Big Data Complements Qual at Fusion 2019

For the first time ever, this year’s ESOMAR Global Market Research report has shown that the value of the data and analytics sector is almost exactly the same as the originally defined market research sector. What’s more, by next year, analytics is predicted to have overtaken research. 

As these figures show, data and analytics companies with tech-enabled systems and automation are increasingly providing organizations with key patterns, trends, and associations to guide their decision making. Increasingly, companies rely on this quantitative data every day to keep their business in line with the needs of consumers, but, while this data can readily provide the ‘what?’, what it cannot provide is the ‘why?’ – and without this contextual ‘why’, there is a real danger of data being misconstrued or misinterpreted.

This is why qualitative research is so important – and even more so, nowadays. Not only does it explain the trends that organizations are seeing in their data and humanize the numbers on a screen with real words and feelings, but by delving deeper into issues, it also acts as a troubleshooter, which can highlight bogus quantitative data. Integrated data is the future of the industry, big data providing behaviors at scale and qualitative providing the all-important context. 

So, from the 11-14th November 2019, the global big data and qualitative communities will be gathering in Madrid, Spain for the second annual Fusion event. The event will showcase some of the latest and greatest developments in big data and qual and demonstrate why using both techniques is so crucial in gaining a well-rounded view of the consumer and society. 

Here’s a sneak preview taster of some of the top presentations on offer:

Gen-Z: Some Like it Old

Gen Z is credited with many so-called “disruptive” shopping behaviors and preferences, which make them a supposedly difficult target group to understand. 

In early 2019, Leboncoin, France’s number one classifieds platform, asked Respondi France, a Paris-based panel provider and market intelligence agency, to conduct research into this group, to get a better general understanding of their online shopping behavior and expectations, and to focus on their interest for second-hand products and their use of online marketplaces.  

In this presentation, Respondi and Leboncoin will deal with one of the hottest topics when it comes to Gen Z – Collaborative consumption,  the set of resource circulation systems, which enable consumers to both “obtain” and “provide”, temporarily or permanently, valuable resources or services through direct interaction with other consumers or through a mediator.

They will explain how they used quant and qual analysis to understand the relationship between 16-25-year-olds and their shopping habits for new and old products, the factors that cause 16-25-year-olds to look to used products rather than new ones, and how the trend of collaborative consumption is likely to rocket in the near future. 

The Ultimate Wicked Problem

How do you solve a problem like climate change? This has become an increasingly large worry for societies around the world in recent years, resulting in mounting pressure on governments around the world to take meaningful action against it. 

A cornerstone objective for the New Zealand government is to reduce carbon emissions, and by ratifying the Paris Climate Change agreement they have committed to having an emissions reduction target and regularly updating it. 

To achieve this they needed to improve the energy efficiency of New Zealand homes and encourage businesses to reduce their carbon emissions – and these momentous tasks required insights.

This presentation will explain the holistic approach they took to finding these insights, employing semiotics, systems thinking, unstructured and structured data, ethnography, and cultural analysis. They will show the important role that thoughtful and expansive insights have in influencing behavior change and how insights can benefit society for generations to come. 

Keeping it PC 

I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this, but…. regardless of your own politics, it’s impossible to ignore how society’s standards of political correctness have changed over the past few years. With awareness of the complexities of social issues growing, words and phrases that were previously socially acceptable are now met with anger and upset. But has the rise of the ‘ever-offended snowflake generation’ caused a barrier to authentic responses in qualitative research?

In this presentation, Peter Totman of Jigsaw’s research will look in particular at the ‘Brexit-voting working class, how they are affected by political correctness and the research methodologies and settings that can navigate the barriers that political correctness forms. 

These presentations show the power of both big data and qual to provide important, actionable insights that can make a difference not only to brands but also governments and help guide how best to address huge societal issues. By bringing these two methodologies together at Fusion 2019, attendees will see how big data and Qual truly complement each other and enable dependable insights that can be relied upon.