World Cup Blog
World Cup Webbers
The 2010 World Cup is here. In the run-up to the event Discovery Research scoured the globe for die-hard football fans to take part in a series of challenges and to report their first-hand experiences of how the tournament touches each and every one of us. The twist… all the respondents are researchers by trade. Blog by Michael Webley.
Research.Opinionated.Insightful blog
Research . Opinionated . Insightful
A blog about words we sometimes find daunting or dull: profit, productivity and ROI. It’s about the initiatives necessary to drive these in market research and why simplistic tactics can be self-defeating. Authors Alastair Gordon and David McCallum have worked at senior levels in market research around the world, and are currently partners in Gordon & McCallum, a business consultancy specialising in the Market Research industry.
The Young Ones – blog
The Young Ones
Want to keep tabs on the ups and downs and ins and outs of the youth market? This blog forecasts and explores trends and cultural developments specific to consumers aged 16-30. It’s compiled by Dave Stenton and colleagues in the research team at Voodoo Research.
Mediawatch blog
Mediawatch
The Mediawatch Blog provides running commentary on what’s being written and said about research. The idea is to keep you up to date on what’s being said, and help oil the wheels of discussion and debate.
Reporter's Notebook blog
Reporter's Notebook
Comment and opinion from our team of journalists, who offer their thoughts on the stories we write about and why we report what we do. Have a burning question you want answered? Email news@researchmagazine.co.uk.
Research Technology blog
Online samples - where lighting a few fires might help
Will a new and much-needed initiative to provide industry-wide tools to monitor online sample quality put fire into the hands of mortals?
Connect the Dots blog
Connect the Dots
In this blog, Martin Hayward sets out to raise awareness of, and stimulate debate around, the growing body of new data and insights that is challenging the usefulness of and even the need for many of the staple research approaches that have supported the industry since its inception.
How customers think, feel and behave - blog
How customers think, feel and behave
This blog is all about understanding customers and clients, how to research them and what to do with the insight generated. Author Steven Walden, head of research at customer experience consultancy Beyond Philosophy, sets out to highlight some of the innovations in research that shine a light on the mind of the consumer as well as how they interact with the experiences businesses design for them.
The Editor's Chair blog
The Editor's Chair
This is a blog devoted to examining the wealth of communications that fall across my desk on a daily basis. It’s going to be a quick and frequent round-up of the major research issues that we are covering, thinking about covering or shelving for good. If you want the inside track on what the editorial team is chewing over – this will be the blog to read.
Tea and Sympathy blog
Tea and Sympathy
Steve Phillips is the chief happiness officer of Spring Research and a partner in both MESH Planning and Tuned In Research. His blog discusses the state of research as a discipline and casts a critical eye over the research industry and its mass of contradictions and challenges.
Only Connect blog
Buzz Off?
Google Buzz shows us how little we know about how social networks operate as brands.
Talk Normal blog
Talk Normal
Tim Phillips has been a journalist for 20 years. During that time he has been slowly driven crazy by bad spokespeople: the jargon, the evasiveness, the inability to make a point or to answer a direct question. It’s time to stop thinking about spin and management and start talking like human beings. Talknormal.co.uk.
Latest entries
What a to-do about DIY
With everyone talking about clients doing DIY research, Steve is wondering what research agencies will be doing in five years.
Consultation or nonsultation?
In the Daily Telegraph, Andrew Gilligan has been having a go at ‘nonsultations’ – cynical attempts by government to lend legitimacy to pre-determined decisions, masquerading as consultation exercises.
Wedding Fever
A look at how the 'big day' continues to buck the recessionary trends
The difficulty of proving your point
The debate over the bestselling book The Spirit Level is a reminder of how much people’s view of (or interest in) the evidence can be influenced by what they already think.
Why changes to Canada's census make no sense
Government ministers have railed against “personal and intrusive questions” in the long-form census, hence their call for it to be made voluntary. But, bizarrely, the questions they cited in the press were added on their watch.
Butterflies don’t innovate: the real innovation challenge for market research
Far from being super conservative, most researchers are fascinated by “trends” and new ideas. But too often we mistake “trend-following” for “innovation”, flitting like butterflies from one new idea to another – never quite developing their potential or integrating the new techniques with old ones. It’s not “innovation” we lack, it’s “implementation”.
The new stay at home generation – and implications for marketers
There’s been a well documented shift in the number of young adults staying at home with their parents rather than moving out. What direct impact is this going to have on patterns of consumption or implications for underlying attitudes and behaviours?
Is anybody listening?
The UK’s new government has been keen to position itself as one that listens, using crowdsourcing in high-profile attempts to garner comments and suggestions. But questions are already being asked about whether it really wants to hear ideas.
Online samples - where lighting a few fires might help
Will a new and much-needed initiative to provide industry-wide tools to monitor online sample quality put fire into the hands of mortals?
The poll truth and nothing but the truth
Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs (pictured) said recently: “We’re too busy to sit around looking at polls.” Yet they’ve spend $4.4m on them in 18 months. Why can’t politicians be honest about their love for opinion research?
In iPad we trust?
We couldn’t help but be a little bit concerned at reports earlier this week about how the iPad had given a boost to market research interviewers, by suddenly making the public more interested in them.