MarketTools Blog

For all the recognition of the impact of social media on new product introductions, there appears to be relatively little effort to understand the role and contribution of buzz when evaluating new product ideas.  While the traditional “Likelihood to Recommend” measure is still part of the key performance indices tracked for new product concepts, additional – perhaps more relevant – measures of advocacy are not systematically incorporated into innovation research. 

Whether or not a new product or line extension is buzz-worthy, the reality of how new products break through barriers of awareness and adoption should be incorporated into concept testing disciplines.  However, to do so suggests that we should update how we test new product ideas – in terms of how ideas/concepts are presented to consumers, what questions we ask them in their evaluations/reactions, and what variables to include when forecasting them. 

With the year’s end coming, pundits are looking to the social media sphere to come up with their predictions for the newest trends for 2012.  But when it comes to looking for practical direction from the wild and wooly world of social media, I’d advise a little caution. 

Imagine asking a person on the street for directions to a nearby restaurant.  You follow those directions, but you can’t find the restaurant.  You backtrack your route to find the person who gave you the faulty information.  “Hey, mister,” you say.  “Your directions were useless!”  The stranger answers, “But you never asked me if I knew where the restaurant was!”  Social media can seem like it’s populated by people who are more than happy to give you directions even though they have no idea where the restaurant is.

A comic strip I saw recently had a line that went something like “Any time my boss tells me about a trend, it’s probably too late.”  That’s not a putdown of bosses or management, but it does speak to the incredible buzz currently taking place around social media and the research opportunity to listen to “real people”.

We are now seeing all kinds of tools in the marketplace that allow us to make sense out of the gazillion conversations taking place in the social media sphere.  Many of these tools work and are wondrous to behold.

But let’s take a step back and ask ourselves: what can we expect to ascertain about these folks who are sharing their lives with us on a daily/hourly basis?  I go back to something I was taught years ago when I started to think it was possible to understand the collective human experience.  I was taught that there are two kinds of research:

Forrester has started a research project to benchmark the use of social technologies across the enterprise, and is especially interested in hearing from market research professionals.  I say “hallelujah!”

Much like Tamara Barber mentions on her blog, our market research clients run the gamut in their use of (and success with) social media, and those clients are definitely curious to know how their use of social media for online market research compares with that of their peer organizations.  We get that question all the time.  

The goal of Forrester’s research is to gauge the current reality of social media practitioners across the enterprise, and we’re definitely encouraging our market research practitioners to participate by taking the Forrester survey.

Our view on the drivers of success for social media programs for online market research or Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM):