The future of questions

Everyone likes to make predictions as one year closes and another begins with fresh hopes, although fewer go back to check what they said previously (with some notable exceptions). Rather than make predictions, most of which are guaranteed not to happen, I would like to share a hope for how market research can reinvent itself for the future. In sharing my hope I can also share some of the changes that I believe will happen at some time in the near future (I would never be confident enough to say that it will be in 2012).

My big wish is that market research can start to get beyond its obsession with questions. Read more »

What does 2012 hold?

In an uncertain world, it’s always good to hang on to someone else’s predictions of what lies ahead, and in that spirit here is a summary of some of the key trends outlined by trendwatching.com in their end of year report (link here). Some of these trends seem very similar to previous years perhaps, and some are less relevant for Asia, so I will focus on six that I find most relevant and intriguing plus a tip for which colour to wear to your New Year’s party on Saturday night. Read more »

Market research and product testing

The history of product testing is long and can trace its path back to many diverse fields along a similar timespan to that of market research (back to the 1920s when the science was first introduced to manage product quality). Sensory science developed at a fast rate in the 1950s and 1960s, when different techniques for the ‘descriptive analysis’ of products were developed, starting with the flavor profile method, in the fast developments of the consumer goods industries which followed the end of the second world war. The science was boosted by the publication of Stevens’ landmark textbook on psychophysics in the mid-1970s and has come a long way in the last 50 years.

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Making meaning

We are a peculiar species. For example, many of us continue to risk our long term survival for the pleasure of puffing on a stick of nicotine, while others make it very difficult to walk by wearing uncomfortable high heel footwear. Read more »

“Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.”  - David Hume

“The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning.”  - Stephen Jay Gould Read more »

A universal story

Although there are seven basic plots which have been the basis of storytelling for thousands of years (even if there have been some developments in recent years), the plots share many common trait. All the plots can ultimately be summarised as a single universal story, and share many common features such as a tension between light and dark and masculine and feminine, use of archetypal symbols, patterns and personalities, and an overarching theme of self realisation in their narrative structure and elements. Read more »