10 answers to contemporary market research questions

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Anke Moerdyck

A team of leading market researchers from around the world have come together with ESOMAR to provide market researchers, especially young researchers or researchers new to a topic, with a quick overview of the basics of market research. The book aims to enable new researchers to orientate themselves, and avoid walking into too many of the traps that the changing world of market research can create. In market research, there are some key concepts, ideas, and pieces of knowledge that even the newest researcher (or a researcher new to a topic) should have at their fingertips.Read more

Mobility study: why do people live abroad?

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Katia Pallini

The presence of European and international institutions makes Brussels one of the most important decision making centers in the world. This development has had a major impact on the demographic movement towards this European city. And this trend is not only visible in Brussels and among political expats, but can be seen as a global trend across all age categories. A research report from the European Union showed that since the launch of the Erasmus exchange program in 1987, 3 million students spend time studying abroad, with an 8.5% increase between 2010 and 2011.Read more

Doing more with less: the Romanian perspective

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Annelies Verhaeghe

As published on ESOMAR’s RW Connect on March 13, 2013. During the last few weeks I carried out a small investigation into the state of the Romanian market research industry. One of the biggest challenges for the market research industry in Romania today is cost cutting on the client side. Alina Serbanica, Vice President of Ipsos testifies, “market research budgets are continuously reduced by clients – including by international companies. Nowadays, some sectors cannot afford to invest more in market research as they have been significantly impacted by the economic crisis (e.g. automotive or constructions sectors). However, despite the economic difficulties, all the sectors adapt their market research budgets, challenging market research agencies to revamp the research services to fit into the budget limitations clients have.”Read more

Research in transition

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Annelies Verhaeghe

As published on ESOMAR’s RW Connect on March 4, 2013. In a couple of weeks, the second edition of ESOMAR’s Central and Eastern European Research Forum is taking place in Prague. Although I am not originally from the CEE region, over the last year, I have spent a lot of time in Romania. Romania is, like many countries in this region, in full transition. However, I was curious if changes are also taking place in our industry. To find out, I talked to industry representatives from both client, supplier as agency side.Read more

Our journey to the revival of surveys

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Katia Pallini

In line with what Kristof De Wulf said in a previous blogpost, in which he quoted Darwin ‘It is not the smartest of the species that will survive, but the ones most adaptive to change’, we are starting 2013 with our embracement to change. Methods like Research Communities (MROCs) support the continuous dialogue with consumers, are shaping the bigger picture and bring more context to marketing questions. Our mission: bring the consumer to your boardroom.Read more

What would it mean for research if our participants’ hardware could share senses?

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Niels Schillewaert

As published on Greenbook on Tuesday January 29, 2013. I often reflect on issues like ‘what if we could do…’ to spark my imagination and think about the future of our business. Many times I end up in science fiction-like scenes of ‘transporting’ and ‘de/rematerializing’, ‘traveling in time’, becoming ‘invisible’. Often nothing with real use so far, I have to admit. Until I recently read IBM’s 5 in 5 on cognitive computing. It literally and figuratively adds a lot of sense(s) to our profession.Read more

ESOMAR CEE Research Forum 2013

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Natalie Mas

After the successful launch of the CEE Research Forum in Krakow in 2012, ESOMAR will return to the Central and Eastern European region this year to host the second edition (this year in Prague on 17 and 18 March). Our Head of Research Innovation & Division Manager of our Romanian office Annelies Verhaeghe is one of the program committee members of this year’s ESOMAR CEE Research Forum 2013. Next to that our ForwaR&D lab colleagues Tom De Ruyck and Anouk Willems were selected to host a workshop on MROCs the second day of the event (18 March).Read more

Think mobile

Posted on December 4, 2012

With the IAB Think Mobile Congress taking place, Google’s Belgian offices were pretty crowded on November 27. Next to Google’s own mobile experts, a few Belgian experts on the subject were sharing trends, strategies and interesting cases. Although everybody remembers services like WAP, nobody will remember actually using them. Read more

Thinking about emotions

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Annelies Verhaeghe

Do you remember your last vacation? You felt so happy, it was great… but do you also remember the rain that made you stay in the hotel for a full day, your stomach that did not react properly on the local food or the noisy neighbours that kept you awake at night? This story clearly illustrates one of the difficulties we are facing today when measuring emotions in research. Consumers post-rationalize their own behavior. But even worse, they think less than they think.
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Contextual surveys: Keeping surveys alive, bringing respondents to life

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Bas de Luij

Last month I had the honor to take the ‘stage’ at the NewMRwebinar “Advances in quant research”. In my presentation I took the opportunity to share our ideas on contextual surveys, a new survey approach we’ve been developing the last couple of months. In this blogpost I’ll give you on overview of this approach, which is more task-based, with bite-size questions, has illustrative co-creational elements and basically takes surveys into the asynchronous mode.
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