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Research News Roundup: Dreams, Teens, Social Media, Perils & Promise

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News gathered from around the researchosphere this past week: Communispace and Ogilvy have researched the changing American dream, Carol Philips has blogged about the global teen, and Chadwick Martin Bailey and iResponse have studied the social media spleen (er, the effect of Facebook fan membership on WOM and buying patterns). Businessweek warns of the perils of market research, and Marketing Magazine says it's never held richer promise.

And now our top stories.

Communispace and Ogilvy have just published a new study of American consumers called 'Eyes Wide Open, Wallets Half Shut':

Among the study's key findings is that "having it all" is an unrealistic goal with 75% of those surveyed saying they would rather get out of the rat race than climb the corporate ladder - and instead, 76% said they would rather spend more time with family than make more money. Moreover, Americans are showing disenchantment with the pursuit of money with 75% again saying they would trade job security over a job that offered an opportunity for raises.

"The most surprising thing about our study was how much consumers were saying what they would NOT do for money, even when money worries are high on the list," explained Graceann Bennett, Managing Partner and Director of Strategic Planning at Ogilvy & Mather Chicago. "Prioritizing your life based on money is seen as a sure way to be disappointed..."

In fact, the recession has revealed important new consumer priorities with quality of life and peace of mind at the top and a focus on living life in a more sustainable way both from an environmental and financial point of view

Carol Phillips, in her blog post Where Teens Hang Out Digitally, sums up a wide range of research into the secret life of the global teenager. Teens multitask and forego sleep to cram in media consumption (20 hours a day when you double- and triple-count hours spent multitasking). Carol quantifies how teens text more than they talk and skip Twitter but use Facebook. What Outlook is to the businessperson's life, Facebook is to the teenager's life: a central site for messaging, calendar and contacts.

Speaking of Facebook, a Response magazine article, Facebook and Twitter Makes Consumers More Likely To Buy, Recommend, discussed recent research by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies:

Consumers who are Facebook fans and Twitter followers of a brand are more likely to recommend and buy those brands then before they were fans and followers....60 percent of Facebook fans and 79 percent of Twitter followers are more likely to recommend those brands. It also revealed that 51 percent of Facebook fans and 67 percent of Twitter followers are more likely to buy the brands they follow.

"While social media is not the silver bullet that some pundits claim it to be, it is an extremely important and relatively low cost touch point that has a direct impact on sales and positive word of mouth," says Josh Mendelsohn, vice president at Chadwick Martin Bailey.

In other news, The Perils of Market Research, a Businessweek article by Steve McKee, offers these five pitfalls to be aware of:

1. There are things you can measure and things you can't. Don't mix them up.
2. Just because you can't measure it doesn't mean it's not real.
3. The best research is the real world.
4. People lie.
5. If you blindly follow the research, you'll lose. 

From perils to promise, where Marketing Magazine provides a comprehensive but succinct look at the "endless insight opportunities" that await MR in Tell Me About It:

Market research is attempting to change from an interrogative discipline into one that is more conversational. Instead of asking questions that prove what they already know, canny marketers and their research partners are simply opening their ears to listen to what people are saying.

'Two changes have come to a head at the same time,' says Ray Poynter, managing director of The Future Place. 'The first - a slow-burning one - is that marketers, NPD, innovators, and even sales have been realising that the results of too much market research are slow, expensive, and lacking in the sort of insight that would enable them to make a real difference.

'The second change is that the conversations between customers have shifted from being ephemeral to being indelibly inscribed on the web.'

And that's the way it is, March 20, 2010.