With Leading Edge Marketing Research now published and my piece of the book in print, I now want to share two big ideas that came to me months after I had already submitted my manuscript – way too late to be added to the book. Here they are: Big Idea #1: Beyond the Database I [...]

In thinking about market research, I have posited that the industry will go through several evolutionary phases. These are: Asking Epoch Observational Epoch Co-Creative Epoch Anticipatory Epoch At present, MR is trying to move out of the Asking Epoch and into the Observational Epoch. But, its the co-creative evolutionary stage I want to focus on [...]

Many Future of Insight readers are likely to have read this recent article in AFP regarding Russian Internet tycoon Yury Milner’s prediction that: “I think that in 10 years if you ask a question on a social network and you get an answer you will not know if a computer or a person has answered [...]

I just arrived here at the San Diego Bayfront Hilton in anticipation of The Market Research Event 2010. On the flight from Washington I had some time to think and finish reading Rachel Botsman’s new book on “the rise of collaborative consumption.” Botsman paints a sweeping landscape of consumers cooperating in their purchase and use [...]

One of the fascinating things about examining the futures of almost any domain is that weak and strong signals can typically be found for them today. Because of this, those of us who are scanning the horizon tend to compress our view of future time and expect trends we see today to blossom fully (and [...]

Have any of the following given you pause and made you think: 1. Shared bicycle services or short term home-apartment rental sites or freecycling 2. The viral spread of marketing messages via social media 3. The idea of social currency based on reputation (eg “Whuffie”) They have something in common. They all are aspects of [...]

We’re hearing the word “foresight” quite a bit today here at the ARF’s Industry Leader Forum. As I’ve noted in a previous post, I think the word is being used in a general way to mean “thinking ahead of the curve” and not in the specific sense used by professionals working in “strategic foresight.” I [...]

Consumer privacy is a SIGNIFICANT challenge to many industry futures. I’ve written about this previously. Today at ARF Susan Whiting with Nielsen surfaced “privacy” as a core challenge to the industry. She’s right. Given the recent stories regarding privacy and web “scraping”, I think we’re very close to the boiling point on this issue. If [...]

We hear a lot these days in MR circles about research transitioning from “questioning” to “listening” to “observing.” Although we will always need to ask consumers questions, the trend toward “passive research” is fairly obvious. But, what about gaming? Could gaming enter into the MR toolbox in a serious way? I think so. Gaming has [...]

In my analysis of plausible market research futures, one that I come back to frequently is what I call the “epidemiology future.” By this I mean the application of memetics to marketing campaigns utilizing research and testing techniques. Memetics is the application of the viral analogy to the world of ideas. The idea is the [...]