i Research | Joel Rubinson on Marketing Research
Thoughts by Joel Rubinson, Chief Research Officer of The ARF
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Six big wakeup calls in 2009 are doing the marketing research profession a favor; refocusing us on what it will take to conduct trustworthy research, find unexpected feedback, provide anticipatory insights, measure media in a way that people now choose to experience it, and properly rebalance our understanding of how people choose brands by placing more emphasis on understanding the shopper.

Internet research has some huge advantages. It is not only faster and less expensive; it offers an environment that is more native to our digital, interconnected world. We must not shy away from finding the best way of harnessing the more realistic environment that internet research can offer.

Listening reveals insights via social and open-book approaches. Listening is about studying the change-makers (people) in a way that is native to how they are increasingly living their lives. We must learn how to add listening to our survey-based approaches for generating anticipatory insights.

In a world of the long-tail of choices that are sometimes not very functionally different, use curiosity as a way of getting people to think about your brand. Being interesting might be a new way of being better.

Recent evidence from over 100,000 interviews in a tightly controlled experiment proves online research, using best practices, can produce results that equally or more accurate vs. RDD phone interviewing on a series of benchmarking questions and demographics.

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