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Learning The ABCs Of Storytelling — Focus On The Conflict

Posted by Roxana Strohmenger on November 15, 2012

Roxana Strohmenger

I am now back from attending this year’s The Market Research Event (TMRE) in beautiful Boca Raton, Florida. As always, TMRE produced a content-packed program that addressed a multitude of different topics, ranging from mobile and technology to shopper insights to ROI and measurement and even data analytics and big data. While I attended my fair share of talks focused on emerging and innovative methodologies, I was really interested in the consultative skill development track. This was a track that focused on discussing what client-side Market Insights (MI) Professionals have learned are the best practices for storytelling and data visualization.

One of the talks that I really enjoyed was by Brett Townsend of PepsiCo, whose talk title was aptly named “Treat Your Clients Like Your Kids — Tell Them A Story.” While this isn’t a new idea for MI Professionals — and he discussed well-known takeaways such as “If we can’t tell a story in 20 minutes, then you don’t have a story to tell” — one comment really struck me: Conflict is the engine that drives the story. Our primary goal as MI Professionals is to understand the conflict that consumers are experiencing in their daily lives and to understand what that means to the company or brand.

To focus on the conflict, Brett broke down the story-building process as if we were in the movie business and we were writers writing a script. For each project you work on, you need to understand the following factors:

·         Who is the hero? For our purposes, it will always be the consumer.

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The Data Digest: Profiling Chinese Luxury Shoppers

Posted by Reineke Reitsma on November 9, 2012

Reineke Reitsma

One of my responsibilities at Forrester is editing our Technographics® research deliverables globally. In recent years, we have regularly published reports on consumer behaviors in emerging markets, including the BRIC countries. One aspect of this global data really intrigues me: the success of luxury brands and the profile of luxury goods buyers in these markets.

China has emerged as one of the world's largest luxury goods markets: According to the World Luxury Association, shoppers from Japan represent 29% of the world market share of luxury goods sales; China, 27%; Europe, 18%; and the US, just 14%.

How are Chinese luxury goods buyers different from their non-luxury goods buyer counterparts? Forrester's Technographics® data shows that Chinese luxury goods buyers are similar in terms of age and gender to non-luxury buyers, but they tend to have higher incomes. However, they differ significantly with regards to lifestyle and social attitudes.

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Ninety Percent Of The Online Population Will Regularly Watch Online Video By 2017

Posted by Michael O'Grady on November 7, 2012

Michael O'Grady

The music industry in Europe has had a traumatic time, losing more than 31% of its revenue in the past five years to piracy. Given the increasing digitalization of content in the music, video, gaming, and newspaper industries, our recently published Forrester Research Online Paid Content Forecast, 2012 To 2017 (EU-7) maps content’s evolution from an audience, payer, and revenue perspective for each of these categories and for each of seven European countries. Here are some high-level results for the four categories:

Music.With more than 35% of music revenues in Europe coming from digital, spending on physical music will soon be overtaken by its digital counterpart. Although digital music use in Europe still lags behind the US (where digital revenues exceeded physical revenues for the first time in 2012), Forrester found that more than 50% of online Europeans already listen to online music regularly.

Video.Video is the fastest-growing digital content category; we forecast that more than 90% of the online population will regularly watch online video by 2017. Online video audience penetrations will rise significantly as video on demand, pay per view, and catchup TV become mainstream. And with pay-TV penetrations in the EU-7 nations considerably lower than in the US, there’s more scope for paid online video to grow.

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The Data Digest: Magazine Readership On Digital Devices

Posted by Reineke Reitsma on October 26, 2012

Reineke Reitsma

This week the news broke that Newsweek, one of the most recognized magazine brands in the world, will cease publishing its print edition after nearly 80 years and go all digital in 2013. The news got quite a bit of attention globally — it even made it into the printed edition of a Dutch newspaper. Of course, this didn’t come as a complete surprise, and Forrester has published enough about digital disruption and the media meltdown to know that newspapers and magazines have to change their strategy.

But the news got me wondering to what extent consumers use their digital devices for media consumption at this moment. Forrester’s North American Technographics® Media And Advertising Online Benchmark Survey, Q3 2012 (US) shows that about one-fifth of US online adults consume magazine content digitally, meaning they visit magazine websites or read digital publications.

This is lower than for newspapers, where about one-third of the US online population reads newspapers digitally — and 14% digital only (compared with 5% for magazines). Those who read digital magazines only are far more likely to be male, the average age skews younger than 35 years old, and only one-quarter of them regularly spend money on magazines.

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Navigating How To Win With US Banking Customers

Posted by Gina Sverdlov on October 22, 2012

Gina Sverdlov

Recently, Forrester released a report entitled “What Drives Retention and Sales In US Banking?” that tackles this question from the consumer point of view. Using regression analysis, we uncover how these drivers vary for acquisition, retention, and cross-selling in US retail banking.

What did we find? For one thing, consumers value trustworthiness from a bank above all else for both sales and retention. This comes as no surprise to us; with so many financial institutions to choose from, consumers want to do business with a bank that they trust. This finding also supports the key theme that Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine focus on in their recent book, Outside In: Treating your customers well and providing them with a positive customer experience pays off.

The graphic below shows the drivers of retention for the US retail banking customers: The perception of trustworthiness is off the charts as a driver of retention, and offering good customer service is the second-most influential driver. What our analysis shows to not impact retention — and even shows a negative relationship with retention — is having low APR and many locations.

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78% Of US Email Users Will Also Access Their Emails Via Mobile By 2017

Posted by Jitender Miglani on October 18, 2012

Jitender Miglani

 

If you search for “the death of email” on the Internet, you might be surprised by the number of articles on the subject. Why are so many people talking about it? Is this 40-year-old method of communication really under threat from social media? Does it mean that marketers will spend less on email marketing solutions? We paid close attention to these questions and many more when building the Forrester Research Email Marketing Forecast, 2012 To 2017 (US). We believe that spending on email marketing solutions will continue to grow. Why? We will see:

1. An increase in the number of active email users. Our email address is our online address, and it offers us universal interoperability. As per our forecast, we expect the number of active email users in the US to grow to 227 million by 2017.

2. The evolution of email clients. Over the past 40 years, email clients have evolved from text-based to desktop to web-based to mobile clients. As per our forecast, 178 million users —78% of all US active email users — will also access their emails through mobile email clients by 2017.

3. Email’s integration with social media. Email marketers have started leveraging a combination of email and social media marketing to get the best results. They are providing links to share via social media in their email messages and are encouraging their social media followers to subscribe to their email lists.

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For Consumers, ”Being Online” Is Becoming A Fluid Concept

Posted by Gina Sverdlov on October 17, 2012

Gina Sverdlov

Consumer behavior is changing even more rapidly than you might think. In the past couple of weeks, my colleague Samantha Jaddou and I have been analyzing the data for the US version of our annual global series, “Understanding The Changing Needs Of Consumers.” We are seeing not only a decline in the number of US consumers with a computing device (a PC, laptop, or netbook) but also a drop in the amount of time that consumers spend on traditional media like watching TV (on a TV) or reading newspapers or magazines.

One of the biggest revelations in this year’s data was the change in attitude of consumers — particularly younger ones — toward the Internet. Since we started tracking this information in 1997, we have only seen the amount of time spent online increasing. But Forrester’s 2012 data shows that US online adults are now reporting a decline in the amount of time they spend using the Internet compared with 2011 and 2010.

What’s going on? Our analysis revealed that “being online” is becoming a fluid concept. Consumers no longer consider some of the online activities they perform to be activities related to “using the Internet.” In fact, given the various types of connected devices that US consumers own, many people are connected and logged on (automatically) at all times. The Internet has become such a normal part of their lives that consumers don’t register that they are using the Internet when they’re on Facebook, for example. It’s only when they are actively doing a specific task, like search, that they consider this to be time that they’re spending online.

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The Data Digest: Profiling Creators

Posted by Reineke Reitsma on October 12, 2012

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Reineke Reitsma

Creators sit at the top of Forrester’s Social Technographics® ladder: They are the consumers who write blogs and articles, upload self-created video and music, post photos, and maintain their own web pages. More than any other group, Creators are shaping the face of consumer content online. We recently published a report called “Exploring The Social Technographics® Ladder: Creators.” It shows that Creators are great advocates for the brands they like, and that they have, on average, many more friends and followers to share their opinions with than any other group.

However, what was really intriguing is how much they value feedback from companies and brands. Even more importantly, more Creators expect companies to respond to positive posts about products/services than to negative ones.

This is contrary to popular belief. In fact, there’s plenty of advice out there on what you should do in a crisis or how to respond to someone who’s posted a complaint. There’s not much advice on how to handle positive feedback, but in fact, it’s one of the best ways to trigger (and motivate) your brand advocates.

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Innovative Methodology: Companies Are Seeing The Value In MROCs

Posted by Roxana Strohmenger on October 5, 2012

Roxana Strohmenger

My colleague Lindsey Colella and I attended the Vision Critical Summit in New York this week and were inspired by how market insights professionals are truly embracing the value of market research online communities (MROCs). Among the emerging and innovative methodologies, this is the one that we are seeing gaining significant traction: The Greenbook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) Report shows that this is the top emerging methodology used by client-side researchers — with 36% currently leveraging it.

What did we learn at the event? In addition to reinforcing MROC best-practice tips like closing the loop with panelists and incentivizing in a relevant way, which Lindsey recently wrote about in her report “Best Practices For Managing A Market Research Online Community,” the following best practices and examples caught our attention:

·         Internal marketing is critical. Market insights professionals need to “sell” the value of MROCs to various business units across the organization. One electronics retailer did that by hosting monthly meetings in which the MI team presented all the research collected in the MROC to the cross-function business leaders.  

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The Data Digest: Multitasking While Watching TV

Posted by Reineke Reitsma on September 28, 2012

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Reineke Reitsma

The proliferation of mobile and portable Internet-connected devices has made TV multitasking the norm. Forrester’s Consumer Technographics® data shows that about four out of five US online adults who own a laptop, smartphone, or tablet go online regularly while watching TV, but the intensity of interaction differs by device.

 

My colleague Tracy Stokes wrote about this in a report called “The New Layers Of TV Audience Insight.” Her take: Just because your TV audience is active on social and digital platforms doesn’t mean that they will blindly engage with your brand. To drive cross-media engagement, you have to have a clear call to action that easily conveys why consumers should be active across multiple media channels.

But when you do it right, there’s a lot to gain. Research from Discovery Communications shows that exposure to more digital touchpoints while watching TV can strengthen consumers' connection to content and brands, not detract from it. Discovery's study found that users who multitask with devices while they watch TV are more attentive and responsive to TV programming and advertising than the average viewer.

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