How will business, marketing and market research deal with the challenge of acceleration? The rate of change appears to be accelerating.  Business is innovating new products and distributing them at a faster rate.  For example, radio was invented in 1897 and it took 31 years for this innovation to penetrate 25% of the US consumer base.  [...]

As many of you know, Research World recently ran my thoughts on Rateocracy and market research in the October edition. If you’ve read restaurant reviews on Yelp, rated a vendor on Angie’s List or rated a seller on eBay, you’re already part of the movement toward Rateocracy, a world in which everyone and everything has a [...]

I’m here in Dallas for the Corporate Researcher’s Conference 2012. My speech tomorrow morning is titled “The Once and Future Roles of Corporate Researchers”, it begins with Shakespeare (a personal weakness) and explores 5 possible future roles. As usual, my presentation borrows heavily from strategic foresight principles and future scenarios. And, as usual, the presentation is a bit [...]

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 [...]