Content Creation--At What Cost?

Marketresearch.com and Profound were proud to sponsor and host the SLA Europe event—Content Creation—At What Cost? Everyone thinks they have a great panel and begin by telling the audience that. But after a preliminary meeting on the phone a few weeks earlier Jason Ward, the host of the evening and lead sales for Profound, remarked, “we really have a great panel.” There were three speakers and Marketresarch.com CEO Rob Granader Chaired the panel.



David Frigstad, the Chairman of Frost and Sullivan, spoke first. David has been providing industry research for 30 years. He started analyzing trends in the US in 1977 and by 1981 he co-founded Market Intelligence Research Company in Mountain View California. In 1993 that company acquired Frost & Sullivan which now offers a full line of consulting services including competitive benchmarking and corporate training. David talked about the gifts of Steve Jobs and how to look at a market more fully than just the market you think you are in.

Roger Bamkin is the director and current Chair of Wikimedia UK and an administrator of the English version of Wikipedia. He was a leading member of WikiProject Schools and WikiProject Derbyshire. In real life he trained as a mechanical engineer, systems analyst and teacher but has also been a partner in a software company and chaired I.T. standard committees for the UK.

He also co-developed QRpedia codes that provide multi-lingual access to Wikipedia via QR codes. And for the record, as I looked you up, there is no Wikipedia entry for you. Roger spoke about the more than 200 fascinating projects Wikimedia is working on.

Nic Newman’s background is in the news and news content space. He is the former Future Media Controller for Journalism, co-ordinating the BBC's plans for News, Sport, Weather and Local in the Future Media space. He now consults with a number of companies on these issues. Nic was a founding member of BBC News Online, Europe's most visited news website. He was World Editor from 1997 to 2001 and then led the Technology and Product Development divisions.

Topics included the changing customer, “People don’t want to read Word, they want video and PowerPoint.” You can’t connect the dots going forward, get a bigger perspective. We discussed how to be important to Google and in the news business who tells the stories when everyone tells the stories.

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Internet Week Europe

MarketResearch.com was proud to be at the opening ceremonies of Internet Week Europe. We plan to be at many of the events in and around London this week and at the Lovie Awards Friday night.

Join Us: http://www.internetweekeurope.com/

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The Reach of MarketResearch.com

The times when I am amazed by the shrinking of our world seems to be growing.

But when you play “who do you know” you soon realize that in our lives we run in fairly small circles and so the chances of knowing somebody is pretty high.

And when you read Freakonimics or Malcolm Gladwell, you realize that probability suggests strange “coincidences” are on the rise: With just 57 people in a room the chances that two have the same birthday is 99%!

But in the larger world, outside our small geographic or socio-economic realms it becomes more surprising. And I am continually impressed as I travel the small streets, the back alleys, the mews of Europe to find so many people who know, use and rely on Marketresearch.com. It is a perspective you miss from the behind a desk in Rockville Maryland.

I have been in tiny offices in Brussels and office shares in London, picturesque buildings on the banks of Lake Zurich and the top of the tallest skyscrapers in Canary Wharf and found our clients experiencing what we hoped they would when we started the company 10 years ago.

I have spoken to people and watched orders come in from all over the world and am amazed at the impact. When you hear someone at a university in Brussels, in broken English/French talk about things that we created or using our lingo, KWIC, Kalorama, Profound, I still find it remarkable.

But so far this is the strangest twist.

My wife goes on an overnight walking trip to the Cotswold’s and meets a woman who tells us she is moving back to the states. On their 11-mile walk she lets out that there are some things she’s trying to divest herself of. A week later I am in her packed up apartment picking up space heaters, alarm clocks and half empty bottles of Pimms.

Sad to leave London, but overflowing with praise for the three years, her husband enters the room and we begin talking about his return home. The job he has in the UK? Head of Market Research for an international consumer goods company.

And so he volleys back to me "and what do you do?"

I have a market research company, named Marketresearch.com. And he returns, I am a customer of Marketresearch.com and I use Packaged Facts and I know Larry (his sales rep).

Walking home down Maida Vale lugging their leftovers I realize again that in this overlapping/combined world the chances of chance meetings are increasing every day. Although I receive no further discount on the goods I buy, I am reminded that the value of good service to our clients and strong word of mouth is what makes a great company.

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DIY Market Research

George Terhanian writes about the democratization of market research and asks what will happen when market research becomes streamlined and open to all?

Every product you interact with has been filtered through the$32-billion global industry. Every business of consequence values and demands the research because it’s vital to “innovation and competitive advantage.” He says the downside is the complexity, time and cost.

But now he sees a world where “just about anyone could pose questions to a target population and receive unfiltered, immediate answers they could trust.” It’s already happening when you post a picture on Facebook or ask a question on Twitter. The feedback, while lacking scale, coverage and diversity can be worthwhile and influence your decisions.

He expresses admiration for a variety of new tool for the more adventurous including Toluna’s QuickSurvey (Mr. Terhanian runs Toluna) which enables you to select the respondents and write the questions for a small fee, with a credit card, in minutes.

The DIY survey market is in $500 million range, he says, which includes companies like SurveyMonkey and Polldaddy, which sell subscription services to its survey engine. He likes survey more than the first movers because his product gives the customer “access to its community of four million prescreened responders in more than 30 countries. The business model is akin to selling a printer at low to no cost, and making money by selling the ink.”

He sees a lot of growth in this DIY market, but says it will depend on the quality of the information the DIY approach can produce and on whether or not people are willing to change their buying habits.

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Market Research is Necessary Even for Small Local Businesses

A professor at the Jim Moran Institute at the College of Business at Florida State University implores people in a new article to do market research before embarking on new product.

Your feelings, your gut, or those of friends and family are not a sufficient measure of future demand. He also says passion is not enough, saying market conditions should be your guide.

He writes about a couple who went personally bankrupt after launching their pet business without realizing the saturation of competitors in their market.

He calls market research "due diligence," which will decrease your chances of making a bad decision on a new venture. He does admit there is “a price tag,” on this data, but then argues the value of it.

“Knowing the demand for your product or service allows you to accurately assess the viability of a business and limit your risk of failure.”

To prepare an accurate forecast you need to employ a market research firm and follow one of the following three approaches: Phone surveys of potential customers, a focus group or conducting a survey via mail or email.

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Market Research in the Fields

The Indianexpress.com website writes this week about a group of students from the Punjab College of Technical Education who performed some hands on market research in poorly developed areas as they attempted to understand rural business models. They spent part of the week living and watching the people as they struggled to resolve their business problems.

From this work the students developed ideas to provide commodities at cheaper rates for these residents without compromising margins.

One of the students worked on making Indian mattresses by using scrap from the Ludhiana textile market. The student said they will make 100 per cent profit by adopting this model.

Another group designed a solar bulb, another student, after having spent a night at a vehra, where painters and masons live, decided to launch a product with a shaving cream in a sachet with a cap on it. His sachet with shaving cream would last three shaves.

After spending two nights in a village on the outskirts of the city a group decided to launch a soya milk product after noticing gross health neglect of both kids and adults.

Learn about our company and the services and products we offer: http://www.marketresearch.com

Market Research in the Fields

The Indianexpress.com website writes this week about a group of students from the Punjab College of Technical Education who performed some hands on market research in poorly developed areas as they attempted to understand rural business models. They spent part of the week living and watching the people as they struggled to resolve their business problems.

From this work the students developed ideas to provide commodities at cheaper rates for these residents without compromising margins.

One of the students worked on making Indian mattresses by using scrap from the Ludhiana textile market. The student said they will make 100 per cent profit by adopting this model.

Another group designed a solar bulb, another student, after having spent a night at a vehra, where painters and masons live, decided to launch a product with a shaving cream in a sachet with a cap on it. His sachet with shaving cream would last three shaves.

After spending two nights in a village on the outskirts of the city a group decided to launch a soya milk product after noticing gross health neglect of both kids and adults.

Market Research as Competitive Intelligence

Market Research goes by many names, one of which is competitive intelligence, or CI. A new book pushes the value of CI saying that it’s about staying ahead of the competition.

The book, New Directions: A Competitive Intelligence Tale, is written by CI industry vets David Kalinowski and Gary Maag, who want to help CI analysts over-come the typical problems they face. The book is written as a case study, that according to the authors “reads like a mystery novel.”

A good primer on how to perform competitive intelligence and identifying the necessary components to help your business. Additionally there is a do’s and don’ts section and a process for showing how to integrate it into your business.

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