Another day, another bad news week for digital… well from a reputational point of view that is.

At the MR Summit 2017, senior leaders from Orange, Just Eat and Worldpay discussed the advantages of insight platforms, the benefits and challenges of bringing work in-house and the value that research agencies deliver.

Fashion, in different guises, has been around for thousands of years. Each era has been defined by a specific style or shape. Thankfully we’ve moved on from whale-bone corsets and top hats, but nevertheless, fashion is in a constant state of flux.

I always enjoy hearing from entrepreneurs who have built successful businesses, especially when they tell stories that I knew little about beforehand.

It was back in 2014 that Steve Cannon, CEO of Mercedes Benz USA stated ‘Customerexperience is the new marketing.” But what has really changed since that hemade that infamous statement and has the paradigm shift mooted by Cannon reallycome to fruition?

What if I offered you the chance to listen to a room full of your competitors’ customers as they gave their opinions on everything related to them – from what they like and dislike about their products, to why they chose a competitor over you?

Let’s first look back to 2015 to see where it all started. Lidl – the top-of-mind discount retailer – decided to take on a new venture and develop its business by offering new product ranges centered around fashion and beauty.

Despite the introduction of all sorts of new technology, a myriad of new channels and a host of self-service options, when things go wrong, get complicated or become difficult for customers most of them will want to pick up the phone and talk to another human being.

Data transparency, walled gardens, GDPR: there are no shortages of challenges when it comes to the application of data to ad measurement and media planning processes at the moment. 

It’s recommending our next TV binge-watch, suggesting the best driving routes and even meddling in elections, but is Artificial Intelligence about to revolutionise Market Research?

Previous uncertain times are no indication of how consumer behaviour will change in the next few years. 

The phrase ‘Customer experience’ often tends to get mentioned internally when things get spiky in business, such as when customer complaints arise during the middle or towards the end of the customer journey.

Kate Slater, Research Director at DJS Research explores the  role of automation in data analysis and how, technology and innovation helps  researchers to deliver value for money through insight and strategy, instead of  producing tables and charts, ‘just in case’.   

Data is getting big right? We all know that by now. We've got the message. It's getting so big that it's bursting at the corporate seams, bubbling up from the research, insight and analytics floor in to the boardroom

Whilst always a dynamic and exciting category retail has recently become even more so, as brands seek to seamlessly join their digital and non-digital offers. The ultimate aim is to present customers with a slick and enjoyable experience, minimising the opportunities for customers to disengage and maximising share of wallet.

Africa simply doesn’t have the research capabilities or the infrastructure that you can easily access in established European, US and Asian markets. Across the African continent,personal relationships and face-to-face presence are vitally important to help ensure quality data collection and deliver quality information. 

You might be making mistakes on the margin of error, but I believe the speed of which you get data and make decisions is more important than accuracy of the answer you get

The distinction between short-term and long-term advertising has been well documented. Many analysts agree that both types of communication have an important role to play but, it’s not easy to determine the best time and place for each.  

Insight communication has an increasingly important role in the research process and in the business world in general. It is no longer acceptable for the responsibilities of a research agency to stop at the debrief, more often than not, that is when the real work starts. 

Consumer neuroscience has emerged as an innovative field in the crowded space of research methods, as a growing number of brands seek to prove their advertising budget are delivering value for money. 

Market researchers are anxiously looking over their shoulders at data scientists. Qualitative practitioners are hotly disputing the value of neuroscience. Media buyers and programmatic algorithms are competing for budgets. Econometricians are trying to elbow planners aside.