Customer Trend Log

Future of Marketing Research

Change is the only constant, and who knows it better than us.

Since internet and mobile is changing every industry so I decided to have a look at the impact of these two game-changing factors on MR and summed up my thoughts in the attached presentation.

Here is a summary of what I think will happen in Marketing research:-

1. Traditional MR will be replaced by Social Media Listening and Integrated data solutions

2. Revenues of marketing research will mostly come from emerging economies and hence more understanding of local languages and cultures will be required to interpret data meaningfully

3. Integrated data mining tools that will integrate social media data, sales data/ retail data and with customer profile will be used in predictive models to forecast behaviors and trends.

4. Impact of each data based decision will be assessed through financial value i.e. cost of analysis and revenue generated

5. A Research manager will be required to understand the complete value chain of client and how the data is flowing in the value chain. Plus, he will be required to understand strategic planning, forecasting models, data integration methodologies

Additional Readings

Public Sector Insight: Public Engagement in Public Sector

Recently Community engagement has reached an appraisable level of interest across public sector globally. There could be many reasons for this including success of Obama’s election campaign, strong conviction of USA, UK & Australian government towards public engagement, UN millennium development goals and technological advanced population.

I have tried to compile the learning’s from across the globe in this document (public engagement in public services), I hope you will find it useful.

I personally believe in identifying the challenges first because that stimulates the thinking as to how these challenges can be addressed. Below is an extract from the document, it highlights the key challenges

Challenges:

A comprehensive list associated with community engagement is available at the website of Queensland Government (Australia); following are some risks which I foresee in community engagement

• A broad target segments: Unlike private sector Government reaches out to everyone equally. Now this involves lower & higher SECs, hard to reach audiences, opinion leaders and followers, literates and illiterates, segments with vested interests etc. This together broadens the scope of community engagement for public services and makes it complicated to ensure unbiased results
• Accountability, information access and federal government:-  Unlike private sectors in public sector – community and citizens have all the rights reserved to access the information they shared at all levels. But it is very difficult from Governments’ perspective to share information at all levels, especially in the absence of web 2.0 technologies. Governments are also centralized and decisions take a lot of time before implementation. This results in distrust of communities on the Governments and consequently people feel that their input is not being valued.
• Generic community management issues:- Addressing the destructive impact of ‘bad participation’, where negative attitudes to community involvement lead to poor engagement practices, causing increased hostility, decreased trust and poor experience and outcomes not only for communities, but also for officials and politicians, thus further reinforcing negative attitudes and behavior. Recognizing the catch-22 faced by residents who take on responsibilities as community leaders, but find their legitimacy challenged precisely because they ‘stand out’ – becoming labeled as ‘unrepresentative usual suspects’.
• Inconsistent vocabulary: - The term ‘community participation’ is understood and applied differently by different statutory bodies, and by different officers within those statutory bodies. These variations can make it hard for different bodies to work in partnership with each other and with communities.
• Lack of available statistics on how community engagement helped Governments gain popularity, enhanced their positive image and got re-elected also acts as a barrier from government officials view point
• Managing expectations: – increased community engagement results into high level of expectations. So it at times become a catch 22 whereby increasing satisfaction through involvement Governments can lead to dissatisfaction by inconsistent policy or by not incorporating the community inputs
• Lack of time and interest: – An audit in Canada found that 55% people don’t want to be involved in community engagement because of lack of time, feeling of no influence over decision making etc.

IMPLICATIONS to United Arab Emirates

• In a tax-free environment, the first question which Government as a service provider asks is the depth of community engagement. Why and to what level people should be engaged? On top of tax-free environment, high turnover rate of expats (which constitutes the major part of the population) complicates service delivery, satisfaction levels and result oriented community engagement
• A unique mix of expats from different parts of the world results into different level of satisfaction and expectations across different segments. It becomes increasingly difficult to understand the cultural, lingual differences in involvement and product delivery.
• UAE has very high penetration of mobile phones and internet; this actually paves a way for technologically advanced means of sustainable community engagement.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Advertising sector: Future of Advertising and impact of technology – Part 3

Future is uncertain, unseen and for industry like advertising and marketing fairly challenging. Advertising is going through interesting times, social media hype has been blown out of proportion, and some have started to celebrate the death of TV and 30 second commercials. As per my understanding of communication industry, following is my perspective about advertising’s future

• New age advertising will be very much like old-age advertising – The soul of advertising and communication has always, been and will always be in IDEA. The means of communication will keep on changing. It is the power of a relevant idea that drives marketing and communication. and more empowered generation of consumers will demand more relevance (in terms of everything from product to communication).
• To increase revenue (product usage) there are only two ways either we should increase the uses or the users. Advertising industry will expand also like this either we will tap into the untapped i.e. new markets and/or new media.

Following is my understanding about the future of communication industry, hope you will find it useful

Link to previous mails about Future of advertising part two & part one

Additional readings:

• Media Planning by Numbers by Millward brown: It thoroughly discusses optimal media plan
• Very good insights shared by Arnab Sengupta (from india) on future of advertising
• Future of PR by Marketing Profs
• Outlook for 2010 by ACNielsen

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Advertising sector: Future of Advertising & impact of technology – Part 2

In the next decade, agencies and holding companies will spend less time fitting into the traditional mold of an ad agency and more time focusing on consumer data and new media. Martin Sorrell – WPP’s chief

Our strategy is summed up in one sentence: new markets, new media, and consumer insight,” Sorrell said in recent interviews

Why Martin Sorrell believes traditional advertising will not be a focal point in coming years is primarily because of the emergence and popularity of measurable new media.

If I go through my blog previous entry on future of advertising and impact of technology  and also the tag cloud of Martin Sorrell’s interview. Following are the key take outs

• Measurable = Quantifiable
• Interactive = Involve-able

Previously, brand managers used to base their decisions on Gut, Experience and limited insights. Tomorrow, it will be based on numbers, pilot tests and insights generated through new media. This in itself opens up the new job description for the brand managers and also a very different operational model for agencies.

I am personally excited about the interesting times that are coming our way, my suggestion polish up your data visualization and computation skill, understand how to crunch the numbers and comprehend insights that generate quick (and measurable) results. Gear up for a vocal target segment (prepare to manage negative feedback) and learn to enjoy the change (as change will be far more frequent than it ever was).

Do you want to add to it? Please feel free to voice your comments, I intend to compile all the comments from Industry experts across the globe. To get a better picture of the changing industry landscape.

Implication for UAE

• UAE’s major ad-expenditure is on real estate and print media. This trend in a nutshell asks for more and more interaction, in-person consultation and solid information dissemination. Print, online and any other interactive media fits into that need-gap. Now if real-estate Ad-spend has to grow (which is very much doubted on the account of recession) Business Consumers’ insight will definitely take the lead in the region. Advertising will be very personalised, informative and highly interactive on that front.

• Thinking about FMCGs: Brand Managers have been taking it very easy,  as with the consumption savvy audience everything was selling with or without the brand recall. (Personally speaking I am still unable to remember the brand name of my grocery items, but that’s just a personal observation). Now with more and more tech savvy mothers; the need for conversation has increased. It implies they need more and more of advice from brand (not just a sales pitch). My advice, associate with them on broader consumer insight i.e. love, affection, etc not just on sales level. Few examples could be Ivillage, W-network, Omid-e-Mehr. And before you associate with them learn about them.

• Consumer insight wings: bye –bye the age of mindless numbers, welcome the age of numbers turning into practical solutions. And those who will be able to do better than others will climb corporate ladders faster. Note: my advice, after spending in years in MR I would like to mention that consumer insight doesn’t necessarily come from data sets and questionnaires. It comes from observation as well, these insights are embedded in every human interaction.  This is a new career direction which will emerge in the region – Consumer Insight & Innovation (people who can understand the end-user and quickly suggest innovative solutions)

Enjoy the age of conversation and involvement. – Ayesha

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Email to a friend

Advertising Sector: Success elements for Social Media Companies in UAE

One question that I was asking myself for quite some time is what is I want to launch an internet concern, a social media company or something on the digital revolution lines in UAE. What will help me succeed? I am trying to answer that question in this blog entry, hope you will find it useful.

Question 1 – Why consider launching a digital company in UAE

UAE has the purchase potential: Per capita income is $54,430 , E-commerce in UAE to hit $36bn by 2010 this is bigger than the whole economy of Lebanon.Credit cards are everywhere so online purchase is not an issue and probably this is why the online retail sphere in UAE is constantly growing

UAE is ready for digital revolution: it is the top ranking Arab state in terms of e-readiness, 3 out of 5 people in UAE have internet access. UAE is a world leader in terms of mobile lines per person, with almost 2 phones lines per person. (There were 1.5 million 3G handsets in UAE in 2008)

For more more statistics on UAE internet penetration  (previous blog entry) 

Now let us see what the key consumer-desires in UAE are and how can we leverage those: -

Here is a detailed presentation, FYR.

• Recognition: UAE and people in UAE have an uncontrollable urge to be recognized. Capitalize that.
  • Innovate : Make UAE the platform for something new (it will gain traction, usage, build community)
  • Be the First 1 in some respect: Example UAE the first one to launch Windows 7

• Identity, Personality and Cultural Uniqueness: From Government to a common Emirati, everyone is keen to maintain the unique Emirati identity
  • Maintain the Identity : Learn from leading Arab online communities maktoob , travian , UAE women network or follow the guidelines chalked out for brand Abu-Dhabi
  • Language: Arabic. The journey of culture, identity and heritage begins from there. (plus, language will help you fit-in well with Arabic speakers)
  • Segmentation: Create activity groups of and for Emiratis. Provide Emiratis some form of exclusivity 

• Empower Youth: Government is investing a lot in UAEs youth and is promoting a culture that will enable their Youth to lead from the front in today’s competitive world
  • Enable: Be an enabler; either by connecting, providing knowledge, providing ideas, facilitating education. Enlighten / connect / update / Equip / provide voice etc
  • Encourage: Occasionally and/or regularly encourage offline and online activities through your social media that helps youngsters at UAE to be heard at international level

• UAE is a business hub. 
  • Help the entrepreneurs interact, exchange knowledge, and use it as a platform to revolutionize their business. Better yet, promote SMEs

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Consumer Trends – UAE digital media statistics

I am as of now conducting an experiment i.e. analyzing the popular brands of UAE in the light of Social media. And when I started working on that I stumbled upon some interesting facts about UAE internet landscape.

Following are the facts that you should know about UAE digital landscape

1. UAE is the top ranking Arab state in terms of e-readiness
2. UAEs Per capita income is $54,430 in year 2008
3. In total people from 208 nationalities are living in UAE
4. Population of the UAE in 2009 stands at 6,000,0000 of which 20.1 per cent were Emiratis according to 2005 census
5. 3 out of 5 people in UAE  have an internet access
6. More than 40% of UAE internet users are female, that implies almost all women in UAE have internet access
7. E-commerce in UAE to hit $36bn by 2010 This is bigger than the whole economy of Lebanon
8. 1 in every 6 resident of UAE has a facebook account, in total there are 840,000 Facebook users in UAE
9. Youtube is the third most visited website in UAE after Google and Yahoo
10. Some of the top community sites of UAE in order of popularity are Facebook, Maktoob, Blogger, Friendster, UAE women network
11. There are only 5000 twitterers in UAE, growing at 300% per quarter. This means by the end of 2010 we will have 1,200,000 twitterers
12. UAE is a world leader in terms of mobile lines per person, with almost 2 phones lines per person
13. There were 1.5 million 3G handsets in UAE in 2008
14. 78% of mobile users in UAE use some form of mobile music service
15. The average lifespan of a mobile handset in the UAE is 2 years, compared with a global average of three years
16. UAE is top Arab state in the web-measure index which assesses the extent to which governments are providing e-government policies, applications and tools, and the 12th in the world.

Here is the fact-sheet in presentation format

Here is the compilation in basic video format (help me make an interesting video, my skills on this front are very basic)

What does this mean?

Usually, in this section of my article I try to answer the questions from marketing, public sector and agency perspective. But today I am going to leave you with questions instead of my opinions

–      Is your organization, your employees, your backup system ready for e-savvy and mobile addicted audience?

–      Are you as a marketer ready for active listening?

–      Have you developed a strategy to cope with the technology challenge that is on our way?

Enjoy the Change – Ayesha

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine