MRGA JOURNAL Volume 1 Issue 1 02.16.11

02.16.11 Volume 1 Issue 1

Who Is MR Heretic?  An In-Depth Interview Offshore Transparency  Market Research Bloggers You Should Follow Now  Adopting A Social Model For Market Research

MRGA JOURNAL

JOURNAL ENTRIES 4 Welcome to the MRGA JOURNAL

33 New Membership Spotlight

6 Exclusive NGMR Interview with the Most Mysterious Blogger in Research

35 A Candid Conversation On Off-Shore Transparency

12 Featured Bloggers You Should Follow Now 16 Featured MRGA Blog Posts

43 How to Enhance Productivity in the Human Cloud 44 Throwing Down the Gauntlet 46 Top Stories

17 LinkedIn Conversations 19 Corporate Membership Spotlight 20 Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark

50 Events

52 Videos 55 Social Media Innovators

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Volume 1, Issue 1 :: February 2011 MRGA JOURNAL by MRGA Members is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

MRGA JOURNAL

Welcome to the MRGA JOURNAL Welcome to the first edition of the MRGA JOURNAL, the Market Research Industry‘s first user generated content periodical. We find it appropriate that our first cover story comes from two of the most talked about bloggers in market research… self proclaimed market research super villain (he‘s really a very nice guy, in my opinion more super hero) Tom H.C. Anderson and the MR Heretic, who‘s mystique leaves us all rooting for the vocal researcher keeping quality in check. We believe the stories, content, and press covered in this edition and JOURNAL entries to come, will cover the most important issues facing our industry today.

After all, our content is comprised of MRGA Members and industry experts just like you trying to navigate observations and needs within the market research landscape. We hope you will make it a better place for all of us to succeed, gain knowledge and do a better job for those we help gain insight and make strategic decisions.

Eric Bell, Founder & CEO The Market Research Global Alliance

Please follow the articles back to the original bloggers or the MRGA Discussions Forum and comment with your thoughts or write another article if you feel inspired. We have no agenda other than to support what you our members and readers are interested in. We give all of our members an equal voice as it pertains to market research!

If you are inspired to write a story or publish an article as a professional member, please do it – it only costs your time to participate. If you are a brand and want to share ideas about your company brand you just need to become a corporate member. All you need to do to share your news is be a member of the MRGA, and pick one of these areas within the MRGA Community and we will publish it.

Step 1. Become A Free Professional Member (Individual) of the MRGA or Become A Paid Corporate Member (Company Branding) of the MRGA. Step 2. Create Content or Lead Groups of Like Minded Professionals - Pick Your Publishing Destination::

 Market Research Conversations (Industry Announcements:: Post Blogs Commentary, News, Press, White Papers    

etc.)

Forums & Discussions (The best place to gather like minded professionals under industry topics) Groups & Online Product Labs (Join other like minded professionals to discuss topics and follow product innovation.)

Events (Post Your Industry Events, Webinars, Speaking Engagements, Interviews etc.)

Videos (Have media content you want to share with the world? Post it here and share)

Step 3. The MRGA will automatically publish and optimize your content through our one-click publication network as soon as you click submit! Our network publishes to over 17,000+ instantly. Our network is comprised of ::

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MRGASN ResearchVibes GreenBook Blogs (Selected Commentary) Social Media Resources (LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook and More!)

Our goal is to give you an easy to publish, share, and achievable open platform that opens gives you ownership of your content and indexes for it the industry.

Where ever you see the blue bubble, click to comment. or just The podium is yours, visit the discussion forum to see what other industry thought leaders are saying!

Eric Bell, Founder & CEO The Market Research Global Alliance JOURNAL@mrgasn.com

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MRGA JOURNAL Exclusive NGMR interview with the most mysterious blogger in research!

By Tom H. C. Anderson, MBA & MEA Founder & Managing Partner Anderson Analytics, LLC Tom H. C. Anderson founded Anderson Analytics in 2005 as the first full service online market research firm to leverage data and text mining with other online research techniques. Since then Tom and his team have won several awards for their innovative methodologies and groundbreaking work.

He earned his BS in Marketing and MBA, Beta Gamma Sigma, in Marketing, Finance and International Business from the University of Connecticut where he is a frequent guest speaker in graduate level marketing research and data-mining courses. He attained his Master of Economics with honors from Lund University, Sweden.

During his thesis work he consulted for several joint ventures in Shanghai, China and also interned for the United Nations (UNICEF Geo-Political Analysis Group).

Several of his articles and methodological approaches have been published in trade JOURNALs as well as decision science text books including: Business Research Methods 10e , McGraw-Hill © 2005, 2007 & 2008, and Qualitative Market Research – Approaches and Applications IFCAI Books/IFCAI University Press © 2007.

If you, like me, feel market research is in dire need of change, then it‘s hard not to enjoy reading MR Heretic‘s sharp and witty posts, often containing very visually apt meme like images, on the Market Research Death Watch blog. While speaking anonymously, @MRHeretic does so with a certain elegance and restraint, that is hard not to admire. I often find myself hoping his efforts will encourage and spawn other masked heroes to join his ranks, taking on the establishment that market research has become.

MR Heretic

Since I mentioned I‘d be interviewing MR Heretic on the blog a few days ago I‘ve had several people contact me with questions and guesses about his identity. Personally, I enjoy a bit of mystery, and so while there‘s no harm in guessing, the following interview with MR Heretic is strictly about his views on our industry.

I‘m pleased to delve a bit deeper into market research with MR Heretic here on the Next Gen blog. He indicated he might even take a few reader follow up questions/comments if there are any.

Tom H. C. Anderson: You‟ve gotten quite a following, and a lot of people including myself really like and agree with what you have to say. Can you tell me a bit about why you started blogging and tweeting, and why do you do it anonymously?

MR Heretic: I guess there is a heretic in all of us. That‟s why I started the blog.

The same things kept coming up in private conversations with friends, acquaintances, even clients. We all saw how broken MR is, and felt powerless to change it. Some were inhibited by fear of losing clients or jobs, others just tired of swimming against the current. MR Heretic became our voice. Especially early on, the inspiration for many of the posts came from other people… I just pressed the keys. That‟s why posting anonymously made sense. MR Heretic is not a person, it‟s an idea. The blog doesn‟t belong to me, it belongs to everyone who is tired of the same old bullshit and in favor of destructive reconstruction for the greater good; I just post words on a web page. The fact that I can speak freely without putting my employer or myself in potentially sticky situations is a bonus.

Tom H. C. Anderson: I have to admit, I think part of the intrigue is that you are anonymous. I think the anonymity is something we‟ve lost on the web with social networks. I think part of it is good, part of it is not. Anyway, a lot of us would still like to know a bit more about you. Can you give us a few clues about who you are?

MR Heretic: I am the silent discontent of research-serfs everywhere, given voice and freed from fear of ostracization. I am everyone, and I am no one. In other words, I‟d like to dodge the question.

Continued

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MRGA JOURNAL Tom H. C. Anderson: Fair enough. Can you at least tell me a few particulars so we can sort of get an idea of where you‟re coming from. Are you a Boomer, I‟m guessing Gen X? Are you American, European, Australian… (you seem like a native English speaker)? Have you worked in any other industries before MR? MR Heretic: I‟ve lived in Europe and North America. I worked briefly for a large „tech company‟ a long time ago, the rest of my career has been in MR. I might or might not belong to GenX depending on the definition you use.

Tom H. C. Anderson: Getting back to Market Research, what is your single biggest industry pet peeve?

MR Heretic: Seth Godin calls them „the forces of mediocrity.‟ They are sheeple who fear change and resist it with devastating efficacy.

Who is the MR Heretic?

“I am the growing multitude of people in the Market Research industry who have realized that the status quo is obsolete, and we face a choice between evolution and extinction.” http://www.mrheretic.com/

Tom H. C. Anderson: Ah, so you like Seth Godin. From where else do you get inspiration?

MR Heretic: I try to ingest a variety of perspectives. The Cluetrain Manifesto has a special place on my bookshelf. Some others sources of information and inspiration: Getting Real and Rework by 37signals, @researchlive, @mrnews, all the usual MR Tweeple and bloggers including yourself, Mashable, TechCrunch, Ted talks, Twitter, Facebook, The Economist, Science, New Scientist, Advertising Age, Mitch Joel, Clay Shirky, Guy Kawasaki, O‟Reilly radar, Kevin Kelly, and whoever else has something interesting to say on any given day. Some are in my content queue because I agree with them and they inspire me, others are there specifically because I think they are full of shit. The second group helps me remember that each of us projects our own reality and I shouldn‟t take myself too seriously. My favorite quote this week comes from Hugh MacLeod talking about Rackspace‟s evil plan: “believe in the future by creating it first.”

Tom H. C. Anderson: What company or companies do you most admire and why?

MR Heretic: I admire MR companies that treat respondents like human beings. Sadly, I don‟t know of any. Do you?

Tom H. C. Anderson: What do you mean exactly? I like to think my co. and many other companies treat our respondents ok.

I do think I know what you mean though about long surveys, spammy ads and low as you can go incentives without sharing any results with respondents? I can see how changing this would improve our data and street cred with civilians, but I think the other part of the equation lies in improving our analytics skills, leveraging and merging more data sources for predictive analytics, would you agree this is maybe even more important?

MR Heretic: I agree that improving skills, merging data sources and predictive analysis are all important. I don‟t agree that they are more important than re-framing our respondents as customers. It‟s not an either-or proposition; both are essential. I focus on user experience because that‟s what I know and that‟s what I‟m most passionate about today. We have an image problem, a serious one, and a deserved one. Tell the average 20-something you work on market research surveys and they will look at you like you have leprosy. This stigma limits who we can reach now, and if we don‟t fix it it will continue to hold us back in the future regardless of what skills or tools we develop. I want to believe that your company treats respondents well, but I need proof. I invite you to let me participate as a respondent in some of your research and I will give you an honest review on my blog.

Continued

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MRGA JOURNAL Tom H. C. Anderson: LOL, thanks for the offer. Not really the way we recruit (we have a small highly specific GenX2Z panel) but will keep your offer in mind. For many studies, we like all other companies I know of are guilty of participating in the great panelist exchange market…

You are completely right about our reputation I‟m afraid. As we branch out with new skill sets and techniques, perhaps this will be part of the change.

So, what do you think the future of marketing research looks like? 1 year from now? How about 10 years from now?

“I admire MR companies that treat respondents like human beings. Sadly, I don‟t know of any. Do you?”

MR Heretic: Nothing will change in the next 12 months. The industry will continue to hype innovation while dabbling halfheartedly to convince clients (and ourselves) that we are moving in the right direction. The buzzwords will change, but everything else will stay the same. In 10 years what we think of as MR will fill a small niche in a new ecosystem dominated by Web-based analytics and visualization tools connected to active and passive data feeds from a variety of sources. Think back to the music industry in the days of vinyl records, tapes, and CDs; now fast-forward to iTunes…this is going to be a bit like that.

Tom H. C. Anderson: I think I like the future. But I think many of us are not prepared for it.

What new techniques do you find most interesting?

Conversely, which ones do you think are already getting more hype than they‟ll probably ever deserve?

MR Heretic: Is this my cue to plug Odintext? It‟s too early to declare winners and losers. We need to give all of them a sporting chance and see what works and what doesn‟t. Of course everyone is going to back their own horse and try to trip the others up. That‟s unfortunate but unavoidable; take everything with a grain of salt. No one really knows what they‟re talking about. We‟re all making it up as we go along. We will all end up using a variety of tools to get the job done, so don‟t write any of them off just yet. I happen to believe in an interactive MR canvas where a variety of techniques are all available as modules and you simply drag & drop whatever is right at the time. I see a lot of potential in predictive analysis using search and social data. I also see an opportunity to rethink how we ask questions; something more intelligent than a poll, less annoying than a survey. Most importantly, I‟m prepared to be wrong and open to having my mind changed.

Tom H. C. Anderson: Thanks for the plug, LOL. I like to think OdinText fits nicely into what you‟re describing RE the interactive MR canvas. And like you, perhaps a persona might even develop around the effort In any case, It‟s easy to criticize, I find myself doing it on more than one occasion. However, I think it‟s also important to give constructive criticism. What are some things you think market research companies could do to improve?

MR Heretic: Create a better respondent experience and you will gain the keys to the data kingdom. For starters, MR is a two sided market, so start conducting yourself accordingly.

Respondents are your customers. They consume your Web content (surveys, apps, community websites, etc.) and pay with their time and data; start showing them some love.

If you start designing Web experiences for customers instead of respondents good things will start to happen: the number of people willing to take your surveys will grow and dependence on incentives will decrease.

Continued

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MRGA JOURNAL MR Heretic: Create simple, beautiful, usable web pages and apps. Write question copy that is as good as the best marketing copy. Make the process as short and relevant as possible.

Don‟t use social media to recruit survey takers or scrape data in sleazy ways; hire amazing social spokespeople to provide customer service (i.e. support) to your survey takers and nurture genuine relationships. Use social media to make your company human and provide service to the community, then–and only if they feel it‟s genuine–you won‟t have to recruit them with cash and prizes, they will come willingly. We believe these things are hard, expensive, and reserved for „technology companies.‟ That‟s a myth. They require a different skill set and a different approach, but they can be done by any company with minor retooling and a big attitude change. When done right they are cheaper and easier to execute (not to mention better ROI) than the brute force tactics we are using now. If our entire industry is riding on the backs of the 1% of Internet users willing to take a survey, imagine how much money there is to be made if we could move that number to 2% or 3%. It can be done. I just told you how.

“Failure is good. We need to fail more. If you try and fail many times you will eventually build something they will come and pay for.

The learnings you get from failing are breadcrumbs on the path to success.”

If you outsource any part of the data collection process, test it as a respondent. If it feels like torture to you, and you wouldn‟t wish it upon your friends or loved ones, don‟t let it happen to someone else‟s loved ones. If you outsource participant recruitment via web search, check the referring URLs in your web server logs… I mean actually open the pages. You might be shocked at the sleazy tactics your suppliers are using on your behalf. Vendor practices are shaped by market pressures, put some pressure on your vendors to clean up their act.

If you commit to doing the things I described so far I tip my hat to you, and your webcustomers thank you for making MR a lot less painful for them, but surveys and focus groups can only take you so far because there is no real value in it for participants. Start doing some serious blue sky thinking. Encourage it in your company. Don‟t let the forces of mediocrity stifle it. Look for ways to gather data that require less time and effort from participants, give them something of real value in return. Don‟t listen to the fear-mongering about Web data; if you gather it the statistical models will come. Try things. Experiment–a lot! Don‟t be scared of ideas that break or cannibalize the current business model, they might be your future business model. If you don‟t develop them, someone else will.

Tom H. C. Anderson: Thanks, wonderful advice. I think as usually I agree with most of what you said. Again, I hear the best interest of the respondent as key in much of it, which is good.

It feels a bit like you‟re holding suppliers a bit more responsible for the status quo than I think we deserve. Anderson Analytics has ventured into some of the areas you‟ve mentioned.

Facebook apps for instance, which were both more interesting for respondents, and collected a lot more interesting data .

We moved away from this early effort mainly because client interest wasn‟t there. I heard “Was it marketing or marketing research?” and that the small extra expense wasn‟t in their budget. I think part of that might have had to do with recession pressures, but we‟re just responding to the demand.

So what I‟m saying is, if we build something better, do you think they‟ll really come, and want to pay for it?

MR Heretic: Failure is good. We need to fail more. If you try and fail many times you will eventually build something they will come and pay for. The learnings you get from failing are breadcrumbs on the path to success. The key is to prototype quickly, without spending a lot of money, and feed what you learned last time into each new iteration. Web technology is perfect for that. Expecting everything to fall into place on the first try is unrealistic.

Continued

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MRGA JOURNAL Tom H. C. Anderson: Yes, iteration is certainly key in what we do.

What skill sets do you think will be most important for the Next Gen market researcher?

MR Heretic: The next generation of market researchers will use new technology and updated statistical models; those skills become pretty straightforward to acquire once someone writes the manuals. The tricky part will be staying current in a world of constant change. Curiosity, creativity, adaptability, and technophilia will be essential characteristics for the next gen researchers as much as analytical & statistical aptitude. In some ways those are the same things that make a great researcher today; the big difference will be the environment they will have to navigate and the ever increasing pace of technological and social change.

“The goal is to build the future I‟ve been writing about. I was recently reminded by someone on Twitter that talk is cheap.

That‟s true if all you do is talk. I‟m ready to get my hands dirty.”

Tom H. C. Anderson: Are you happy with your efforts so far? What are your goals going forward? Any intentions of revealing your identity at some point?

MR Heretic: I‟m happy to see more candid and open minded discussion about the state and direction of the industry. How much that has to do with me is immaterial. I didn‟t have any expectations when I started the blog, it became a success as soon as one other person read it.

The goal is to build the future I‟ve been writing about. I was recently reminded by someone on Twitter that talk is cheap. That‟s true if all you do is talk. I‟m ready to get my hands dirty.

I‟m sure I will reveal my identity to a few people at some point, and then it‟s just a matter of time. So, yes I think at some point you will find out who I am. Am I going to broadcast it? No. Tom H. C. Anderson: Thanks and great having you on the blog. I‟m sure I speak for most Next Gen members when I say I look forward to seeing more of your posts soon.

View more articles by Tom H.C. Anderson by visiting his blog or MRGA profile.

View more articles by MR Heretic by visiting the Market Research Deathwatch blog.

Click To Comment What do you think of this interview? Share your thoughts & theories!

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Featured Bloggers You Should Follow Now Marcelo Sicoli Marcelo has an MBA in marketing and graduation in International Relations.

Has worked for a few Embassies, has many articles published in major magazines, newspapers and websites. World Champion of International Negotiations forum for students(Harvard World Model United Nations-1998.

Event held in Brussels, Belgium). Professor of International Marketing in MBA courses. Consultant for food, industrial and pharmaceutical companies in Brazil and all over the world.

Recent Posts by Marcelo: The banalization of Market research in Brazil Over the past several months, observing some market research companies at work and some of them quite large, one immediately notices the banalization of market research in Brazil.

(EDUARDO GARCIA/ GETTY IMAGES)

Designated as a "pharmerging market," Brazil is revamping its pricing models.

Brazil is the eighth largest pharmaceutical market in the world with 2008 sales estimated at $19.5 billion and the number of units sold in 2008 estimated at 1.8 billion (1). By 2011, Brazil and the other "pharmerging" markets (Russia, India, China, Mexico, South Korea, and Turkey) are expected to contribute approximately 27%...Read More.

By Marcelo Sicoli.

Entering the Brazilian Pharmaceutical Market Stable economics and growing healthcare concerns make Brazil one of the top emerging markets, with a current growth rate >20%.

Many analysts argue that the future for Brazil, which has been called for decades ―the country of the future,‖ has finally arrived‌Read More.

By Marcelo Sicoli.

The need for cutting costs within the market research segment, has resulted from a desire to maintain profit margins, while maintain pricing structures at a level at which the contracting parties abroad were accustomed (willing) to pay at the time of a strong dollar. However, particularly in the well known area of cash incentives for research participation, I see the market working at unrealistic and lessthan-professional levels...Read More. By Marcelo Sicoli.

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Featured Bloggers (Cont.)

Leonard Murphy Lenny is a seasoned and respected industry leader with an entrepreneurial drive. He has been called a visionary and is renowned as an innovator. He has successfully established several companies in the MR space including Rockhopper Research, a leading full service global research firm and MDM Associates, a MR consulting firm, before founding his current companies: BrandScan 360 and his consulting practice LMC group (www.asklmcg.com).

Lenny serves on the Board of The Market Research Global Alliance, the premier social network for the global MR profession. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Research Industry Trends Monitoring Group & Publisher of the GreenBook Research Industry Trends Study, the oldest study in the industry devoted to tracking changing trends in MR. He is on the Advisory Boards of the Festival of NewMR and The Merlien Institute. He is also the Chairman of the IIR Technology Driven Market Research conference.

Rounding out his busy professional life, he is the Editor in Chief of the GreenBook Blog. Lenny can be reached at lmurphy@brandscan360.com

Recent posts contributed by Lenny:

Mental Spring Cleaning One of the biggest challenges for me as a blogger is finding the time to write about every idea or news item that catches my eye. There is so much great information being generated and disseminated out there that it can be a real challenge just to keep up with it all!...Read More. By Leonard Murphy

Do It (Yourself) Or Die Regular readers know that I think a lot about the future of the market research industry. I make it my business to follow as much news as possible, network with peers, talk with thought leaders, and collect my own primary and secondary research data on the topic. I do all of this for three reasons‌Read More. By Leonard Murphy

Be There Or Be Square!

Now that the Holidays are over and we've put 2010 behind us, it's time to start planning for that perennial tradition in Market Research: conferences and seminars!

There are a bevy of events coming up that are near and dear to my heart, so rather than recap everything that is scheduled (you can find that here), this is the list of events happening over the next few months that I recommend all readers of the GreenBook‌Read More.

By Leonard Murphy.

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Featured Bloggers (Cont.)

Guadalupe Pagalday Guadalupe is an experienced and highly motivated bilingual professional with a diverse background in online marketing, public relations, international sales, operations, and teacher as well as language training.

Currently, she is a Marketing Associate at Qualvu.

Recent posts contributed by Guadalupe:

Changing the Odds: How Online Video-Based Market Research Can Be a GameChanger for Product Design We all admire people who want to defy the odds: the athlete whose dream it is to compete in the Olympics, the civic-minded student who hopes someday to become President, the struggling writer whose dream is to write the Great American Novel...Read More. By Guadalupe Pagalday.

Join the conversations!

You can be a featured blogger, too. Post your blog to the MRGA, so you can be heard.

Great Research Begins with Great Respondents It‘s essential to have cooperative and willing respondents because qualitative research tends to take longer than quantitative research. And that‘s because of the depth of information researchers seek. Projects that focus on ―why‖ instead of ―what‖ require participants to do more than just check a few boxes; qualitative research seeks consumers‘ stories on why they make the choices they do...Read More. By Guadalupe Pagalday.

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Featured MRGA Blog Posts Kinesis Survey Technologies Achieves Seventh Straight Year of Record Growth and Profitability Austin, TX - Kinesis Survey Technologies LLC (Kinesis), the industry leader for future-proof market research software solutions, today announced record revenue growth for 2010 and its seventh consecutive year of sustained profitability. Founded in 2003, Kinesis has been profitable every year and has experienced year over year revenue growth to date, all of it generated organically. Read More. By Kinesis New Study Shows How Ebooks Have Changed the Reading Landscape Research from iModerate Research Technologies and Brock Associates finds that 66% of consumers with multi-function devices have increased their reading their habits and 46% have been inspired to read more books in print. In a recent study to understand how portable, multi-function devices or MFDs (e.g., iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android devices, etc) are changing consumer book reading habits, consumers who utilized these devices expressed a tremendous affinity for them, struggling to come up with any sign…Read More. By Adam Rossow.

Four Keys to Creating Value (& Brand Insights!) from Facebook Fans Facebook is clearly King, as evidenced in the Time cover, it's valuation and all the media and blogosphere buzz of late…Read More.

By Globalpark.

Gazelle Global Announces New Viewing Room in Manhattan Gazelle Global Announces New Viewing Room in Manhattan January 25, 2011– New York, NY: US-based research operations service provider, Gazelle Global Research Services, LLC., announces the opening of their new qualitative viewing room located in their Manhattan, NY headquarters. This viewing room is centrally located, offering busy professionals a convenient, flexible solution for conducting qualitative research in New York City. The room comfortably holds a group of 8 participants with a separate viewing…Read More. By Gazelle Global.

Turnkey DIY Alternative for Online Focus Groups: uSamp Delivers Real-Time Participants for GutCheck’s Online Qualitative Market Research Chats Encino, CA – uSamp (www.uSamp.com), one of the world‘s fastest growing technology and online sample companies, announced today that it has teamed up with GutCheck (www.GutCheckIt.com), an innovator in online qualitative research, to provide the automated delivery of screened and qualified participants for moderated, online qualitative market research studies. Read More. By Diane Urso.

5 Strengths of the New Agency Times are hard in the marketing and advertising world and there seems to be consensus that things won‘t be getting easier. The old agency model is on the road to extinction, but no on seems quite sure how to survive. There is agreement that agencies need to adapt and transform from ―integrated ad agencies,‖ to some new type of organization that is defined by broad thinking, flexibility and a more strategic approach to problem solving. The problem is that this sort of thing is easier to talk…Read More. By Gavin Johnston FocusVision Enhances Video Editing Tool Stamford, CT, 17 January 2011 — FocusVision, the leading global provider of qualitative research solutions, has made it even easier to align key decision makers using video highlights from their…Read More. By FocusVision World Wide

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Conversations MRGA on LinkedIn :: The MRGA group on LinkedIn is comprised of almost 8,000 members globally.

Alfonso Regalado How online community research can help brands keep their finger on the pulse of shopper’s decision making?

Coca-Cola Project Shopper 360 shows how brands can respond to the challenges of the post recession shopper landscape through continual dialogue with consumers. This presentation of ESOMAR INSIGHTS Conference Brussels 2011 will show how cutting edge community research combined...

Maruan Trascu What are the "hot" research topics on media and advertising in your countries?

Hello everybody! It appears that in Romania we (or at least I) have managed to come to a stop in the flow of interesting topics related to media and advertising that we can use as study object for research projects. I'm talking here, of course, not about research for...

Junaid Zakria The GRI Report Survey Report chloregy.com You will all recall the GRI Readers Choice Awards last year and the reporting survey that formed part of the competition. Some of you may recall how the Brazilians cleaned up, winning six first place…

Stephen M. Sweid Dr. Market intelligence and the right business decision? With a reliable market intelligence you can get the right decision and the wrong decision, depending on the capabilities of the decision marker(s). With the lack of market intelligence, or the inaccurate data, you are bound to get the wrong decision, irrespective of...

Jessica Groopman How do you approach international market research? focus.com What are the different considerations MRGA you need to make when embarking on international market research?

Sam (Yu) Zhuang Smart Path: Merries, Huggies, Pampers, GOO.N and MamyPoko dominate China diaper online market.

According to latest tracking report of Smart Path (www.smart-path.net), Merries, Huggies, Pampers, GOO.N and MamyPoko dominate China diaper online market, with a collective 90.6% share in 2010Q2. These top 5 players have been holding a dominant position in China diaper...

Mark Uttley Fancy bringing your global MR skills into the music industry? Sony Music‘s Global Marketing team in New York City is setting up a Global Insight Lab. The Lab will provide insight that makes Sony Music‘s global campaigns even more targeted, creative and effective. If you have 5+ years of relevant insight experience and a US VISA, why not...

Jack Jefferson “What’s with all the buzz about Customer Advocacy?”

Market Probe News Live correspondent Melissa Hartzel interviews Dr. Michael Lowenstein and Mr. John Gilbert of Market Probe about customer advocacy, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty measurement and market research at the Loyalty World conference in London, UK.

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MRGA JOURNAL

Corporate Membership Spotlight

Company Description Globalpark offers panel, community and feedback management solutions that drive loyalty, product innovation, and marketing reach. We help organizations like Citi, Daimler and Nintendo, and top MR and HR agencies, to ensure the voice of the customer/employee informs daily decisions. We offer web-based solutions for: - Online Research including mobile, for instant ―in the moment‖ feedback - Research Panels with the most open, efficient panel management platform available - Private Feedback Communities fusing quant and qual research - Advocacy Networks to build reach, reputation With over 10 years experience, we offer a proven, cost-effective solution to help organizations manage what matters and fuel bottom-line growth.

WHY YOU SHOULD GET TO KNOW GLOBALPARK: the recently announced Social Insight Connect solution seamlessly integrates their Enterprise Feedback Suite with Facebook. With this first of its kind application, researchers get an at-the-ready audience with higher-than-average response rates; marketers get to know and measure who their Facebook fans are; and fans get unparalleled engagement with their favorite brands without ever leaving the social networking site.

IN GENERAL: Technology company helping to shape the future of market research with an open feedback management platform that integrates across mobiles, social media and ―surveytainment.‖ Listed on Deloitte "Fast 50: Germany" every year since 2007, Globalpark is making its mark internationally with offices in London and New York and top brands like Citibank, General Mills and the BBC on its client roster.

Dr. Lorenz Gräf Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Globalpark

HISTORY: Founded in 1999 – building a 35,000-member online ―transportation panel‖ for first (and current!) customer, Daimler – to engage customers in collaborative product design.

THE MAN BEHIND IT ALL: Globalpark founder and CEO Lorenz Graef has worked in the field over 25 years: he created the first GOR (nee German Online Research) conference in 1997, has been a long-term board member of German Society for Online Research, and has written numerous texts about online research as recently as 2010.

Find more on www.globalpark.com.

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Jim Whaley VP Business Development Globalpark

Adopting a Social Model for Market Research By: MRGA Live Chatter Aired: 2/10/2011 7:00 PM UTC Description: The MRGA and Globalpark discuss the opportunities and inherent challenges of adopting a social business model for researchers and across the enterprise.

Join a 45-minute radio show that will reveal: How to adapt to a social business model: content, curation and collaboration Benefits of aligning consumers with employees across the enterprise The nuances of influencers and influence, enabling word-of-mouth, and measuring social currency The new ability to extract measured and actionable insights from Facebook fans – without them ever leaving Facebook!

Join the discussion on the approach, and its impact on both marketing and research teams. Mark your calendars for the live debate, and register now to get access to the recorded broadcast - as well as a seat at the February 24th webinar that dives further into the topic!

Eric Bell (0:56): Hello everyone. Welcome to Live Chatter. Today's show is about using social market research to create value and insight for Facebook fans. Here to talk about this with us is Jim Whaley, a 30-year veteran of the industry currently heading up business development at Globalpark. Jim has spent his entire career in research and technology. He has worked in marketing and business development at firms like IBM and held executive positions at SPSS, InfoSTEP, and Gazelle Global. In 1990, he founded a research firm where he was president until 1999. Today he is the vice president at Globalpark US, a firm focusing on enterprise feedback management solutions. He is the father of two girls and also a new grandfather. Congratulations Jim! Jim Whaley (1:40): Thank you Eric.

Eric Bell (1:41): A quick fun fact about him, for those of you that know Jim. He is a member of a blues jazz fusion band called Hipster Hotel where he plays piano and keyboards out of Ridgefield, Connecticut. He also holds a private pilot's license. For those of you, who are not familiar with Globalpark, tell us a bit about yourself Jim and what you do.

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark (Continued) Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Jim Whaley (2:01): Thank you very much, Eric for that introduction and, thank you for this opportunity to engage with the MRGA community members. Certainly, we are happy to have the opportunity to talk about some important trends that we see influencing businesses today as they seek to understand the social web and particularly, the world of customers as they develop new social business models. Also to understand a little bit more about our role as researchers. As you had mentioned in your introduction, I have been around a little bit of time and that's sort of given me the opportunity to evaluate quite a number of technologies as they've come and gone over the past couple of decades. So, I've built a lot of business cases and deployed a lot of new technologies during my time as a practitioner in the research space. Also, I grew up in a research family. So, I appreciate the work that we do. And also as you mentioned, I spent about half of my career in technology companies, primarily solving customer business problems in companies like IBM and SPSS, and the other half of my time as the owner of a research company. So, today I'm pretty happy that I can satisfy both of my passions at Globalpark.

Speaking about Globalpark, we are a company of researchers and technologists, and we're deeply committed to enabling our customers with best practices and tools in order to enable them with the ability to address their business information requirements. Today, our customers are using our platforms to deploy lots of diverse insights and advisory communities.

They're conducting online and offline research with communities that are as little as just few hundred members to very, very large communities that have multidimensional segments associated with them, and have millions of active participants. So, our goal is to speak to those who desire to deploy continuous feedback into their business management processes.

Eric Bell (3:58): Great! So, let's jump into this. You do a lot with General Mills from the IIR presentations that involve social media and mix of offline activities. Is that your typical client? What types of organizations do you serve?

Jim Whaley (4:14): Sure. Well, certainly General Mills is in many ways a typical client. They are certainly one of our flagship clients here in North America. And we are happy to be associated with them. But we also work with a lot of other companies that are global in nature. Citibank for example or Citi if you will, where we do a lot of work with in the area of Voice of the Customer.

And we do research around the customer as well as their employees. And then Nintendo, we have an interesting engagement with them where we collect insights at the point of presence of their gamer portal. So, we have a community of roughly about three million Nintendo Wii customers. And Nintendo reaches out to them based on the different types of games they use. For different initiatives around product design, and development, and marketing communications.

Eric Bell (5:12): That's fantastic. And am I right, you guys have been in business for more than 10 years?

Jim Whaley (5:17): Yeah. We've been around for a little bit of time and one of our first customers back in 1999 was Daimler. Many of you know them as Mercedes if you will. Long before the social web existed, we built a community of around 30,000 customers. A panel basically that was for collaborative product innovation. So, issues like ergonomics and seat design.

Things like that. We engaged engineers, and customers, and employees to sort of work towards building you know, better products. So, we were doing some of this collaborative research long before we knew it was cool.

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark (Continued) Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Eric Bell (5:58): And I think what's cool today is social media, of course MRGA, that's our main business focus, and then of course Globalpark. Particularly, with Facebook, just the other week as Globalpark launched Social Insight Connect. My understanding of Facebook application that gives organizations of private channel with fans, with new ways to interact and measure their input. Is that the kind of a summary that I got from the press release?

Jim Whaley (6:25): Absolutely. We're very excited about Social Insight Connect, but sort of taking a step back, most organizations today, Eric, have a Facebook page by now. So, the primary, thrust of those pages have been sort of a passive way to collect fans, connect with customers, and share information. But the piece that's lacking in that is an integrated way to engage, and understand, and activate fans within that community, and beyond the community. You know today, people have a desire to be a part of the process and feel like they have a voice. And the traditional ways that we've gone about embracing our customers' opinions and insights are still pretty useful and important, but today we can do so much more.

People know this, and they've come to expect it.

Eric Bell (07:11): That's great. So, as researchers what should we be focused on relative to social media research? What is the role of the researchers that Globalpark sees it?

Jim Whaley (7:21): Sure. Sure. Well, when we take social media into consideration, I think it's important to sort of think about what it is and what it's not. Today, as part of this discussion, the focus is about technology, but not so much that it overwhelms the conversation. Social media really is sort of an abstract term for sort of an abstract entity, if you will -- it's less about technology and more about the idea that we can connect today with the people that -- we feel -- have similar interests, and desires, and motivations. We can connect and share. So, this is a new environment where it sort of changes the dynamics of the discussions that we're having. I think as researchers -- there's a few questions that we need to consider -- from the standpoint of where we fit in to this process, and one of the first questions that I think that we should think about is what do we say to our customers…. When they come to us and say, "Hey! I want to….. or how should I… engage in the social media process?" I like to think about that this way -- you might answer your customer -- why would they want to do that. So a lot of times you'll hear something like, "Well, because it's what everybody else is doing". And I submit to you, this is probably not the best motivation to start a social media campaign or even research around social media. What I like to respond to my clients with when they ask me about this subject is -- "Hey, look. What is – (on a scale of 1 to 10), what is the relationship that you have with your customer today?" And more often than not, I get a response like something like, "Well, I'll give it an 8 or a 9". And I said, "Okay. Good. Now, what if I ask a hundred or maybe even a thousand of your customers, you know what THEY think the relationship is?" And then you get sort of a different response, that is like, "Well, you know, I'm not exactly sure‖. And what I would say is that, "That's the reason why you want to engage. That's the real motivation".

Think about it that way. The second thing that I would ask myself, what I want to know is how I help my clients shift from traditional customer marketing, which is a one-way communication to more of a customer collaboration, which sort of transcends all my lines of business, which brings you to strategic planning process that you want to start to consider. And then the third thing is -- how do I put programs in place to measure the performance of whatever strategic initiatives that we find that are necessary to implement.

Eric Bell (10:00): Great questions to think about, Jim. Why do you think businesses are starting to get serious about social media and building communities?

Continued

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark (Continued) Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Jim Whaley (10:06): Well, okay. Well, there are several reasons. I think that first of all if you take a look back over the last couple of years, there has been sort of stagnant or slow growth in new program adoption. And most organizations have been sort of reticent to sort of jump into this, but that's starting to change. Businesses are starting to now increase their budgets. They're investing capital and other resources into the social business endeavors. The second thing is that social communities are not new. We have been serving them at Globalpark, as I alluded to earlier for quite some time. Certainly the basic concept of communities had existed long before we ever started building communities at Globalpark. What's new really is the social web. The social web being sort of self-defining online communities that come together around people's interests. That we have in each other, interests that we have as individuals in each other, as well as communities that are focused on special interests and activities. So, for us this is really an evolution. This is the thing that we're reacting to. It's all about reaching people where they live, listening, communicating, understanding, and collaborating.

Eric Bell (11:18): The attention on all of this is really high. Many of our MRGA members are talking about social businesses, this is certainly a program for us.

Jim Whaley (11:27): Well, all of this attention is quite understandable. Just take a look at the growth in all these social networks that we hear about on a regular basis. Literally, hundreds of millions of active new participants are joining the ranks of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter -- this is the new media. And this has all happened in a relatively short period of time. You have to be in a vacuum not to be aware of how much attention is being paid to this. So, this is true. Even if you don't have a Facebook or Twitter account, but could you imagine that?

Eric Bell (11:57): Yeah. Exactly, the focus on trying to get people to zero in and where to start -- that's the core focus of what the MRGA does is we try to people understand where to get started. So, it‗s hard to imagine that being on Facebook or LinkedIn with all the buzz today.

Jim Whaley (12:14): Absolutely. But, despite all the buzz, if you're a business decision maker - you're not just going to jump on the social media bandwagon without some hard reasons or hard numbers to look at. Not because it‘s the latest thing. So, we must think about this in a way where we're investing only after we understand what's happening in the market place and what things are driving this market opportunity as it exist today.

Eric Bell (12:37): So, what specific trends are you referring to?

Jim Whaley (12:39): Sure. So, let's take a look at how we work today. The fact that we're becoming more open and connected as a society, and then we can't ignore the fact that the personal technology that's available today is ubiquitous and it's very, very powerful. So, just consider today how we work. For many of us, we have sort of adopted sort of an always on, always connected posture. And this has really kind of changed the concept of how we work and where we work radically. Today, we work at different times. We have one or many offices. Many of those offices are offices that we check into. I personally, work at several offices and my home office, as I travel. So, I have a virtual office concept as well.

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark (Continued) Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Jim Whaley (Cont.)

And this is sort of becoming increasingly accepted for most of us as a way of life. At least for me and the people that I know.

Business are not just looking at this is just the way to save money. They're looking at it as the way to retain and attract the best people, and so that people can be productive. This is really important because this really changes the way we view the world and our place in it significantly. We have today the time to be interested and connected and engaged in more of the activities and the people that we're drawn to. Our companies has recognized this and as a result, the perception we have of our own value increases and it should increase. We become more engaged, we become more involved, and hence, we become more influential.

Eric Bell (14:09): Yeah. Sounds like with this concept in place, it drives more motivation around the workplace, and I think, I‘m not sure if you agree or not, but I think companies benefit from this because they become constantly plugged in and are constantly referencing and helping their employees gain momentum, and see a preview of things that are happening in discussions.

Jim Whaley (14:40): Yeah. No doubt about that. It's a good progression. You know the second thing or the second trend that we need to consider is the idea that we have moved in this society to being more open and more sharing. Most of us have this sort of the need to be connected even before the web. And I think about people that were influential or people that are influential before there was LinkedIn or Facebook, many people had like the very sophisticated ACT database or giant Rolodex, or what have you -- makes me think about Harvey Mackay a few years back when he first wrote Swimming with the Sharks.

He went on a book tour to promote his book and he was talking about the fact that when he was in the publishing process, he was having a hard time getting Random House, I believe, or McGraw-Hill, I'm not sure, to publish his book because he was an unknown author. And he talked about the fact that he went to them and said, "Look. You need to make sure that you can sell at least 10,000 copies before you take a risk on this". And they said, "Yes". And he said, "Well, I have 10,000 people that I'm directly connected to, and those 10,000 people know at least five people that will buy my book. So, there is 50,000 right there." And they took his word for it and decided to publish it, and of course we all know what a big success that book was. But today, think about that coveted list of Harvey Mckay's contacts and many of us -- many of the people that have big powerful networks are on Facebook/Linkedin now. And those networks are shared. This is really kind of an important shift because we understand and recognize the importance of relationships. We understand each other better now in a more three dimensional way. We view our peers and who they're connected to -- we know what's important to them. So, this really changes the motivation, the frequency, and even the depth of the conversations that we have.

Eric Bell (16:22): I completely agree. That's a really, really powerful example.

Jim Whaley (16:26): And the last piece of it is personal technology. I mean, most of us have a Smartphone or an iPhone if you will and even a regular cell phone. There is more computing power in that cell phone today then ran a small community bank not too long ago. And what really is interesting about this is it gives us the ability to do a lot with the very little. On my Smartphone, I basically can surf the web, navigate, do emails, make phone calls, text, stay very, very connected. I can even publish and modify content if you will. So, we now have more access to information than anytime in the past - we can digest and modify this in anyway, shape or form, and provide feedback.

Continued

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark (Continued) Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Jim Whaley (Cont.)

As a result, I know that I make better choices with the information that's in front of me now than I was ever able to do. A good example of how these have changed the way my life operates in a more efficient way is that recently I was -- I live in New York City and worked downtown and I was -- I was needing to go up to Connecticut for a meeting later in the afternoon on a Friday. So, I went by my apartment and during that time, I got an email from a customer saying, "Hey. Can you check on this piece of information?" So, I needed to enlist the help of one of my colleagues back at the office. So, I was able to fire off an email to him on my laptop. Check my little applications on my iPhone that looks at the train schedules and constantly rolling update of it, which really saves me a lot of time. And I was able to fire that email off to the client, get in a cab, go to the train station, get a response back, and then make a modification on my iPhone. Send that email off and still make my train. And also, found an alternative way to get from the train station in Connecticut to the house all on my iPhone. So, is this workplace balance? Absolutely. Because I was able to make a personal engagement without having to get tied up with what was going on at the office, all because I have the power there in my hands.

Eric Bell (18:41): That's a pretty powerful example. Imagine if you could capture that insight on a community that you're monitoring with people that enjoy communicating and talking on a regular basis. So, as a researcher or I should say as researchers addressing our customers' social business initiatives' -- how do we leverage that all the trends that you outlined for us?

Jim Whaley (19:04): Sure, absolutely. Well, let me go back and say it's important that we take the holistic approach to considering and modeling business opportunities, right? So, today most social media still focuses on customers and prospects. And what lacks is the strategy that employs all the key players. The new social business needs to include business partners and employees, as well as customers. If you don't do this, you're going to miss important opportunities relative to trends in work, society, and technology.

Eric Bell (19:33): With the important outcomes and various stakeholders, it's important to have a plan I would assume.

Jim Whaley (19:39): Absolutely. It's really, really important to have a plan. And this is really the main point that I'd like people to take away from our discussion today. I can't stress the importance of setting goals and objectives. This is all relates back to strategic planning. So, I mean, many of us understand the process of strategic planning and from our first position as a manager or even back to business school. So, these are principles that should all be very familiar to us. I can give you a couple of examples of some successful engagements that we've had with a couple of clients where doing strategic planning aligns the business and all the resources together with the final outcomes of the social media and research campaign. I'll give you one example of General Mills. At the very high level, they talked about setting goals. This is all about business alignment. General Mills wanted to set or basically maintain or achieve brand category leadership across a number of their big brands. So, they set that goal. The next step of course in strategic planning is to establish some objectives and of course objectives which are measurable. So, increasing brand awareness and the adoption was where they were focusing their attention. Next that gave them the ability to sort of lay out some strategy as they were thinking about using the resources they had internally and matching that up with the opportunities in the social web. So, they decided that they would identify key influencers within their customer base and activate them. Leveraging word of mouth principles if you will.

This led to some specific tactics that said, ―Okay what we're going to do is develop a series of online and offline communities of advocates.‖ they organize around word of mouth events and open sharing between the brand, people that advocate those brands, and other influencers that talk about the brands to encourage in sort of an open sharing in a promotional environment via the social web.

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark (Continued) Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Jim Whaley (Cont.)

What this led to is some series of engagements of insights communities to advocacy communities where the brands were able to share behind the scenes, types of activities about people that were enthusiastic about the brand and very socially connected so those people would share with people that they were connected to. So, they ended up with pre and post awareness of net promoter scores and awareness y measurements before and after these campaigns. And they experienced the tremendous amount of lift before and after measurement. Another example is with a client that is an industry leader in the area of online education curriculum. And what they did was they really wanted to look across what their business requirements where and they decided that they wanted to sort of expand in this new market specifically the secondary education market, and so they set out series of strategic goals and incorporated principles within the organization all the stakeholders that were responsible for making that happen. They had established some objectives which were to create new curriculum to develop new accounts and specific revenue targets which were able to be measured before and after. So after dealing with that that they laid out a strategy which was to basically developed a world class curriculum for the secondary education market, which led to some tactics which said what they would do would be to create a community of curriculum developers, educators, students and parents getting together for collaborative co-creation of these new curriculums and they were widely successful on this process.

Eric Bell (23:24): Oh, that's great. Some say that surveys are irrelevant that we should forego them in favor of listening without asking, what are your thoughts on that, Jim? Jim Whaley (23:33): Sure. Well you know there's been a lot of talk about, you know, whether or not people should still do surveys.

Whether or not, the information on the web really give us all the information we need from a listening posture. But I would say that that's not necessarily the case. I think that if I were to go into the customer business meeting and just listen‌ and then come back and respond without ever asking questions they wouldn't feel like after leaving that meeting, I was very engaged with them. So I think the principle of asking questions is important especially if we want to develop relationships and really want to understand deeper what's going on with our customers. But certainly listening is important. But I think we have to take an inventory of where we were coming from a research standpoint, and what we have to work with today. What the opportunities are - So let's kind of consider the traditional approach to research. So a familiar approach for a brand to take to target their marketing. First, by taking a look at survey data. Think about the kind of customer that they would like to service. And use that information to build a model if you will or sort of profile of a set of customers. So what would they look at, they would look at things like, age and gender, maybe income and profession if you will. What types of media that they were consuming? What they are buying? And then you sort of use this information and work backwards to sort of refine the messaging you know? What channels to use and how much to spend in these channels to sort of communicate with customers in that one way paradigm. You know this is pretty much the way research has been done for the past several decades. The challenge there‌ and the limitations of depending solely on that sort of demographic approach is it becomes problematic in a couple of ways, Eric. First, it all starts to fall apart when you start to consider the digital media world.

Because you don't really necessarily know who you're talking to, at least not until you start to engage. The other thing is that demographic information isn't particularly useful because on any given channel or, website or community‌.. People get together around exactly what the site is about, people get together around the things that they are interested in or things that their passion as opposed to a sort of a pre-defined group that we typically look at. Great example of that are a community of people that play Final Fantasy, you could have a wide variety of demographic categories of people coming together around the globe. They have very, very different profiles about their personal life and what their personal choices are but they have a common interest around the gaming and fantasy gaming. The same as games like Second Life or even around communities that have to do with sports, sports or food or what have you.

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark (Continued) Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Jim Whaley (Cont.)

We don't really know much about these communities until we start to engage them and start to do some of our own segmentation. So the opportunity is that you know, we can start to develop deeper insights by going sort of beyond listening if you will and start looking at people's behavior, what their networks you know, their own networks look like you know what their influence profiles look like. As marketers , what our customers want to do is be able to learn how to use these conversation so that they can have better relationships and as researchers you know, our job really is to sort of help them provide a context around this conversations and really make it easier for the customers to act on the insights that are gleaning from them. Ultimately, I think where we want to go is having the collaborative relationship between the company and the end user.

Eric Bell (27:17): That's really interesting insight. Thank you for sharing strategy and tactics and of course the challenge around that process. So with social media in your words, what do you think is the best way for someone to get started that wants to explore this?

Jim Whaley (27:23): Well its simple really you know, First find your existing customers, fish where the fish are. Have a conversation online, start talking to them and then ask them if they'd be interested in helping advance the conversation.

Eric Bell (27:46): That's it? Is there anything else? It sounds really easy.

Jim Whaley (27:48): Well, I mean it is easy, you know why? Of course if you begin with the end in mind, right?

Eric Bell (27:53): Yeah.

Jim Whaley (27:54): And I think that there are other things that you can do from a tactical standpoint. I certainly think it's important to look at the traditional data that we've had to work with and what some of the sort of new data points are that we should start to consider. Certainly, some of the traditional data points that we have to work with that are available on the web are demographic and product-related, and there's lot of tools out there for listening and scraping websites that you can, sort of start to glean this kind of information about products and demographics. Certainly a lot of business applications have APIs in the Facebook analytics, companies like Radian 6 can do a lot of listening. But beyond that there are a whole lot of information categories that you can consider in the social web. Certainly, there are psychographic types of data points you know, where you can glean information about people, about their feelings, and what they think about things. There's a behavioral activities that certainly people talk about on the web that you can start to develop deeper insights in. And then the referral data, there's lots of websites like Klout and Yelp, where you know people are talking about "they like this, or they like that" and you know, this information can all easily be processed. Some of the newer types of data points that you can consider are things like location data and intention data. Certainly if you have a smartphone and you know, really, really hooked in with the latest trends, there are companies like Foursquare that provide location type of services. These are services in more open in sharing environment that many of us are you know, more comfortable working within. Where I can be in a particular restaurant or a particular event and it automatically will update my network of where I am. I happen to use this feature, it's sort of controversial I know, but many of the people I know do use it.

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark (Continued) Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Jim Whaley (Cont.)

So this is still new and people are still getting used to it and trying to figure out what you can do with this data but it's very, very powerful stuff that you get creative and think about how you can weave this into your insights program. And the other type of data is intention data. So there are lots of new activities that you can do on Facebook or LinkedIn about events that you're planning to attend or things that you're planning on doing, there are sites like Eventful where you can talk about events that you're planning on going to it and there are whole communities that can be built around that. So this is also stuck but you know, it's very, very interesting to look at and I think that over the next coming years, people really jump on this and marketers will be able to use this type of information to be more proactive in their offerings.

Eric Bell (30:42): Okay. So let's say about Global Fortune 100 company and let's say I've got 10,000 fans or maybe even 100,000 fans to support my Facebook page, what should I be doing?

Jim Whaley (30:57): Okay. This is a good question and this is the question that our customers are asking us today you know. So find out who your fans are, what you want to do is what I've been talking about is basically building social business insights and collaboration into your Facebook site. But I want to step back and I want to reiterate that it is important that you take a holistic approach that considers a couple of key areas. First of all, start with the connections that you currently have on your Facebook and start to drive new interests in your fans page by providing something for these people to do; and then start to understand who these people are, the type of things that drive them. The second thing that you might want to consider is to understand who your fans and customers are, and how they're connected. Who are they influenced by and who do they influence‌. Then understand who you're connected to and how you're connected to them. Taking this sort of social business approach to connections leads to a better deeper relationship management system which will ultimately lead to better outcomes. So start to develop a meaningful relationship and dialogue between your customers, between your fans, and your business partners as well, and your employees.

Eric Bell (32:26): Great. So you know, using your strategic planning example, those are great goals and objective. Now what about the strategy and tactics, what specific action items should we start to think about?

Jim Whaley (32:38): Okay. Well you know what we like to talk to our customers about is this. Think about content, curating, and collaboration. So you know, think about the progression of your fan page or your community in terms of those three actions.

Start out by thinking about content. Start by executing your business plan by providing regular and useful content on your community. You know, and don't worry about whether or not it's going to go viral. I mean the fact that the matter is that very little content goes viral nor does it need to go viral. Instead focus on serving and educating your customers you know, start out by being more open as an organization. Why not consider taking the covers off of your organization and letting people see who you are as a company and you know, what your values are and what your employees you know, want to do to serve their customer base. Then start to look at how much your customers will really appreciate their transparency. That's what's some of the best examples of companies doing social media today are doing. When it comes to curation I mean, let's think about this. We all start our lives on by consuming, right? So before we do anything else, we need to be fed but after a while as we develop as human beings, we start to find the need to, put things together you know, that we read about on the web. We start to add value to these pieces of, or snippets of information by providing the context around them. And their context comes in many forms like putting this content together and repackaging it with your insights, and your feedback about it and then starting to share that with people that are important to you, or that you think might have a stake in what you have to say.

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark (Continued) Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Jim Whaley (Cont.)

The other form of curating when it comes to sharing is you know, we curate our networks of our relationships. So another form of curating is who are we connected to? So we can start to understand our customers by understanding as I said earlier, who are they connected to? Just help us to have a more three-dimensional view of who the person is that we're communicating with as the customer. And then I would say, the next progression is to move towards the collaborative environment. So beyond content, beyond listening to feedback, beyond watching for the progression and transformation of your content, if your customers are providing or adding value to what they share, it's really important to engage with your customers and ask them the how and the why. Ask them what's really driving, what they do, what things are important to them. So this you know goes beyond the benefits of sort of simply going out and getting ideas from crowd sourcing standpoint. It makes you more real and more relevant in your customers view. And also gives the customers just taking the game in a sense that you know, a sense of ownership that the brand, the efficacy is a little bit in their hands at least to some extent anyhow. This joint trust really becomes important and also becomes very intoxicating for your current customers and those that might be customers. So this is the kind of thing that you want to consider as your point you know, and this is the kind of thing that your customers wanted to think about is they're forming a relationship with your brand.

Eric Bell (36:03): So content, curate, collaborate that seems pretty straightforward enough and how does this all play in the research?

Jim Whaley (36:11): Sure. So you know, at Globalpark we like to say that we help our customers measure what matters. So, you know...

Eric Bell (36:19): Right.

Jim Whaley (36:20): Thinking about this discussion about from a strategic standpoint, are you measuring what matters? Are your programs aligned with your corporate strategy and have you identify those things that are important to measure? So basically, the substance of all these social business initiatives must really relate to metrics by which the business really can manage itself. So this is about you know, measuring fan engagement, event participation, influence as well as you know, what are your sales results. So there's a way to link all of these together. So the idea here is to drive up the ratio of the signal to noise ratio. If you are clear in your intent, and you're clear in your tactics and you know what you need to measure before and after, you can start to increase that signal to noise ratio and start to hear what's important in terms of whether it relates to all the chatter that is out there online, and help you take the reins and control of your business back by being more focused. So it's all about deploying the right tools and listening but also practically engaging.

Eric Bell (37:36): Would you say is there a danger to focusing on fans only?

Jim Whaley (37:40): Well of course there is. I mean if we take it the idea of just Facebook fans we don't necessarily want to just look at Facebook fans. First of all, we don't really know who they are but it certainly is a great place to start. I think beyond just measuring who your Facebook fans are, I think you want to understand and compare them to your overall customer base and your target audience. You know, a great example of that is Ferrari. Ferrari, if you go to their Facebook page you they have many, many fans around the globe.

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark (Continued) Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Jim Whaley (Cont.)

As a matter of fact, they have many, many more fans than have ever owned a Ferrari or ever own a Ferrari but that's not really the idea. For Ferrari, the idea of their brand and its popularity and the sort of the cult status that it has, is the perception in the industry is very much driven by fans. And this goes across the all the products that they offer and events that they provide you know, well beyond just you know, people buying cars or servicing their cars of their own.

Eric Bell (38:55): Thanks a lot. So this information, can I better segment my audience and interact with them more appropriately and I would say that social insight connects support next steps you know, what makes it actionable for people listening in.

Jim Whaley (39:11): Sure. Alright, so think about where we came from you know, basically sort of passive Facebook sites or communities if you will, and think about what you can do with technologies like Social Insight Connect. For example, what makes it actionable is that you now have the ability to identify and engage appropriate advisers. Advisers that can help you with the variety of programs that you put into place like product testing, co-creation, ideation or you know, campaign optimization like word of mouth that I had suggested earlier. The other thing that you can do is begin to identify and enable influential advocates within your communities or brand ambassadors which will help also.. What will ultimately drive your community to grow? You know, the other thing that you should consider is when you're considering a platform is one that's open and is able to integrate with your business systems. I mentioned in the Nintendo example we are very much, integrated within their gamers portals so it is very seamless into, their business workflow. So you know, we like to talk to our clients about not just enabling feedback but how to just fit in to your business systems, how do you embed ongoing feedback management and measurement into your whole business system.

Eric Bell (40:45): So the idea of integrating Facebook has been highly anticipated and I think just within the industry in general, I'm really glad to see that Globalpark is taking that lead on this. And it was featured in a recent Forrester report about the industry obviously trying to figure out the evolution of MROCs and for those of you that are familiar with the term MROCs, it means Market Research Online Communities. You seem to be the only organization doing it?

Jim Whaley (41:13): (Laughs) Eric Bell (41:14): (Laughs) It's an observation.

Jim Whaley (41:16): We like to think that we are first out of the gate on this. I would say that the customers and prospects that we've been showing this to are really amped about the ability to start to build these types of communities within the context of a social media framework. A lot of the social media and marketing experts are talking today about how users are starting to develop their own safe environments on the web and they are sort of curating their relationships if you will on the web and they want to be able to do things within their safe environment if that happens to be Facebook for example. So to be able to have a community and insights community, with things to do inside the social media framework is very, very important and our customers are very, very amped about it.

Continued

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research :: MRGA Interviews Globalpark (Continued) Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Eric Bell (42:12): That's great. Thank you so much for the taking the time to share what MRGA membership and people that have tuned in, it's been a real pleasure interviewing you.

Jim Whaley (42:22): Well thank you, Eric. This has really been an enjoyable discussion.

Eric Bell (42:26): And just for everyone listening and for the folks that might want to find out more information about Globalpark, I understand that you guys are hosting a webinar in a couple of weeks.

Jim Whaley (42:36): Absolutely. We're co-marketing this with Quirk's and on February 24th, at 2 p.m. Eastern we will host a webinar and basically we want to be able to inform you listeners on our Facebook page, log into the MRGA site and by email follow-up and giving them access to the recording.

Eric Bell (42:57): Fantastic. So we'll help you do -- we will -- for those of you that registered for this event you'll get a recording and we'll send out a reminder in conjunction with the webinar series as a result of this radio interview and partnership with Globalpark. Thank you so much, Jim. Jim Whaley (43:19): Thank you so much, Eric.

What is your social media strategy? Share your thoughts or ask Globapark.

Click To Comment

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New Membership Spotlight Welcome some of MRGAS’s newest members‌

Susan Scarlet Birmingham, MI United States Company: Gongos Research Member Since : January 6, 2011 I am a market research: Full-Service Market Research Firm

Jason Inderhees Cincinnati, OH United States

Romina Vinci Milan , Italy Company: Interquota Member Since: February 2, 2011 I am a market research: Market Research Solution Provider

Rox-Anne R Klemetsen Milwaukee, WI United States

Company: EMI - Online Research Solutions

Company: SCJohnson

Member Since: February 1, 2011

Member Since: January 4, 2011

I am a market research: Market Research Solution Provider

I am a market research: End-User(Client-Side-User)

Angela Wende Elkins Park, PA United States

Savino Lobo Mumbai, Maharashtra India

Company: CETRA Language Solutions

Company: Ugam Research Solutions

Member Since: February 10, 2011

Member Since: January 6, 2011

I am a market research: End-User(Client-Side-User)

I am a market research: Market Research Solution Provider

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A Candid Conversation On Off-Shore Transparency Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Tom H.C. Anderson

By: MRGA Live Chatter Aired: 2/16/2011 2:30 AM UTC Description: Join Eric Bell & Tom Anderson at 6:30 PM PST Tonight for a surprise radio interview on Offshoring Transparency.

If you have the time to hop on the broadcast visit LiveChatterSN or Dial in to 1 (347) 539-5747 to listen in.

The Interview will discuss a candid conversation on Offshoring Transparency as Eric & Tom have a candid conversation about Market Research Off Shoring Transparency. No matter your opinion you don't want to miss this insightful interview.

If you missed this interview you can check back and download the interview. * The MRGA supports ethics in market research, and supports causes that are trying to make the market research landscape an easier place to navigate.

Introduction (0:00): Welcome to Live Chatter powered by the MRGA. Title sponsor GreenBook and signature sponsors Peanut Labs, Decipher, along with Kinesis Survey Technologies.

Eric Bell (0:45): Hi everyone! This is Eric Bell, founder of the Market Research Global Alliance, here with the founder and managing director of Anderson Analytics, Tom Anderson, and also the founder of The Foundation for Transparency in Offshoring. That also stands for FTO. And I want to give you the FTO's mission and then we're going to discuss a little bit about what FTO is all about. What some of the conversations have been like and relations should support it or not, just based on your views. So, the FTO is an independent non-profit organization dedicated at educating buyers and suppliers of consumer research and analytic services and considerations related to offshoring, and establishing sensible, clear disclosure standard for offshoring practices. FTO holds no position or against offshoring research services, but maintains transparency and open dialog between research buyers and suppliers. And it's critical and designed to help make informed, secure business decisions.

FTO defines offshoring as the movement of a business process done at a company in one country to the same or another company in a different country, usually do to lower costs of operations in a new location. FTO Certification is free. Market research suppliers may self-certify. Market research clients are encouraged to require their suppliers to certify and show their support for the transparency initiative by visiting www.offshoringtransparency.org. So, I don't know if I said that all on one breath. But welcome Tom Anderson.

Tom Anderson (2:21): Thank you Eric.

Eric Bell (2:22): How are you doing today?

Tom Anderson (2:23): Pretty good. Pretty good. Yourself?

Continued

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A Candid Conversation On Off-Shore Transparency Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Tom H.C. Anderson Eric Bell (2:25): I'm doing great. I'm really excited to talk to you about this. I know we've talked about this for a few months, almost since the inception, but I know we want to kick off and see how it did. For those of our MRGA members listening and some of the Next Gen members that I'm sure will be listening as well, and other researchers around the web. What inspired you to create the FTO effort?

Tom Anderson (2:50): Well, it's sort of just happened, I guess. We have been involved with offshoring into various degrees. My formal employer before I started Anderson Analytics, several of my friends worked in the offshoring industry. And at one point, I even considered going to work in selling offshoring services before starting Anderson Analytics. But when I started Anderson Analytics, actually my first employees were offshore. However, in 2006, we decided to stop offshoring, and some time after that, my friend, Raul Sehgal contacted me about being on a panel by offshoring, at the TMRE actually, and I agreed. And before that, I surveyed the NGMR membership and we had 855 responses, then I saw that there was a big gap in terms of knowledge of our transparency. About 20% of our respondents where client-side researchers and the rest were supplier side.

And there was a big gap in terms of knowing how much offshoring was going on, what kind of offshoring we are in the value chain, the types of projects, and so forth. And I guess, depending on whom you have talked to on the supplier side, roughly about 60% of suppliers thought that there should be transparency in offshoring and of course virtually all client-side researchers wanted transparency in offshoring. Go ahead.

Eric Bell (4:41): Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Just in general, one would think that there's something that would just naturally happen and it turns out it almost sounds like unless a buyer of market research services knows exactly what to ask, they may not even think about.

Tom Anderson (5:00): Well, in fact, we saw that even on the supplier side. A lot of employees at companies that do offshore are not aware.

It's something that's -- well, in many cases, actually purposely kept hidden.

Eric Bell (5:18): Why do you think that is -- what are some of the reasons behind that?

Tom Anderson (5:23): Well, I don't know. I guess the main reason for offshoring is obviously cost savings. Allegedly, you can save as much as -- cut costs by a third or two thirds or more. So, obviously that's not something maybe that you want to advertise per se, but I think it's still something -- obviously, you can pass on some of those ratings to the client. It's nothing to be ashamed of.

Eric Bell (5:54): Right.

Tom Anderson (5:56): But, unfortunately, at some companies, that has not been the case anyway.

Continued

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A Candid Conversation On Off-Shore Transparency Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Tom H.C. Anderson Eric Bell (6:02): Okay. In a resting dilemma -- even -- I guess, comes down to the ethical standards of some companies undertaken what they should or shouldn't share and I'm sure as -- any security concerns are -- I'm sure quite varies by case. And maybe if there are some examples a little bit later on, on our conversation here, maybe there might be some good examples you can share if you feel comfortable with it. Just out of curiosity, what was the purpose of FTO, for those who haven't heard of it?

What got you started on the idea? And I know you kind of mentioned it a little bit in the beginning of the -- just kind of kicking this off. But what really inspired you as the chairman to really push this effort hard?

Tom Anderson (6:56): Well, again, I've worked with several companies in different respects both as a supplier in conjunction with other market research firms and so forth. And it basically is the lack of transparency that causes or creates problems in many cases and that goes obviously with qualities, it can be impacted for your label practices. As you mentioned ethics, but probably the foremost concern is legal protection, specifically IP and also data privacy, depending on what places you're offshoring to, that can vary widely. Some countries have virtually no IP protection. So, that's something that really needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. So, that's the primary reason for starting the FTO and I think most of the members involved, while we all may have different feelings on offshoring and for what purposes, it's useful or not useful, the one thing that we can agree on is transparency.

Eric Bell (8:23): Yeah. And do you even think that companies realize that they are putting their clients and themselves on an IP or intellectual property potentially breaching position? It seems like it‗s something that people don't even realize that they're doing unless they know what they're looking for or kind of let things happen.

Tom Anderson (8:44): Yeah, you're right. I think they -- especially on the client side, there's surprisingly little knowledge on that side. I've seen more and more in contract now, certain firms are putting in language in terms of outsourcing and offshoring, but you need to tell them exactly where things are going in and if you're doing that. But the majority, I guess three quarters of firms, don't have that in their vendor contract still. So, that's certainly something that's not being considered enough. I think there's a false assumption that if you go to a large multi-million dollar marketing research firm headquartered in the US or Europe that something goes wrong that you can sue them, but that's not going to take care of the problem if valuable IP and data privacy is lost in a place where you don't have legal recourse.

Eric Bell (9:50): Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And obviously, there is a lot NDAs that go on for non- disclosure agreement. Go on another industry, and just something to think about, you may inadvertently be breaching it. This isn't something that‘s designed to scare anyone, just think through the process as you're making commitments to your clients and vice versa.

Tom Anderson (10:11): So, often things can be offshored, outsourced several times and those NDAs that you signed up initially don't cover those subsequence engagements that you're outsourced for...

Eric Bell (10:28): They've been shared over and over again. Without even the request, they're probably even realizing it.

Tom Anderson (10:36): Right.

Continued

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A Candid Conversation On Off-Shore Transparency Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Tom H.C. Anderson Eric Bell (10:37): So, why do you think this -- why is it important for those that believe in these kinds of FTO to support it?

Tom Anderson (10:49): Well, I mean it's good for everyone. It's modeled in part based on the EU Safe Harbor. The EU has been ahead of the curve in terms of protecting data privacy of its citizens. And the EU Safe Harbor website, for instance, where American firms can sign on and say that they follow the EU Safe Harbor guidelines, is something that was free until last year. Now, there is a small fee. And initially, several large market research firms were signing up from the EU Safe Harbor, but lately, they have not kept up their certification on there. Anyway, just like the EU Safe Harbor and even safe like eTrust, the FTO allows our company to self-certify, it's totally free and you get to say what kind of offshoring you're doing. So, whether it's Business Process Offshoring known as BPO or IT Offshoring known as ITO or KPO, Knowledge Process Offshoring, which has really worked a lot of the market research falls under in terms of doing analysis and so forth. And you also specify which countries you're offshoring to so that you can then -- well, it protects you and legally you're not defeating anyone. And it opens up conversation with clients if it's important to discuss whether or not their projects are being offshored and what parts of their projects are being off shored. Since I mentioned before in our research, among those 855 market researchers, there was difference in opinions in terms of what parts of other process. So, for instance, concept testing and add testing was viewed as more sensitive, but the clients than say CRM, analytics, and sales forecasting, and also different parts of the value chain like -- well, if you're doing invitations to a survey saying, "Who does the client's sample?" Obviously, that's PII and the clients were more concerned about that as well than suppliers.

Eric Bell (13:26): Fantastic. So, coming down to the need of it -- when this first came out, you got a lot of -- press both positive, negative, and a little bit in between. Why do you think there has been such strong opposition in some market research circles to oppose this effort?

Tom Anderson (13:49): Well how strong the opposition is, I mean the companies I guess that have had the biggest problem with this would be the ones that are most heavily engaged in it -- which are the Honomichl top five. If you look at who is doing most offshoring, it's totally correlated with size of company, companies with over 5000 to 10000 employees, about 80% of them were using offshored services, whereas smaller companies, it's much less frequent, the sole proprietors, only about 15% or so are using offshored services. But it's not the size -- anybody can offshore these days, in fact Timothy Ferriss and his book, The 4-Hour Workweek, seemed to advocate that everybody should offshore. But it's Honomichl top 5 or the ones that are most engaged in it for the cost-cutting measures in large part. So, I think -- well they haven't come out directly against it. We haven't seen any Honomichl top five firms on FTO yet. We've seen some other fairly big firms like Greenfield, Toluna, Insight Express and a few others. But also one opposition I think came a bit from some of the trade orgs like ESOMAR and CASRO and perhaps because they are a bit embarrassed about not having done anything for so long. I mean offshoring is no a new trend. It's something that's been growing and probably peaked around 2005 or so and they've done very little. Now, we have to talk about ISO, which is -- some say that there is protection in that, but really it's just...

Eric Bell (15:50): Another strong...

Tom Anderson (15:54): Yeah. Well, they are interconnected. The ISO is about documenting and simplifying processes so that they can be done anywhere so that you can offshore them. So, if you have a process that's ISO certified, does that mean that it can be done anywhere without telling your clients? I think not. Obviously, that doesn't take care of the legal issues for instance.

Continued

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A Candid Conversation On Off-Shore Transparency Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Tom H.C. Anderson Eric Bell (16:20): Right. And you know it's interesting because I'm not a market researcher by trade. I'm a market research connector and understand the overall concepts on how everything interacts and connects. My background has been on market research sales. So, it seems like it's the right thing to do when you're talking to your clients. It's not like it's -- other workers being outsourced in Michigan are losing their job. We're talking about market research and data. Well, it makes sense and it was interesting when on this launch and obviously a lot people know that I'm on your board of directors and think that's an effort we're supporting because it's just the right thing to do in general. And I got some strong email concerns saying, "We're really surprised that the MRGA is backing us up," and my statement was, "there's not so much backing anything up," it's just being transparent and sharing the thing for your clients. But it's really up to -- the thing that I think really needs to be addressed is it's really up to the risk that you're willing to take when you're a doing research with your costumers and the long-term health of your business partnership if you're working with somebody. Do you want to jeopardize a long-term opportunity just by passing up and doing something so incredibly simple?

Tom Anderson (17:57): And also I think there has been some confusion on what offshoring is. And a few complaints came from smaller consultancies and a few from Australia and Canada even.

Eric Bell (18:15): I think they've misunderstood what you're really saying and what you're trying to do. I think this might be -- yeah, this has been a question we talked about, but maybe mention what the intensions are, I can certainly say it's been my view -you're really trying to do the right thing by the industry to make people aware. You're not trying to point fingers and say, "This is bad, don‗t do it." You're just saying, "I understand what's going on."

Tom Anderson (18:42): Yeah. Just being aware of what parts of the market research is offshored to, where and what if any of these issues then apply, is important. I think there has been some confusion there. But I think it's -- we have over 50 members now signed up and it seems to be growing so I think it's becoming more accepted. I know when it will be accepted by the Honomichl top five maybe when their attorneys start reading [Laughing]. How good it can be for them?

Eric Bell (19:22): Yes. If they get complaints, so all it takes is zero.

Tom Anderson (19:25): Yeah, sure.

Eric Bell (19:26): One bad delivery on a project, where something doesn't happen because they weren't quite transparent enough, but we have to say that we obviously don‘t want to do fear monitoring , we just want to say, "Hey let's just take a look at this and understand what's it s all about."

Tom Anderson (19:44): Right. Yeah. I heard several clients now have started asking their suppliers about this so that may be another reason to look into this but we do have some papers written by the foremost attorney in offshoring in the US, Sonia Baldia and they're available free on the site and she knows a lot more about offshoring than I do.

Continued

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A Candid Conversation On Off-Shore Transparency Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Tom H.C. Anderson Eric Bell (20:09): Oh great. So, I will announce an MRGA group along with a Next Gen group because we both use the same social media technology a little bit later on in this radio interview, broadcast so that you can go and interact and plug into that website and follow the base on which ever site you'd like. You've gotten some interesting press and I thought that this would good forum for you to kind of defend your thought process and why you think there was such -- even initially and we're approaching close to a year anniversary on this launch. Why do you think there is such strong opposition in the media circles when you're announced as FTO? Tom Anderson (21:11): Well, I don't know what...

Eric Bell (21:20): Well, I guess I'll just -- Research Library Live, Research Live Magazine printed an interesting article that made the process seem self-serving to Anderson Analytics and it was a pretty strongly the opposition.

Tom Anderson (21:35): Yeah. Research Live is just one small publication in the UK and I think they somewhat are skewed by SMR obviously as more have gotten into the discussion in the NGMR group and I think there was some things taken out of context there, but I wouldn't at all call that media opposition. There has been a lot of media for it as well. Anything from RFL communications.

Eric Bell (22:10): Yeah. So, I guess we'll say for it or against -- I don't...

Tom Anderson (22:15): Right. So, yeah, I think for the most part, it's been positive and most people -- in terms of self-serving, I don't think self-serving, it serves everyone who is a member, who believes in transparency, sure, it's healthful to Anderson Analytics, our clients certainly appreciate transparency so [Laughing] it's not something I'm afraid to say that we're for transparency, truth, and so forth.

Eric Bell (22:45): Yeah. If you keep talking like that, you're going to have to take your Twitter post down that says, market research is self-certified, dealing on whatever you have out there. [Laughing] You're talking about life and truth and justice here. Just kidding. You know I love you. So, I think you pretty much already answered this question, but I had outlined can you defend your reasoning or is this surely a self-serving effort and one of the things I learned a long time ago was on business, it's always self-serving for the business and the way that we go, but I've always learned that it's not my job necessarily.

Somebody writes about what their goal is, especially in the social media spaces we communicate, the space is my job to give everyone an equal platform to communicate the message. So is there anyone or any thoughts that you want to talk about, about defending why you're doing this?

Tom Anderson (23:48): No. I think -- I mean it's basically giving back to the research community that's pretty much where most of my experience has been, pretty much since university days. I started working in the market research industry, starting with Nielsen BASES and have been in the industry ever since, after grad school as well. Obviously, being involved in social media and with the Next Gen Market Research Group I'm linked in, becoming so large and receiving so much. Because of data involvement, I felt that this was a good way to give back, in a way that -- there was a clear gap.

Continued

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A Candid Conversation On Off-Shore Transparency Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Tom H.C. Anderson Tom Anderson (Cont.)

But I mean the FTO is totally free, there is no advertising there, there is no cause for certifying or so forth. In fact, if anything, it caused some money in terms of just putting my developer to put up a site and so forth. So, it very much runs itself and it's in the spirit of social media, it's open to anyone and totally free.

Eric Bell (25:08): Yes. I think personally, it's a great effort, I don't -- I guess it may be me being na誰ve, I guess. In the market research industry, there are some matters sometimes that I'm not aware of and I can be like a bull in a china shop, but I'm trying to figure stuff out. I think this is a great initiative. What's wrong with being transparent?

Tom Anderson (25:30): Yeah.

Eric Bell (25:31): Be upfront. I mean, seriously.

Tom Anderson (25:32): Even as I mentioned before, the US government has started charging for their EU Safe Harbor, just a modesty of I think $100 or so, for the cost of certifying. So that they can maintain the program, but there is no such cost and again the main cost was in just setting up the site and so forth. So, I'm not worried about anything like that.

Eric Bell (26:02): And some of the story that was written between the alliance or they say it's for you to get more business, for you to put them because you're in the US. I mean you outsource sometimes, was that correct? There, you're doing all work within the US right now.

Tom Anderson (26:18): No. Yeah. We're not offshoring.

Eric Bell (26:22): Oh yeah.

Tom Anderson (26:23): At the moment. We...

Eric Bell (26:24): That's just a choice you're business makes. First of all, I don't see why that would even be an issue in between but...

Tom Anderson (26:32): Right. I mean it's a difficult process I've learned to do so and it's something maybe that's best done in skill. That's something that I noticed when I started Anderson Analytics and started offshoring like I mentioned. So, my first employees were oversees, but it was not smooth of the process, though I used the same offshoring vendor that I had used at a larger company previously. It's not as easy as you think so -- it's individual business choice. Anderson Analytics is a boutique market research firm and our clients come to us and believe that an experienced analyst is doing the work and so forth so -but in the future, if we change, thinking in that area, then we will be certified -- changing our certification on the FTO site.

[Laughing] Continued

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A Candid Conversation On Off-Shore Transparency Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Tom H.C. Anderson Eric Bell (27:39): And transparent about it, right?

Tom Anderson (27:41): Yeah so you can watch. [Laughing] Eric Bell (27:44): Great. And then I just wanted to have you explain a little bit about the FTO directory and have somebody that's just sitting there dawning on them that this could be important to them. How do they use the FTO directory? What does that mean -- what should that mean to them and how do they use it? It sounds -- it's very pretty self-explanatory, but it's always good to hear it straight from the person that invented it.

Tom Anderson (28:09): Well, It really takes only five minutes to certify, believe it or not. And any corporate officer can do so. There's just a few -- a form there to sell out and then you are certified and your company will show up in the directory, and before interested, can check what types of business processes you offshore, if you offshore, and if so, where. For clients, there is a petition you can sign. If you want greater transparency. And we have several fortune 1000 companies who have signed the petition and a few of them are listed there on the website. And also on the site, like I said, it's linked to some research that we did on the issue of transparency and it's probably for the market research industry. The primary piece of research that's ever been done on that and two or three papers that you would otherwise have to pay a lot of money for on Westlaw by Sonia Baldia as I mentioned who is also on the board of advisers.

Eric Bell (29:20): Great. So, thank you so much for your time. Is there anything else you want to add to our conversation?

Tom Anderson (29:30): No. I think we covered most of it. Thanks Eric, for giving me the opportunity.

Eric Bell (29:35): Yeah. Great. I believe that topics like this are healthy in a great way to express far innovation and better unity industry wide and FTO becomes the answer, isn't the answer to the industry, would love to hear our memberships, thoughts of the dangers of ignoring offshoring, or why you think it's a great process for your company. We've heard Tom's views. I absolutely don't think there's any harm in supporting the opportunity like this no matter if you go with FTO or ISO or whatever the varying standard becomes for your company. Obviously, there are strong opinions both ways and I know Tom has his opinions on those. But may be that will be another discussion with him and some other industry leaders. But we will have these links up here for debate. For the MRGA, it will be www.mrgasn.com/groups/FTO and we'll leave the sound wide open so that I can implement your -- when you create it and I'll turn off the recording now. Yes, you're offshoring self-certification.

Visit www.offshoringtransparency.org. To learn more about Tom Anderson and Anderson Analytics, visit andersonanalytics.com. Thank you for joining me today on the Live Chatter edition of offshoring transparency. We look forward to your engagement.

Click To Comment Weigh in on Offshoring Transparency, what side of the fence are you on and why?

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How to enhance productivity in the human cloud February 2,2011 Courtney Boyd Myers The way we work is changing. For the majority of the world that relies on the Internet for work, we are always connected. Therefore at its base- we are always able to be productive, and as a result, the 9-5 is nearly dead.

I‘ve been a freelance editor and writer for a year now and am surrounded by consultants, freelancers, contractors and sub-contractors. The part of the professional world that is tied to multiple clients rather than a single employer is an ever-growing network. We meet in co-working space, we blog from coffee shops, kitchen tables, home offices and post stories from 30,000 feet in the air on Virgin America flights.

The result is the ‗human cloud,‘ an omnipresent, virtual workforce powered by new cloud-based, social networking and mobile technologies.

So how do we enhance our productivity in the human cloud?

I asked Ray Grainger, the founder and CEO of Mavenlink, a web-based project management platform for consultants, freelancers, and other independent service professionals. Grainger founded Mavenlink to give independent professionals the tools to compete globally and efficiently.

Here he shares some of the key ways independent professionals can leverage cloud-based tools to improve the way they attract and conduct business: 1. Stop juggling multiple point solutions: How are you managing your projects, contacts, and business today? If you‘re like many independent service professionals, you‘re using a mixture of tools: email, LinkedIn, project tracking/management tool, Google Docs or other document sharing program, an invoicing application and more.

As a result, you end up with multiple logins, multiple windows, multiple dashboards, and a lot of manual reconciliation across each application.

In contrast, an end-to-end project management solution gives you single log-in access to all aspects of your projects and business: your network, your clients, your projects, your communications, your invoices, and your financing. This approach offers a more seamless workflow to improve both your organization and efficiency.

2. Create a collaborative online work environment: When you‘ve got multiple people in multiple locations involved on a given project, you‘ve got to make it easy for everyone to work together, review documents, make comments, and view project status. A cloud-based workspace is the new and improved conference room. You want to create a onestop-shop for all project-related documents, conversations, tasks, milestones, and financial information.

3. Give clients an easy way to answer their own questions: Any freelancer or consultant knows just how much time gets absorbed fielding emails: How‘s the project coming along? When do you expect to have draft 1 completed? Did Joe ever review that last version? How many hours did you spend on that last revision?

You can eliminate the back and forth communications by providing your clients with an at-a-glance dashboard that includes all aspects of a project‘s status. In addition, a centralized online area manages all project-related documents and conversations in a single place. This gives an instant audit trail for any project…and one that‘s readily accessible to all involved. Your clients will be happy that they can easily find the answers they need (at any time of day), and you‘ll be spending less time responding to emails.

4. Track all your project-related documents and communications in one place: A centralized project area helps you stay organized by capturing all communications, documents, milestones, tasks, and projects in one place.

You don‘t have to wade through scores of emails trying to find one particular email with a client‘s instruction. In addition, it‘s critical for your online platform to support email integration, because inevitably, some clients just can‘t let go of email. So, even if your client chooses to respond via email on their BlackBerry, you‘ll still be able to capture this communication in your project space.

5. Make it easy to bring others into your project: By nature, the virtual workplace is very fluid. Even if you‘re a solo freelancer, you‘re undoubtedly bringing in any number of contract specialists to help on certain projects. A flexible cloud-based project management platform can help you make sense of this dynamic work environment. You can invite as many people as you need to any project workspace (with varying access levels). You can track all project expenses and sub-contractor hours in a single spot. And you can offer a centralized place that keeps everyone in the loop.

6. Need an intuitive, simple project management solution: As an independent service provider, your time is indeed money. Deploying a complex software or SaaS solution can often cost you more time in training clients and subcontractors than it actually saves. A simple solution that offers just the features you need will help lower the learning curve and improve user adoption rates across the board.

7. Streamline your billing: Last, but definitely not least is invoicing. We all now that invoicing is key to getting paid, but the task is often viewed as an administrative hassle (particularly when your attention is already focused on the next project and deadline). A true end-to-end project management platform simplifies your invoicing process. You can invoice from directly inside your project workspace, tying invoice line items to specific tasks or milestones. With this level of invoice detail, your clients can better understand the output purchased, and you don‘t have to jump between spreadsheets, emails, and billing apps to put together your invoice. *** What other ways can you think of to enhance productivity in the human cloud?

P Publish Your Blog

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Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Loyalty ≠ Experience ≠ Satisfaction ≠ Advocacy ≠ Promoter February 2,2011 Howard Lax I’m taking off the gloves and issuing a challenge to practitioners and students in the arena of Customer Loyalty research. I’m not a language “priss”, and I know that outcomes and actions are what matter and always will trump debates about definitional purity. But am I the only one who is tired about the failure of people in our field to distinguish between key concepts – loyalty, experience, satisfaction, advocacy, promoter, etc. – and to treat them as interchangeable synonyms? This is not an academic issue of semantics. It’s about taking aim at business objectives and clarifying what we purportedly are trying to measure and how we go about designing an appropriate research program to hit those objectives.

I know this sounds more like geek-speak than applied and practical research, but who (sample audience), what (survey content), when (timing) and why (analysis) all flow from the business objectives and need to be logically related to those objectives. If a bank wants to measure customer loyalty, using surveys of online bill-pay customers triggered by a specific transaction and asking about their most recent experience misses the mark. Perhaps the bank should and does want to examine satisfaction with the bill-pay experience. That’s fine.

But that should not be treated as a measure of loyalty.

While I know that reasonable people may still disagree, I’d like to put a stake in the ground and start a dialogue and, perhaps, tease out the similarities and differences between what it is we are trying to measure (while always keeping in mind that the measurement is a means to a business objective, not an ends in itself).

Loyalty, I would argue, is a relationship concept. It is not an interaction or a transaction. Loyalty is about the stickiness of the relationship with the customer. Loyalty is a mindset, an abstraction, not a behavior. Loyalty is made tangible and expressed through behaviors (or the absence of behaviors). “Loyalty behaviors” are the expressions of loyalty that create value for the company or organization. In general, those behaviors include continued purchases, brand permission (consideration and purchase of related goods and services) and positive word of mouth (WOM).

Loyalty is not an experience. Every experience, every customer touch can undermine or strengthen the relationship (loyalty), but it is not the relationship itself. Experiences matter because they are part of the gestalt of the customer relationship. Dissatisfaction with an experience might weaken the glue of the relationship, threatening to dissolve the bonds of loyalty, while exceeding customer expectations can further reinforce those bonds. But loyalty is more than the sum of the customer’s experiences.

So at the risk of taking some daggers: you can effectively measure satisfaction with an experience; but asking the “based on your most recent experience with XXX, how likely are you to continue to use/buy again/recommend/what-ever-behavior” types of questions misses the relationship dimension of loyalty behaviors. People no doubt might talk about particular experiences – good, bad or otherwise – but asking people to parse out how they responded to a particular experience separate from the larger relationship usually is misguided.

(Yes, I intentionally hedged to permit for exceptions to which someone no doubt will point, such as once-in-a-lifetime experiences that leave indelible impressions. So if you sell helicopter tours over Grand Canyon, there probably is no relationship beyond “the experience.”)

Satisfaction, I would suggest, is both a dimension of loyalty and an overall measure of performance with regards to an experience.

There are some who argue that satisfaction has nothing to do with loyalty. I invite these people to post their data sets, as I have never seen an instance in which satisfaction with a company is not highly correlated with any reasonable measure of loyalty to that company. Some people may prefer to use the term “delight” or some other more emotive term than satisfaction; either way, any particular experience can lead to sentiments ranging from elation (i.e., further supporting the relationship) to disappointment (i.e., eroding loyalty).

Advocacy – saying or writing good or bad things about a firm and spreading positive or negative word of mouth is, as described above, a loyalty behavior. That is, advocacy is not the same as loyalty; rather, it is a behavioral manifestation of loyalty. The willingness to be an advocate or to recommend often is part of a loyalty construct.

In the NPS (Net Promoter Score) world, willingness to recommend is the single measure used to classify people as Promoters, Detractors or Neutrals.

The best measures? That is an empirical question: what approach best predicts the customer behavior the firm wants to encourage?

The answer may vary based on the company, its value proposition, business model, competition, footprint and other variables. At GfK, we have found that our Loyalty Plusapproach is more predictive of customer behaviors than other models. That said, we also recommend testing and improving on our own approach to best adapt Loyalty Plus to the individual client’s needs. A one-size-fits-all approach guarantees a lowest common denominator that probably doesn’t meet anyone’s needs. We apply the same way of thinking to our Guest Experience Measurement (GEM) work: start with a proven approach, modifying it as appropriate to best meet client needs.

Companies need to measure and understand customer loyalty and customer satisfaction with interactions or experiences at key touch points – and they need to understand the role of the customer experience in building customer loyalty. But they should not confuse loyalty, experience, satisfaction or other concepts as one and the same. At best, this reflects sloppy writing and lack of attention to detail. At worst, it indicates a lack of clarity in conceptualization that can totally undermine the validity of research findings and lead to misdirected decisions.

I invite you to pick up a glove and share your thoughts.

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Top Stories Cello Forecasts 20% Rise in Research Profits January 19, 2011

In its 2010 pre-close update, UK-based Cello Group has recorded a ‗strong second half‘ for its market research and consulting business, and says it expects to report a 20% plus like-for-like rise in operating profits.

During the year, performance in the research and consulting division – which includes Leapfrog, 2CV, MRUK, RS Consulting, Insight Research Group, and MSI - was ‗particularly strong‘ in the pharma and health-related client sectors. Cello says these sectors now constitute the primary area of the group‘s research and consulting activity, and operate at a higher margin than its other client sectors.

The division‘s overseas revenues are growing faster than those for the UK and now comprise almost half of its activity. In particular, the group's pharma offering based in the New York office has performed very strongly and is said to be expanding rapidly.

Cello says that as a result of ‗significant blue-chip client wins‘ in 2010, the group intends to expand its US West Coast office more aggressively in 2011. ‗Revenue momentum experienced in the research and consulting business in the last quarter of 2010 means that the group is carrying forward a healthy pipeline of activity into the first quarter of 2011,‘ Cello said today in a statement. ‗At this early stage of the year, the group is currently trading in line with management's expectations and the Board remains optimistic for the prospects in 2011.‘ Cello expects to announce its preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2010 on Wednesday 15 March.

As anticipated in Cello‘s interim results, which were announced by CEO Mark Scott (pictured) in September, Cello has incurred an exceptional charge of approximately £0.8m relating to the reduction of its public sector client spend.

To counter this, in November Cello announced that RS Consulting and mruk would be working in closer partnership to create a ‗research powerhouse‘ for the public sector.

This followed earlier news that mruk had closed its operations in Glasgow, Bristol, Cardiff and Newcastle, losing 90% of its staff including MD Jim Law, following public sector budget reductions.

Web site: www.cellogroup.co.uk .

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Top Stories TNS Buys Control of RMS in Africa January 4, 2011

TNS has acquired a majority stake in the Research and Marketing Services (RMS) group of companies in West and Central Africa.

The firms partnered in March to provide customized research in West Africa, combining RMS‘s 30 years of local market experience and TNS‘ global expertise, branded solutions, training and technology.

TNS says the acquisition will add Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Ghana to its existing network covering South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Egypt and Morocco.

RMS employs more than 225 people and reported consolidated revenue of approximately $12.6m for the year ended 31 December 2009.

The newly named TNS RMS will have a West African hub based in Lagos, Nigeria with East Africa run from Nairobi, Kenya. Current RMS COO Aggrey Maposa and TNS East Africa CEO Melissa Baker will head the two regions while RMS CEO Adeola Tejumola will take overall charge. ‗Via the acquisition of RMS, TNS becomes the first market and social Research Company with a comprehensive African network able to service local, regional and global clients in all African markets,‘ states Kim Macllwaine, CEO, TNS Africa and Middle East. ‗No other research company will have the depth of knowledge of the African consumer or the understanding of opportunities present in the rapid growth emerging markets of Africa.‘ Web sites: www.tnsglobal.com and www.rms-africa.com.

E Post Your Event

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Top Stories US Partners Study Online/Off-line Brand Link January 12, 2011

In the US comScore, dunnhumbyUSA and Accenture have partnered to study the link between consumers‘ usage of brand web sites and their in-store brand buying behavior.

Their research will be based on a panel of one million US Internet users who have given comScore explicit permission to have their online behavior continuously measured and matched to dunnhumbyUSA's in-store brand buying data from 60 million US households.

This panel will provide a single source of data that contains each panelist‘s online activities and their in-store buying patterns.

For participating CPG (consumer packaged goods) brands, the study aims to deliver both brand-specific and general industry-level insights.

It will examine areas such as the value of specific brand web sites as measured by the in-store brand buying of consumers visiting those sites, and whether features (coupons, recipes, social tools etc) on brand web sites correlate with high engagement among brand buyers.

The trio will also aim to uncover the common components of the most successful CPG brand web sites; and details about the lifestyles, interests, and passions of specific brand buyers as measured by their favorite online activities. ‗The aim of this important study is to quantify the retail value of the visitors to various brand websites, identify the most valuable content that can be provided on the site, and provide actionable insights into where else on the Internet marketers can best reach their brand buyers and prospects,‘ explained comScore Chairman, Gian Fulgoni.

This research is being conducted with the endorsement of the Grocery manufacturers Association (GMA) and the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), with the results to be presented in Spring 2011.

Web sites: www.comscore.com , www.dunnhumby.com and www.accenture.com.

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Events Mobile Research Webinar: Put Power in Your Consumers' Pockets & Purses February 23, 2011 from 3pm to 3:30pm – EST Since Qualvu pioneered the use of Internetbased video to make qualitative research better, faster and cheaper, you might expect that Qualvu would also be the first to make those capabilities mobil…Organized

by Guadalupe Pagalday | Type: webinar

Insights 2011 A Asia Pacific 2011 - Increasing value through simplicity - Melbourne/20 - 22 March March 20, 2011 to March 22, 2011 – Australia Asia Pacific 2011 will offer several preconference workshops in addition to round-table discussions and engaging presentations from top international speakers and clients all over the world such as…Organized by ESOMAR WORLD RESEARCH | Type: conference

Community Panels Part 2 – Three Steps to Success February 24, 2011 from 11am to 11:45am – Online What are the keys to a winning community panel? Building on the basics covered in Part 1, we‘ll reveal the 3 pillars of success – the what, who and why behind every great community panel. During t…Organized by Vision Critical | Type: live, webinar

MARKET RESEARCH AND INSIGHTS IN ACTION April 12, 2011 at 2:45pm to April 14, 2011 at 7pm – New York MARKET RESEARCH AND INSIGHTS IN ACTION Is a connecting platform where global leaders meet to discuss strategic and key topics, exchange most recent experiences, and brainstorm on future developments…Organized by Connecting Group | Type: conference

They Like You...Now What? Create Value (and Brand Insights!) from Facebook Fans February 24, 2011 from 2pm to 2:45pm – http://bit.ly/SINCweb Most organizations have Facebook pages; few are leveraging them to their fullest. In this 45-minute Webinar, we will introduce a new solution to help brands create value – and insights – from Faceboo…Organized by Globalpark | Type: online, webinar, //,discussion

MOBILE RESEARCH CONFERENCE (MRC) 2011 April 18, 2011 at 12pm to April 19, 2011 at 6pm – Mayfair Hotel The third annual gathering of researchers, end-clients and academics interested in capturing insights through mobile phones! This 2-day event will highlight opportunities and innovations, debate best…Organized by Kelly Anson | Type: conference

New World Order In Shopper Marketing Brussels/ 27 February - 1 March February 27, 2011 at 8am to March 1, 2011 at 7pm –Belgium The consumer is now in control!

Join ESOMAR at INSIGHTS 2011 to explore the crucial role that consumer insights are playing in unlocking the new mindset of shoppers. The INSIGHTS 2011 Programme fe…Organized by ESOMAR WORLD RESEARCH | Type: conference

IIR Technology Driven Market Research May 2, 2011 to May 3, 2011 – Hotel Allerton Chicago Starting things off is the Technology Driven Market Research conference scheduled for May 2-3, 2011 at the Hotel Allerton Chicago in Chicago, IL. The theme for this year‘s conference is ―Capture I…Organized by IIR | Type: conference

Click here to view all of the upcoming events.

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Videos

Online Market Research 101 - How to purchase online sample :: Learn how to purchase online sample for your market research in less than seven minutes. For more information, visit www.zoomerang.com.

Introducing Research Vibes :: www.researchvibes.com in partnership with GreenBook and Netvibes, we've created the first ever Market Research only widget based dashboard for all segments and categories to help manage everything market research.

Pew Internet: Young Adults Lead in Social Networking Site Usage for Political Engagement :: According to a report published by the Pew Research Center‘s Internet & American Life Project, young adults, ages 18-29 (42%), are more likely than older adults, ages 50 or older (33%), to use social networking sites for political purposes.

Mobile Research - How Important is it? :: Is conducting research through mobile phones a "cool solution in search of a problem" or is it "inevitable that it will succeed"? Find out...

Truly Understand Your Customers' Experience with NetBase :: We often do not think of consumer purchases as emotional experiences. So much of our lives is transactional though. It's not uncommon for a buying experience…

Speaker Highlights, David Rowan, Editor, Wired Magazine :: Toluna 10th Anniversary video highlights.

Paul Kirch Hot seat with the Marketing Research Association :: Recently, Jack Campisi of Qualvu, interviewed Paul Kirch, CEO of ActusMR, as part of an ongoing series of interviews being conducted for the Greater New York…

Our Approach: Vision Critical - The Interactive Research Solutions Company :: http://www.visioncritical.com Vision Critical's strategic research approach brings together the best people, ideas and practices for the digital age—blending...

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Where Market Research Brands Deploy Their Social Media Strategy Corporate Membership Make your social media presence known. The MRGA has spent years defining the art of social media presence. After all we were the first social media platform for market researchers. We know what works and what doesn't. The MRGA's Corporate Membership is your out of the box social media advertising kit designed to give you a basic branded social media experience from day one.

This is a recurring annual membership, and the first step into the MRGA AD::CHATTER 360 Social Media Network. This membership is designed to give your corporate brand a social media presence on all major social media platforms that market researchers follow.

Benefits Include :: • On-Boarding with the MRGA Social Media Starter Kit with Bench Mark Review (New) • Access to 16,000+ MRGA Members Globally • Access to the MRGA Publishing Network (Organize & Publish To All Social Networks Once)Publish to MRGAsn, ResearchVibes, LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook, Flickr, etc. & synchronize all of your blog posts on the MRGA to over 25+ Blog Search Directories.

• StudyBounty Access & Registration (New) • Corporate Bloggers Linking Package (New) • Unlimited Press Submission through Press Chatter (New) • Unique URL to MRGA Corporate Membership • Corporate Archive Publication Unlimited :: Press Releases, Whitepapers, Webinars, Podcasts and Video Submission • Unlimited Employee Directory Linked to Professional Memberships

• Branded Conversations with Logo • MRGA Membership Seal • MRGA Sponsor Recognition • Social Media and Search Engine Optimization • Opportunity to Access Premium Sponsorship Opportunity Have Questions? Call 1.888.250.8779 email membership@mrgasn.com, or visit http://invite.mrgasn.com/corporate-membership/

Request Your Online Grade :: Learn About InBound Leads :: Monitor Your Competitive Landscape

Want to know how to optimize your brand's market research social media presence? We help Brands Deploy and get found by more prospects and convert more of them into leads and paying customers with our services strategy.

The MRGA has partnered with HubSpot to help with a no-obligation Inbound Marketing Assessment that evaluates your current social media participation areas open to improvement. You can learn more about your competitors by finding out the number of inbound links, search engine indexed pages and how they stack up against you. Plus, you'll be able to make better decisions with your marketing dollars.

We offer an unbeatable combination to help you spread the word about your market research brand and services.

We would like to offer you the MRGA Corporate Membership in Combination with Hubspot Software! Get your free 30 day market research focused evaluation today.

We can help you track your presence on :: Your Website :: We will help you measure your SEO measurement and the marketing effectiveness of your website. Website Grader has graded over 1,000,000 sites and won numerous awards.

Your Blog :: Measure the marketing mojo of your blog.

FaceBook :: Did you know that there are over 500 million active users on Facebook? Or, that thousands of businesses are setting up Facebook pages to help reach their potential customers...

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Press Releases :: Evaluate your press release. Get the most of your investment in press releases.

Fill out the Step 1. Form and get started today!

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Social Media Innovators ::

Company Description ActusMR™, Inc . is a world class provider of strategic sales solutions, specializing in the marketing research industry. ActusMR™ is known as a resource to any firm wanting to increase sales exposure. Whether clients are leveraging our sales representatives, working with us to refine your sales process, or leveraging our virtual sales team management, ActusMR™ can help you grow, as well as gain stronger name recognition. In the race for market share, you need to have your strongest team running. Clearly an endurance race, we'll help you develop a strategy to outlast the competition. Go for the gold with Team ActusMR™!

Email: info@actusmr.com Website: www.actusmr.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/ActusMR

Company Description THE OTHER SAMPLING COMPANY IN CONNECTICUT™ - Call for competitive quotation. Quality online and telephone samples since 1991: exact age, income, new mothers, ethnic, businesses, tract/block groups, radius, RDD, many low incidence categories (product users, etc.), radius, census tract/block groups, many others, standard formats, email delivery, survey/sampling expertise. Survey programming and hosting.

Email: sales@affordablesamples.com Website: www.affordablesamples.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/AffordableSamples

Company Description The American Marketing Association (AMA) is the professional association for individuals and organizations who are leading the practice, teaching, and development of marketing worldwide. Our principal roles are:

• The AMA serves as a conduit to foster knowledge sharing.

• Providing resources, education, career and professional development opportunities.

• Promoting/ supporting marketing practice and thought leadership.

Through relevant information, comprehensive education and targeted networking, the AMA assists marketers in deepening their marketing expertise, elevating their careers and ultimately, achieving better results.

Website: www.marketingpower.com MRGA Profile: Coming Soon

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Social Media Innovators :: Company Description The Internet is the greatest data source we have ever seen. Always changing, expanding and evolving at a pace faster than we can digest. In order for the Internet to be a great business information source, we must be able to able to identify the information we need, aggregate it efficiently, review it effectively and take action.

Since our inception in 2002, Broadlook Technologies has focused on delivering innovative software solutions and services to empower business professionals to ―Leverage the Internet‖ as a real-time source of contact, company and business intelligence and information.

With well in excess of 10,000 users across 23 countries, Broadlook has emerged as the leader in helping B2B sales, marketing, specialty information publishers, talent acquisition departments, professional recruiting and staffing turn the Internet into an optimal sources to generate leads, source talent, power marketing campaigns, develop business, drive revenues and grow.

The future is brighter than ever. Several core applications have been architected for the SAAS and mobile platforms. The award-winning Contact Capture application is available on the major mobile platforms and has over 250,000 downloads. Profiler will be SAAS enabled and distributed through strategic integration partnerships with leading Applicant Tracking and CRM partners.

Website: www.broadlook.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/Broadlook

Company Description We gather millions of opinions everyday. We organize these opinions and deliver them to you in real-time.

CivicScience Inc. is a team of career idealists that includes world class economists, scientists, software engineers, leading pollsters, former elected officials, media personalities, and accomplished entrepreneurs.

Website: www.civicscience.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/CiViCSCIENCE

Company Description A marketing research services provider, Decipher specializes in online survey programming, data collection, data processing/reporting and custom technology development. Utilizing web-based applications, Decipher integrates state-of-the-art technology with traditional research techniques. Decipher's survey tools and data reporting suite provide users with the ability to automate post-field production, significantly increasing the accuracy and quality of research reporting.

Email: info@decipherinc.com Website: www.decipherinc.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/decipher

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Company Description: Founded in 1995, DMS Insights leverages its full-service heritage to provide a level of research knowledge and expertise unseen with other online sample providers.

Experts in Online Research: Our team has extensive full-service research experience from both client and supplier-side companies. The benefit to you will be obvious -executional excellence based on greater research knowledge and a deeper understanding of your objectives.

The Highest Quality Sample: Our pioneering work in creating the innovative ―river sampling‖ methodology resulted in the development of Opinion Place, the online industry‘s first and largest portal for reliable survey respondents. Opinion Place is the right choice when quality matters.

Precision Targeting: Specialty panels we offer include: Hispanic (Tu Opinion Latina), B2B, and Health Conditions.

Our level of research experience, in combination with the quality of our unparalleled samples, makes DMS Insights an excellent choice to meet your online sampling needs.

Email: info@dmsinsights.com Website: www.dms-insight.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/DMS

Company Description EFG is the U.S. subsidiary of the Paris-based MV2 Group, one of the European leaders in international Market Research. EFG is a fullservice one-stop shop for quant/qual fieldwork and mystery shopping worldwide on behalf of US-based Market Research and consulting firms.

We provide quotes within 24-36h, coordinate your fieldwork worldwide, provide daily updates, and answer any questions you might have. EFG‘s global network counts 9,500 Face-to-Face interviewers (CAPI-equipped), 2,000 in-house CATI Stations, 75 Focus Group Facilities, and 35+ proprietary panels across EMEA, APAC, and LatAm. EFG is ISO 9001 quality certified since 1995. EFG covers all types of industry. Special units dedicated to specific industries such as Healthcare, IT, B2B, C-Levels, Finance, Automotive, and Sports.

Email: contact@efgresearch.com Website: www.efgresearch.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/EFG Company Description

Company Description FocusVision is the leading global provider of live video transmission, analysis and archive solutions for the qualitative market research industry.

With transmission solutions for all venues, including the largest global network of focus group facilities, FocusVision delivers the highest audio and video quality, security and reliability for the most advanced research organizations in the world. FocusVision solutions increase key stakeholder participation, avoid the hassles and costs of travel and accelerate the review, analysis and reporting process to make smarter decisions, faster.

Email: info@focusvision.com Website: www.focusvision.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/FocusVision

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Company Description Gazelle is the trusted resource chosen by leading market research firms since 1993. Services include domestic and international field management in all methodologies, online programming and hosting, sample acquisition, data processing, coding and foreign language translations. When you partner with Gazelle, we put you in touch with our extensive network of global providers in Europe, Asia, Africa, plus North America, Latin America and the Middle East. All work is prepared in compliance with the International Code of Marketing and Social Research Practices. Gazelle Global Research Services, LLC is certified as a women‘s business enterprise through the Women‘s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC). Professional affiliations: PRC certified by the MRA, AMA, CASRO, ESOMAR and AIMRI. Email: info@gazelleglobal.com Website: www.gazelleglobal.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/GazelleGlobal

Company Description Globalpark offers panel, community and feedback management solutions that drive loyalty, product innovation, and marketing reach. We help organizations like Citi, Daimler and Nintendo, and top MR and HR agencies, to ensure the voice of the customer/employee informs daily decisions. We offer web-based solutions for: - Online Research including mobile, for instant ―in the moment‖ feedback - Research Panels with the most open, efficient panel management platform available - Private Feedback Communities fusing quant and qual research - Advocacy Networks to build reach, reputation With 10 years experience, we offer a proven, cost-effective solution to help organizations manage what matters and fuel bottom-line growth.

Email: community@globalpark.com Website: www.globalpark.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/globalpark

Company Description Every month, thousands of companies, organizations, governmental agencies, and market research firms use the GreenBook to find partners for research projects. These prospective buyers of research services find GreenBook to be: - Reliable: information is provided & verified by listed companies - Detailed: provides clear direction and confidence - Practical: standardized, uncluttered and user-friendly format Email: ncardenas@greenbook.org Website: www.greenbook.org MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/GreenBook

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Company Description Founded over a decade ago, Hotspex helps the marketing world discover the hidden truth behind consumer behavior – emotions, feelings and relationships towards brands and marketing ideas. Leading manufacturers, retailers and service providers continuously rely on us for our insights, innovation and technology. We differentiate ourselves from other research companies by: 1) focusing on emotions to understand subconscious associations and drivers of behavior, 2) engaging millions of consumers to help us shape products and experiences through our interactive and enjoyable surveys, and 3) providing business-focused analysis of all results.

Email: gera.n@hotspex.com Website: www.hotspex.biz MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/HotSpex

Company Description HubSpot's vision is to provide a (killer) marketing application and provide great advice to small businesses enabling them to leverage these disruptive effects of the internet to "get found" by more prospects shopping in their niche and to convert a higher percentage of prospects into customers.

Most small businesses have a website that behaves like their old paper-based brochures, but just sitting online. It is rarely updated, is not given significant visibility by the search engines, has low traffic levels, does not encourage return visits, does not enable/track conversions, etc. What HubSpot does is transform that relatively static website into a modern marketing machine that produces the right leads and helps convert a higher percentage of them into qualified opportunities.

For more information about what we are building, see our products page and see this article on our strategy for success.

Email: jmahtani@hubspot.com Website: www.hubspot.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/HubSpot

Company Description iCharts offers a fully integrated, web based solution that allows you to visualize any kind of data online and easily distribute it to any audience. No Software to download. No Programming required. iCharts has solutions designed for researchers that: allow users to visually experience, consume, analyze and reuse your data; create dynamically updated interactive charts and dashboards; integrate data across multiple sources, including surveys and databases; automatically update iCharts wherever they are on the web with no manual effort; and improve productivity by going from raw data to charting and online distribution with no aggregations or crosstabbing required. iCharts - your online resource for data visualization, publishing and information distribution.

Email: dstanley@ichartsbusiness.com Website: ichartsbusiness.com/solutions MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/iCharts

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Company Description InsightsNow is the leading product design and development research company whose unique consumer behavior frameworks, powerful technology platform, and rapid delivery of relevant insights provide a rich, integrated, and scalable research environment that accelerates the development of products for major consumer packaged goods manufacturers. Through the company‘s advanced real time research and analytic solutions, such as profilesNOW and reportsNOW, InsightsNow provides faster, deeper, and more insightful results. InsightsNow‘s headquarters are in Corvallis, Oregon with offices throughout the United States. For more information, visit www.InsightsNow.com or call 541-757-1404.

Email: info@InsightsNow.com Website: www.InsightsNow.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/InsightsNowInc

Company Description Kinesis Survey Technologies™ provides powerful survey and panel management solutions for building and maintaining web and wireless survey communities with two available versions -- Market Research and Enterprise editions. Kinesis Survey™ is a web-based, survey programming application with intuitive user interface for rapid training and minimal programming time. Kinesis Panel™ is a query, sample distribution, and invitation solution that supports small communities or large. Kinesis Panel includes a customizable Panelist Portal for creating panel and community websites, and API for extending to third-party and in-house applications. Reporting tools provide visibility to all aspects of survey launch and panel management, with branded options for third-party access.

Email: sales@kinesissurvey.com Website: www.kinesissurvey.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/Kinesis

Company Description The Market Research Event unites the world's most influential researchers to share best practices, industry innovation and showcase the business value of market research. This years event is November 07 - November 09 2011 in Orlando, FL. MRGA members receive a special discount.

Brought to you by IIR USA: Our events provide you with laser focused content, unique experiences, access to people & ideas that create innovation, relevant connections, & generate business.

IIR USA has identified and branded 5 critical factors necessary to meet changing customer needs . It's through the unique combination of these imperatives that IIR USA events continually set the standard for which conferences in general are measured.

Email: aioannou@iirusa.com Website: www.themarketresearchevent.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/tmre

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Company Description Founded in 1979, Mktg, Inc, is the online SampleAnalysts™ to the industry with the largest global research on research effort covering 35 countries. The Grand Mean Project™ tracks hundreds of panels globally. Our consistency modeling is a new measure of quality.

Offering unique online sample quality measures through: The Grand Mean Project™; Optimum Blending Solutions™; Consistent Track ™; QMetrics™: Crop Duster™. State of the art programming/hosting & 160 CATI stations.

Email: customercare@mktginc.com Website: www.mktginc.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/grandmean

Company Description The Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA) is a Canadian not-for-profit association representing all aspects of the market intelligence and survey research industry, including social research, competitive intelligence, data mining, insight, and knowledge management. Members include over 1,800 practitioners, small to large research houses, and the many buyers of research services, such as financial institutions, major retailers, insurance companies and manufacturers. The industry accounts for almost three quarters of a billion dollars in market research activities annually.

The MRIA was founded on November 21, 2004, after the membership of the three Canadian associations representing the industry voted overwhelmingly in favour of merging. The newly-created body, which began operations on January 1, 2005, presents a unified voice for the industry; pulling together all of the products and services formerly offered to the public and the respective members of the now dissolved Canadian Association of Market Research Organizations (CAMRO), the Canadian Survey Research Council (CSRC) and the Professional Marketing Research Society (PMRS).

Email: FBorok@mria-arim.ca Website: www.mria-arim.ca MRGA Profile: Coming Soon

Company Description Successful qualitative research techniques begin with understanding the specifications of our clients. Our professionally trained in-house staff can tackle the most difficult recruiting assignments in a timely and cost effective manner utilizing client supplied sample, our computerized database, location intercepts or random calling. Mars Research has an extensive field department that offers our clients the opportunity to conduct mystery shops, store audits, and exit interviews on a local, regional and/or national level Quantitative research studies are implemented with a team approach. This gives us the ability to complete projects on schedule and within budget.

Every interviewer is thoroughly trained, briefed, supervised and monitored to ensure accurate and valid data collection. Our research provides reliable and concise data on consumers, professionals and businesses, as well as a full range of special target audiences, including seniors, physicians and baby boomers.

Email: ron@marsresearch.com Website: www.marsresearch.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/MARS

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Company Description Missing from this new economy is an intermediary to unite organizations and service providers. Mavenlink is that connection.

Organizations and service providers that use Mavenlink can tap into trusted referral networks to contract specialized talent without the cost, barriers or time-consuming processes of traditional staffing companies and recruitment firms. The Software as a Service platform enables organizations and service providers to conduct business while simplifying communications and promoting transparency among collaborative work teams.

Email: support@mavenlink.com Website: www.mavenlink.com MRGA Profile: Coming Soon

Company Description Mindwave has in-depth experience in several quantitative and qualitative methodologies, but it‘s our ―think beyond the assignment‖ mentality and our vast global knowledge that differentiate us as a premier research company.

When you need research, you want more than a stack of quotes or a bunch of numbers. You want a better understanding of your customers. You want to know what they‘re thinking, what they need, what drives them.

Our teams have designed and executed some of the most innovative studies for a broad range of demanding clients from around the world – and the services we provide are a reflection of in-depth expertise in applying methodologies and techniques that help you see your customers in a clearer light. Plus, our suite of fully-owned, in-house services and expertise means you get seamless integration of quantitative and qualitative methodologies and techniques.

Email: info@mindwaveresearch.com Website: www.mindwaveresearch.com MRGA Profile: Coming Soon

Company Description We are the insight discovery company. Founded by innovators Jonathan Spier and Michael Osofsky, NetBase develops and markets a next-generation semantic technology that reads and understands the English language. This technology is the basis for solutions that help our users answer complex questions faster, more accurately, and with greater confidence. And we do this at scale. NetBase finds and extracts the most relevant information from billions of public and private sources of online information. Our advanced technology combines with patent-pending lenses to provide context for search results and intelligently guide users to highly relevant answers.

At NetBase we have a team of seasoned high-tech executives and a teamwork environment. Our solutions assist market researchers at Fortune 1,000 companies with netnography and social media understanding, and enable science, technology and medical (STM) publishers to make searches of their proprietary content much faster and more productive, thereby increasing the value of their content.

Five of the top ten consumer packaged goods companies, including Procter & Gamble, and two of the top three STM publishers, including Reed Elsevier, depend on NetBase to find answers faster.

Email: info@netbase.com Website: www.netbase.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/NetBase

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Company Description The Enterprise, Engaged.

The key to better engagement is personalization. Netvibes for Enterprise is the perfect daily interface for organizations to engage customers and employees alike with fully branded, yet individually personalized startpage portals. Widget-based Enterprise Portals deliver your unique content, relevant industry feeds and multiple enterprise tools—all from a single, unified dashboard—alongside the user‘s favorite search, weather, email, news, blogs, social networks and widgets. Netvibes for Enterprise adds a personalized face to the front of any enterprise system, with a user-friendly dashboard that‘s more customizable, productive and engaging.

Email: chris@netvibes.com Website: http://business.netvibes.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/netvibes

Company Description Online Market Intelligence (OMI) provides high quality online fieldwork in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and the Baltic states.

With OMI online panels you can access over 300k consumers, 85k vehicle owners, 15k IT professionals, and 5k Physicians recruited from a wide variety of local Web-portals and professional websites.

OMI manages 4 proprietary online panels: Consumer Panel Automotive Panel B2B IT Panel Physician panel OMI consumer panel in Russia holds the Silver Certificate for data consistency in tracking studies that is awarded by the international panel auditors Mktg Inc. Email: rfp@omirussia.ru Website: www.omirussia.ru/en/ MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/omi

Company Description OnePoint Surveys offers a complete mobile research solution encompassing the creation of mobile surveys which support multimedia content and location based services (LBS), recruiting and profiling mobile communities and panels, through to rewarding participants with cash and other incentives directly to their phone. The OnePoint mobile survey platform enables research to be deployed across 193 countries via multiple mobile channels; SMS, WAP, choice and mobile websites, using any type of mobile phone handset.

Email: tellmemore@onepointsurveys.com Website: www.onepointsurveys.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/OnePoint

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Company Description Peanut Labs enables organizations to gather quality data for market research by embedding surveys into social networking applications and communities. Users complete a preliminary profile questionnaire that enables Peanut Labs to target users with the most relevant surveys. Information collected from the profiler includes basic demographics such as age, gender, ethnicity, geography and household income.

Those who meet the required criteria receive highly targeted survey invitations in real time - as they log in to their application - and are rewarded with virtual currency upon completion. Peanut Labs offers community-based incentives that are different for every respondent think of it as a customized incentive based on personal preferences and affinity. These incentives are controlled by the social network or community partner, of which the respondent is a member of. This form of engagement provides a better user experience, ultimately allowing for better quality of data.

Email: sales@peanutlabs.com Website: www.peanutlabs.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/PeanutLabs

Company Description Qualtrics is an industry-leading provider of enterprise feedback management and survey software solutions. We provide a platform for designing, distributing and evaluating survey results to keep the research process in-house and immediately actionable. Qualtrics is the most robust and easy-to-use online survey tool on the market. Our products are unique in how they offer a straightforward, sophisticated option for professional research.

Qualtrics makes sophisticated research simple. That's why industry leaders and Fortune 500 companies choose Qualtrics.

Email: sales@qualtrics.com Website: www.qualtrics.com MRGA Profile: Coming Soon

Company Description Research Now is the leading global online sampling and data collection company. With over 6 million panelists in 37 countries worldwide, Research Now enables companies to listen and interact with real consumers and business decision makers in order to make key business decisions. Research Now offers a full suite of data collection services, including social media sampling, and operates the Valued Opinions™ Panel and e-RewardsŽ Opinion Panels. The company has a multilingual staff located in 22 offices around the globe and has been recognized for three consecutive years as the industry leader in client satisfaction. Visit http://www.researchnow.com to learn more. Research Now is part of the e-Rewards Group which also includes Peanut Labs and e-Miles.

Email: info@researchnow.com Website: www.researchnow.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/ResearchNow

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Company Description Research Rockstar delivers training, tips and tools to busy professionals seeking Market Research excellence—and we offer it all online or in-person. Our clients are the actual users and buyers of market research services—people who need to find, buy and manage market research resources. In some companies, this is a full-time researcher. In others, it is a person who is using research as part of another job.

Market Research is an investment, and a large one for many companies. But like any investment, it can be risky. Research Rockstar provides precise, actionable information to make sure your investment is optimally managed. We want the actual buyers and users of market research have a positive experience with it—so that they can complete research projects, apply the results to real-world business decisions, and feel, indeed, like a Research Rockstar.

Email: support@researchrockstar.com Website: www.researchrockstar.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/RESEARCHROCKSTAR

Company Description Interview & on-site surveys: Rapidly develop and deploy complex and multilingual surveys on a variety of mobile devices. Interviewers engage people at the point of experience to ensure that the insights collected are timely and accurate.

Diary research: Arm any group with a cost-effective survey appliance. Customizable alarms, photo capture, and an elegant interface give you infinite abilities to customize how, when and where people share their lives and experiences with you.

Mobile panels: People have never been so connected yet so unreachable. A mobile-enabled panel will allow you to engage your audience on their own devices to provide feedback and insights that are meaningful and convenient--on their own terms. The result: more accurate, timely information and reduced churn of your valuable panel asset.

Consumer engagement: Mobile marketing isn't just about smaller ads, and traditional surveys don't equal engagement. Techneos is your ideal partner to build sticky applications that not only enable 2-way dialogues that deliver insights, but also provide value to your mobile community.

Website: www.techneos.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/techneos

Company Description With a cumulative 200 years of championship work, Thoroughbred Opinion Research has a rich pedigree in market research. We are lifelong researchers who have dedicated ourselves to what matters most – working with you in the spirit of collaboration to provide data that is valid, representative and replicable. Every client has a dedicated team of senior leadership. The partners are hands-on and accessible. The team communicates with you daily throughout the project providing insight, objectivity and balance. We have six call centers with 330 CATI equipped stations, and conduct a variety of quantitative telephone and online studies.

Email: vic.walsh@torinc.net Website: www.torinc.net MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/ThoroughbredResearch

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Company Description Toluna, is the world‘s largest online sample provider, delivering sample of unrivaled reliability and representation from millions of panelists worldwide. Offices around the globe ensure local expertise for your projects. Contact us to learn more about how we can serve your online research needs.

Toluna provides online sample and online research panel building expertise to over 1,500 of the world‘s leading market research agencies. Get in touch with 4 million active panel community members across 34 countries. 16 specialist research panels reach niche segments to provide quality survey research data. Respondents can be delivered to your programming or ours. We also offer custom panel and community building and management.

Email: toluna@toluna.com Website: www.toluna-group.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/toluna

Company Description Since 1986, 20|20 Research has been providing the tools, services and support to help our clients conduct the best in qualitative research. In addition to our ―Top Rated‖ Focus Group facilities and local recruiting, 20|20 has grown to become a worldwide leader in online qualitative research solutions. We currently offer five different software platforms, qualitative recruiting in the U.S. and around the globe, as well as the best project management, service and support in the industry. Let us know how we can help you with your next qualitative project.

Email: Sales@2020research.com Website: www.2020research.com MRGA Profile: Coming Soon

Company Description uSamp (www.uSamp.com), formerly United Sample Inc., is one of the world‘s fastest growing online panel companies, providing survey panelists and technology for use in market research. Founded in 2008, uSamp has 90 team members worldwide and more than 2.7 million global market research panelists. The company‘s web-based panel platform is transforming the management and delivery of online panel for market researchers, offering unprecedented access over their panel. uSamp‘s deep well of proprietary technologies includes cutting-edge solutions for accessing, branding and managing panels. Established by the creators of the renowned goZing™ online panel, uSamp is based in Los Angeles, with offices in India, Connecticut, Dallas and London.

Email: sales@uSamp.com Website: www.uSamp.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/uSamp

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Company Description At Vision Critical, change is something we do often. We don‘t tend to stagnate. We operate in a way that‘s counter to bureaucracy because we‘re blessed with exceptionally talented people – people that we trust. It‘s as simple as that.

When you work with your Vision Critical team, you‘ll take advantage of the most adopted online market research software in the world.

You‘ll work with smart, high-energy people who make interactive technology, strategic research and global panels into something that sparks – and you‘ll turn that potential into marketable reality.

We believe in a vigor of personality, and in quirks and -isms of all kinds. In discovering new talent, it‘s this seeking out of like-minded souls that assembles an eclectic, more genuine team.

We feel the same way about our clients. Vitality, like new ideas, thrives in a brainstorm.

In some companies, the bid to present an executive front lends an almost solemn air – but that‘s a tone that keeps people from connecting with one another beyond the constructs of quotas and budgets. In contrast, enthusiasm ripples through Vision Critical not because it‘s mandated, but because it‘s infectious.

Our client relationships feel like friendships. Candid, unconventional, and open to anything new. We‘re proud of our creativity, and of our humanity – and of all the people and brands connected to our family. Software is not often that kind of business. But that‘s how it is with us.

Website: www.visioncritical.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/VisionCritical

Company Description How can we help with your next research project? With Zoomerang Sample™ you get the highest quality means of conducting online research. MarketTools, our parent company and a leading market research firm, manages the Zoomerang survey panel through an innovative management process that aims for 100% survey respondent authenticity. That authenticity is crucial: our research has shown that your risk of bad information can double if your survey group contains even 30% bad respondents.

Email: samplesales@markettools.com Website: www.zoomerang.com MRGA Profile: www.mrgasn.com/profile/MarketToolsZoomerangSample

Interested in becoming an MRGA sponsor? We have many different options to help your company thrive in the social media space. Contact us today at 1.888.250.8779 or e-mail membership@mrgasn.com.

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