TRC

Well, another conference is over, perhaps our best ever. A great roster of speakers, a room full of engaged attendees and a great location was a terrific formula for a memorable conference. Some highlights from the various sessions:

Lenny Murphy, Editor-in-Chief of the Greenbook blog opened with a wide sweep discussing the waves of changes rocking the market research world. Pulling from the GRIT survey, his discussion with emerging and established players, as well as his itinerant investigation, he was able to convincingly make the case that change in the MR industry is happening. Now. He talked about emerging technologies such as mobile, social media and text analytics and how academic expertise was a key to unlocking a future of new ideas. It was a perfect set-up for the group of academic presentations that were to follow.

Tags: Market Research, Market Research Innovation, Conferences, Behavioral Economics, Neuroscience

Over the past year I’ve blogged about the things that I think will drive the future of Market Research and I’m pleased to announce that for our Frontiers of Research annual conference (May 8th, in NYC, view full agenda or register) we have assembled speakers who will drive that conversation forward. The conference will cover the full spectrum of buzz-worthy topics (Behavioral Economics, Neuroscience, Gamification, Predictive Analytics). And the focus, as always, will be on ideas presented in an easy to understand way (no math!). With speakers from four Ivy League schools, and presentations that range from poker to motion picture box office, this should be an informative and enjoyable day.

Leonard Murphy will set the table by calling on his extensive knowledge of the industry to illuminate how academia can and is driving us forward. Anyone who follows his blog knows that he is not only one of the most knowledgeable industry leaders around, but that he has a provocative view of where we are heading.

Tags: Conferences, Behavioral Economics, Neuroscience, New Product Development

In his opus Thinking, Fast & Slow, Nobel winner Daniel Kahneman (click here for previous post) relates a story from early in his career when he was leading a team to develop a curriculum and write a textbook on judgment and decision-making in high schools. He had assembled a group of experts and after working diligently for a year they had completed an outline of the syllabus and written two chapters. One fine day when discussing procedures for estimating uncertain quantities, it occurred to him that he should get an estimate from everyone on how long he thought this whole project would take. Being the clever psychologist that he was, rather than ask the group to guess publicly, he asked each person to make a confidential prediction. The mean was about two years and the range was about half a year on either side. In other words, the group was very consistent in its prediction.  

Tags: Psychology, Daniel Kahneman, Behavioral Economics, Market Research, Consumer Behavior

The Economist reviewed a study by Dr. Neil Brewer about effective police lineups which I think had implications for Market Research. Like researchers, police typically like to encourage witnesses to take their time to ensure they are making the correct choice. This makes logical sense, more time, means more thinking which naturally should lead to better results. Sadly, Dr. Brewer found otherwise.

He had volunteers view short films which detailed mundane scenes of everyday life and a crime (shoplifting, car theft, etc). Later (some minutes later, some a week), they were asked to identify the criminal from a group of 12 pictures of “suspects”. Half were given 3 seconds to evaluate each picture and asked how confident they were of their choice. The other half were given as much time as they wanted. The results showed that the group that had the limited time was correct 67% of the time. The group with more time was only correct 49% of the time.  

Tags: Gamification, Behavioral Economics, Market Research Innovation

The Nobel Prize winner and the intellectual godfather of behavioral economics, Daniel Kahneman, has summarized a lifetime of research in his recent book Thinking, Fast & Slow. In the next few blog posts I will be drawing upon some concepts that he espouses and link them up to research to see what practitioners can take away from his four decades of work.

This post goes directly to the title of the work; fast and slow thinking. This is the foundation of his work. He and his great collaborator Amos Tversky, (who passed away and therefore could not receive the Nobel) see human thinking in two forms that they call System 1 and System 2. More aptly they could be called “automatic” and “effortful” systems, but Fast and Slow is a good shorthand description. According to Kahneman’s description,

“System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control”

“System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations”

Tags: Market Research, Consumer Behavior, Psychology, Behavioral Economics

Yes, it is a rather important issue and can be approached in a variety of ways. My purpose with this post is not to provide a comprehensive answer, but look at one specific solution based on what I recently read. The book is Thinking, Fast and Slow, the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman's excellent summary of a lifetime of research. He is perhaps the most accomplished psychologist around and could (among other things) justifiably be called the intellectual godfather of behavioral economics. It is always worth listening to what he says and in this particular case, it seems to me there is a nugget that applies to making quantitative research more actionable.

Tags: Psychology, Behavioral Economics, Consumer Behavior

I was on a call recently working through the details of a complex discrete-choice task. Specifically we were debating how best to apply price prohibitions - restrictions on the design that would prevent certain "monthly" and "one-time" prices from ever appearing together.

Rest assured our thinking was all very logical. We needed to put controls in place because who in their right mind would ever choose an option where a low monthly rate, coupled with a contract, quickly added up to more out of pocket costs than would accrue by skipping the contract and paying a (slightly) higher up-front fee. That's when the client's client chimed in:

"People don't do the math," said the man who spends little to none of his time conducting surveys.

Tags: Consumer Behavior, Behavioral Economics

A new book attempts to make behavioral economics interesting and approachable by couching it in the world of sports. Personally I try to avoid books on economics, but I did find a review quite interesting. Not only did it help to explain why the Philadelphia Flyers lost the 1980 Stanley Cup, but it also helps to illustrate the limitations of crowd sourcing and the reality of Asymmetry in key driver analysis.

Behavioral economics studies the role of emotion in economic decision making (something marketers need to master). In application it can help to explain the illogical decision making of shoppers. A classic example of this is when someone spends $1000 on a product they don't need thanks to a price cut of say $200. They will often focus on what they saved ("I saved $200!!!) and not on what they spent or the actual need.

Tags: Market Research, Behavioral Economics

Ever heard of a Commitment Contract? No we are not talking about marriage. A commitment contract is one where you commit to doing something and sign a contract. If you don’t do what you committed to, the terms of the contract go into effect. The terms are set up in such a way that you could end up paying a penalty if you fail to honor the contract. In other words the incentives are aligned to elicit a specific behavior. The kicker is that you set up the contract and the penalty.

Tags: Behavioral Economics