Market Insights

If Only We Had Done X (Lessons In Project Management)

Richard Evensen — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:26:36 +0000

How many of you have managed consulting projects that didn't turn out as planned and left you saying, "If only we had done . . ." ? Have you ever wondered how many steps and criteria are involved in successful consulting projects? And do you know how to avoid project failures?

In an upcoming research report, "Five Stages To Optimize The Research Process," Forrester will lay out the five key stages, 30-plus key steps, and 130-plus key criteria identified in successful consulting projects. Not all criteria are equal and required for every project, but miss some key criteria and project steps and you could have a project crisis (or expensive failure) on your hands.

Some highlights for each of the key project stages:

The Data Digest: Profiling Digital Natives

Reineke Reitsma — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:05:04 +0000

As part of our Demographic Overview series, we just published Digital Natives: A Demographic Overview; previously, we published research on digital dads and digital moms. For readers who haven't heard the term before, Digital Natives are the individuals currently ages 12 to 17, and they will soon become the most sophisticated consumers in the digital world. Forrester defines Digital Natives as "individuals who have grown up in the age of technology and cannot imagine a life without computers, cell phones, and social networking."

With the increasing numbers of these Digital Natives, it is imperative that companies get to know them -- and the earlier the better. They adopt digital technology faster than older generations; they can't imagine a life without digital "essentials"; and they combine these digital activities in sophisticated ways.

For example, Forrester's Consumer Technographics® data shows that boys, on average, spend 6.1 hours playing video games per week, and when they have discussions on social networks, video games are the No. 1 topic. Moreover, despite having little disposable income yet, more than one-third of Digital Natives have either researched or purchased a product or service online in the past three months.

Bringing Qualitative Research Expertise To Forrester’s Market Insights Team

Lindsey Colella — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:19:20 +0000

As the newest addition to the Market Insights team, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lindsey Colella, and I recently joined Forrester as a Senior Community Manager.

It is a pleasure to "meet" all of you, and I look forward to many future interactions and discussions regarding market research. My background is in qualitative research and, in particular, cultivating insights through online community management. I take great pleasure in showing clients the value of qualitative and online community research and bringing them to a new level in understanding consumer behavior.

As some of you may know, Forrester runs its own online research community for two purposes -- to conduct proprietary research as well as to run custom client research projects, both of which I manage. Our proprietary research is a monthly document called Community Speaks that discusses trends in consumer behavior. This product provides a unique offering because I work closely with expert analysts who provide additional insight around the findings.

As an example, I published a document last month covering how brands should engage consumers via social networking sites. A key finding from this report is that for a brand, earning a "like" is in fact the easy part but keeping that "like" is even harder. The key to maintaining a "like" from consumers is to provide information and promotional offers that relate to their interests. As one of our community members shares:

"I have unliked a lot of brands lately. There are just too many on Facebook to like. I try to limit liking brands that I actually use and interact with often and would benefit from learning more about that brand."

The Data Digest: Consumers' Attitude Towards Online Privacy And Security

Reineke Reitsma — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:04:08 +0000

Over the weekend, one of the most reputable online retailers in the US, Zappos, broke the news that its database was hacked and that the information for about 24 million user accounts was breached.

How do stories like this affect consumers' attitude toward online privacy? In our August 2011 Community Speaks Qualitative Insights report, "Consumer And Online Privacy: How Much Information Is Too Much?" (available for Community Speaks subscribers only), we found that online privacy is one of the most concerning topics in online users' minds. Two-thirds of US online consumers report being very concerned about the recording and collection of their personal details by websites.

Hello Mobile Market Research. Where Have You Been? What Took You So Long?

Roxana Strohmenger — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:17:16 +0000

My colleague Reineke Reitsma and I have been championing mobile market research for quite some time. In fact, we published the first Forrester report on this emerging and innovative methodology back in 2009. In the report, Reineke wrote about the value of its mobility and flexibility to gather insights into consumers' behavior anytime and anywhere. And for mainstream adoption to occur, hurdles such as cost, technology, privacy, and representation must be addressed.

At that time, I thought the growth of mobile market research was soon upon us. I was off by about 2 years. But 2011 was a turning point for mobile market research. We started 2011 with seeing the number of global shipments of smartphones and tablets surpassing the global shipment of desktop and notebook PCs. Blog posts and Twitter chatter under the #mobilemr hashtag increased significantly. In July 2011 there was the first formal debate about the merits of this new technology. And also in July there was a conference completely dedicated to how early adopters have leveraged mobile market research.

In our 2012 market research predictions report, we predict that mobile research will start to show uptake within the market research community. And it's not another false promise. Let me share our thinking behind this prediction with you. In 2012, I think we will see the following things occur for mobile market research:

The Data Digest: Understanding The Changing Needs Of Online Consumers In Asia Pacific

Reineke Reitsma — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Recently, my colleague Olesia Klevchuk published a report about the behaviors of consumers in India, China, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, called 'Understanding The Changing Needs Of Online Consumers In Asia Pacific'. Forrester has been tracking consumer online behavior in Asia Pacific for six years now. In 2011, we polled Asia Pacific consumers in two separate surveys to find out about their use of the Internet for media, entertainment, shopping, communications, and social computing.

This year's Asia Pacific data shows continuous growth in the amount of time consumers spend with online media, including widespread adoption of social activities, as well as growing importance of the mobile phone. For consumers in Asia Pacific, PCs at home and high-speed Internet connections are becoming the norm.

In metropolitan China and Japan, at least nine in 10 adults have access to a computer at home, and almost eight in 10 are already online. In metropolitan India, the numbers are much lower, with only 27% regularly going online. But India is a populous country, and there are currently around 100 million online users, which puts it in third place after China and the US.

Global Social Technographics Update 2011: US And EU Mature, Emerging Markets Show Lots Of Activity

Gina Sverdlov — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:15:00 +0000

Last month George Colony, CEO of Forrester, talked about a "Social Thunderstorm" at the LeWeb conference in Paris. He argued that social is running out of hours and running out of people. What does that mean? Well, the second one is easy: The vast majority of consumers around the world who have access to a computer use social media. And the first one? George goes on to say that Americans are spending more time on social media than volunteering, praying, talking on the phone, emailing, or even exercising.

With so many people spending so much time on social media, it is crucial for companies to understand how their customers use social media. We just released our newest report, Social Media Adoption In 2011, which reveals the latest trends.

The report illustrates how consumers are using social media by applying our Social Technographics® global classification system. The graphic below illustrates this framework. We classify consumers into seven groups based on online activities, and consumers can fall into several different groups. Only Inactives are an exclusive group.

In the six years that Forrester has been collecting Social Technographics data, a lot has changed in the world of social media. Social networking has morphed into a global phenomenon. Today, 86% of online US adults and 79% of European online adults engage with social media. And consumers in emerging markets are also on social media -- not just catching up. In fact, they lead the world in social media usage and engagement.

Market insights 2012 Soundtrack

Reineke Reitsma — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:00:41 +0000

I love this time of year. As a real nostalgic I enjoy all these 'best of 2011' lists and 'year in review' overviews and it feels there are more every year. In the past two weeks we also have been bombarded with opinions about the developments in the market insights industry in 2011, as well as what people expect to happen in 2012 (and beyond). We've seen Twitter 2011 reviews, crowd sourcing activities, expert views, and so on. And I read them all. However, I do this with my favorite end of year activity playing in the background: The Top2000. This is an annual five day event that counts down the 2,000 best records ever produced - as voted by 3 million Dutch adults.

The Data Digest: Who Adopts Tablets Next?

Reineke Reitsma — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:41:47 +0000

In the current time of digital disruption, market insights professionals need to know the market their organization plays in well enough to identify the "adjacent possible" but also to understand how receptive their customers are to new offerings. With that in mind, I've taken a fresh look at Forrester's Technographics® segmentation. This segmentation is built on three main components: motivation, income, and technology optimism/pessimism using a proprietary algorithm and is created in 1997 when we first began collecting our Technographics® data to help companies understand and predict changes in the consumer technology landscape. In 1999, Forrester published a book, called 'Now or Never', that covered how companies should use the model.

Recently I was wondering: does the segmentation still hold for current technologies like tablets and can it still help companies understand and predict technology behaviors? For this, I analyzed tablet uptake as well as buying intention of tablet from one of our European surveys by segment:

2012 Market Insights Professionals – Better … Stronger … Faster?

Richard Evensen — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:19:34 +0000

As the world starts discussing the intricacies of the Mayan calendar, Nostradamus' predictions and the potential appearance of "Planet X" in 2012, we thought we would get the conversation focused on something much more important … the future of Market Insights. No, there's no doomsday planned for our profession but, yes, there may be some cataclysmic events for some market insights professionals as they get hit by increasing demands from executives and stakeholders who are struggling to keep up with competitive disruption and fast-changing customer preferences.

Forrester will shortly publish the "Predictions 2012: What Will Happen In Market Research" report. In it, we'll detail major tectonic shifts which we've been monitoring in the industry and why we are reaching a tipping point where constancy is now riskier than change. Some factors contributing to this include:

The Data Digest: The Profile Of Digital Moms

Reineke Reitsma — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Since 2007, Forrester has been advising companies about how to use its POST-- people, objectives, strategy, technology -- methodology to develop social media strategies that help them engage with their audiences via social media. Since then, social media uptake has grown enormously, and brands now have a multitude of social platforms from which to choose. Before you decide which platforms to go with, do you actually know where your audience is in the social media world?

Even today, when social media usage is close to mainstream in the US, different target groups still show different behaviors. For example, when you want to target moms, you have to understand what makes them tick online.

Forrester's Technographics data shows that the majority (71%) of US female Internet users are Joiners and Spectators. They maintain their profiles on social networking sites and actively consume shared content online. This shows that it is important for brands to have a website, a blog, videos on YouTube, and a social network presence. It is also important for brands to update the information on their website or social network profile regularly and make it both informative and entertaining.

The Challenges Of Running Global Research Projects In Today’s Digital World

Reineke Reitsma — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:55:30 +0000

As some of you know, I really have a thing for doing research in multiple countries. I've been working in market research for two decades now and have always conducted international research projects -- and experienced all the challenges that come with them. But I believe that conducting international research is even more challenging now than it was 20 years ago when I started my research career.

I see three key challenges that market researchers must deal with when doing multicountry projects:

1) How to collect globally comparable data. As soon as the surveyed cultures are so different that you need to adapt research methodologies and localize questionnaires, you've lost the chance for global comparisons. How do you walk that fine line between globalization and localization?

2) How to put this data into a local context. It's really hard to understand the real drivers of behavior in different regions. Just looking at the results and comparing them with those of other countries might result in the wrong conclusions.

3) How to distribute and communicate these results back. Collecting information is one thing, but communicating it back to the local organizations and having them act on it is quite another. Will your local market insights teams use, share, and implement the data that you've collected globally?

The Data Digest: Black Friday - Understanding The Purchase Path Of Online Holiday Shoppers

Reineke Reitsma — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:37:16 +0000

Successfully reaching online shoppers during the critical holiday season is crucial to the Q4 success of eCommerce businesses. Forrester recently published its "US Online Holiday Retail Forecast, 2011"; it predicts strong growth despite the current economy. My colleague Sucharita Mulpuru shared in her blog that November and December alone are expected to pull in nearly $60 billion in online revenues in the US, a 15% increase over 2010 and about one-third of the overall volume of online sales for the year.

But what are the drivers for purchasing? How do consumers discover a good deal? Forrester collaborated earlier this year with the eCommerce company GSI Commerce to answer these and other questions and to create a picture of online buyers' purchase journey in various categories during key periods of the Q4 2010 holiday season across 15 eCommerce sites.

We found in this study that search and email were the most effective tactics in driving sales, and shoppers were heavily influenced by retailers' marketing efforts during key dates such as Cyber Monday and the Thanksgiving weekend. But in many cases, it's a combination of marketing tactics that makes people buy: More than half of US consumers purchasing products online in the soft goods category experienced two or more marketing touchpoints prior to the completion of their transaction.*

Mobile Research Needs Nonmobile Insights

Gina Sverdlov — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:27:28 +0000

With mobile usage becoming increasingly widespread and companies testing the water with mobile strategies, market insights professionals need to uncover consumers' mobile behavior today and tomorrow. But with the pace of mobile innovation moving so rapidly, how can you keep up with all of the things that people are doing with their mobile phones?

In the next three years, would you expect people to use their mobile phones as wallets? What about as electronic passports? What about for space exploration? While that seems like a long shot, a New York state resident did just that -- attaching an iPhone to a weather balloon, videoing the journey, and using its GPS feature to map its voyage (see link for the footage).

With this kind of innovation, how can market researchers predict future consumer mobile behaviors? Would we have predicted mobile space exploration (which is already possible today)? Probably not, if we had relied solely on current mobile behaviors to understand future mobile opportunities. In a recent speech at Forrester's Marketing & Strategy Forum EMEA in London, I shared how mobile segmentation, as it currently stands in many organizations, consists of grouping current mobile behaviors like Internet use, the amount of texting versus talking, gaming, and so on. But market researchers can no longer afford to limit mobile research to mobile behaviors.

The Data Digest: Ads That American Youth Trust The Most — And The Least

Reineke Reitsma — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:51:31 +0000

Although data nowadays shows that young consumers in particular are moving away from traditional media in their daily media consumption, our Forrester data also shows that traditional media are still powerful means for advertising/promotion. In Roxana Strohmenger's recent report, "Young Hispanics Lead In Mobile Activity But Don't Trust Mobile Ads Very Much," she discovers that the two top channels are TV and magazines; American youth trust them twice as much as other online or mobile channels, and ads on mobile phone are being trusted the least. No wonder TV spending continues to top other forms of media in America and continues to grow, according to Nielsen; even search engine giant Google is getting into the TV advertising business by offering unique targeting and measurement capabilities.

Market Insights

If Only We Had Done X (Lessons In Project Management)

Categories:

The Data Digest: Profiling Digital Natives

Categories:

Bringing Qualitative Research Expertise To Forrester’s Market Insights Team

Categories:

The Data Digest: Consumers' Attitude Towards Online Privacy And Security

Categories:

Hello Mobile Market Research. Where Have You Been? What Took You So Long?

Categories:

The Data Digest: Understanding The Changing Needs Of Online Consumers In Asia Pacific

Categories:

Global Social Technographics Update 2011: US And EU Mature, Emerging Markets Show Lots Of Activity

Categories:

Market insights 2012 Soundtrack

Categories:

The Data Digest: Who Adopts Tablets Next?

Categories:

2012 Market Insights Professionals – Better … Stronger … Faster?

Categories:

The Data Digest: The Profile Of Digital Moms

Categories:

The Challenges Of Running Global Research Projects In Today’s Digital World

Categories:

The Data Digest: Black Friday - Understanding The Purchase Path Of Online Holiday Shoppers

Categories:

Mobile Research Needs Nonmobile Insights

Categories:

The Data Digest: Ads That American Youth Trust The Most — And The Least

Categories: