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Alert!Marketing research association January 2012 · Vol. 52 · no. 1

The New Gen PopGeneration Y Meets MR

Do Demographics Make Us Irrelevant?

What’s his demographic, really?

2 MRA’s Alert! Magazine – January 2012

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MRA’s Alert! Magazine – January 2012 3

Editor Amy Shields, PRC Editorial Board Nancy Cearley, PRC Sherri Dansby, PRC Amber Leila Esco, PRC Steven Gittelman Pat Graham

Twitter @MRA_National Phone 860.682.1000 Fax 888.512.1050

Look for us on Facebook and Linkedin.

Article ideas? Contact Amy Shields at

[email protected].

Advertise in Alert! Contact Lisa Lockwood for information at [email protected] or

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The views expressed in Alert! are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect

the opinions or positions of MRA.

Alert! is available online: alert.MarketingResearch.org

Upcoming Conferences June 4-6, 2012

MRA’s Annual ConferenceSan Diego

September 19-21, 2012Corporate Researchers Conference

Dallas

Contents January 2012

6Generation Y Meets Market ResearchBy Michael Stanat

18Do Demographics Make Us Irrelevant?By Marshall Toplansky

Features

24 Balancing Multiple Generations at WorkBy Jennifer FitzPatrick, MSW, LCSW-C

28 Making the Leap from Market Research to Insight Part One: The Four Places Insights Hide By Thom Pulliam

32 Tablets: Evolving from Personal to BusinessBy Elaine B. Coleman, Desirée Davis, Kari Cafouros, Randy Hellman & Aric Ackerman

Keeping Informed

14 Letter From the Editor

11 Welcome New Members

12 Member Spotlight

14 Chairman’s Perspective

16 Message from MRA’s CEO

38 Legislative Update

41 Chapter Update

42 Industry News & Announcements

Departments

“There no longer is a typical anything,” says Marshall Toplansky on Page 20, “there is no single segment that defines us in general terms as a society.” So where does our plugged-in cover kid fit in this new reality? Mastering demographics is key to marketing research’s future.

12Member Spotlight

Jay White

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alert.MarketingResearch.org


The diversity from which we draw inspiration is fascinating. Is the New Year a time for resolutions, reinforcement, or just another period of time on the calendar? Does it motivate, overwhelm or depress? For me, it’s a time to reflect on the past and focus on the future, to review accomplishments and strategize regarding how to move personal and professional life forward, and to concentrate on being involved

and engaged in every minute of life. Specifically, in terms of Alert! and looking to the year ahead, the human interest angle continues to surface as a compelling area of focus. (After all, we are a relatively small industry that is relationship-centric.) With this in mind, 2012’s Alert! will offer many stories about the lives of our members and the history of our profession, in addition to continuing to provide insights that help

move the close-knit world of marketing research forward.

The concept of the book, Baseball Lives: Men and Women of the Game Talk about Their Jobs, Their Lives, and the National Pastime by Mike Bryan, is to provide an original point of view by interviewing professional baseball personnel at all levels – from bus drivers and batting practice pitchers to coaches, janitors and players’ wives. This notion intrigued and inspired me because, although MR is not the size of some other industries, it is a complicated and diverse field that draws from: the experience of seasoned professionals, the enthusiasm of young professionals, and the dedication of every “player” - from the interviewer/recruiter to the supervisor, project/database/HR/IT manager, service provider, practitioner, consultant, educator, corporate researcher, executive, and beyond. This clearly provides an endless wealth of knowledge to learn from and about. Jennifer FitzPatrick’s article, Balancing Multiple Generations at Work, touches upon this area, as does our interview with Jay White, a veteran researcher with flare.

Being somewhat obsessed with the human interest focus, I recently emailed industry friends asking if they are aware of MRA members who have a unique story (to be interviewed for Alert!). In addition to some wonderful Spotlight

recommendations, one leader also presented ideas for future content that I am excited to “steal” and run with. In the near future, all members will receive a quick and simple link to a survey that asks if they are a second+ generation researcher and who their MR mentor is/was. The results will either be published as two separate articles or periodically over the course of the year, depending on response. How educational to hear the

lessons MRA members have learned from trusted advisors and how fun to reflect on the history of members who come from a long line of researchers!

This month’s theme, the new general population, resulted in dissimilar points of view, as revealed in Generation Y Meets Market Research by Michael Stanat, and Marshall Toplansky’s, Do Demographics Make Us Irrelevant? It is also exciting to hear from a new contributor, Thom Pulliam, who will be authoring a three part series relating to insights. This month, Thom focuses on the varying types of insights and what they mean, while he will specifically tackle deriving insights from qualitative research in the March issue, and the same for quantitative research in May.

While I am personally not inspired by New Year’s resolutions and cannot remember ever making one, I am motivated by goal setting throughout the year. As communicated in the article, The 5 Steps to Setting SMART Business Goals (from Darrell Zahorsky, former About.com Guide), I have found it useful to apply the following principles of S.M.A.R.T. for business goal setting:

Specific: Great goals are well-defined and focused.

Measurable: A goal without a measurable outcome is like a sports competition without a scoreboard or scorekeeper.

Attainable: Dream big and aim for the stars but keep one foot firmly based in reality. Check with your industry association to get a handle on realistic growth in your industry to set smart goals.

Relevant: Achievable business goals are based on the current conditions and realities of the business climate.

Time-Based: Business goals and objectives just don’t get done when there’s no time frame tied to the goal-setting process.

We wish all readers of Alert! personal and professional prosperity for 2012 and beyond.

Amy Shields, PRC is the Editor of Alert!. She can be reached at [email protected].

Letter From the Editor

2012: A Time to Move Forward

“ The diversity from which we draw inspiration is fascinating. Is the New Year a time for resolutions, reinforcement, or just another period of time on the calendar? Does it motivate, overwhelm or depress?”

About.com



MRA’s Annual Conference & Expo has grown into a unique event that promotes learning, community and is designed to ignite conversations that matter. Our 2012 event will provide even more value, including several new features:

· New! Seven additional education sessions in four new tracks covering business management, trends and technology, data integration and real world research.

· New! Two networking receptions open to all attendees at no additional charge, with one at the famed SeaWorld San Diego.

· New! CEO Symposium with an exclusive dinner and educational program.

· New! Speed Learning – Connect with peers who are speaking, interact with colleagues in the audience, and learn about a wildly diverse number of topics.

· New! Volume discount pricing when three or more register from the same organization.

· New! Expo Grand Opening reception for extra time to network.

Learn more about our New Annual Conference & Expo at www.ac12.MarketingResearch.org!

Three motivating days of high-level content

An energetic and welcoming environment

A genuine peer-to-peer event where life experience merges with learning

6 MRA’s Alert! Magazine – January 20126 MRA’s Alert! Magazine – January 2012


Generation Y Meets Market ResearchBy Michael Stanat

Last year, researchers witnessed dramatic changes on the world stage. They saw riots against longtime politicians televised from Arab streets, nationwide protests by Occupy Wall Street and riots in the streets of London about tuition hikes. Behind those headlines was a common thread: young people known as Generation Y playing a larger, more influential role in world economic, political and cultural transformations.

Photo credit: David Shankbone Occupy Wall Street – photos from the camp in Zuccotti Park and the march against police brutality, walking to One Police Plaza, headquarters of the NYPD.



For clients of research, the young people in this generation can heavily influence the success and strength of brands. In a matter of seconds, young people can share opinions globally about the brands they like and especially the ones they dislike. And, as societies become older in Europe, Japan and the United States, companies are increasingly eyeing how to market to lucrative segments with disposable income and employ Generation Y in their organizations.

Who is Generation Y?“Generation Y,” the group of young people born after 1980 and through the early 1990s, is generally differentiated from past generations by their individualism, consumerism and technology prowess. Many news articles write about a generation of entitled, praise-craving individuals whose ultimate pursuit is personal fulfillment. The reality is quite different.

Defined by seminal events such as the Recession, Post 9-11 outlook, and global economic and political transformation, many are struggling to understand just who this generation is.

Despite such a diverse generation across seven continents, interesting commonalities exist. Young people around the world are less united by a common goal than they are united in fear of lost prosperity and factors “holding them back.” In Emerging Markets, for example, youth are concerned about unemployment, inflation and competition for jobs to help them rise in social class. In the United States, Japan and Europe, young people are concerned about debt, unemployment and tuition. And in the Middle East, youth are fearful of repressive systems having an impact on their prosperity. Frustrations towards structures that are perceived to limit their success are commonly manifested in the form of protests largely online and in the streets.

Globally, Generation Y shows interesting similarities across borders. One recent survey by Kenexa conducted in 28 of the largest economies showed

that young people tended to be driven by status and affiliation, compared to Boomers who were motivated more by power and optimism. The study compared findings from decades past and found that the differences excluded lifecycle variables.

In a 2010 survey by Martin Lindstrom, author of “Buyology” and “Brandwashed,” and SIS International Research, young people were significantly more influenced by status, peer dynamics, customer experience and word of mouth.

This drive for affiliation and affirmation coincides with the generation’s high usage of social media. Young people spend time publicly accepting “friends,” “de-friending,” “liking” status updates and constant in-group networking. Mark

Zuckerberg, arguably Generation Y’s leading business icon, was illustrated in the movie “The Social Network” as driven by the desire to belong during his studies at Harvard. The success of Facebook is arguably so profound because it first capitalized on the deeply rooted underlying affiliation desires of college students to join the network.

Having endured the recession, tech-savvy young people have adopted ways to reconcile unfavorable economic pressures with their motivations.

Today’s Gen Y consumer considers the following factors together:• Competitive cost due to economic

realities• High quality or Strong Brand

• Engaging customer experience Popular brands like IKEA and

Apple capitalize on a marketing mix emphasizing affordable products, high quality and unparalleled customer experience. At the end of 2010, Apple announced that it nearly quadrupled its year-on-year revenue in China largely because of the iPhone and iPad. A key part of that success was from China’s young people and their exploding demand for foreign branded products which communicate status and are often perceived to be of higher quality.

Interestingly, some of the most successful Generation Y entrepreneurs cultivate these values in their companies. Facebook’s corporate culture exemplifies this emphasis on a competitively priced

product – in this case a free product – with a focus on quality and experience.

Because of new economic realities, Gen Y is on the hunt for high quality deals – same quality products at discounted rates. They do online price comparisons, online shopping and look for their next deal on popular sites like Groupon, Facebook Deals, Living Social and Yelp. They receive the same quality entertainment at appealing prices on sites like Hulu, Netflix and iTunes. The concept of

the “hunt” and the experience for some tends to be more important than the marginal savings. FourSquare.com has even integrated this concept of the hunt into its customer experience as users “check in” to places and “unlock” badges to be showcased on their profile pages. With these deals, they can influence opinion internet-wide on products through internet memes, witty comments, viral videos and reviews.

Because of their innovative spirit and digital technological skill set, Generation Y has drawn the attention of HR executives and marketing managers alike. The HR opportunity they see is not only in terms of attracting skilled employees, but also Gen Y’s potential to

“ ‘Generation Y,’ the group of young people born after 1980 and through the early 1990s, is generally differentiated from past generations by their individualism, consumerism and technology prowess. Many news articles write about a generation of entitled, praise-craving individuals whose ultimate pursuit is personal fulfillment. The reality is quite different.”

FourSquare.com


innovate new digital products. For many large companies, developing a robust recruiting program, succession planning, outreach programs, training program and conflict-resolution procedures are top HR initiatives. Companies like Standard Charter in Singapore have aimed to attract Generation Y by embracing digital habits, e.g. providing iPads to staff and setting aside dedicated office space as “hang out space.”

However, this generation is far from homogenous.

Gen Y’s online habits are becoming more diverse. A recent study by Gartner

challenged myths about young peoples’ social media obsession. Nearly one in four American Gen Y respondents considered themselves bored and “burnt out” by social media, while a slightly larger percentage mention higher usage than before.

As the digital revolution continues, new customer touch-points can mean more ways to reach out to new segments. Whereas previous generations once primarily engaged with brands at stores

and at customer service by telephone, new touch-points in mobile, kiosk, tablets and apps all make buying behavior much more diverse. That Generation Y will be a leading adopter of new technologies such as model raises the need to understand Generation Y.

Despite a global economy, Generation Y culturally differs from country to country. For example, Chinese web-enabled youth access the internet almost twice as much as their USA and European counterparts. Lady Gaga commands much less of a fan-following in China and Korea than do local music stars. Gender dynamics can heavily

impact purchasing decisions in some countries and have little impact in other countries. Subcultures can be lucrative target segments for companies, but can evolve rapidly.

Societal representation of Generation Y also differs dramatically. In North America, Europe, Japan and China, young adults are already beginning to support their parents as they age, raising new questions about the future of Generation Y in ageing societies. In contrast, younger

societies in Latin America and Middle East raise new questions for researchers on how societies with more young people impacts companies and societies.

Researching Generation YWhile young people congregate in large numbers on social networks, a comprehensive picture is often needed to account for slight differences in segments and for the self-censorship that can occur in certain mediums. In Generational Research, hybrid methodologies can help contextualize cultural, behavioral and attitudinal insight.

Part of my research among China’s young people concerned the purchasing habits of young people in a country known for price leadership of its goods. Online surveys and background research on the topic were less common then. A basket of methodologies were needed, such as many in-depth interviews, ethnography, homestays, focus groups, offline surveys, quantitative research, secondary sources and cultural research.

In the research, complex considerations impacted purchasing beyond price

China’s New Environment


China’s Young People

and quality concerns. Respondents in some cases displayed conspicuous consumption, spending beyond their comfort level. This was unexpected as income, inflation pressures and fears about unemployment ranked very high in young peoples’ fears for the future.

Ethnography and cultural research uncovered that young people of moderate means occasionally purchased expensive foreign branded goods as a means to communicate status in a society that emphasizes hierarchy and relationship networks. For some, this was both ironic and intriguing, as China is technically a communist country with Confucian values of thrift. The analysis provided more topics for further inquiry.

Co-creation, ethnography and cultural research together can help to provide context and understand intergenerational differences. “Coolhunting,” in which peer researchers conduct ethnography in respondents’ preferred venues like

skate parks and bars, can provide deep observational insight from peer researchers on-the-ground. As the need for affiliation is important for this generation, some researchers have employed word of mouth and buzz tracking to understand how interpersonal influence can impact purchasing. In addition, the study of Semiotics, Behavioral Psychology and Heuristics are

“ As the digital revolution continues, new customer touch-points can mean more ways to reach out to new segments. Whereas previous generations once primarily engaged with brands at stores and at customer service by telephone, new touch-points in mobile, kiosk, tablets and apps all make buying behavior much more diverse.”

also gaining more and more attention in intergenerational research.

SummaryGeneration Y is rising on the world stage impacting politics, economics, societal structures, the marketing landscape and marketing research. Understanding the nuances can mean the difference between success and failure for products and brands. Hybrid research programs and HR outreach can provide granular insight to make sense of and to engage a diverse generation worldwide.

Michael Stanat is a Global Youth Research Specialist,

and a speaker on Generation Y issues. A fellow member of Generation Y, he is the published author of “China’s Generation Y: Understanding the Future Leaders of the World’s Next Superpower.” Stanat is a Global Emerging Markets Executive at SIS International Research, and has previously worked at market research firms in China and the Middle East.


Welcome New MembersJonathan AshtonAflac, Inc.Midland, GA

Victoria BourbeauPhoenix, AZ

Dale CakeBloomsburg UniversityArdmore, PA

Carol ClericoJohnson & JohnsonSkillman, NJ

Zoni HansenMedtronic ENTJacksonville, FL

Michael HayesVeris ConsultingReston, VA

Paul KennedyTwo Thirds SkyBrisbane, Australia

Andrzej LudekAlmares Institute for Consulting and Market ResearchWarsaw, Poland

Jennifer MillerPlaza Research - DenverDenver, CO

Elissa MolloyAustralian Market & Social Research SocietyGlebe, Austalia

Tanya MulveySociety for Human Resource ManagementAlexandria, VA

Lauren OlmstedBoston UniversityBoston, MA

Jon PenningtonUniversity of MinnesotaMinneapolis, MN

Bonnie ReenstraBlue Sky Research Group, LLCTarpon Springs, FL

Ian SephtonCalifornia Lutheran UniversityEncino, CA

Valerie St. JamesJohnson & JohnsonMontreal, QC

For more information on joining MRA, visit www.marketingresearch.org/membership

ONLINESAMPLE. ONLINEPANELS. ONLINERESEARCH.

Since 1995, researchers have called on Esearch.com for their online panel needsEsearch.com, Inc. online fielding support for research www.esearch.com [email protected] 310.265.4608

[email protected]

www.marketingresearch.org/membership

www.marketingresearch.org/membership


Jay is the CEO and Co-Owner of Baltimore Research, a full-service marketing research firm and facility in Baltimore, Maryland. He has been a member of the MRA since November of 1998, despite the fact that I incorrectly indicated that his “start date” was 2005 in November’s issue (under his Corporate Researcher’s Conference quote on page 44 of that issue). During Jay’s 13 years as

a member, he has: served as President of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter; co-organized many chapter events; introduced speakers at national conferences; been a buddy, a ticket-taker and PRC scanner; and most recently, was appointed Chair of the Standards and Ethics Committee. This new post is a significant commitment and one that assures members will be seeing and hearing more

from Jay through updates and articles that he and the committee contribute to Alert! magazine in the coming year. Therefore, January seemed an appropriate time to spotlight this very special member of the Association.

While Jay has worked exclusively in marketing research since November of 1996, MR was a part of his marketing position long before then, albeit as more of a “generalist”. Most of his experience, about 90 percent in fact, lies in qualitative framework, although he understands, embraces and values quantitative research as well. It is always fun to learn the pre-MR history of marketing research professionals and I personally could not wait to hear what Jay’s background was before entering the world of research. As it turns out, the most interesting job he had was working as a Hospice Corpsman during the Vietnam War years when he was often placed in situations where he was the only medical personnel at hand and, therefore, was the “physician”. As you can imagine, this was a scary, fulfilling, challenging, gut wrenching and yes, interesting time for Jay. Then there was the memorable period of time when a 14 year old Jay worked in an old fashioned German bakery where he was taught to decorate wedding and birthday cakes, and where, when he turned 16 years old, he then had to deliver them.

When Jay purchased his facility, which had declined over the decades, he was completely and utterly frightened. With one full-time employee (himself) and three on-call aging part-time employees, who wouldn’t be scared? As things stand today, Baltimore Research’s staff fluxuates between 70 and 85 employees at any given time, and by the close of 2011, Jay and his partner, Ted Watson, will have provided employment to over 500 individuals. This is undoubtedly Jay’s proudest accomplishment. What does he consider the smartest business decision he’s ever made? Quite simply, and with certitude, it was the addition of Ted Watson as his business partner and co-owner, whom today Jay considers to be his brother. Jay cites that the significant contributions from his partner have directly led to the success and accomplishments at Baltimore Research

Member Spotlight

Jay White – Remaining Immature for all EternityBy Amy Shields, PRC

If you have ever met Jay White, PRC, you probably agree that he is one of the most gregarious, smart and colorful (no, not just his apparel but mostly his spirit) people you have had the pleasure of meeting.


(and in Jay’s life as a whole). It seemed apropos, bearing in mind

the outgoing nature of his personality in general, to ask what Jay considers the most fun aspect of his marketing research function. It is clear that he has the most fun when expanding (adding additional square footage) to his offices, and when attending industry conferences, of which he considers the MRA “gigs” to be the best, believing they provide an opportunity to learn from (and “size up”) his peers, whom often turn out to be competitors. He is quite serious when he says that MRA conferences assist with “getting smarter as I go along”.

As a vested marketing research professional myself, I love to hear stories about the most peculiar requests others in the industry have received. Like most researchers will communicate, Jay has had many out of the ordinary requests from clients over the years, but was able to narrow the “strangest” down to these two: the recruitment of individuals whom regularly call 900 adult phone lines and the moderator who demanded to see three bananas at various stages of ripeness and who, after selecting one, requested that Jay peel and slice it for him!

When asked what are the most challenging issues he’s facing as a business professional, Jay commented, “My biggest challenges are how to grow the business, maintain quality, keep costs at bay, and provide a decent living for all of the quality individuals – and there are many - ‘under my wing’. For most of us

working in marketing research, there is no horizon; most jobs are awarded two to four weeks prior to execution. Most folk’s calendar is blank two to three months out...at least, I know ours is.”

Married to his college sweetheart for 43½ years, Jay is also the father of two sons and the very proud grandfather of five grandchildren. To see Jay speak of his grandchildren is like watching the best feel-good movie you’ve ever seen. And, I also have it on very good authority that they might just be the luckiest grandchildren in the world since Jay’s vocabulary doesn’t include the word “no” when it comes to his beloved. In addition to running a successful business and spending time with his adored family, Jay and his wife are also avid gardeners and maintain four and a half acres at Birch Hill on the coast of Maine, near Bar Harbor. They also support a variety of charities, with animal rights being their number one cause.

Jay’s favorite quote comes from John Dunn and goes like this, “It is true that I may not be young anymore, but I can stay immature for all eternity.” Again, if you know Jay, you will agree that this is a fitting quote and it aligns well with his overall philosophy about life. In fact, Jay was recently interviewed by Rob Macdonald of the Baltimore Business Journal. The October article was for a Get Smart on Work and Life feature and was titled Being Funny Gets More Than Laughs, It Gets Good Results. Mr. Macdonald relates that most companies avoid humor like the plague because,

after all, it is critical to show that we take our clients’ problems seriously. He goes on to ask, on the other hand, “Must we be so boring?” To answer this question, he turns to Jay White, who clearly doesn’t think so as he states, “We want to entertain. We certainly don’t want the fun factor to diminish the serious side of our firm. But one of our goals is to inform and amuse our clients.” Macdonald himself then shares, “But most amusing to me was the wall of identical clocks at the top of the stairs. Instead of showing the time in cities around the world, these 25 clocks are labeled to show the time in neighborhoods around Baltimore.”

What Jay didn’t share during his interview, but that I know full well, is that he also did some modeling in his younger years. While he certainly gave James Dean, Cary Grant and Marlon Brando a run for their money, I can assure you that his blue eyes still sparkle as brightly today as they did when he was a stunning 20 year old. Jay might well have a personality that is “larger than life”, but don’t let that fool you; he is also one smart cookie – somebody our industry is fortunate to have as a practitioner and ambassador. Please join me as I humbly request of Jay that he remain immature (and brilliant) for eternity and that he continue to cast the very unique effervescence that IS Jay White.

To recommend an MRA member with a special story or background to be interviewed for a future Member Spotlight, please contact the editor at [email protected].



Can you actually sample a Gen Pop?

I just finished writing another report, where most of the analysis was based on a general population. We also analyzed a sample of our client’s customers, but it was in contrast to the general population. As I look back, I’ve written at least two dozen reports in the past year that focused on a general population.

While we referred to them as a general population, and agreed on a basic definition with our clients (usually 50/50 male/female, age 21+, geographically dispersed), we all know they aren’t truly a general population. In fact, I think most researchers, and most users of research realize they can’t readily interview a true general population.Yes it can be done, but the commitment in terms of time, patience and money, can be significant. I think we may be seeing the same “ostrich with their head in the sand” phenomena that I witnessed when research was first conducted online. A lot of people didn’t like it, but they were lured by its immediacy and low cost. They chose to ignore whether the sample was

Chairman’s Perspective

representative. Eventually, their comfort level improved as the industry completed comparison studies to demonstrate results online compared to other data collection methods. More importantly, they were making sound business decisions based on this research, and it didn’t backfire on them. I think the final converts to online research were won over once they realized traditional telephone research is far from being representative these days. So why aren’t most general population samples representative? The reasons are numerous:• While there is a lot of talk about multi-

mode data collection, let’s face it – most studies still use one data collection method. Unfortunately, there’s not one data collection method that is truly representative.

• The constant pressure on conducting research faster means data collection is often completed in two to three days. Regardless of the data collection method, this brief field period almost always results in a different sample than a study that is in field for one to two weeks.

• A secondary issue with short field periods is the lack of an appropriately stratified geographic sample. Sure you can balance sample by census region or even down to the state or smaller geographies; but are you also balancing geography along with time of the day. What if most of your West Coast interviews are completed during the respondents’ afternoon, while most East Coast interviews are completed during the respondents’ evening. Is this sample representative?

• The biggest issue is quite probably the lack of proper ethnic representation. While this has always been an issue, the magnitude is now much more significant due to the growth of

Hispanic and Asian populations in the United States. The majority of general population studies are conducted in English only – excluding the unacculturated.

• Besides ethnic issues, other demographic groups are frequently excluded due to the data collection method. This includes senior citizens, youth, lower income households, higher household incomes, more rural areas and many other groups.So many marketers (secretly) say

“sure, I realize the sample excludes some portions of the population, but the sample is still representative for my needs”. That might be true right now, but considering that Hispanics and Senior Citizens are two of the largest and fastest growing segments in the country, how long can any marketer ignore them? Both of these groups are having monumental impacts on society. If they haven’t impacted your brand yet, they probably will. Ironically, much of the talk about representative samples has been concerned about whether the sample is reaching young people. It’s the same mentality that drives the TV rating wars for the coveted 18-39 year old viewer. Yes, it is important to reach these young consumers, hopefully locking some of them in as lifelong customers; but their numbers are shrinking compared to Hispanics and Senior Citizens.

Personally, I think it will be a number of years before general marketers start addressing the representiveness of a general sample. Right now, only the government and universities have the time, patience and money to attempt truly representative coverage. Eventually, some marketers will start making the wrong decisions because they don’t have a representative sample. While reputable researchers have been warning them about sampling, most marketers have ignored us. When problems arise, they are going to want a solution. The current path to a representative sample just isn’t acceptable for most marketers. Our industry has much work to do.

Ken Roberts, PRC is the Chairman of the Marketing Research Association and President of Cooper Roberts Research. He can be reached at [email protected].

“As I look back, I’ve written at least two dozen reports in the past year that focused on a general population. While we referred to them as a general population...we all know they aren’t truly a general population.”

population.Yes

cooper-roberts.com


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2012 – Progress Ahead!Message From MRA’s CEO

As we gear up for 2012, I’ve heard from members who have had a record-breaking 2011 financially, but also those (more than I’d like) who still are more challenged business-wise than they’d prefer.

Common threads that seem to run throughout these conversations are concerns for the overall economy, with the global economic situation increasingly shading U.S. business attitudes which in turn buffet spending on MR, business regulations emanating or threatened from Washington, as well as fundamental, ongoing evolution in how research is conducted.

We still are very much in a time of change. Inasmuch as fate favors the connected, your participation in MRA is all the more important in these challenging times.

As for our part, we are packing up to move MRA’s headquarters to Washington, DC, to hopefully increase our positive contribution to ending the political gridlock that seems to be in fashion there. We’ll also be advocating for the value that marketing research can bring to the economy and improvements in our quality of life through the introduction of more insightful policies, products and services.

I can’t say that I recommend moving offices on a regular basis but it does

provide an opportunity for improvement, of which we’re taking advantage on your behalf.

MRA is at the end of the day all about you and our other members as our mission is to vigorously support and advocate for your professional growth and success. That’s far more than making our case before government officials, although we do this full time. It’s also about keeping you informed, providing access to markets and trusted partners, raising professionalism through standards and certification, and career advancement. Of course, all of this combined can result in increased business and, hopefully, personal success.

With that mission and goal in mind, over the last year or so we’ve rewritten MRA’s Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws, revamped our website (which can newly be found at www.MarketingResearch.org), introduced online forums, live news feeds, an improved Annual Conference, more cutting edge coverage in a redesigned (and way-cool) Alert! magazine while doubling its circulation among industry thought leaders, increased our membership particularly among corporate researchers, launched new partnerships with other MR organizations, provided job

leads, an expanded BlueBook.org, and a fun, new logo, among other advances.

In 2012, we’ll be dramatically streamlining and improving PRC to be the industry’s standard – PRC is one of MRA’s core offerings and a really fantastic idea – as well as strengthening our Review Program for company certification. We’re bringing dramatic, new improvements to MRA’s conferences, such as...

2012 MRA Annual Conference & Expo – MRA’s Annual Conference & Expo will include several innovations, among them a second evening networking reception open to all attendees at no additional charge at

the famed SeaWorld San Diego that will include a private MRA-only performance by Shamu the killer whale, as well as special appearance by SeaWorld penguins and sea lions! For the first time, Annual Conference & Expo volume discount pricing will be available for more than three attendees from the same company who may also participate in corporate retreats and meetings around MRA’s Annual Conference in San Diego, June 4-6.

2012 Corporate Researchers Conference – The next CRC will be held September 19-21 at the Dallas Fairmont with a second night networking event at the exciting Dallas Frontiers of Flight Museum. Last year’s inaugural event was a tremendous success and, guided by the great feedback received from our 2011 attendees, we plan to design a larger and even more successful 2012 event.

If you’ve never been to an MRA national event, please consider doing so. They can be hugely beneficial in both professional and personal terms. Expect a warm welcome from hundreds of your peers.

We’re also ramping up our free webinar series while maintaining its quality, increasing our efforts in online education for those who cannot attend in-person events, and complementing the attendance for those who can. Expect new, specialized one-day seminars this year, as well as the introduction of unique online training courses. Expect greater collaboration with our association peers in 2012 as well. We also expect to launch a National Respondent Registry to improve research quality, integrity and reduce the threat of unnecessary regulation. Stay tuned. The best is yet to come!

Hopefully, 2012 will bring with it better consensus regarding our political and economic future. We live in hope, but with more certainty in a better business climate, you will benefit directly, and the business of marketing research will thrive.

In 2012, please remember that we’re here to help. Join with us to work to make this remarkable profession even more successful.

David W. Almy is MRA’s CEO. He can be reached at [email protected].

“ Inasmuch as fate favors the connected, your participation in MRA is all the more important in these challenging times.”

www.MarketingResearch.org

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18 MRA’s Alert! Magazine – January 201218 MRA’s Alert! Magazine – January 2012


Do Demographics Make Us Irrelevant?By Marshall Toplansky

Every 10 years, market researchers come alive with expectation. The release of a new set of census data means employment security for the marketing research industry, as tens of thousands of us try to make sense out of this new flood of data.



My contention is that this exercise may pay our mortgages in the short-term, but underscores our irrelevance to our clients in the long-term. The reason is that the data from the census is far less useful to marketers than it has ever been. And, by focusing on it, we end up ignoring the data that marketers really care about.

Some of the reasons for this diminishing value of census data have been brewing for a while, and are well known.

For instance, one of the cherished traditional sports we, as researchers, engage in is trying to use this updated data to define a generalized description of the “typical” American. We all know that we have become so fragmented as a society, that there is no longer a “typical” anything. There is no single segment that defines us in general terms as a society. Aren’t we just perpetuating nonsense and reducing our own credibility?

Here’s another activity that has

defined us: Identifying the “heavy users” or “focus audience” for our brands and categories. However, the fundamental reasons WHY we do this are no longer as relevant as they once were. The big reason for creating heavy user profiles is to find efficient ways of targeting mass media to reach a higher concentration of the “good ones”. But think about it. Most brands are now using new and niche media to reach customers and get them to identify themselves as interested in


purchasing. Marketers’ segmentations are increasingly based on observed inquiry and purchase behavior, not reach/frequency of outbound ad messages. What moves people to purchase changes daily, as new data on response and click-through are generated by massive networks of computers? By spending our time profiling demographics, we are making ourselves irrelevant to the people who actually use data to determine who they are going to target.

To better understand my comment about reducing our credibility, consider some historical context. The notion of defining a “typical” American was introduced by media companies in the early 20th century. The idea was useful in answering the classic question of advertising waste: How much of my media spend is not hitting a target that is valuable to me? As media grew, and new niche publications, radio stations and cable networks proliferated in the 1970’s, this became an even more important task to perform. Finding the “best fit” for a media plan could save companies tens of millions of dollars because all a brand’s marketing budget was spent in media. The key to the exercise was having a benchmark to compare against. Defining the “General Population” (or, as it became known as, “Gen Pop”), was something that had to be done regularly in order to remain accurate. And, the census, because it is a census and not a representative sample, was the logical baseline to use.

However, two things happened to change the game: The growth of direct response marketing and the introduction of the internet.

In the late 1970’s direct marketers made a compelling case to many marketers. Their main point was that who buys your product is a far more important thing

to measure than who you expose your message to. They used empirical data to show that identifying people who have bought a product recently, and/or who buy a product frequently, is a far more accurate way to identify who might buy your product in the future. Their argument was that you, as a marketer, can go ahead and build exposure of your message over time to people who have the potential to buy, and that might lead to someone eventually buying your product. However, if you actually want to make money today, you are better off targeting people who are similar to those who have actually bought your product

recently and with some frequency. The key was to find them, as individuals. Not to describe them generically.

This rocked the world of traditional media, and the world of marketing research which had grown up to serve it. Forget about telling me that my best audience to target is suburban women with kids who live in households that make between $25,000 and $75,000 and like skiing because they index at a 130 versus gen pop for annual consumption of life insurance.

The new mantra was “find me a list of people who have bought life insurance in the last 6 months”. The fact that they have bought life insurance makes them likely to buy more and to refer others.

Now, let’s add the internet to the mix. The internet is a living, breathing direct

marketing engine. It is used by two-thirds of the entire planet...daily, for hours at a time. Additionally, people do more than simply buy things on the internet. They research products, they inquire about them and tell marketers that they are interested in purchasing. And, they actually buy. At a cost per sale that can be one-hundredth of the cost of direct mail and telemarketing.

But the same logic applies to internet marketing as to direct marketing. It is all about using observed behavior to determine who your customer is, and then finding more like them. However, the big difference is the sheer volume of data

that the internet provides. We are now calling this “BIG DATA”, and it is changing the way we do business.

There are quadrillions of data points from the internet that marketers are now using to determine who the best targets for a product are. It is breeding a new generation of “data explorers” who are analyzing patterns of behavior of consumers. These

patterns, when they are discovered, are worth BILLIONS of dollars to marketers, because they identify who is going to buy a product.

The Census data cannot answer that question anymore. It can only answer the question of who has the capability of buying a product . . . not the demonstrated likelihood.

Does this mean that the census data is useless? No.

The census does answer one important question: How many people can potentially buy my product in the United States. Based on census data, you can now definitively say, for instance, that there are x number of women with babies in the household with incomes between x and y, living in the suburban zip code 92603. This defines a product’s total

“For instance, one of the cherished traditional sports we, as researchers, engage in is trying to use this updated data to define a generalized description of the “typical” American. We all know that we have become so fragmented as a society, that there is no longer a “typical” anything. There is no single segment that defines us in general terms as a society. Aren’t we just perpetuating nonsense and reducing our own credibility?”


available market in the U.S., and that has some value.

However, even that information used to have a lot more value than it does today. Our population is not growing at the same rate it used to, which means that overall markets are not growing. Census data used to be used to show areas of the U.S. where products were under-distributed and under-penetrated, and provided a useful map for more efficiently deploying media dollars. Today, with almost universal internet access and universal distribution coverage, the value of that analysis is far less than it used to be. And, finally, with marketers able to target their marketing via attitudinal segment, ethnicity, income and gender on different websites and social networks, with highly

customized content, at very low cost (compared to a $30 million television campaign), there is simply less “blending” that is required. You can afford to market to multiple markets in multiple ways. So, instead of spending the time of market researchers to develop low-value analyses of census data, what should we be doing that has higher value and relevance?

We should be focusing ourselves, as an industry, on tapping into the “big data” that marketers are increasingly using

to build models that correlate consumer behavior (like response, click through and conversion) against the profiles of those consumers. Not just the demographic and geographic profiles you get from the census, but the attitudinal and behavioral profiles you get from analyzing the products they buy,

inquire about, search for and express opinions about. That is where the future of marketing research lies: Answering the question of who is going to buy my product, not how many can buy it.

Marshall Toplansky is the President of WiseWindow, a company that turns the chaos of online chatter into a database illuminating consumer sentiment across hundreds of dimensions.

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“Additionally, people do more than simply buy things on the internet. They research products, they inquire about them and tell marketers that they are interested in purchasing. And, they actually buy. At a cost per sale that can be one-hundredth of the cost of direct mail and telemarketing.”


Keeping Informed

Balancing Multiple Generations at WorkBy Jennifer FitzPatrick, MSW, LCSW-C

Since mandatory retirement does not exist in the market research industry, we are living in a time where there are multiple generations of employees working together. Healthy seasoned octogenarians working alongside college interns, and every age group in between, can make for a particularly generationally diverse workforce.

This age diversity in the workplace presents challenges in areas of communication, expectations, work ethic and abilities and strengths. But there are also many opportunities for exciting intergenerational collaboration that can benefit customers. The business of market research, advertising and branding is constantly changing. Diverse

workplaces mean more viewpoints to offer customers on projects, especially those with expanding age ranges of targeted end users.

While multigenerational teams struggle to understand each other, some of the most difficult situations involve managing a much older or younger staff. Younger managers sometimes categorize their

older workers as slower, technologically deficient and archaic. Older managers tend to question younger employees’ experience, maturity and work ethic.

Samantha, a newly hired 28-year old vice president of a small company is meeting with David, a 52-year old manager who reports to her. Samantha asks David to spearhead a project to

24 MRA’s Alert! Magazine – December 2011


“While multigenerational teams struggle to understand each other, some of the most difficult situations involve managing a much older or younger staff. Younger managers sometimes categorize older workers as slower, technologically deficient and archaic. Older managers tend to question younger employees’ experience, maturity and work ethic.”

create a Facebook page for their company. David responds that he does not know much about Facebook but comments that his teenage sons use it all the time. When David asks why the company would want a Facebook page, Samantha rolls her eyes and chalks this up to David being behind the times.

Robert is a 61-year old supervisor and is constantly receiving requests from his team about working from home. While much of his team’s work does not have to be done on site, he does not believe in the concept. Since many of the staff are

in their twenties and thirties and have young children, he expects that much work won’t be getting done at home. Robert tends to have less confidence in employees wanting flexible schedules.

What can Samantha and Robert do to better lead their employees of different generations? Samantha would probably best engage David if she approached the Facebook situation with patience and additional training. Robert would likely inspire the most loyalty with his team by being a bit more flexible. If Robert made an effort to put some work-life balance policies in place his staff might perceive him as more reasonable and work even harder to get their jobs done.

There are challenges from the subordinate’s perspective as well.

While it is usually a mistake to underestimate a younger manager, many older workers do. Sure, it is possible that a younger employee might have been hired or promoted due to nepotism or other unjustifiable reasons. But typically, that younger person is deserving of the position due to education, experience, leadership potential or other abilities. Regardless, it is important to judge

younger managers on merit rather than age. While a seasoned employee may resent a younger person coming in and telling him what to do, it is likely this person has something unique to offer.

Sometimes the resentment toward a younger boss has more to do with the older worker than anything the younger manager has done. Reporting to a younger manager can trigger feelings of inadequacy, feeling “old,” and regret for how an older worker’s career has turned out. The older worker may think back to when he began his career and second

guess choices. Older workers feeling this way should contemplate possible changes so their work (and life) is more fulfilling.

Older employees struggling with accepting their younger managers should focus on getting along with them and supporting them as they would with any other boss. In managing the situation, the older worker should consider:1. Keeping an open mind about the

younger manager. Almost everyone we encounter at work can teach us something. At the very least, most younger managers have fresh new ideas that can invigorate the workplace.

2. Offering the younger boss support, particularly when other staff is being uncooperative. The younger boss will appreciate and remember those who supported him.

3. Avoiding discussion of the younger manager’s age. When an older worker starts to compare the younger manager to his daughter or even granddaughter, it can offend the younger manager. Younger managers know their age; they don’t need older staff reminding them.


4. Refraining from too many references about the past. Harping on the way “it has always been done” or the way things were “before you were out of diapers” will not be appreciated by the younger manager.

5. Making an effort to learn technology that the younger boss uses. Not only will this impress a younger manager, it will increase the older subordinate’s skill set.

6. Accepting that this person is the boss. Ultimately, if the older worker wants to remain in the position, an attitude shift is critical to remaining employed or even being promoted.

Younger workers also have a challenge understanding their older managers. They find themselves frustrated when the older manager does not embrace technology, lives in the past or dismisses younger counterparts when they don’t recognize pop culture references of the past.

In working with a boss of an older generation, younger employees should consider:1. Respecting the years of experience

the older manager brings to the table. Even when an older boss acts in a way the younger staff does not agree with, it should be acknowledged that the decision may be based on past experiences from which the older manager has learned.

2. Understanding that “face time” may be very important to an older manager. It is common for older bosses to be less open to the trend of working from home because it was not something with which they had ever become comfortable. If staff members do have flexible schedules or work off site from the older manager, they may want to check in regularly and take steps to reassure the older manager that work is getting done.

3. Explaining current pop culture references without making the older employee feel out of the loop. A twenty-something who mentions something he saw on the latest reality show should take the time to let his sixty-something boss in on the joke.

4. Accepting that meetings and phone calls may be preferred rather than texting, Skype, instant messaging and e-mail. While many older

workers embrace technology, some still favor more traditional modes of communication. Going with the flow on the boss’ desired communication method will be appreciated by the older manager.

5. Helping the older bosses incorporate new technology that they may not understand. Sometimes older workers reject technology because they lack confidence. When suggesting new technology, younger workers should remember this. There could be a

sensitive ego at stake. Demonstrating competitors’ success with a specific technology can be a way to break through with a particularly resistant older manager. Presenting the idea as cost-saving if the older boss is budget-focused may garner a more favorable reception.

6. Finding ways to relate to the older manager. We accept that building rapport is crucial to working with customers and focus group participants. But even if an older boss has been the manager for a while, it may not be too late to develop common ground. If the younger worker has any outside interests that overlap with the boss’, that might be a great place to start. As long as the rapport building is genuine, it is worth giving it a chance, even if the relationship has been strained up until now. If the boss likes Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and you do too, it might be worth asking if he’s seen Jersey Boys. While it may be overkill to suggest getting tickets together, discussing a mutual interest may be an effective relationship-building strategy.

7. Remembering the barriers that older women bosses have encountered to

achieve their positions. While there is still not complete gender equality in the workplace, older generations of women managers typically faced much more adversity than younger women starting out today. Today’s older female managers may have even began their careers as secretaries for men with similar or even inferior credentials.

While intergenerational tension can be common, it is important for all workers to gauge whether or not their conflict

with another employee is truly related to the person’s age. Sometimes when there is a significant age gap between two parties, it may be assumed that there is a clash because of age. But it is worth contemplating if the conflict could be related to personality, outlook, values, or work performance.

During this economic time, it is guaranteed that we will continue to see multiple generations collaborating at work. More retirees are reentering the workforce for extra cash and many older adults are delaying retirement indefinitely. With more and more high school and college graduates entering the workforce every year, it is important for workers of all ages to make an effort to understand and appreciate each other. Not only does this improve morale and enjoyment of work, but market research customers have much to gain from teams with multigenerational perspectives.

Jennifer FitzPatrick, MSW, LCSW-C is an author, speaker and educator. Founder of Jenerations Health Education, Inc., she has more than 20 years’ experience in healthcare. Jennifer is a frequent speaker at national and regional conferences and is an Adjunct Instructor at Johns Hopkins University.

“Younger workers also have a challenge understanding their older managers. They find themselves frustrated when the older manager does not embrace technology, lives in the past or dismisses younger counterparts when they don’t recognize pop culture references of the past.”


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Keeping Informed

Making the Leap from Market Research to InsightPart One: The Four Places Insights HideBy Thom Pulliam

Don’t Mess With Texas. Rarely have so few words communicated so much to so many so effectively.

The line was conceived by Tim McClure 25 years ago when he went out for a walk. McClure, a partner at advertising agency GSD&M, was preparing a presentation to the Texas Highway Department for an anti-litter campaign. McClure had not come up with a slogan for the presentation. Most of his ideas focused

on the word “litter.” McClure did not like the word “litter” because to him it evoked images of kittens. As he walked, he noticed something that shocked him out of his daze. His own neighborhood was strewn with all manner of debris. If this is not litter, he thought, what is? He then remembered how his mother would scold

him about his messy room when he was a boy, and four simple, powerful words struck him like a bolt: Don’t Mess With Texas.

Where did this stroke of genius come from? Was it just the observation the neighborhood was a littered mess? No. Was it just a childhood memory? No.


Was it just McClure’s knack for lateral thinking? No – well, maybe. It was the amalgamation of all three, plus whatever market research McClure had sifted through prior to this moment. If we could step inside McClure’s head at the moment of his awakening and work backward to understand where the slogan hatched from, what would we find? An insight. A powerful nugget of an idea that arose from McClure’s interpretation of market research. His thinking might have gone a bit like this: Why do people litter? Litter is everywhere. When I was young, Mom told me to pick up the litter in my room. Why is litter everywhere? Why do we do it? Do we not think we will be caught? Do we not see the harm of it? Are we just lazy? Is it because we do not care about public property and the environment? Kind of. It is because when keeping the environment clean is everyone’s responsibility, there is no motivation for any one person to act, even when it is your own neighborhood that is littered. Eureka. There is a human insight. An insight, which birthed the Don’t Mess With Texas campaign.

For the campaign, GSD&M targeted major litter offenders -males 18 to 24 who tossed trash out of their pickup windows –and used personalities, music and images they would identify with to position littering as a personal slight to every Texan with state pride. The first commercial featured blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan and aired during the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 1, 1986. Some other early commercials had Johnny Dee and the Rocket ‘88s, football stars Randy White and Ed “Too Tall” Jones, the comedy troupe Greater Tuna, boxer Mike Williams, and singer Jerry Jeff Walker, all making strong pitches for “Don’t Mess With Texas.”

A researcher named Dan Syrek literally counted litter to check on the campaign’s success. The first year, trash on Texas highways dropped by 29 percent. Within five years, it was down 72 percent.

GSD&M continued to manage the

campaign for 12 years, with commercials featuring musicians Willie Nelson, Joe Ely, Lyle Lovett, Marcia Ball, Ian Moore, LeAnn Rimes and Little Joe y Familia; sports stars George Foreman, Mike Scott and Warren Moon; Shamu the whale; and even the Texas Confederate Air Force. (Dromgoole, 2006)

Don’t Mess With Texas is a great example of how an insight is born from market research. And, for today’s modern marketers, a seemingly infinite amount of research is available. Gathering data can be as easy as taking a walk through the neighborhood. Sometimes all it takes is a mystery shop, a Simmons run, or results from a Qualtrics survey to attain information. The challenge is not in the

sources from which to garner data, but in making the information you have useful. The value of research is not in number sets or reams of transcripts. It is in the implications they hold and our judgment of them. As market researchers and brand strategists, we hunt for insights – unique combinations of information that give meaning to the marketplace. How can we act like Tim McClure and pull insight from simple observational research? How do we move beyond collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data and make the leap to insight discovery? This is the topic of a three-part series that looks at where insights hide and how to derive them from qualitative and quantitative research.

Where do insights come from? Insights are based on the analysis and interpretation of information. Information can come from primary or secondary research into the consumer, brand, category or competition. Insights hide in these four spaces.

To get to an insight, start with an observation derived from one of the four areas. Something like “many students fail to complete school assigned readings.” Observations are easy to come by. I bet you could think of 100 right now. To turn observations into insights look beyond the observation and ask, “Why is this?” Why do many students not do their reading? The key is to find the root cause of the event by laddering down and always asking why something is the way it is. In this case, the insight behind the observation that students fail to complete school readings is that people are afraid of embarrassing themselves by failing, but it is impossible to fail if you do not participate, thus students will not

complete school readings. Now that we understand what an insight is and where they hide, let us delve into what insights at the consumer, brand, category and competition level look like.

Consumer InsightConsumer insights hide in the behavior and feelings of people. They are human truths that

either are a part of local culture or are universal. What is the consumer insight in the following observation: Why do many men like spicy food? Withstanding the intensity of spicy food is a sign of toughness. Why? It is an area of competition and esteem. Bingo! That is the insight.

Brand InsightBrand insights speak to what is true about a product, service, or brand. It works best if it is a truly unique feature or benefit of the brand. Although it does not have to be unique, as long as no one else is leveraging the same insight. What is the brand insight for Snickers, a chocolate bar filled with nougat, caramel, and nuts? First look at the brand truths. Yes, Snickers is a rich candy bar. Yes, people consume it quickly. Yes, it has the same ingredients found in one combination or another in most candy bars. So why would someone pick a

“Where did this stroke of genius come from? Was it just the observation the neighborhood was a littered mess? No. Was it just a childhood memory? No. Was it just McClure’s knack for lateral thinking? No – well, maybe. It was the amalgamation of all three, plus whatever market research McClure had sifted through prior to this moment.”


Snickers over a Milky Way? Snickers has nuts. And, it does not just have nuts – it is packed with them. Why is that important? Because it adds protein and crunchiness to a rich, convenient candy bar. Why is that important? Snickers can really satisfy someone’s hunger. This is Snickers brand insight.

Category InsightCategory insights speak to why a specific commonality exists between a set of competitors. It is useful in understanding what is expected from certain groups of products and services. Consider the observation that major casinos display large water fountains outside their doors. Why is this? Is it for entertainment? No, people go to shows to be entertained. Is it for aesthetic appeal? No, casinos are not in the business of providing public art. So, what is the purpose behind it? A water fountain is a great display of resources. Why? It shows that someone came in, captured water and transformed it into a spectacle. Why is this significant? Water fountains symbolize great wealth. Here comes the category insight: grand water fountains outside plant the idea that people become wealthy inside.

Competition InsightInsights that come from investigating competitive products and services uncover meaningful differences that separate a brand from the pack. A lucrative insight in this area is an opportunity to flip the competition on their heads. The Dyson Air Multipler is a good example. Its competition is the everyday blade-spinning fan. Dyson, a company known for innovation, uncovered an insight within

its product’s competitive set and produced a machine that amplifies air without blades. It started with the observation that every fan on store shelves works the same way - by moving blades that chop the air. Why is this significant? The technology that drives personal fans has not changed since the late 1800’s. Why? Manufacturers do not see consumer demand for new technology. Why? Because consumers do not know that another type of fan

is possible. That insight, the idea of consumers not expecting more from fans because they do not know what is possible, spurred the Dyson company to innovate in a tired space filled with parody products. The sameness of the category was Dyson’s inspiration to figure out a better way to make a fan.

Good marketing is based on insight and the strategy that leverages it. Insight is derived from research into

four areas: consumer, company, category, and competition. It is brand strategists, researchers, and marketers’ job to unearth these insights by using creative interpretation and judgment, which makes the research meaningful in a marketing sense. We do this by actively observing the world and research around us and continually asking

“why”. Next time you are looking for insight, remember that an insight is simply an observation waiting to be decoded. Seek to understand the why behind the action, use creative interpretation and you might have your own Don’t Mess With Texas eureka moment.

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Keeping Informed

Tablets: Evolving from Personal to BusinessBy Elaine B. Coleman, Desirée Davis, Kari Cafouros, Randy Hellman & Aric Ackerman

No other device has become a new product category faster than the tablet. In just one year, tablets are having a profound effect on how we browse, consume media, communicate, work, and structure our daily lives.

In fact, they can be found everywhere from small town meeting agendas on municipally owned tablets, to Nordstrom sales associates making real-time updates on shoe inventories, to limousine drivers holding a tablet as a placard in order to pick up their clients at airports. The market for these devices exploded in 2011 as prices became more affordable across multiple carriers and manufacturers.

At the same time, diverse industries, including market research, saw the potential for what a tablet could truly accomplish.

When ResolveMR ran two separate studies in 2010 and again in 2011, we were expecting to see marginal movement upwards in usage, consideration, engagement, and future expectations. We were surprised to

encounter six key developments and shifts in attitudes:• Consumers no longer see the tablet as a

toy, but as a tool • Consumers are using tablets in almost

all contexts, from home to vacation to work

• Consumers are beginning to replace laptops with tablets in the business sector


• Consumers are collectively spending about the same amount of time watching video as browsing the Internet or sending emails

• Consumers are using tablets as companion devices with other, more established devices

• Households own more than one tablet and are now considering buying a third

In the marketplace, we are seeing voice-generated innovation and interactivity take center stage, as well as more consumers preferring un-tethered access to media as opposed to purchasing digital copies. A startling number of tablet owners, both business and personal users, are finding the need for more than one tablet device, whether to serve multiple users, or to access improved

functionality. The intersection of these consumer preferences with the popular tablet platform should usher in an even more rapid transition to cross-platform engagement and communication. 1. Consumers no longer see the

tablet as a toy. Last year, the majority of consumers

(55%) saw iPads as an expensive toy or

luxury item. For example, one respondent stated the following:

“It’s a great gadget to show off to others, but that’s really its main purpose… You can’t type on it… It’s worthless while walking… It can’t do half the stuff a computer can do, nor what a phone can do… You need both hands to use it, plus it’s not like you can keep it in your pocket, so

it’s just not worth it… Pointless… A waste of time and money… Just an iPod Touch on steroids.”Yet, as tablets change how owners work

and play, these devices are also changing how they think about the category overall. Perceived primarily as a very expensive toy by over half of respondents last year, the proportion of people who feel this way

currently has decreased by 10%. In just one year, consumer attitudes have shifted dramatically. Tablets have gone from being ancillary luxury items to practical work tools – one day replacing laptops while remaining fun, entertaining, and critical mediums of social connectivity.

With owner attitudes changing this dramatically in just one year, it will be interesting to see how their opinions

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

it will preplace the need for netbooks/laptops

it is a useful tool for productivity

it is a technological breakthrough

it is a very expensive toy

Tablet Attitudes Trended

2010 Data: A2: Which of the following statements do you agree with regarding the iPad? Base: N=406 (iPad owners and intenders)2011 Data: F5: Which of the following statements do you agree with regarding your tablet device? BASE: N=232 (personal users who own an iPad)

All rights reserved. Resolve Market ResearchTM

55%

45%44%

38%

33%33%

28%

2010 2011

“These early business adopters are among the most influential users in the workplace and will drive enterprise purchase decisions over the next major purchase cycles. Most importantly, with the introduction of new business apps and increased power, the ‘business user’ will simply evolve into the ‘general tablet user’ – someone who uses the tablet as a multi-purpose device.”


“One of the things we are seeing is that new productivity apps and business software designed for the tablet are making tablets a viable platform for enterprise networks. While personal tablet usage has already caused some defection from laptops, we are more than likely just beginning to witness the drawing power of the tablet for business users.”evolve over the next year as new tablet products come into the marketplace and applications for tablets continue to enhance. 2. Consumers are using tablets in

almost all contexts: from home to vacation to work.

One of the key developments driving interest in owning additional tablets is that consumers want to use them across all of their activities. Tablet usage occurs while they watch television (44%), in their office (40%), on vacation (52%) and at key places in which other devices may be more prominent. This need to leverage the tablet’s portability, simplicity and functionality at all times is further promoted as an easy and intuitive “touch-screen” device for their kids. With the tablet’s appeal in every context, it is highly likely that most people are accurately stating they will own multiple tablets in the future.

Tablets are becoming influential in the business world, whether used in the office, home, car, or on vacation. In fact, business usage of tablets has stronger momentum than anyone may have realized. Enterprise users are quickly adapting their habits to use the tablet wherever they work – and taking them to work as well as a second screen on their desk. It is not a matter of simply using a new gadget to do basic activities; tablet users see the device as fundamentally affecting how they approach the activities themselves. 3. Consumers are beginning to

replace laptops with tablets in the business sector.

One of the things we are seeing is that new productivity apps and business software designed for the tablet are making tablets a viable platform for enterprise networks. While personal tablet usage has already caused some defection from laptops, we are more than likely just

beginning to witness the drawing power of the tablet for business users.

Right now, the laptop is still preferred for the majority of business-related activities. Specifically, laptops have the edge for creating documents and emailing – the functionality and keyboard of tablets are not sophisticated enough. However, the release of a Microsoft Office app for the iPad as well as a Windows tablet should help accelerate that transition.

Beyond media consumption and internet browsing for which tablets were first known, these devices are revolutionizing the business world. Across industries as wide-ranging as healthcare, education, the military and media, in addition to technology, retail and publishing, tablets are changing the way people and sales organizations conduct their business.

These early business adopters are among the most influential users in the workplace and will drive enterprise purchase decisions over the next major purchase cycles. Most importantly, with the introduction of new business apps and increased power, the ‘business user’ will simply evolve into the ‘general tablet user’ – someone who uses the tablet as a multi-purpose device. 4. Consumers are collectively

spending about the same amount of time watching video that they do browsing the Internet or sending emails.

We are also seeing a surprising degree of people using the device as a video platform. When we look at activities on tablets, a substantial (14%) amount of tablet time is spent watching movies, TV shows and watching or downloading other videos. In fact, tablets are the preferred mobile device for watching video among almost half of owners, compared to a third who prefer netbooks/laptops and just 5% who want to watch on

their smartphones. Tablet screen quality and size provide

opportunities to enjoy professional content, which is increasingly available on the newest mobile apps for TV shows, movies, music videos, and even baseball games. At the same time, user-generated material is getting increasingly sophisticated and more popular; they are moving beyond grainy pet videos with the availability of improved video technology and better user UI.5. Consumers are using tablets

as companion devices with their established TV viewing. This supports the need for more comprehensive metrics for advertising and television viewership/ratings.

Just as tablets are not cannibalizing gaming or smartphone purchases, these devices are not replacing television viewing. Rather than being competitive with TV, tablets have the potential to promote and enhance TV and video viewership.

Over a third of tablet viewers watch TV shows on their tablets and for most cases the tablet provides supplementary viewing. However, it does not appear to be substituting traditional media viewing. For 90% of users, the tablet is an addition to (not a replacement for) their TV set, as it is for the majority of those watching TV on their laptops (70%) and desktops (60%).

In addition to being used for watching TV, tablets are being used for a variety of functions while watching TV. While all this multitasking is seemingly a distraction from TV viewing, tablets actually offer opportunities for viewers to become more engaged with their favorite TV programs. Tablet users are highly interested in using their devices interactively while watching TV, especially to update their Facebook status, replay recent scenes, and read


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Time Spent on the Tablet

DBA. Think about how you use your tablet device on the a weekly basis. What percentage of your time spent using your tablet device is on each of the following activities? Base: N=1000

All rights reserved. Resolve Market ResearchTM

4%: Watching TV shows

5%: Watching or uploading videos

5%: Watching movies

5%: Looking at saved/imported photos

5%: Downloading and listening to music/radio podcasts

8%: Reading books/magazines

9%: Reading news articles/blogs

9%: Downloading and playing games

9%: Creating, reading or modifying documents

19%: Reading and sending e-mail

21%: Browsing the Internet

14%

21%

19%

9% 9%

9%

8%

5%

5%

5%

5% 4%

additional information about an episode. Applications such as IntoNow help support these and other companion experiences.6. Households own more than one

tablet and are now considering buying a third.

Tablet ownership may cannibalize other technologies, but it also increases tablet purchases. A surprising number of tablet owners, both business and personal users, are finding the need for more than one tablet device which, to many, was a superfluous luxury just 18 months ago. Whether to accommodate multiple users in the home, or to access new product capabilities, people expect to own two or more tablets in their household.

As households continue to purchase multiple tablets, the rate of potential laptop cannibalization will continue to grow. Elements such as cloud computing, diversification and maturity of the competitive marketplace, incremental refinements in tablet product development, the resolution of security issues, and the eventuality of Microsoft

Office for tablets will continue accelerate their proliferation into the enterprise.

Tablet Implications for Market Research Given these developments, market researchers should be poised to leverage the full functionality of the tablet platform in 2012. The research on how tablet users think and behave has far-reaching implications for companies and organizations involved in every facet of communication. However, it will have noteworthy implications for our own industry.

Market researchers will have to incorporate the tablet device better in their data collection, analysis, communication of reports and respondent outreach. In working with brand advertisers, researchers will have to monitor the effectiveness and positioning of messaging by device and contextual usage. In assisting educators and regulators, analysts will need to integrate tablets more deeply into research programs addressing scholastic

efforts, municipal support, and agency interactions. Meanwhile, researchers in the media and TV space will need to push metrics forward that help address the presence and value of tablets as a prominent second screen.

The intersection of tablets and research methodologies will remain in flux, so successful research firms—regardless of size and focus—will need to stay on top of these trends as they unfold. Understanding the evolution of tablet users, their needs and how tablets affect their engagement with brands will be vital to competitive research development and knowledgeable recommendations.

Elaine B. Coleman, Ph.D. and Chief Research Officer and Co-Founder, Desirée Davis, Kari Cafouros, Randy Hellman and Aric Ackerman are with Resolve Market Research, a global research consultancy firm with extensive insight into how technologies and digital media transform consumers and audiences.


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De-identification: A Potential Solution to Protecting Personally Identifiable Information in Marketing Research?By Howard Fienberg, PLC

De-identification, those oblique techniques that seemingly render personally identifiable information (PII) harmless, could be the linchpin to any overarching federal data privacy law that would avoid ruining the research industry. It is certainly a big reason why research survived the passage of the HIPAA Privacy Rule.

Legislative Update

However, the devil will be in the details. As MRA observed and discussed with numerous experts at a recent all-day privacy conference, the privacy community is divided and confused on some fundamental principles, not to mention the gradations necessary to coalesce around in any useful de-identification standard in data privacy law.

Certain terms raise more combativeness from privacy experts than others, and researchers should take note since many in the profession throw these terms around in blithe fashion (especially in their privacy policies and promises made to respondents). Anonymity? No one seems to believe in the concept anymore. Confidentiality? It may only perfectly apply to data that’s been shredded beyond recognition.

The Future of Privacy Forum’s “Personal Information” conference on December 5 featured a wide variety of speakers and attendees discussing and debating the de-identification, re-identification, and the definition of personal information.

Peter Swire, Professor of Law at Ohio State University and the person who designed the Privacy Rule when he worked in the Clinton Administration, opened the conference with a look at

federal statistics law. He cited endless years of federal experience with the decennial Census, resulting in highly useful de-identified data. The promise of confidentiality – and the legal rules to try to back that up – has been central to the Bureau’s ability to conduct the decennial and to use and share resulting data. Such promises were elaborated and codified for federal statistical agencies in the Confidential Information Protection & Statistical Efficiency Act of 2002 (CIPSEA). The basic rule is that if you collect data for statistical purposes, you can only use it for statistical purposes and you can’t re-identify it. Of course, that culture of practice has existed for years outside of government, in survey and opinion research of all sorts, and in the Code of Ethics for MRA members.

The HIPAA Privacy Rule developed a safe harbor for de-identified data, as well as provisions for data use agreements stipulating that the data could be shared for research purposes as long as it was not re-identified. The end goal was to allow data to be shared publicly if it had been sufficiently scrubbed; if insufficiently scrubbed, the party receiving the data would be subject to an enforceable contract not to re-identify the data.

However, the Internet changed the

game tremendously, since data mining rapidly progressed far beyond the province of specialized researchers. This evolution led to an erosion of practical obscurity: the amorphous “they” may now be able to figure out who “we” are.

The benefits of public data are clearly big, so what are the practical risks of harm from potential re-identification of de-identified data? Professor Swire highlighted three different threats:1. Insiders (e.g., employees or

subcontractors) “peeping” at data they shouldn’t see, such as George Clooney’s doctor records, the online dating info for their spouse, or data that could be (and then is) used for criminal harm (e.g., identity theft).

2. Outsiders hacking into a system;3. And, the general public.4. De-identification can be pretty

effective for the first two threats (an employee would be unable to search for or accidently find Clooney’s doctor records and a hacker would download a huge cache of seemingly meaningless statistical data), but there was a lot of debate at the conference over how much defense it can provide against the public.

Professor Swire asked, “What if... everything can be re-identified?” That


was certainly the case made by Latanya Sweeney, Director of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard University, based on a pair of her studies. But as several other researchers pointed out in response, the two biggest re-identification studies were very limited cases and not generalizable.

Date of birth could be considered personally identifiable, since it splits the population into 25,000 cells and can enable re-identification. If you combine such data with a zip code containing only a handful of people in a certain age range, it may be very easy to re-identify. Professor Swire made an analogy to a cop collecting clues. A suspect is male, tall, with red hair. That would not be enough to re-identify, but it would certainly make it easier. It is more a matter of how much legwork, analysis and extra data is available and accurate. That is what weighs against the public being able to re-identify de-identified data.

Conclusion: Re-identification is hard and de-identification can be harmfulKhaled El Eman, a researcher at the University of Ottawa, felt that the data re-identification efforts by Sweeney and company are the exceptions that prove the rule. Most attacks fail miserably. The studies that succeeded are too small, too few, too ambiguous, too heterogeneous and with confidence intervals that are way too large. Eman concluded that, “Re-identification is hard.” He suggested that there would need to be 40-50 replicable studies to start to change such a conclusion.

Daniel Barth-Jones, epidemiology professor at Columbia University, warned that excessive de-identification of data can yield huge statistical errors and inaccurate research results. The greater the level of de-identification, the less statistically useful the data becomes. Blanket de-identification would grind statistical research and number-crunching to a halt. Ultimately, there is no point in de-identification to a level where there are significantly easier and cheaper ways of getting the data. Professor Barth-Jones ended with a warning about trade-offs, that the real harm is not the ephemeral threat to privacy but the real threat of “not catching the next HIV epidemic”.

Look for further discussion of this issue and some of the interesting debates from this conference on the MRA website, and feel free to contact me about it at [email protected]

Howard Fienberg, PLC is MRA’s director of government affairs. iSwire, Peter. “Peeping,” 24 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 1164 (2009). http://www.peterswire.net/Peeping.pdf



http://www.peterswire.net/Peeping.pdf

http://www.peterswire.net/Peeping.pdf


Chapter Update

Southern California

On December 9th, the SoCal MRA Chapter hosted its annual Holiday Party at Rosa Mexicano. This year, the Board’s President, Myla Kovac, organized a toy drive in conjunction with Spark of Love. Not only was the party a success, it also managed to collect a large amount of toys and donated over $800 raised from a raffle. The SoCal Board would like to thank all the Sponsors for the event and its members for a wonderful evening.

Minnesota/Upper Midwest Update On November 3rd the MN / Upper Midwest chapter hosted an exciting speaker and branding expert, whose presentation was titled, “Why do some rebrands fail? Why do others succeed?” The speaker, David Brier (www.risingabovethenoise.com), gave a highly visual and entertaining presentation that showed the impact of several re-branding efforts via case studies. He specifically discussed: • What to do when your brand’s been pigeon-holed and how to overcome this brand killer• An inside case study of one rebrand that increased sales 300% in 30 days after the launch• How an online startup that saw sales increase 397% in 4 years after their rebrand and what exact steps made it work

If you are interested in becoming more involved with MRA, contact Lisa Lockwood, Director of Development, at [email protected].

www.risingabovethenoise.com



Marketing Systems Group MovesMarketing Systems Group is thrilled to announce their move to new larger corporate offices. Their new address is: 755 Business Center Drive, Suite 200, Horsham, PA 19044, 215.653.7100

uSamp Announces New Appointments and is Named as One of America’s Most Promising Companies in 2011uSamp has appointed Joshua Pink to the newly created post of Senior Vice President, Corporate Sales Strategy & Global Development, as well as Justin Wheeler as Vice President and General Manager to head all global operations for SurveyBuilder™. Additionally, uSamp has been ranked among the top 20 companies on the prestigious Forbes Magazine List of America’s Most Promising Companies.

Schlesinger Associates Acquires Schmiedl in GermanySchlesinger Associates is delighted to announce the acquisition of Schmiedl Marktforschung GmbH, a leading fieldwork services agency and provider of focus group facilities in Germany. Schmiedl’s offices in the three key markets of Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich will continue to be overseen by Schmiedl’s long-standing managing directors: Stephan Lange, Stephan Schmid and Markus Herbig.

Focus Forward, LLC Announces Appointment of Liz GranahanFocus Forward, LLC is pleased to announce the appointment of Liz Granahan to President of Focus Forward LLC & Panel Direct Online. Liz joined Focus Forward in 2005, beginning her career as a project director in the qualitative recruiting division. Over her 7 years with the firm, Liz has held a number of roles, escalating in responsibility. Most recently, she has served as the Vice President of Transcription Services.

The Marketing Workshop, Inc. Announces Appointment of Brian GanttThe Marketing Workshop, Inc. is proud to announce and welcome Brian Gantt as its new Senior Research Manager. Brian brings with him over eight years of qualitative and quantitative marketing research experience for Fortune 500 companies in consumer packaged goods, health and beauty, and healthcare services industries. Brian comes from DSS Research in Dallas, Texas where he served as Manager of Analytic Services.

Send press releases and announcements to Amy Shields, PRC at [email protected].

Industry News & Announcements

Copyright © 2011 Epocrates Inc. All Rights Reserved. Epocrates and Epocrates QuickRecruit are registered trademarks of Epocrates, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries.

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“My volunteer experience with MRA is a key contributor to my career achievements and has made me a better employee, manager and mentor.”Hilary Fischer, PRCCOO, US, All GlobalMember Since 1998

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tablets: evolving from personal to business by elaine b. coleman, desirée davis, kari cafouros,...

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