Why consumers connect with Marketeers via Email and Social sites

These days the new trend is to connect with the consumers through emails and social networking sites(SNS). For the companies, this is just another avenue for them to reach out to their customers what with the growing internet penetration and growing popularity of such mediums. But why do people support such initiatives?

A research done by ExactTarget in US tells us why consumers (atleast in the US) give their email ids to companies. (refer to the graph above)

Discounts and promotions were the clear winner, followed by freebies and sales. Reasons like wanting to interact with the brand or show their support came in at the bottom of the list.

For social followers, discounts and deals are still highly important. They came in second in a March 2010 survey by Morpace about joining Facebook fan pages.

Chadwick Martin Bailey found they were the primary reason to follow a brand on Facebook or Twitter in February 2010. Razorfish reached similar results in August 2009. (refer second graph)

But the more public nature of opting to join fan pages, like brands or follow marketers means motivations like showing support for the company are also important to social marketing. In the Morpace survey, that was the top reason to join a fan page.

Other researchers also found substantial numbers of respondents eager to show their support or follow brands simply because they were customers.

These motivations bolster assumptions that email is a more passive channel, while the more active brand advocates are to be found following brands on social sites.

MARKETING RESEARCH JARGONS

What is Self-Select bias?
Self-select bias is the error that can potentially enter into a survery when a sample is formed of self-selected volunteers, also known as the voluntary-response bias. The resulting sample is often over-representative of those who have strong opinions and thus may not be a true representation of the general opinion on a product, servuce or issue.

What is a Corporate Image Study?
A corporate image study is similar to branding research. The focus is on the perception that members of the wider community have of a company, and the position it holds within that community. Corporate image describes what consumers think about a company - their thoughts, feelings and expectations on issues such as products, services and customer satisfaction.

What are "Intercepts'?
The term 'Intercepts' defines a wide range of short, quick interviews which are carried out "in-situe" with consumers.
Street intercepts are a common form and involve approaching likely interview prospects at a specified time and location, asking several screening questions to establish the respondents eligiability, then asking for permission to complete a questionnaire - sometimes, though not exclusively, in return for a small incentive.
Intercepts are also frequently carried out in or outside shopping centres, or other large retail outlets - indeed any venue where a high number of the specified target group are likely. Normally, regardless of the qualification questions, the sample should be viewed as a convenience sample, as sample selection is often less tightly managed than with other methods. However, intercept surveys have great advantages in terms of cost, turnaround time and establishing a good range of views.

NEUROFOCUS IN MARKETING

DEAR FRIENDS
THERE IS A NEW BUZZ IN THE MARKETING RESEARCH ARENA AND i.e. NEUROFOCUS.It is already being used in U.S by Cocacola & P&G

Neurofocus is in the realm of neuromarketing.In this the researcher doesn't asks consumers/respondents any ques but instead get them wear a hat & track their brainwaves as they are shown stimulus or advertisementswhich is being tested,even packaging,ambience or buying behaviour inside a store.They try to map their subconsciousness and know what they are thinking.

Sometimes the consumers are not able to express these things properly.Research is about getting into the minds of the consumers and using technology helps researchers to do so.Listening rather than asking what they have to say

Coca-Cola Uses Mobile Research To Capture Real Time Brand Touch Points

Friends this interesting news i got from a Marketing Research website. Tells about the latest reasearch technique companies are using.
--------------------------------------------------------
Delegates at Globalpark’s forthcoming Mobile Research Conference in London will be among the first to hear findings from a groundbreaking research project that could be the answer to problems that have previously challenged market researchers.

Heval Ceylan, Experience Director at MESH Planning, will take to the stage with Linda Neville, Portfolio Planner at Coca-Cola, to share findings from a mobile research project they worked on last year.

Using a three-stage approach they set out to elicit responses in real-time.

The project used the mobile as one research platform to help Coca-Cola understand the various touch points respondents – who had been recruited through an online panel - had with a short list of specific brands. The first stage of research involved an online questionnaire to understand people’s relationships to the brands.

Then using their mobile phones for the second stage of the project, respondents were asked to text whenever they came into contact with one of these brands over a period of a week and reply to a text containing a code frame using four simple characters.

These texts provided information including where they saw the brand, how they felt about the touch point and how likely that made them to choose the brand next time.

The mobile approach met a number of the key objectives: it provided research findings in real time, allowing Coca-Cola quickly to make changes in their ongoing “topical” campaign in newspapers as the results were analysed; it was deemed the perfect platform for reaching the target market of 25-49 year old ABC1 respondents and it was able to capture experiences with the brands being measured as they happened, including photos.

Conference delegates will gain other useful insights from the project: how MESH Planning was able to integrate the results of mobile research with those from the online platform; how online diaries were used by the respondents to see what they had submitted; how the MESH research team were able to instruct respondents in the methodology throughout the project.

Quantitative vs Qualitative Research Methods

This link provides us with insights that when we should use quantitative or qualitative methods..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=638W_s5tRq8

PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

These are unstructured prompts,indirect techniques or stimulus that encourage the respondent to project their underlying motivations, beliefs, attitudes, or feelings onto an ambiguous situation to disguise the purpose of the research
examples :
1.word association - say the first word that comes to mind after hearing a word - only some of the words in the list are test words that the researcher is interested in, the rest are fillers - is useful in testing brand names - variants include chain word association and controlled word association
2.sentence completion - respondents are given incomplete sentences and asked to complete them
3.story completion - respondents are given part of a story and are asked to complete it
4.cartoon tests - pictures of cartoon characters are shown in a specific situation and with dialogue balloons - one of the dialogue balloons is empty and the respondent is asked to fill it in
5.thematic apperception tests - respondents are shown a picture and asked to make up a story about the picture(s)
6.role playing - respondents are asked to play the role of someone else - researchers assume that subjects will project their own feelings or behaviours into the role
7.third-person technique - a verbal or visual representation of an individual and his/her situation is presented to the respondent - the respondent is asked to relate the attitudes or feelings of that person - researchers assume that talking in the third person will minimize the social pressure to give standard or politically correct responses

infact some good serearch on qualitative vs quantitative research
gr8 going guys