Eye tracking is a white hot area of interest in market research and Tobii is the technological leader in this space. Barbara Barclay, General Manager at Tobii, was kind enough to give Future of Insight an in-depth interview. Robert Moran: First, tell us a little bit about Tobii. Barbara Barclay: Tobii Technology is the global [...]

In the research world brand and corporate reputation have lived parallel lives. Quarterly brand trackers are commonplace and a key (dependable) source of revenue for the larger MR suppliers. Annual corporate reputation studies are also fielded for most large corporations and are focused on a much wider array of universes than the brand tracker. Different [...]

Tom LaForge at Coca-Cola presented his thinking on macro-forces shaping our world (what Smith and Raspin in their book “Creating Market Insight” call “remote environment factors”) and Coca-Cola’s strategy. It was all strategic foresight. Tom, with his focus on the trends driving our futures, represents one aspect of where I believe market research is headed. [...]

Here in San Diego at The Market Research Event there are five (5) symposia today and one is on “Culture & Trends.” I’m particularly looking forward to Saatchi & Saatchi’s presentation on the evolution of wellness and Coca-Cola’s presentation on “how macroforces are reshaping relationships, roles and the very idea of ‘consumer.’” With all this [...]

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 [...]

What are the social, economic and market research implications when location based services like Foursquare or Gowalla go mainstream? We know from research released by Pew today that 4% of online Americans and 8% of online Americans under 29 years old are already using these services. Pew is now tracking this trend. And, while we [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Those attending the ARF’s Discovering Consumer Insights, Industry Leader Forum today at the New York Athletic Club were treated to an excellent overview by Joel Rubinson (formerly of ARF and now the President of Rubinson Partners). Citing Intel’s Andy Grove, Rubinson argued that market research is itself at a “strategic inflection point.” He’s obviously right [...]

Although the Wall Street Journal piece on Nielsen/NM Incite scraping messages from the PatientsLikeMe community (“‘Scrapers’ Dig Deep for Data on Web”) has generated some buzz in MR circles, I’m surprised that it is not THE topic. It should be. Consumer listening is one aspect of the evolution of MR. This listening comes in a [...]