Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection

In this special series on data quality, you’ll hear different perspectives from other industries regarding market research and the analytics industry.

Sima chats with Charlie Allieri, CEO of Imperium, and the sponsor of this series on data quality, and Matt Staudt, CEO of Venture Development Center.

Bringing Traditional and Alternative Assets to the Marketplace

Venture Development Center, started in 1996, is an organization that works in the big data market space, primarily with traditional data and alternative data. 

They have assembled 190 relationships with organizations that have the traditional and alternative assets and Venture DC looks to bring these assets to the marketplace that they’ve created where buyers of data can be traditional players themselves. 

They can be brands or professional service organizations, and Venture DC assists with helping them to understand these assets and how they might be used in particular use cases, thereby creating licensing events and making these matches.

Traditional and Alternative Data as Transformational

From the perspective of Venture DC, traditional data is the kind that has been around for 30 years. In other words, demographic dataset, which typically consists of a mailing address, business name, business sector, contact name, and email address.

Matt defines alternative data as the behavioral activities, such as signal data, geolocation, search, transactional, and crowdsource. 

The amount of data Venture DC represents in the marketplace is tremendous. They have access to transactional data files that cover the spectrum of all types of activities, and are terabytes in size.

The traditional models can be incredibly enhanced by looking at the alternative behavioral activities. 

Looking at models isn’t a question of accuracy but the timeliness of it. The behavioral and signal aspects is immediate and when you have access to it you can react quickly. There are privacy compliance concerns when you start using it but using it properly can be transformative.

Representative Criteria and Measuring Quality

In order for Venture DC to represent an organization, there are 3 factors at play: (1) Compliance. The organization needs to be in a position where the data they’re getting is being collected in a compliant fashion. (2) Historical data. Is it represented there? People may have great data that they’re collecting but if they don’t have some sort of history associated with it, then it’s hard to test. (3) The future. Are they going to be able to collect this data for the foreseeable future? They don’t want to represent any file where a potential buying entity within their portfolio utilizes the data and then all of a sudden, it’s no longer available. 

One of the biggest challenges is pricing, which depends on unique data points of value and what kind of use-cases it can be used in. How unique is it? Are there data points of value within the dataset that are compelling, and if they are, how unique are they? How do they measure up against other things that are represented in the marketplace? 

The Impact of Privacy Issues

Matt discusses how many companies have ignored privacy issues, the ensuing lawsuits, CCPA, and more.

Sima suggests that there’s a positive side to this, however, in that it makes everybody rise and clears the bad actors out of the system.

There needs to be a country-wide level of legislation because complying with all the nuances that exist state to state poses a challenge.

_______________________________

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don’t forget to leave a rating and review!

This 4 part series is sponsored by Imperium. We are grateful for their support to bring you this important series.

Connect with Matt Staudt:

Venture Development Center

LinkedIn

Sima joins some of her peers on a panel discussion as it relates to M&A trends, what’s going on in the industry, and some insights for founders, as they consider their alternatives for the future.

In light of the recent acquisitions for staggering amounts of money, such as SAP acquiring Qualtrics for $8B, Tableau being acquired by Salesforce for $17B, and Bain Capital acquiring 60% of Kantar, today’s show will focus on key drivers of investment and M&A activity in market research.

Listen in to this mashup, as they help to de-mystify the big questions and considerations that founders often have.

Global Market Report from Esomar Congress

The GMR is a wonderful market trend report that Esomar Congress publishes each year. It is free for members and can be purchased on their website for non-members. 

The first place Kristin Luck, Advisor at Oberon Securities and host of this panel, flips to is the helpful chart that shows where industry growth is coming from. This chart is always located around pages 32 or 33, and this year you can find it on page 33.

Kristin finds it especially interesting this year because, for the first time ever, traditionally-defined market research is in decline globally by .3% over the last year. 

The growth of the industry is coming from verticals like surveys software, social media monitoring, consulting firm research, IT telecom research, and syndicated research. 

Investments and incoming money are going more towards these tech-centric verticals.

What Does This Growth and Monetization Ability  Mean for Traditional, Full-Service Research Firms?

Panel Member Sima Vasa, Founder of Paradigm Sample and Advisor of M&A services at Oberon Securities, takes the lead on addressing the answer to this question.

It will be challenging for traditional market research companies because of new methodology. As a founder, you must know what you want. You can’t be reactive. It’s imperative to understand your goals and put together a plan for proactive implementation. 

Although it may be tough, Sima feels there are still opportunities to stay in the game and partner with other companies to specialize. She provides some examples of companies that are doing very well providing vertical specialization and suggests other options for traditional, full-service companies. 

Is There Space for Research Generalists?

Lisa Courtade, Executive Director and Global Consumer Insights  at Merck and new Chairperson for the Insights Association, tackles this question.

Lisa thinks that the answer lies in understanding the needs and the problems that you have today that you’re trying to solve.

Traditional research generalists are a shrinking pool. You’re looking for that full complement, that missing piece. Often that missing piece is a new start-up or an agency that specializes in an emerging area. 

Industry Trends and the Impact of M&A Activity

Sören Haefcke, Vice President of Bain Capital, addresses this topic.

What the traditional players need to do is to adopt some of the methodologies out there in order to be able to compete fully in the marketplace, which is his perspective.

One of the great things about technology is that it’s very accessible to anybody. Great customer access, great customer understanding, and a great understanding of what the data means are things that are very hard to replicate in many cases.

Sören predicts that bringing together a traditional approach with a more tech-driven approach is the way the industry will go in the long run.

Advice for Founders Around Positioning Your Firm for Funding

Kristof De Wulf, Co-Founder & CEO of InSites Consulting, provides direction on this matter.

First and foremost, it is important to make sure that you are ready.

As Kristof explains, “ready” involves many considerations: being mentally ready, making sure that everyone is aligned to do this, that it is the best model going forward, do you need private equity money, or is it a strategic sale where you simply carry on organically without any extra funding.

Kristof mentions that alignment and timing are also a part of being ready. There is a lot of preparation involved, and it’s best to bring in professionals to help guide you through the process.

Don’t underestimate the impact it has on your daily business. It takes quite a long time to go through the transaction.

There’s more than money in the evaluation now, and Kristof shares more of these important aspects to consider.

The Relationship is Key

Panel members weigh in and agree on the necessity of building relationships. If you want a tech service, you can get that, but without the client, you have nothing.

If you are considering selling or merging your company, you must  

ensure that you understand the client process while doing this.

Post-acquisition service is detrimental to the business, and the reasons why are discussed.

Triggers That Are Driving High Valuations

Kristin poses the most annoying question they get on a daily basis to Sima to Sören: “What are reasonable multiples that you can expect?”

As Sören reports, this is a hard question to generalize, especially in this industry, because it depends on so many factors, and he expounds on these factors.

From Sima’s experience, she agrees with Sören’s summation and adds that it’s really hard for founders to have that “crisp story”, such as “What do we do, why do we exist, and what’s the value we bring to the industry?”, because they put their blood, sweat, and tears into their business. 

Key Takeaways

Each panel member offers key takeaways and parting thoughts on specific subjects, such as trends, M&A, founders, and research buyers.

_______________________________

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

Email: [email protected]

If You’re A Member of Esomar Congress and Didn’t Receive a Link to the Webinar, Please Email Kristin: 

Book Mentioned:

Marketing is Finance Is Business by Chris R. Burggraeve

Documentary Mentioned:

The Great Hack, a Netflix Original 

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

Sima has a special treat in store for today’s show. As Chair of SampleCon, she and the other Board Members have been knee-deep in planning for the 2020 conference to ensure its continued success.

She will be chatting with some of the board for a peek as to what’s coming and the importance it holds for each member.

For Sima, she loves that there’s no other conference that focuses specifically on online data collection and sampling and she finds that refreshing. Additionally, the conference is a way to influence, shape and collaborate with other leaders to share best practices and network with other people. 

Representing the Buyer Community

Corey Julseth, Managing Director of Sample Strategy at J.D. Power weighs in with his opinion as the only buyer of sample on the board. 

Corey thinks sellers are very sophisticated in their approach, leveraging marketplaces and programmatic, but the buyers are somewhat lagging, and this is a great opportunity to represent the buyer community in the SampleCon arena.

At J.D. Powers, Corey finds it necessary to stitch together many suppliers to support a single syndicated study, so it becomes really challenging from a purchasing standpoint. They’re looking to evolve that landscape and SampleCon provides a venue and forum to collaborate with others who do that very well.

Corey appreciates that there’s going to be a healthy mix of familiar topics and a fresh line-up of innovative speakers. Another great aspect he’s looking forward to is the networking because SampleCon is a well-attended conference across a diverse audience of buyers and sellers.

He desires two takeaways for the attendees, and the first is an exposure and opportunity to participate with the latest and greatest around sampling innovation, as this conference is very unique in that it focuses on only sampling. Second, Corey wants people to have fun networking and collaborating with their peers in the industry.

Community of Like-Minded Folks

Sima hears from Nancy Brigham, SVP of Global Head of Sampling at Ipsos Interactive Services.

It is both Ipsos’s and her own personal belief that as an industry leader they need to help drive the industry forward and help shape the direction that it's going. SampleCon provides that platform to drive that change and gives them a community of like-minded folks who have the same passion and commitment to sample. Not only does it benefit their clients and company, but it also benefits the industry as a whole. 

One of the things Nancy likes about SampleCon is suggested in its name: sample conversation. With frank, transparent conversation about sample across many different climes and types of industry stakeholders, the bar is raised for all of them: buyers, sellers, and respondents.

Nancy shares that she is most excited about the focus on new, innovative approaches in sample and data collection as it relates to the respondent. A lot of what is happening now in automation benefits respondents directly in various ways. The more we can reduce the cognitive load on respondents the better data will be. 

Nancy encourages frank conversations with fellow attendees because if someone has an issue or question there’s a very good chance someone else does, too so this is one way that networking can be valuable. There’s a finite pool of respondents and they all draw from the same pool.

Content on Hispanic and Minority Sample

Mario Carrasco, Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow

shares the two main reasons he is attracted to SampleCon.

His entry into market research was in the sample space, and at the time there wasn’t any industry conference based on sample, which was something that he had become passionate about. 

Additionally, SampleCon since early on has been one of the few conferences in the market research industry that has really made a consistent effort each year to include content on Hispanic and minority sample reaching minority audiences in the US.

Mario is enthusiastic about the change in mission from moving on from just being a yearly conference and being seen more as a resource for the sample industry. His hope is to see SampleCon expanding into being seen as a thought-leader and a springboard for conversations in the industry and content throughout the year, where people can engage and learn about what’s going on in the sample industry and how to better their respective businesses.

Mario wants attendees to get inspired to grow their businesses in innovative ways.

Networking with Friends that Feel Like Family

Rob Berger, Managing Director of Market Communities at Maru/Blue is Vice-Chair of SampleCon’s Board of Directors, and he sees

SampleCon as a great opportunity to get out of the office and network with other people in the industry. He noted that you’re often friends with the very people you’re competing with. 

Rob maintains that this is a great industry of folks who are passionate about delivering respondents in a quality fashion to clients. SampleCon is also an open forum where everybody can offer their views, controversial or not.

Rob is excited about SampleCon’s expansion and a wider array of topics around data and sample. Rob hopes everyone leaves there feeling like family, and takes that feeling and what they’ve learned back to their businesses. 

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

Email: [email protected]

Learn more about SampleCon.

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

Sima and Menaka Gopinath, Lead of Social Intelligence and Communities at Ipsos, sit down to discuss the use of social media in social intelligence to help answer business questions.

Opposite Ends of the Spectrum

As the market has matured with social intelligence, there’s a lot of amazing things happening in the social intelligence realm for insights, but it’s not being leveraged as broadly it could be. 

On the flip side, the people who are using social listening tools across the board in marketing and digital functions probably could be getting a lot more insight out of it.

The data is already available, but there are so many ways to use it more strategically.

Defining Social Intelligence

This can be many things to many people, but from the perspective of Ipsos, it’s about leveraging the datasets for insights.

From a classic research sense, most clients are using a social listening tool and at the baseline, they are listening to what people are saying about their brand and maybe listening to their core competitive set. From the purposes of Ipsos, this is not necessarily social intelligence, as much as it is social listening, which is still an important aspect of marketing.

How one uses the dataset to address a core set of business objectives from an insights perspective is at the heart of social intelligence.

Social Intelligence and Use Cases

Some of the core areas where a lot of Ipsos’ work is done is in market understanding and category landscape.

Understanding what your category looks like can be a difficult question to answer these days, so what social data can provide from a very consumer-centric perspective is how people are talking about the “need” or the “occasion”. You don’t have to start from the perspective of brands. This is a different way of approaching market landscape work.

Cultural trends and forecasting and foresight against what is bubbling up and what is worth focusing on versus what might just be a flash in the pan is another area where Ipsos is using social intelligence a lot.

Approach in Market Engagement

In the context of market landscape, there are different ways of approach, as Menage explains in a high-level overview.

This is ultimately driven by what consumers are organically saying about these brands in the social conversation.

Imagery is a critical part of the analysis, and video is an emerging area in terms of the technology capabilities for analyzing, but in terms of what is done with it is gaining in importance.

Contextual research is always presented along with custom research to help provide clients with a bigger picture of what the data represents.

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

Email: [email protected]

Connect with Menaka:

LinkedIn

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

If you’re a Founder or CEO of a company that is looking to scale their business, this episode provides some great insight and advice. 

Steve August joins Sima on today’s show, which serves as a great refresher course on things that we might already know.

Listen in for timely reminders on how to really consider the next steps for your business!

Steve is the Founder and CEO of Steve August Coaching.

Scaling Businesses in the Market Research Space

For more than 15 years, Steve has been in the market research space and takes what he’s learned to help business founders and owners scale beyond what they’re able to imagine.

Steve’s method is to examine, break down, and understand what’s going on in the business and the metaphysical life of the owner, then help the owner decide what changes need to be made, and the steps needed to implement them.

Although Steve’s career paths previously focused on the creative application of technology, he entered the market research space quite by accident by way of his wife, as he explains.

First Time Founder Journey

Steve discusses the family business in which he started out as the marketing and tech guy.

As blogs started making their way onto the web, he and his wife stumbled upon a shift that changed the whole dynamic of their business.

Up until this time, online qualitative research was basically replicating focus groups in online space. Steve and his wife wanted something more: to take advantage of that opportunity to access those peoples’ experiences so that they had a very ethnographic view of it. 

Once they started using this and speaking about it, it drew attention and others wanted to try it. This led to the development of the first product version in 2007. 

Lessons in Selling

Building a great business was not the same as building a great product, as Steve soon found out.

He would soon discover what his strengths and challenges were as a leader. 

In 2014, the product was acquired by FocusVision. FocusVision would later package it up with other products and resell it.

Steve got to experience two exits due to his options: the first exit was as the Founder, and the second exit was as part of the Management Team.

The lessons that came out of these negotiations, as well as his being part of a team negotiating the acquisition of other companies, is how he got into coaching.

After he left FocusVision in 2017, people started asking him for his perspective on business matters, and he realized he had valuable information to offer. 

Core Stories

Your core story is what drives the proverbial bus. These are the ideas in our heads that say we’re not worthy, or we’re imposters or any other negative mental chatter that might have served to protect us in past scenarios, but now prevent us from moving forward.

When you’re leading the company, you have to change your core story in order to change the trajectory of your company.

You can’t have a path, the fundamentals, the vision, the right team, the right processes, and a plan of execution until you have clarity of yourself.

Steve and Sima discuss scenarios where core stories can make us stumble, and ways to recover.

Steve's Thoughts on Exits

1. Either be for sale or don’t be for sale.

2. You’re worth pretty much what the market says you’re worth, and the leverage you have.

The Importance of Taking Time

Everything is reactionary, putting out a fire. You have to get to a point where you can get perspective of your own situation, and that means getting a bit outside of your own situation.

Going off-line for a time, taking time to meditate, or getting away, such as to Steve’s Digital Detox Retreat, gets you away from day-to-day thinking and helps you change the way you think and be more receptive to potential solutions.

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

Email: [email protected]

Connect with Steve:

LinkedIn

Twitter

steveaugustcoaching.com

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

Sima brings something a little different on today’s podcast, and that is her perspective on how we think about and accept new approaches and methodologies in the industry.

Believe it or not, words DO matter, as you will soon discover!

Something Shiny

We’ve all lived through the introduction of new and exciting technology. Our first thoughts are typically along the lines of: “What is that? How do you do that? What are its implications as it relates to something new in the industry?”

The success or failure of market acceptance of new technology or methodology is determined by us, both as an individual and as a company.

The words we speak can be incredibly polarizing, and people sometimes make provocative statements just to encourage the discussion and ensuing fallout. 

This is divisive enough to create serious tension among us. In some, it creates anxiety and in others, it can create a mental block with just not wanting to think about it, because things will eventually settle down.

Separating Myths from Truths

Many years ago, it was thought that all surveys would only be taken on a mobile device but they are taken across multiple platforms in reality.

At one point in time, social analytics was going to replace all traditional brand tracking. Also not true. Social analytics is a crucial component to understanding the impact of a brand.

Another blanket assertion is that big data is going to challenge (or even replace) traditional research. We do not yet know if this one is true or not.

Methodology Considerations

In the industry, there’s a lot of buzz about research and its fit in the world of technology, machine learning, automation and big data.

What’s the solution that a company might be offering? And who is it targeted to? What decisions are they trying to make?

Sima raises some thought-provoking questions that beg us, as leaders, to take responsibility in encouraging understanding and rationalization when it comes to the pain points that we’re trying to serve within the client organization. Words matter.

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

On today’s show, Sima introduces Andrea Zurbriggen, the Strategic Sourcing Manager of Escalent, and Katie Egge from Paradigm Sample. 

Listen in to discover the shades of grey that occur between a client and partner relationship. 

The Approach Makes the Difference

Andrea manages vendors of all types: technology platform, sample supplier, or an executive-level recruiter or moderator. It’s her job to find the right source for each particular type of job that comes up.

As a buyer of sample, Andrea appreciated Katie’s initial approach of questions that enabled Katie’s understanding of Escalent, of Andrea, and of her specific business needs. 

Others have approached her with panel books, or an overview of their programming and analytics. This, however, is information that can easily be learned by googling the company’s website, so it's crucial to have conversations about what you do, what your company specializes in, and how you can best support them during the initial courting-calls.

Courting Calls and Red Flags

Always give the dignity of a response, even if you can tell it’s something you wouldn’t utilize or from an unreliable source. 

Consider a quick response explaining that you’re not currently looking to expand your vendor network but will save their number in case something changes in the future. 

Keep yourself open to learning about new sources, though,  because you never know what’s going to come around in the industry, as it is constantly changing.

Andrea discusses what she considers “red flags” from vendors, such as canned emails with bad grammar, companies that have too many “Z’s” in their names, sloppy websites, and an initial email or call that claims their company can “do it all”.

Transparency on Outsourcing

Nobody can do it all, and that is okay! Each company has its specialties and expertise.

What is not okay is pitching yourself as a “do-it-all” because buyers already know that you’re outsourcing much of it. 

Always be specific in how you are able to meet a client's needs and objectives. Packaging other company's assets and selling it as your own is shady.

Curtain Call

The curtain between the “client" and the “panel source” needs to go, says Andrea.

She wants to be able to peek behind the proverbial curtain and understand your processes and protocols, who you’re partnering with, and why.

Her clients have started to ask really great questions about where all of these people are coming from, and that never used to be a question. As someone who manages the panel vendors that she partners with, Andrea has to be able to give them very clear-cut answers. It’s sometimes difficult to get answers from certain companies.

There are some companies, however, that are really strong about communicating those processes and sharing the sources they’re using and why.  It’s fine if you have a reason for utilizing a certain source for a certain population as long as she can clearly communicate to the parties involved why those sources are being used.

Double-Edged Sword

Katie explains the reasons why some companies are not as transparent concerning the revealing of sources as others. As she relates, it is a double-edged sword. 

The first reason is if you are a sample provider and that is your primary asset, your partner network is then an extension of your asset, and there’s a fear that your client will simply go to your partners directly to cut costs.

The second reason is that there may actually be something shady going on behind the scenes and they don’t want to disclose it.

End Client Engagement

Andrea has observed that end clients are starting to get involved in understanding sourcing and sample. They are looking at the entire research process that drives the deliverable insights.

This shows investment in the process and commitment to quality. The end client is interested in learning how panels are created and how they’re cared for.

Katie considers this increase in engagement by the end clients a very good sign that that teamwork is going to help the industry to grow.

Quick links to connect with Andrea Zurbriggen:

LinkedIn

Quick links to connect with Katie Egge:

LinkedIn

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

Charlie Allieri, CEO of Imperium, joins Sima on today’s show to discuss data quality in the market research space.

Imperium offers a full suite of solutions, but their goal is to help customers with data quality issues that they’re dealing with. Data quality in the market research space usually aligns with people and machines who are intentionally providing bad data (also known as fraud). 

A Device Solution

RelevantID®  is a solution that focuses on the device, ensuring that the device isn’t coming back multiple times trying to take a survey. This involves digital fingerprinting and de-duping and represents the first level of defense.

On top of this, there are other indicators and data points that can be used to triangulate in order to get a more precise determination on whether that person is really fraudulent or not.

Measuring the Bad and the Good

The Verity® service they offer has two parts: the first part is making sure the respondents are not bad, and the second part is verifying the respondents are good. 

“Fraudsters have an incentive to misbehave, and the barrier to technology to do these things are getting lower and lower.” 

There are behaviors around the community that they see in their data. That’s the first solution they were able to create by mining all the data that they have access to, and seeing behaviors across all of their customers and being able to indicate if a respondent’s quality is not going to be very good or it’s outright fraud.

Contextual Awareness

Another Imperium solution involves analyzing the behaviors in open-end responses: Are they speeding through? Are they cutting and pasting? And the latest contextual awareness: Does that answer actually apply to the question being answered?

“The ability to deliver value within that cost requirement is key to this market.”

Traditionally, humans would be used to look at all the responses, but Imperium can look at the responses in real-time and kick it out, or give a score to customers that indicate they should not allow that data to get into their systems.

Patterns in Data

One of the biggest indicators of somebody’s next behavior is their past behavior. 

Being able to mine data to find behaviors and patterns of behaviors allow the creation of models that are predictive of bad data, or indicative of an expected outcome.

“I think there’s an exorbitant interest rate on bad data once it gets into your systems, and the longer it sits there, the more it costs you.”

The most useable solution is an IP Blacklist, and this is shared across all customers.

Fascinating Data Insight

Charlie shares an interesting tidbit that has been gleaned from Imperium’s huge repository of data: From a contextual nature, the words “hope” and “joy” are two of the most popular words used.

Quick links to connect with Charlie Allieri:

Twitter

LinkedIn

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

Multi-cultural research, strategy, and understanding is what Sima and Mario X. Carrasco, Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow Research, chat about on today’s podcast.

Mario worked in the early days of digital marketing, building online communities for MSN Latino, and didn’t know what a research panel was until researching it for a job interview for a closer-to-home job. He got his start in market research building what became the first national representative panels at Garcia Research.

As research numbers started pointing to the US becoming a minority-majority country in the near future, Mario realized there was a need for a market research company to be focused on multi-cultural consumers, and this is how his ThinkNow Research came about.

Mario is also the newest Board Member to join the SampleCon team!

Hispanic Market Research, Then and Now

In the early days of market research, particularly Hispanic research, companies were hesitant to use emerging technologies. Back then it was online, and now it’s mobile.

Mario has since learned that multi-cultural consumers, especially Hispanic consumers, are super tech-savvy, and applying all these innovative technologies to multi-cultural consumers has been his company’s ethos.

Defining Multi-Culture

At the basic level of a potentially contentious conversation, it is consumers who are not non-Hispanic white, and traditionally that segmented into Hispanic, African American, and Asian, which are the largest cohorts of multi-cultural consumers in the US. These 3 groups comprise 40% of the US population and are expected to grow. 

As a nation, non-Hispanic white birth numbers are down, and what drives the increase in multi-cultural population growth is US Hispanic births and Asian immigration.

“If I take an acculturation algorithm, it’s gonna say that I’m extremely acculturated.”

As the country is changing demographically, ThinkNow Research is dedicated to helping other companies interpret these fundamental changes from a marketing and purchasing standpoint.

Misconception of Acculturation

It’s interesting to see which cultural values that 1st and 2nd gen Latinos and Asians pick and choose.

There’s a misconception in acculturation in the marketing industry that the longer you’re in the US, the more “American” you become as if it’s a linear model.

“You never really think about acculturation until you have to form a human being and guide them through the process.”

Yes, you are integrating some aspects of the culture, but there are some things about your home culture (or your parent's or grandparent's culture) that are retained over time. It’s more like a bi-dimensionality that is happening.

Bi-Dimensionality Identity Measure

Mario’s company has done some work for The Journal for Cultural Marketing, where they developed a Bi-dimensional Identity Measure.

It essentially combines two scales, the American Identity Measure and the Ethnic Identity Measure. There are 15 total questions, and what they have discovered is that depending on your ethnicity, you’re going to be scoring differently across these different measures, as opposed to acculturation which assumes a linear progression the longer you’re in the US. 

“I think one of the things that rips right through culture is social media.”

We should really be looking at what aspects of culture we’re retaining, in terms of home culture and what aspects we’re integrating from American culture.

The Do's and Don't of Multi-Cultural Marketing

Don’t generalize. 

“I think for me, personally, what I’ve realized about social media and the internet, in general, is that I’m actually able to connect with my culture in a way that I didn’t, pre-internet.”

Do your research beforehand, figure out who your consumer is and delve even deeper by defining that consumer within a subset.

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Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

Kevin Lonnie, CEO of KL Communications, joins Sima in today’s podcast to talk about innovation.

Kevin entered Rutgers College of Engineering then decided he didn’t want to be an engineer and switched to Business and Psychology. From there, he took a course in Market Research and realized he’d stumbled on to a profession that involved both disciplines of Business and Psychology. He’s been in Market Research since leaving college and started KL Communications in 1996. 

Online communities and panels have been their bread and butter for the last 20 years but they are more recently focusing on customer centricity as it relates to product innovation, and are currently building new tools to help make that happen.

The Growth of Online Communities

When you combine adjacent industries to traditional market research, the online communities space and quasi-online vs. communities and quals seems to be a segment that’s growing and taking hold for many brands.

“One of the things we look to do is establish the value proposition in the community at the beginning. We look to do that both from the participant’s point of view but also from the client’s perspective.”

Online communities have been growing because it’s a cost-effective infrastructure for an organization to be able to do a lot of their qual work. An organization can have 24/7 infrastructure and when you do the cross-comparisons of what it would take to do these as ad-hoc projects as opposed to running it through the community and the panel, it is this cost-effectiveness that is one of the reasons they have been gaining more acceptance.

Communities as an Internal Brand

Within client organizations, there’s dedication to ensure that communities are leveraged on a consistent basis on the brand side.

“We try to focus on some strategic learning, as well. I think that helps make it more longitudinal and the organizations are not just simply being used for tactical, nice-to-know things.”

Having an internal champion pointing out the potential and the benefits of the community and the ability to do things really quickly is often of great interest to potential clients. 

Quarterly in-person presentations are just one best practice that KL Communications advocates in promoting an online community as a brand.

Ensuring a Great Experience

Setting up an intrinsic and extrinsic incentive system are ways to be sensitive to participants' needs. 

“It’s one thing to say you’re customer-centric and you’re willing to embrace innovation, but it’s hard to break down the barriers to really let your customers participate and to allow for innovation to take place.”

Reinforce to the participant that the brand that they’re a community member of truly values what they have to say, and share with them how their input is making a difference in terms of the direction that the brand is going. 

They are, in effect, customer advisors.

CrowdWeaving®

CrowdWeaving® came about due to the desire to be customer-centric and engaging customers at the inception of the product innovation process and was somewhat inspired by the wisdom of crowds and crowdsourcing.

“The wisdom of crowds really comes from the combined aggregate of individuals, rather from them talking together.”

The idea behind CrowdWeaving® is to flip the relationship from the customer to where they’re always in a reactive stage to where they actually start off at the ideation process, right from the inception of the business challenge. 

This results in unmet needs becoming apparent, and therefore becomes the inspiration to the internal creatives and hopefully gets them at a better starting point.

 

Quick links to connect with Kevin Lonnie:

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LinkedIn

Email

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!