que un delirio pasajero de poca monta. Aún recordamos, si se nos permite el exabrupto, las palabras de David Harvey, calificando Internet simplemente como 'un teléfono muy sofisticado'. No obstante, no es en el campo de las valoraciones donde la antropología tiene algo que decir. La etnografía se ocupó profusamente del Otro Distante antes de que una revolución tecnológica y la urbanidad contemporánea le empujaran a ocuparse también del Otro Próximo.

La 'revolución' digital, Internet y las CMO nos traen un regalo -quizá envenenado- en la forma del Tele-Otro o del Ciber-Otro. De nuevo, una revolución tecnológica -que tiene también mucho de urbano- produce el suficiente movimiento socio-cultural como para que podamos parasitarlo/etnografiarlo sin ningún sonrojo. Escribió Norbert Wiener, el padre fundador de la cibernética, que "el pensamiento de cada época se refleja en su técnica" (1998: 64). Por ello, no tiene nada de extraño que el pensamiento antropológico actual se dedique seriamente a estudiar precisamente esos reflejos que la (ciber)técnica y la (ciber)sociedad contemporáneas proyectan la una sobre la otra.

Para continuar leyendo: http://www.cibersociedad.net/archivo/articulo.php?art=23

* Mayans i Planells, Joan, 2002, "Nuevas Tecnologías, Viejas Etnografías. Objeto y método de la antropología del ciberespacio". Fuente Original: Revista Quaderns de l´ICA, 17-18, pp. 79-97. Disponible en el ARCHIVO del Observatorio para la CiberSociedad en http://www.cibersociedad.net/archivo/articulo.php?art=23

Making Social Connections and Selling Cookies

By STUART ELLIOTT (New York Times)

For decades, Nabisco has sold cookies called Social Tea and crackers called Sociables. Now a competitor, Pepperidge Farm, is going all social, too, by entering the increasingly popular field known as social media with a Web site devoted to social networking.

Pepperidge Farm, owned by the Campbell Soup Company, is introducing a campaign with the theme “Connecting through cookies.” The centerpiece of the campaign is the Web site, artofthecookie.com, which is meant to help women — the target audience for Pepperidge Farm — improve their social lives.

“Our friendships with our girlfriends make our lives so much richer,” proclaims a section of the home page of the Web site. “Visit our new section about keeping those connections strong.”

Sally Horchow, the co-author with Roger Horchow of “The Art of Friendship: 70 Simple Rules for Making Meaningful Connections” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006), has been hired to serve as the spokeswoman for the campaign.

The Web site includes video clips from a cross-country trip that Ms. Horchow took in the summer, during which she spoke with women from Las Vegas to Nantucket, Mass., about making and maintaining friendships.

The campaign, with a budget of $2 million to $3 million, includes a public relations initiative, a survey of American women on the topic of friendship and print advertising.

The campaign is indicative of the efforts being made by mainstream marketers to take advantage of the growing ardor among consumers for online social networking.

Ad spending on Web sites like Bebo, Buzznet, Facebook and MySpace — by companies like Blockbuster, Circuit City, Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Sony — is expected to total $1.2 billion this year, according to eMarketer, a research company, and climb to $1.9 billion in 2008.
Marketers are also building their own Web sites that encourage socializing among consumers, with brand presences that range from understated to deafening.

In addition to Pepperidge Farm, the marketers going into the social media business include Jockey, with a humorous site for young men (jockeyunderwars.com) devoted to a video contest, and Dove, with an earnest site for women (campaignforrealbeauty.com) devoted to subjects like body image and self-esteem.

“We started with this notion of wanting to move our communication with our consumers from telling them about us to having a dialogue with them,” said Michael Simon, vice president and general manager at the Pepperidge Farm snacks division in Norwalk, Conn.

To make possible that shift “to two-way marketing from one-way marketing,” Mr. Simon said, the company conducted ethnographic research by “going into our consumers’ homes, sitting down with them, talking to them about how they use our products.”

During those conversations, “this notion of connection came up again and again,” he added, and how “hectic lifestyles, life in general, has gotten in the way” of women forging and strengthening ties with friends — over, say, a pot of tea and a plate of cookies.

If Pepperidge Farm can present itself to those consumers as the brand that “can help enable connections and reconnect with friends,” Mr. Simon said, “that will be seen in a positive light.”
There are of course drawbacks to becoming involved in the lives of consumers outside the realm of trying to influence their purchasing behavior.

For instance, what if Pepperidge Farm helps one friend get in touch with another to remind her she has not paid back a debt?

“Maybe then she isn’t a friend,” Mr. Simon said, laughing.

Some consumers might object to the commercial aspects of the site; for example, the Pepperidge Farm brand logo is prominent on the home page.

“Yes, they’re selling cookies,” Ms. Horchow said in a telephone interview. “But they’re also interested in getting into the nitty-gritty of this and helping bring people together.”

To curry favor with consumers, “brands are realizing they have to do a lot more than making something that tastes good,” she added. “Connecting on a personal level with people makes your life better.”

Ms. Horchow, who praised Pepperidge Farm “for asking me to spread my gospel” about the benefits of social connections, will work with the company for a year, she said, adding that “it may continue” beyond that.

Ms. Horchow plays a significant role in the public relations elements of the campaign, which are being produced by DeVries Public Relations in New York.

“The Web offers us so much opportunity for blowing ideas out,” said James Allman, chief executive at DeVries. “We’re not confined to thinking about a 30-second spot.”

Many campaigns centered on social networking use little traditional advertising or none at all, said Mr. Allman, who previously worked for advertising agencies in New York like Ammirati Puris Lintas.

For example, a campaign that DeVries developed for the Pantene hair-care line sold by Procter & Gamble, which encourages women to cut their hair and donate it to cancer patients, “was supported by minimal advertising,” Mr. Allman said, “and we are almost three times over our projected traffic” for the Web site (beautifullengths.com).

Asked if products ought to be striving to play roles in the lives of their consumers, Mr. Allman replied: “Is it weird? It’s a new way to think about brands.”

The most traditional aspect of the “Connecting through cookies” campaign is the print ads, which are created by Y&R in New York, part of the Young & Rubicam Brands division of the WPP Group.

The ads are running in the November issues of three Hearst magazines: Country Living, Good Housekeeping and Redbook. They carry this headline: “Friendship. Is yours an art form or a lost art?”

As the cookie campaign gets under way, Pepperidge Farm is already delving into additional aspects of the lives of its consumers in hopes of forging closer emotional ties with them.

A campaign by Y&R for the Goldfish line of snack crackers, which is aimed at parents, features a new Web site (fishfulthinking.com) with information about methods, as one ad describes it, “to inspire positive thinking in children.”

The goal, said Mr. Simon at Pepperidge Farm, “is understanding your consumer, understanding what’s important to them and how to connect to them in a relevant way.”

Perhaps the next cracker or cookie brought out by Pepperidge Farm ought to be called Altruistic. And instead of fish shapes, each snack can be made to look like Balto the rescue dog.

Will Web 2.0 Transform Market Research?

Yes — But High Cost Will Mean That Firms With Big Budgets Lead

by Brad Bortner with Ellen Daley, Heidi Lo, Madiha Ashour

Market research online communities (MROCs) will shock the qualitative market research world. They provide cheaper, faster, and newer types of insights that today's traditional qualitative research modes, such as focus groups, don't currently provide. Today, many still confuse MROCs — dedicated online communities for qualitative market research purposes — with other online communities used for social networking or online panels used for quantitative research. Despite the confusion, MROCs are fundamentally changing the cost structure of qualitative research from a variable-cost, per-project basis to a fixed-cost "all you can eat" basis — while supporting research approaches that range from using focus groups, harvesting unmoderated conversations, and conducting ethnographic research. Use the tools that we provide in this document to assess your firm's readiness, and use our quick-start guide to kick off your MROC.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Market Research Online Communities Will Turbocharge Qualitative Research
- When To Use — Or Not Use — An Online Community
- Clients' Success Stories Highlight The Power Of These Communities
- Who Are The Providers/Vendors, And How Do They Differ?

NOTES & RESOURCES
Forrester interviewed 31 vendor and user companies, including BMC Software, Blockbuster, Cisco Systems, Communispace, Cox Enterprises, Critical Mass, David's Bridal, Del Monte, DoubleClick, Fidelity, Global Services, Hilton Hotels, IBM, IHG, JCPenney, Kellogg, KL Communications, Lithium Technologies, LiveWorld, MarketTools, McAffee, Networked Insights, Passenger, Peanut Labs, PluggedIN, Prospero Technologies (prior to acquisition by Mzinga), Southern Company, Sylvan Learning, Time, Upromise, the United States Postal Service (USPS), and VisionCritical.

Original Source: http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,44159,00.html

Juan Valdez vs. Starbucks

Para ver el video haz click aquí: http://adage.com/brightcove/lineup.php?lineup=1182767334

En este video "flash" de Advetising Age y Martin Lindstrom podrán ver cómo una de las marcas más valoradas de Colombia ha logrado crear una fuerte barrera de entrada a Starbucks en ese país.

¿Cómo le irá a Juan Valdez en el resto de LatAm y el mundo? ¿Qué estrategia o diseño de investigación usarían para comprender los diferentes mercados en los que Juan Valdéz podría ingresar?

Quedan abiertas las preguntas, sobre todo para l@s colombian@s que visitan este blog.

Y para ponerlo más interesante, los invito a pasear por la comunidad online de consumidores de Starbucks llamada "My Starbucks Idea" http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/home/home.jsp .

Video Presentation: Marketing Metaphoria

YouTube video on Marketing Metaphoria

Endorsements on Marketing Metaphoria

http://www.marketingmetaphoria.com/index.html

Developing Cyberethnographic Research: Methods for Understanding Digitally Mediated Identities

By Natalia Rybas & Radhika Gajjala

Introduction

Doing research in the "third age of Internet studies" (WELLMAN, 2004) and locating our work in the "critical cyberculture studies" (SILVER, 2000), we are concerned with social and cultural implications of producing, consuming, and using technology in various contexts. In this essay, we consider a research practice based on epistemologies of doing in order explore the production of selves at online/offline intersections. This cyberethnographic engagement plays into the critical research agenda of examining the contextual manifestation of oppression. In particular, we place race at the center of our exploration of social network systems, which experience increasing popularity among young people. In this paper, we discuss details of cyberethnography through the lens of epistemologies of doing and through a review of existing scholarship about race in cyberspace. Further, we theorize how the race gets produced and authorized in the minute instances of everyday online/offline praxis. Our work draws from undergraduate and graduate courses, where students are involved in service-learning projects and technology-facilitated activities. Thus, the major objective is to race the interface—to examine and interrogate the construction of (racial) identity in cyberspace.

The context of social networks

Social network systems, or sites, are essentially web based software which connect people and help them stay in touch with friends. Those who open accounts in social network systems establish and maintain friendships, hook up with dates, meet new friends, find jobs, and exchange recommendations and news. The systems share a few key characteristics: profiles, friends, and comments (BOYD, 2007). Individuals create profiles that represent their selves with photos and a plethora of information about themselves (for example, birthday, contact information, education, job, hobbies, favorite movies, books, music, and quotes). Also, the profiles in social systems depict one's network—a group of friends and acquaintances. Another common feature of the social networks systems is the interactive tools to build and maintain relationships within particular contexts and framings. Some of these features include message tools, notes, and comments. Users link their profiles and become connected through messaging systems, bulletin boards, blogging, and other tools.

Students, professors, journalists, political candidates, religious leaders, video fans, and musicians create profiles representing users through images and references to favorite activities and media content. Online friendship is pervasive and involves millions of members, who are collectively called "MySpace generation" (HEMPEL, 2005) because the most populated social network is MySpace. According to various sources, myspace.com claims up to 100 million unique registered users worldwide and about 50 million of users in the US in August 2006. The population of another social system called FaceBook reached 18 million users in February 2007 (ABRAM, 2007). A virtual environment of SecondLife takes the idea of social networking to a cartoon-like reality where each participant has an avatar, which moves across the land and interacts with other characters as well as objects and places. SecondLife resembles a fantasy game, yet people collaboratively build the virtual world and live through vivid experiences of moving through and manipulating with physical space.

Together with the growing popularity of social network websites like FaceBook and MySpace among college and highs-school students, the concern about these sites is rising among parents, school administrations, police, and law makers because of the information openness, which may put the young users at risk. MySpace has become a notorious object of television and newspaper coverage focusing on possibilities of abuse and crime due to excessive personal revelations. Various agents responsible for social safety address the assumed dangers of social networks. Two bills have been recently introduced by the US House of Representatives to block access to any commercial social site that allows users to create a profile and communicate with strangers at federally funded schools and libraries. On university campuses, administrators warn students that the information posted on their profiles may damage the reputation of young people when they apply for jobs or to seek admission to college. Some schools start campaigns or initiate advising boards to recommend parents and students on how to post on social networking sites. Experts on privacy suggest that students do not reveal anything their employer or parents do not want to see.

The attempts to control and regulate online activities—from prohibiting and punishing to educating and training—reflect and play into cyberpanics or cyberphobias, according to Barry SANDYWELL (2006). He argues that cyberspace has been added to the inventory of monsters threatening life in the 21st century, along with various diseases, cloning, and weapons of mass destruction. Stanley COHEN (2003) who started the studies on moral panics emphasizes their focus on a threat to societal values and interests. The rapid technological development leads to deregulating market economy, expanding global capitalism, blurring borders, transforming everyday life, and reconfiguring social relations. The feeling of personal anxiety and uncertainty accompanies the dislocation from the normalized existence in communication limited to face-to-face interaction (SANDYWELL, 2006). COHEN suggests that moral panics originate from mass media or particular interest groups, and Stuart HALL et al. (1978) argue that it is the elite who engineer panics through political and judicial activity. One of the common themes in moral panics is the influences and behaviors of young people. With the case of social networks, the users give the food for thought and worries for adults and attract researchers studying techno- and cyber-cultural practices.

Cyberethnography

Cyberculture is a prolific area of research, and ethnography occupies a central position in studying cybercultures (BELL, 2001). In brief, ethnography is "a written representation of culture" (MAANEN, 1988). It strives to create descriptions of individual or collective subjectivities for the purpose of understanding different cultures. Typically ethnography involves observation of a group of people in their natural environment and description of one or more aspects of group life. Such descriptions are called to develop insights into group life and to understand and appreciate various forms and facets of culture. Ethnography studies the familiar making it strange or studies the strange making it familiar. The use of technology by the younger generation—high school and college age students—may seem taken for granted in the context where computers are widely available, yet focusing the scholarly gaze on this simultaneously mundane and spectacular activity allows challenging and questioning obvious characteristics of culturally and socially constructed technologies.

In conventional ethnography (which does not account for computer-mediated communication), a researcher immerses herself in the community she wishes to study. She becomes familiar with the people and participates in routine activities in order to gain insight into the experiences of her subjects. During the interaction, she attempts to grasp the significance of the language and the actions occurring in the studied community (MAANEN, 1988). The existing examples of cyberethnography suggest the necessity of involvement in multifaceted social settings where the Internet (or other technology) is a part and parcel of everyday life. Daniel MILLER and Don SLATER (2000, pp.21-22) argue that "ethnography means a long term involvement amongst people, through a variety of methods, such that any one aspect of their life can be properly contextualized in others." Their fieldwork in Trinidad includes not only textual analysis of webpages but also interviews with government officials, business owners, Internet providers, and ordinary users. They hang out in the Internet cafes, chat with people in addition to seeking for other formal and non-formal encounters with Trinidadians.

Even though participant observation follows the canons of ethnography, it retains the qualities of realistic study. This is because the authors maintain conceptual separation of online and offline contexts. The Internet takes its origin in the culture of science, yet this frame has shifted towards market-driven social space where the Internet is disguised as a medium of communication and a medium of choice delivering personalized service. This positivist conception easily yields to research which seeks for predictive decisions (JONES, 1999). In actuality, being online and being offline are intersecting and interweaving experiences. The question is: How the research practices can transcend the experience of computer-medicated interaction without creating boundaries and ruptures? Discussing Internet research in cultural studies, Jonathan STERNE (1999) suggests changing the primary concern with the interpretation of texts to the production of context for a text, event, or practice under investigation. In this case, the research considers not what a given event means to its participants but how the meanings are possible and what the conditions making particular practices are (JONES, 1999, p.262).

In response to this objective, we articulate the interactive methodology based on epistemologies of doing. This methodology suggests that subjects/objects produce selves—through typing, writing, image manipulation, creation of avatars, digital video and audio—and engage in practices of everyday life at these interfaces. Living at the intersections of online and offline underscores the significance and particularity of the context and pays specific attention to the social status of knower. Exploring the production of identity in MOOs (multi-user-domain object-oriented)—a multi-user, text-based synchronous and interactive virtual community/program, Jenny SUNDEN (2003) notes that a distance—both spatial/physical and between the mind/body—is created between the typist/programmer and subject typed into existence in encounters with digital interfaces such as computers. She argues:

"This distance is on one level introduced in text-based online worlds through the act of typing, and further reinforced by the mediating computer technology itself. By actively having to type oneself into being, a certain gap in this construction is at the same time created. The mediation between different realms, the very creation of texts by the means of computers, makes the interspace that always exists between myself and the understanding of this self particularly clear. Following the idea of a subject that can never have a direct and unmediated access to herself, that the I writing and the I written about can never be seen as one, cyber subjects are always at least double" (p.4).

The action of producing oneself in such an environment is enacted through typing; however, the particular participant's agency is produced both through the act of typing and the programming that results through her/his embodied negotiations of socio-cultural literacies, memories, histories, patterns and negotiations.

We argue that the ethnographic praxis in technology-mediated environments includes both production and consumption of technological artifacts. This position implies that behavior and activities do not stem from the characteristics of this artifact but from the cultural and social conditions/contexts in which this artifact has been created and used. In these cases, a researcher becomes a user and enters the environment she studies in order to live, to work, and to do things in and with these spaces. This philosophy emphasizes doing technology and building technospatial environment. Living within technology allows not only learning the code but typing oneself into existence while collaborating and interacting with others. In our research and teaching, we thus focus on building encounters in online settings, studying the discourses that emerge at the intersection of online/offline, and engaging the offline context through which the online worlds are entered. Producing and consuming digital realities thus help establish contingency of expectations about technological capacities and human qualities.

Such living/lived cyberethnography relates to auto and critical ethnographic engagements. First, the cyberethnographer becomes a part of the setting, living and providing the framework for the interpretation of experiences. She is included in the epistemological space of the practice under investigation. This implies becoming a part of the online community, while building and maintaining one's own networks. Therefore, this involvement invites a reflexive dimension of ethnography. Bud GOODALL (1991) explains that reflexivity corresponds to scholarly and personal reflection on the lived experience to reveal the connection between the writer and the subjects. Ethnographic reflexivity implies theorizing and analyzing how subjectivities of the researcher and the subjects get mutually constituted in the interaction. The participation in the environment under study leads to autoethnographic writing, which places emphasis on research process, culture, and self as well as exposing and connecting social and cultural aspects of personal experience. The first-person autoethnographic narratives breach the separation of researcher and subjects and establish intimacy with the reader as a co-participant of the dialogue. Stories often focus on a single case thus breaking with the concern for generalization across the cases and striving for generalizations within a case. Such texts emphasize the procedural nature of inquiry, and individualized, fragmented, chaotic, and disorganized qualities of reality (ELLIS & BOCHNER, 2000). Stephen BANKS and Anna BANKS (2000) argue that autoethnography has a pedagogical value as it teaches lay and academic audiences about themselves, illustrates a new forms of scholarly writing, and explicates the mode of critical attitude and self-disclosure. Critical here refers to the process of questioning commonsense assumptions while scrutinizing otherwise hidden agendas, power centers, and assumptions that inhibit, repress, and constrain (THOMAS, 1993). Such ethnographies invoke a call for action and use knowledge for social change. The objective is not only hermeneutic—understanding of cultural symbols of one group in terms of another thus supporting the status quo—but also emancipatory—challenging culture and pointing at implications of descriptions and constrains of discourse.

Contemporary culture is technological because science and technology mark the pervasive and the predominant role in shaping modern societies (BIJKER, 2006). The existence-in-culture happens in a variety of practices that constitute everyday life. The notion of practices connects material actions, principles guiding the actions, discourses, as well as moments and places of acting and meaning making. For example, Michel FOUCAULT (1996, p.276) defines practices as "places where what is said and what is done, rules imposed and reasons given, the planned and the taken for granted meet and interconnect." Pierre BORDIEU (1977, p.72) uses the term habitus to describe "systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations." However, ordinary members of society are not "cultural dopes," who passively carry and obey rules, but are creative appropriators of technology," who actively make decisions (SANDYWELL, 2006, p.56). To study practices means to examine how "everyday life invents itself by poaching" (CERTEAU, 1984, p.xi) as "users make (bricolent) innumerable and infinitesimal transformations of and within the dominant cultural economy in order to adapt to it their own interests and their own rules" (p.xiv).

Reflecting the complex character of technological culture, the cyberethnographic research practice is multidimensional and multimodal. It takes into account multiple contextual factors through epistemology of doing. Sally MUNT (2001) writes that habitus as the practice of everyday life is written in or performed by the body. On the one hand, the body re-enacts its placement and configuration—class, gender, and sexuality, etc; on the other hand, these practices shape how we move through the world as gendered, sexed, and classed subjects. Online production of self expresses the bodily physicality through the acts of knowledge and ignorance, conversation habits, recognizable movements within familiar sites, and memory encoding. Such engagement in self-production constructs knowledge of self, others, and the interactions with others through building objects, or, literally, doing. Thus, we dialogically produce our selves as well as engage our colleagues and students in becoming interfaces to focus on the users' experiences manifested in specific constructions of accounts, oral histories, interviews, journal, or blog entries. [14]

The original source of this post is:

Volume 8, No. 3, Art. 35 – September 2007
Developing Cyberethnographic Research Methods for Understanding Digitally Mediated Identities
Natalia Rybas & Radhika Gajjala

Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8(3), Art. 35, http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/3-07/07-3-35-e.htm

Radiografía del mercado Hispano de Social Networks

Las Redes Sociales en Latinoamérica (Descargar PFD)

Por Juan Damia

El fenómeno de las redes sociales a nivel global está comenzando a sentirse en Latinoamérica. Recientemente techcrunch publicó un artículo sobre Sonico describiéndola como la red social más grande y desconocida de la región.Las redes sociales constituyen la base de la Web 2.0 – serían el equivalente de los portales en la Web tradicional - y consisten en sitios donde los usuarios pueden crear un perfil y contactar a otras personas. En ellas los usuarios son productores de contenidos que pueden compartir con el resto de los miembros de la red.Sin embargo, hasta ahora no se ha dimensionado claramente el impacto que las redes sociales están teniendo entre los usuarios de Internet en la región, ya que el debate tiene un carácter meramente impresionista, así que vamos a recurrir al panel de usuarios de comScore con el objetivo de aportar datos contundentes sobre este fenómeno.

La cantidad usuarios de Internet en Latinoamérica

Según las estimaciones de comScore – un servicio por subscripción paga que realiza auditoría de audiencias de Internet – la cantidad de usuarios de Internet en los 5 principales países de la región (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia y México) se aproximaban a 46,3 millones en enero de este año. Desde enero del año 2007 se produjo un crecimiento de 16% ya que en ese momento se calculaban 39,8 millones de usuarios en estos países.Si a esto sumamos los usuarios de Internet en Puerto Rico y entre los hispanos de Estados Unidos la cantidad de usuarios de Internet asciende hasta 66 millones, con el mismo porcentaje de crecimiento desde enero del 2007.

La audiencia de las principales redes sociales (bebo, facebook, friendster, hi5, mySpace, Orkut y Sónico) sumadas en conjunto era de aproximadamente 29,6 millones en los 5 países de Latinoamérica lo que les proporcionaba un alcance (reach) del 64%. Dicho más claramente el equivalente al 64% de los usuarios de Internet en Latinoamérica estaban utilizando alguna de estas 7 redes sociales en el mes de enero de 2008.

La audiencia de estas 7 redes sociales entre los hispanos de Estados Unidos y los puertorriqueños ascendía a 15,2 millones, lo que equivale a un alcance de 77%. Esto constituye un claro indicio respecto de que las redes sociales tienen más desarrollo e influencia en esos países, y que por tanto es esperable que continúen su crecimiento en Latinoamérica.

Sin embargo, mientras que el total de usuarios de Internet creció 16% en el último año en ambas regiones, las redes sociales crecieron un 48% entre los hispanos y puertorriqueños y un 103% en los países latinoamericanos analizados.

Para leer más visita el post original en: http://analytics20.org/es/analytics-20/radiografia-del-mercado-hispano-de-social-networks/#more-26

¿Qué es HOY la Cultura? Un video provocador - DemoCrultura Digital

¿Comentarios?

Freemium and market research

By Jaroslav Cir

The freemium business model works by offering basic services for free, while charging a premium for advanced or special features" (Wikipedia). By letting the basic service go for free we let people use, taste and experience the brand, turn them into fans and then trade them up to premium service. Skype, Second life or the latest albums of Prince and Radiohead are the most famous examples of freemium. I know quite a few people who traded up to premium in case of Radiohead latest album, buying the £40 pack, containing the CD, vinyl and artworks...

What is the £40 unexpected premium in market research? It is easier to define the basic service first. Data, charts, even glossy PowerPoint charts are the basic things. Data are becoming a commodity and market research should make data available now when there is still interest in it. Data should be free or available at a low cost.

The basic in market research industry still cost a lot though. Market research is still growing mainly through the sales of commodities - data, charts, cross-tabs, benchmarks and focus groups. Similar to tobacco companies, the traditional market research is cashing on ignorance of its consumers: some of the old research methods are best sellers in developing markets such as Eastern Europe where the confidence and expertise of clients is low.

Market research has re-branded itself in recent years and market researchers became insight managers - they promised to gather insight, transmit knowledge and educate their clients. If we had succeeded in this transformation there would be less market research and more educated
clients acting on gut feel. Isn't the true goal of market research/market insight to obliterate data gathering, to throw it away like a person with broken leg throws away crutches when the leg is heeled? Well, the crutches are not flying away as yet.

It is not for lack of intelligence in the market research industry. There is lots of great thinking and really interesting papers talking about the need to understand emotions and metaphors, about the unconsciousness, neuroscience or anthropology. I read these papers with interest until the almost inevitable anticlimax (it always comes at the end) when this great thinking is usually transformed into something very small, into implications and execution for market research. The results are (usually) re-dressed but still the old and mundane ways of data gathering, multiple-choice questions with pictures or photos or scales of different colors. These are pretty good ways for engaging consumers in filling the questionnaires but they don't seem to be worth the great efforts.

This approach (great thinking, mundane executions) often works for the research buyer. We, on the client side, can boost our image of "progressive researchers" by buying the latest research gadget that is just the old mechanistic test re-dressed to look cool... I don't think that there is a need to radically innovate ad tests, concept tests etc. - they are good enough (meaning not that good at all) for what they are designed for, that is, to help us in case our judgment is failing us and to be thrown away when we know more. It is the basic of market research and it should go free (OK, it should be cheaper, one should be able to do such test in a couple of days for a couple of hundred euros).

What is the premium then, the £40 goodie bag? The junior researcher sent by the senior researcher to the client to read from a shadow on the wall that 35% is more than 20%? Nope. The reports from four focus groups that always mysteriously fit to 50 slides? I don't think so.

I talked about this over a coffee with John Kearon a couple of months ago. "Meaning," said John, "meaning is the £40 goodie bag". Meaning, understanding of people, products, brands and the way people, products and brands interact is the premium. It sounds obvious because so much lip service has been paid to it but the money is still elsewhere - with the basics.

Things are changing, even in market research. Those of us who have seen one (or two) political systems crumbling down in our lifetime can't be fooled by talk about "growth and great opportunities," such talk is often masking fear, agony and the beginning of an end . Market research will change radically. The global market research agencies of the future - Google, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter - will take care of the data.

The network of creative experts will take care of the meaning.

Originally pusblished in http://www.perfectcrowd.com/

The global phenomenon of social networks is landing in Latin America.

The global phenomenon of social networks is landing in Latin America.

Posted originally in ANALYTICS 2.0 : http://www.analytics20.org/web-analytics/white-paper-ii-social-networks-in-latin-america/

Techcrunch recently published an article about Sonico describing it as the largest and most unknown social network in the region.

Social networks are the foundation of the Web 2.0 - would be the equivalent of the traditional Web portals - and consist of sites where users can create a profile and contact other people. These users produce content that can be shared with other members within the network.

However, so far it has not been dimensioned clearly the impact that social networks are taking among Internet users in the region, because the debate is been driven to a purely impressionistic one. With focused on providing conclusive data about this phenomenon we analyzed data from ComScore.

Internet Users in Latin America

According to ComScore - a paid subscription service that audits the Internet audiences - the number of Internet users in the 5 major countries of the region (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico) approached 46.3 million in January (2008). The internet users from the above mentioned period is 16% higher than the 39.8 million internet users in January 2007.

If we consider also the Puerto Rican and US Hispanics Internet Users the number jumps to 66 millions, with the same growth rate since January 2007.The audience from the main social networks (bebo, facebook, friendster, hi5, mySpace, Orkut and Sonico) is approximately 29.6 million in 5 Latin American, reaching the 64% of the total internet users population, which means that 6 of each 10 internet users in the above mentioned Latin American Countries are using one of the mentioned Social Networks.

The Puerto Rican and US Hispanic audience from the above mentioned social networks is about 15.2 million, or 77% of the Internet Audiences from the mentioned Markets. Since the penetrations of the Puerto Rican and US Hispanic markets are higher we would infer that the penetration from the Latin American markets will tend to reach those levels.

However, while total Internet users Market grew 16% during the last year (in both regions), social networks grew 48% among Hispanics and Puerto Ricans and 103% in the Latin American analyzed countries.

The biggest Latin American Social Network

If we take into account all the audiences (Latin America, Hispanics and Puerto Ricans) the Social Network with the largest number of users at the beginning of this year was Orkut with 13 million of users, followed by mySpace with 12 million and Sonico with nearly 8 million.

However, there is a very peculiar phenomenon regarding social networks in this region: they have a regionalized presence. For example, Orkut is huge in Brazil but has no significant presence in the rest of the countries from this region. The same happens with mySpace which is the largest social network among Hispanics and Puerto Ricans, but no so in the rest of the Latin American countries (nevertheless its audience is pretty high in other Latin American Countries).

The Social Network with the highest growth during last year, considering only the five Analyzed Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico), was Facebook with 4152% (From 52 thousand users in January 2007 to 2.2 million in January this year) however is in the fifth place if we consider the number of users in the region.

Since Facebook launched its Spanish version become the Social Network of the moment, with an unbelievable growth, and even when its traffic is comparatively low it tends to be in the first or second place.

Among consolidated social networks hi5.com had the highest increase with 72% (from 2.2 million to 4.2 million) over the same period of time.

Orkut, which is the most visited Social Network in Latin America mainly because of the Brazilian traffic, grew only 27% from 10.1 to 12.9 million users.Regarding Sonico, it has a pretty particular situation since it was launched on the second semester of 2007 and reached the second place behind Orkut with 7.3 million users at the beginning of this year.

On the other hand, the social network with the highest growth in the US Hispanics and Puerto Rican markets last year was Facebook with a 251% (from 872 thousand users more than 3 million in early 2008), followed by hi5.com and Orkut increase their traffic in 80%, hi5.com with more than 1.3 million users, and Orkut with, in second place with just a hundred thousand users. My space, the undisputed queen in this market, grew by only 26% during this period.

Profiles

It is clear that the audiences had been distributed among the social networks using a socio-cultural and linguistic criterion. While Orkut is the Brazilian Social Network, mySpace is the one for US Hispanics and Sonico is the social network among Spanish speakers Latin Americans.

Mexicans are fairly distributed among hi5.com, Sonico, mySpace and facebook. We can also infer that the Mexicans living in USA may also use those Social Networks to be in touch with their friends and family.

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¿La libertad de opciones nos lleva a una mayor satisfacción como consumidores-ciudadanos?

Barry Schwartz, en TED, da un repaso de su libro sobre las paradojas de un mundo donde las opciones crean una complejidad adicional a la toma de decisión en sí, y cómo el placer y la motivación inherentes al acto de compra se van deslavando de sentido y crean más bien una sensación in crescendo de insatisfacción con las decisiones en tanto consumidor.

Para quienes estén interesados, aquí va el video al respecto. Y en parte es mi propio fundamento por querer vivir una vida frugal.

About this TED Talk

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central belief of western societies: that freedom of choice leads to personal happiness. In Schwartz's estimation, all that choice is making us miserable. We set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them, and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. His relatable examples, from consumer products (jeans, TVs, salad dressings) to lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, whom and when to marry), underscore this central point: Too many choices undermine happiness.

Por David Rojas E.

CRÍTICA DE LA MOTIVACIÓN ADQUISITIVA (II) ¿TENEMOS ALTERNATIVA?

Por Victor Allan

La motivación adquisitiva, en cuanto impulso por alcanzar la ciudadanía económica, afecta sobre todo a aquel sector mayoritario de la sociedad que denominamos “clase media”. De allí su importancia como motor económico, pues prolonga la sensación de carencia -de que “algo nos falta”- muy por encima de la línea de pobreza, instigando al consumo de múltiples bienes y no sólo de aquellos que otorgan algún poder efectivo.

La dinámica de la innovación y de la carrera tecnológica estimula y refuerza considerablemente la motivación adquisitiva, pues desplaza la ciudadanía económica en el horizonte. El ritmo de estos cambios es, de hecho, muy superior a la capacidad de asimilación cultural de la sociedad, y es por eso que se presentan dilemas éticos. Como sociedad, obtenemos el poder antes de saber para qué lo queremos. Por ejemplo, nos volvemos capaces de manipular el código genético antes de decidir si lo vamos a usar sólo para prevenir y curar enfermedades, o si también vamos a abrir la posibilidad de intervención al mercado, donde algunas personas querrán asegurarse de que sus hijos tengan determinadas características, como color de pelo o habilidades matemáticas.

¿Es razonable permitir que los individuos de una sociedad, cuyos grados de conciencia y responsabilidad varían sin que podamos garantizar un mínimo moral, tomen decisiones que a la larga influirán en el patrimonio genético de la especie? ¿No se corre el riesgo de empobrecer este patrimonio, sujetándolo a una hegemonía arbitraria de ideales?

La dinámica adquisitiva y la carrera por la innovación conducen a la sociedad a desarrollarse en sentido cuantitativo, más que cualitativo, esto es, al crecimiento económico. Como consecuencia, se produce una intensa presión sobre el medio natural, que no puede ser sostenida indefinidamente. Por esta razón, no es utópico sino bastante realista preguntarse si la economía puede sostener una dinámica que no esté basada en la motivación adquisitiva, ni en la innovación acelerada.

No es realista, sin duda, pensar que la economía pueda encontrar esta dinámica alternativa en el ámbito de la planificación estatal, como pretendían los regímenes socialistas. También debemos descartar la ética y la moral como fuentes de motivación, en tanto que suponen la disciplina y la restricción voluntaria del interés individual en favor de un interés común. Ambas alternativas suponen una regresión histórica, antes que una nueva síntesis evolutiva.

Continuación de "Crítica de la Motivación Adquisitiva" (Primera Parte)