As we noted in our White Paper "Beyond Blogs and Tweets" Market Research reports are a better source of accurate and actionable research for your business because it is so hard to discern whether social media information is opinion or fact. An article in the Monday, April 25th Wall Street Journal illustrates at least one way to leverage social media for market research.
The article on customer feedback explains how language learning company Rosetta Stone Inc, is using Facebook for what I'll call "real" market research.
Since Facebook allows access to demographic information, Rosetta Stone used this capability to find a new niche market based on those who were fans of mental challenges, a group outside the core of their customer base.
They created new ads targeting this group and found customers in a new place.
That's not opinion. That's using data to learn about what your customer is doing or how to expand your market.
Hey, that's Market Research.
Rob Granader
Monday, April 25, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Is There a Hole in Our Taxonomy?
The report category (or taxonomy) structure is a difficult thing to manage here at MarketResearch.com. On one hand, you want to be forward thinking and innovative. We would like to have a category page up before a trend or topic becomes ubiquitous. On the other hand, there is no need for a category page without any reports to classify under that category.
Librarians encounter the same problems that we do. How many new books do you need on a topic before you set aside a separate shelf?
Other times adding a category is such a ‘no-brainer’ that we wonder why we didn’t have that category before. This week we added a new category for Children and Juvenile Books.
When we re-shuffled our titles to account for this new category, we noticed we had 33 titles that fit the criteria to be included. The new category will include topics like comic books, graphic novels, picture & drawing books along with more traditional children’s educational books. The two major publishers on MarketResearch.com that produce reports in this category are Simba Information and Icon Group International.
We try to keep our finger on the pulse of topics and trends in market research. If you feel we’ve missed something, let us know!
Vice President of Marketing
MarketResearch.com
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Beyond Blogs and Tweets: Market Research Reports in the Age of Information 2.0
The information industry likes to live by the adage “content is king.” But how is a consumer of professional content to know when the king is a pretender to the throne?
Anyone looking for business information today is confronted with ever-growing options for analysis, data and opinion – much of it free through websites, blogs, tweets, social networks and other repositories of online content. The availability of this content prompts the question for information professionals and novices: “When can I save budget dollars and turn to free sources of information, and when do I need to spend money for published market research reports?”
A new white paper commissioned by my company MarketResearch.com, Beyond Blogs and Tweets: Market Research Reports in the Age of Information 2.0, helps answer that question.
A market research report is an objective analysis of where a market stands and where it is headed. There is some good information on the open web. But a market research report compactly and reliably provides a range of insight and data, plus the analysis to make that data actionable. This is what differentiates market research reports from free sources of business information.
Beyond Blogs and Tweets reviews the pros and cons of free information on the web, and contrasts this content with the merits of a market research report. It analyzes the components that go into a market research report—context, detailed market data, competitor information, trend analysis and forecasts—which contribute to the cost of compiling a research study, but also provide the value proposition on which it’s sold.
Beyond Blogs and Tweets provides information professionals and first-time buyers with a road map to navigate the often confusing array of business content that is now available, and concludes with a handy checklist on the strengths of published reports vs. the Internet or social media as sources of market research. For further information and to download a free copy of the white paper, click here.
Sincerely,
Robert Granader
Chairman and CEO, MarketResearch.com
Anyone looking for business information today is confronted with ever-growing options for analysis, data and opinion – much of it free through websites, blogs, tweets, social networks and other repositories of online content. The availability of this content prompts the question for information professionals and novices: “When can I save budget dollars and turn to free sources of information, and when do I need to spend money for published market research reports?”
A new white paper commissioned by my company MarketResearch.com, Beyond Blogs and Tweets: Market Research Reports in the Age of Information 2.0, helps answer that question.
A market research report is an objective analysis of where a market stands and where it is headed. There is some good information on the open web. But a market research report compactly and reliably provides a range of insight and data, plus the analysis to make that data actionable. This is what differentiates market research reports from free sources of business information.
Beyond Blogs and Tweets reviews the pros and cons of free information on the web, and contrasts this content with the merits of a market research report. It analyzes the components that go into a market research report—context, detailed market data, competitor information, trend analysis and forecasts—which contribute to the cost of compiling a research study, but also provide the value proposition on which it’s sold.
Beyond Blogs and Tweets provides information professionals and first-time buyers with a road map to navigate the often confusing array of business content that is now available, and concludes with a handy checklist on the strengths of published reports vs. the Internet or social media as sources of market research. For further information and to download a free copy of the white paper, click here.
Sincerely,
Robert Granader
Chairman and CEO, MarketResearch.com
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