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New Insights from Old Lessons: Research Roundup

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In the #MRX community this week, 275 participants made 794 posts, sharing 242 unique links. Here are the links that were most frequently shared:

1. 2010 Social Media in Research Report (publicized by Research magazine, shared by Michelle Finzel and many others):
   “Face and the London Co-creation Hub are currently conducting a study on how the research industry is using social media. The following survey is the first step towards a comprehensive annual study titled Social Media in Research. We'd love you to take part in it, it will only take you 3 minutes!”
2. Volkswagen's insight boss on 'inadequate' research (Research magazine):
   “Steve Gatt, economic and insight manager at Volkswagen Group, tells us why he believes most of the research he sees is ‘not up to scratch’.” [And check out Ray Poynter’s response, Poor client service in market research, whose fault?]
3. A Brief and Biased History Of Insight by Tom Ewing:
   “Insight came into fashion because it chimed with two industry trends - a shift away from valorising data to valorising analysis, and a shift away from the comprehensive to the summary. Insight was the synthesis of both - a diamond-bright crystallisation of a data set into a single breakthrough point. It belonged in the same world as Blink and the Elevator Pitch - more, it put research into that world. It was sexy and fast and devastating.” [And don’t miss his own follow up, Useful Abstractions.]
    
4. Crystal Balls or Navel Gazing? by Neil Gains (shared by Ray Poynter):
   “It can seem daunting to keep up with developments in neuroscience and psychology, but the effort is worth it.  Much of research (qualitative and quantitative) continues to follow outdated 50 year old models of behaviour.  Our understanding of decision making has moved on, but survey questions have not.”
5. Has Social Media Research Shown Market Researchers a Different Recession in Our Industry? by Ben Smithee:
   “What do we do to grow and encourage trust with everyone regarding the quality of work our industry represents?  What do we do to position ourselves as the keystone to successful marketing and advertising, the building blocks for new product development and the key player in providing value to our clients?”
6. New Coke – TARSK 3 (Things all researchers should know) by Ray Poynter:
   “Like all great examples, nearly all the facts in this story are disputed. In the mid-1980s Coca-Cola was losing ground in image and advertising terms to Pepsi, especially in the US….” [And see my take on this: Coke, New Coke & the Angry Focus Group.]
7. Social networks getting more of Americans' time online by Sam Diaz for CNET (shared by Cathy Harrison):
   “Americans are changing their Internet usage habits and, increasingly, they're spending a bulk of their time on social networks such as Facebook. Social networks led the pack last year with 15.8 percent of our online time spent there. But that figure has grown 43 percent in a year, now up to 22.7 percent of our time. So what did we dump? Well, e-mail and instant messaging took the biggest hits, down 28 percent and 15 percent, respectively.”
8. Consider the source: Thoughts on sampling & weighting in social media research [PDF, pg. 43] by Annie Pettit:
   “Why do we throw the concept of sampling and weighting out the window when we think about social media research? Sampling is a mainstay of nearly all marketing … It is not feasible to scour the entire Internet every single day searching for every last mention of every brand. Effective sampling for social media research, therefore, entails gathering sufficient data from sufficient sources such that the sample of results gathered can be generalized to a wider population.”
9. The Evolution from Business Intelligence to Personal Intelligence, by Tom H.C. Anderson, shared by Seth Grimes:
   “More companies out there are offering ‘intelligence’ services not just to other companies, but now even to individuals. I’m using the definition of intelligence as in Business Intelligence (BI) somewhat broadly now: new companies that will help individuals with all kinds of analysis and intelligence, I’ll call it ‘PI’ (for Personal intelligence). These services range from the more expected, such as better managing cash flow to the more unusual and specific, such as analyzing your personal Netflix account history in order to calculate and improve your actual ROI of the service.”
10. Content-rich sites, not social networks, are the hot ticket for brands marketing to women:
    “The study found that the anonymity that content channels offer can lead to deeper emotional connections for women.  Women said these sites offer users access to like-minded women and solutions to problems without the risk of being judged by people they know in real life.”

Thanks to everyone who shared these links on the #MRX community!