The New Face Of Marketing

It’s Not Just About Numbers

When one thinks of market research, the image of a “nerd”, with rimmed glasses, pouring over spreadsheets and high level statistical models often come into mind.  Heck, back in my college days, there was a time I wanted to be in market research.  In fact, even to this day, I still very much enjoy conducting research, as I have to scour the internet daily to find good stories on Biometrics to write upon (granted it is not number crunching though).  But, the days of old school, number grinding, bare knuckles approach of conducting research may soon be gone.  Just think about it for a minute. If you think about long and hard enough, you could come to realize that a bulk of market research conducted is to gauge as to how a potential customer will react to a certain product, service, or even an advertisement.  In other words, suppose you have just created Product “X”.  

Before launching it, you want to make sure that you’re marketing strategies and tactics will prove to be fruitful, and yield some sort of positive ROI (I know I don’t sound too optimistic on this point, because advertising usually does not give a high ROI-a response rate in the single digits is good, and low teens is awesome).  What better way than to this then actually conduct a test launch, in a controlled setting, and see how a sampling of people actually react to it.  So, how do you do it??? 

Here is a very possible answer:  “The essential part of marketing is research and testing, which is applied to almost every stage of the product cycle. Psychology tells us that emotions play an important role in how we make decisions. Yet much emotional processing occurs below our level of consciousness. So there are limits to what can be measured in a survey about emotions. By the same token, if we can reach deeper to understand these emotions, it will provide even greater insight into what makes great marketing and great advertising. To achieve this promise, Ipsos has partnered with Boston-based Innerscope Research. Innerscope uses biometrics to understand the full scope of emotional reaction. Biometrics is a fascinating field that measures and analyzes our biological reactions (heart rate, skin conductance, respiration, movement) to decipher the emotional response to any stimulus.”  (SOURCE:  http://www.findbiometrics.com/industry-news/i/9340/). 

My Take

Of course, if you have been an avid follower of my blog site, you will soon realize that I have written a few postings about the use of Biometrics in this type of market research.  But point be known, the term Biometrics here used in this type of content does not refer to the traditional stuff like hand geometry scanning, fingerprint recognition, vein pattern recognition, etc.  Rather, it refers to the use of such physiological features as the amount perspiration, eye movements, heartbeat, brain wave patterns, etc.  So although, in my view, this is taking the definition of Biometrics a little bit to the stretch, it is still Biometrics indeed, because it is still our unique, physical characteristics being probed and examined. 

Or if you prefer, you can look at Biometrics in a different angle, with this approach.  Really, either way works.  But the point that I am trying to make is that as you peruse through the above quote, just realize that the days of conducting market research the old fashioned way of sitting in an office and not having human contact are now over.  In today’s world and times, especially given the advent of all things Social Media, conducting any type of market research means you have to actually do it in real time, with real humans.  Take for example, viral marketing.  In an instant, your product or service could circulate around the web, and around the world, within just seconds. 

And if there is any mistake in your marketing strategy, your company’s image and brand could very well be doomed. Now I am not saying mistakes are not going to happen, but by conducting market research in test pilot phase with a sampling of some real people could greatly help mitigate some of these risks. 

Face it, and believe it or not, social media and the internet has changed the face of marketing.  And with this all, Biometrics will be there to ensure that you, as the business owner, deliver the very best you can to your customers and markets.

Comments

[lilyMix]

you always get some fancy ideas, good!