Kantar's Profiles Blog

What does personal loan usage look like among your customer segments or within your footprint? In the latest Lightspeed Financial Services Group post, we look at consumer trends across secured and unsecured loans. 

Millennials are willing and eager to share personal content (as long as it's relevant) and ultimately crave authenticity. Yet with 83.1 million millennials in the United States, their voices are often underrepresented within typical marketing research forums. So, how do we win their trust and engage them into the marketing research process? 

On a recent earnings call, Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of Lightspeed’s parent company WPP, talked about what keeps him up at night. And no; it’s not (necessarily) his infant daughter – it’s Amazon.

“And I would just mention the rise of Amazon, because in answer to the question, my favorite question is what worries you when you go to bed at night and when you wake up in the morning. It's not a three-month-old child (laughter), it's Amazon, which is a child still, but not three months. And Amazon's penetration of most areas is frightening, if not terrifying to some, and I think there is a battle brewing between Google and Amazon.”

The role of marketers in today’s global, complex organizations is changing. Adapting to technology platforms, expanding client needs and diversified user preferences can pull marketers to alter, modify and adjust directions with regular occurrence. From relationship marketing to automation, marketers need to look beyond the usual brand channels to reach their audiences effectively.

Today, 22% of the world’s total population uses Facebook and LinkedIn boasts more than 450 million user profiles, but moreover, almost 80% of time spent on social media platforms happens on mobile. Marketers need to be able and willing to track the changing behaviours and demographics to optimise opportunities with their audiences. As we start a new year, I, as a marketer working in market research, took a look at some of the marketing trends that will likely influence the requirements of our industry over the next 12 months.

One thing mobile has taught us beyond a doubt: consumers are in control. The information they need to make decisions is now at their fingertips. They are more loyal to their own needs than to any particular brand. And consumers want to move onto the ‘next thing’ seconds after engaging. Never has it been more difficult for marketers to target consumers. Mobile created and enables this behavior, but only one in five surveys is 100% mobile compatible today. To truly ‘meet them in the moment’ their survey “experience has to be fast and frictionless.”

In Debunking Weighting Misperceptions, our first post in the weighting data mini-series, we reviewed the benefits of weighting and debunked misconceptions. Now, we review how to appropriately weight and evaluate the weighting scheme.

Sampling often seems to be an afterthought with clients as many simply state they want a ‘nationally representative sample.’ The question is what does the client mean by a nationally representative sample? One client might think it means representation on age and gender only, while another might expect it to include controls on additional variables like region, income, education, etc.

I recently attended a webinar where Linda West, Director of Digital Marketing at Act-On Software, discussed five common digital marketing mistakes. After hearing what Linda had to say about the five common mistakes, it got me thinking about what we, as Marketing Researchers, can learn from digital marketing. While digital marketing strategies are laser focused on creating value for the consumer, we should have that same focus on our panelists. Panelists are a core part of what we do in the Marketing Research industry, and our panelists are people. These people’s voices and opinions are front and center in how we interact with them.  

Change is the only absolute. After all, clichés are clichés for a reason. The marketing research industry itself is always moving, innovating, adapting. We’re reaching audiences in new ways and accessing new data sources to provide insights. There has never been a more exciting (or scary) time to be in the MR field. But what about the base assumptions we have about consumers? What data is important or the best way for advertising to be effective? We live in a changing world, and our assumptions need to change too.

As our lives become ever more digital so too do the means of technologically amplifying our reach to consumers. Data driven marketing is now commonly accepted as standard practice for the industry. This is no surprise, as online intertwines itself with our physical world through the devices we have come to rely on.