Interesting Trends in Market Research (As off 15 May 2013)

I just saw an interesting article 

20 Tweetable Stats on the State of Market Research

Posted by Isaiah Adams on Wed, May 15, 2013

http://blog.optimizationgroup.com/bid/283647/20-Tweetable-Stats-on-the-State-of-Market-Research?utm_campaign=Popular+Articles&utm_source=blog&

Among them, I found the following figures most interesting:

Social Media Research

50% of research suppliers have been offering social media monitoring services for less than 2 years 

73% of research suppliers provide social media monitoring or analysis 

but

44% of suppliers are skeptical that social media monitoring works 

Observing the above figures, it implies that around 23% of the research suppliers have more than 2 years experience in social media monitoring services. 

On the other hand, there are around 27% of research suppliers who still have not gotten into the game yet. This is perhaps due to the skepticism among the 44%, which also leads to another question: suppose the research suppliers who did not gotten into the game made up a portion of the skeptics, where did the 13% end up?

I would have presumed it to be the profit motive driving these 13%, since the social media research market seems poised to grow by the figures implied below. 

64% of companies had slight to strong growth in social media research in 2012 

45% of companies plan to use online communities in the near future 

Since social media is the main medium/art through which online communities express and share information, there is indeed value to social media research. Ironically, this is a situation where the customers (companies) seem to believe more in the product (social media research) than the producers (research suppliers).

Traditional Research

60% of companies use focus groups as their primary qualitative research method 

78% of companies use online surveys as their quantitative research method of choice 

35% of companies saw an increase in data mining in 2012 

As for the above, enough is said. However I'm quite curious: what are other qualitative and quantitative research methods not mentioned above? Knowing the issues associated with online surveys such as relatively weak response rates, or distortion of monetary incentives which may affect the accuracy of data, what are other effective quantitative methods that can be used? I'll have to do my own research to find out about it.

Mobile Survey

42% of companies plan to use mobile surveys in the near future 

30% of clients/suppliers would focus on mobile capabilities if they started a new research company today 

Mobile surveys are infact closely connected to online surveys and gamification. In recent years, there have been a cultural shift, largely due to the popularity of Android and iPhone. Mobile phones are no longer associated with merely traditional uses such as sms and phone calls. Instead mobile phones are now used to search for information, maintain networks and relationships, report personal adventures and affairs (tweets, instagram, phewtick, etc), gaming and multimedia. 

The cool thing is that mobile surveys can be gamified to capture attention of mobile users; non-monetary rewards such as unique event merchandise, rankings, special achievements and gaming currency could be used to gather data, sometimes in a subtle manner (using analytics). Another possibility is that instead of creating a traditional listed survey with 8 questions, mini surveys of 1 to 3 questions can be flashed periodically over the course of the user experience (eg. one random question pops up every time the user completes certain phases of an addictive mobile game). These mode of data collection is poised to overtake traditional online surveys.

Others

41% of companies believe that research gamification is the biggest hurdle to overcome in 2012 

52% of research buyers use webinars to stay abreast on new research trends