What’s Trending on #MRX? Jeffery Henning’s #MRX Top 10 – April 2, 2012

By Jeffrey Henning & Tamara Barber of Affinnova

Of the 1,300 links shared on the Twitter #MRX community the past week, here are the 10 most retweeted:

 

1. Just Do It! – Richard Evensen of Forrester recaps the three key takeaways of the ARF Rethink 2012 conference: Improve, Innovate, Integrate! Find ways to improve quality, to innovate creatively and to integrate disparate data sources to answer business questions.
2. The 50 Most Innovative Companies in Market Research (A GRIT Excerpt) – Lenny Murphy examines the results of the latest GreenBook Research Industry Trends study for perceptions of research innovators, breaking out the top 50 firms as well as presenting a quadrant analysis of how the top 15 are perceived by researchers.
3. Google Consumer Surveys: Custom Market Research Made Easy – Google enters the survey tool market (we always knew it would happen!) with a river-based polling solution, starting at $0.10 an answer per question for general population surveys and $0.50 an answer after a Yes/No screening question. Google argues in this research on research that these surveys are more representative than panel surveys. Ironic to see the Big Daddy of Big Data embrace an “obsolete” format like direct questioning through surveys.
4. Is Market Research Ready for Big Data? – Ray Poynter of Vision Critical notes that market research is tipping from analyzing direct questions to analyzing collected data. According to the 2010 ESOMAR Global Market Research report, 50% of research revenue comes from data related services such as loyalty card processing, store audits and web analytics. “The move from traditional market research to Big Data,” he writes, “is likely to be a bumpy and not altogether pleasant one for many market researchers.”
5. Focus Group Research: Thinking About Reasons May Hamper New Insights – Margaret Roller recaps some of Timothy Wilson’s research from 20 years ago highlighting that attitudes can be temporary constructions, created through the research process itself when research participants knew little about the topic. As a result, such attitudes have limited value when reported as insights. In light of this, Margaret provides 3 suggestions for improving focus groups to produce more accurate reporting of attitudes.
6. Ex-Peanut Labs Trio Pitch Research for Good – Brian Tarran of Research reports, “A trio of former Peanut Labs employees have launched a new online sample company that aims to support charities by making donations for every survey completed. Research for Good was co-founded by Sean Case, Matthew Ronco and Baillie Buchanan and is described by Case as a ‘socially responsible’ research company which will use a mix of panel, social media and other sample sources.”
7. 4 Ways Big Data Can Trick You – Erik Sherman [an old friend from the days of Compuserve’s PRSIG!] writes an article for Inc. magazine exploring two different assessments of Twitter’s predictive validity and what it means for corporate usage of Big Data, offering four practical tips. [Shameless plug: see his recent interview of me in How Not to do Product Market Research.]
8. Reading Around the Subject – Robert Bain of Research recaps the “Research Book Club” session of the MRS Annual Conference, where panelists advocated books that have inspired them in their work while coming from outside the research world. The four recommendations: Comedy Rules by Jonathan Lynn, 1984 by George Orwell, The Trusted Advisor by David Maister et al, and Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich.
9. Does Market Research Need a Marketing Plan? – Edward Appleton challenges us to think of the core constituencies of market research, how they perceive us, and what we can do to reposition ourselves with each constituency for greater influence.
10. Is Social Media Being Over-hyped? – Ray Poynter of Vision Critical believes “social media is being over-hyped by advertisers, market researchers, and even by old media itself”. He presents four reasons why social media is smaller and less influential than commonly claimed: social media impacts the world when traditional media picks up on a story, social media besides Facebook is little used by the young, social media properties are converging on a few popular sites, and social media usage is being professionalized.