RTi Attends TMRE Conference: The Market Research Event, November 8-10, 2010 in San Diego

November 12, 2010

RTi was one of over just over 800 conference attendees – with approximately 40% of these being from "end user" companies (including CPG, financial services, and "other' types of service companies).

There were two major themes that ran throughout the different keynote speeches and breakout sessions, including:

1. The continually changing face of the Consumer Insights function – rather than just being information gatherers, Consumer Insights professionals are being called upon to be an integral part of the "marketing team" by providing fully integrated insights, enhancing strategic influencing skills so that insights can be positioned in such a way that they are accepted by management, and even going so far as being a part of the "activation" process.

There was also a lot of speculation about what "consumer insights" will be in 2020, with many discussions centering on the role of Social Media in this "future vision". Of course, nobody knows for sure, but it is interesting to be exposed to the range of thinking across "industry experts".

2. The fact that consumers are not rational beings and often don't know what they want or why they do things – to most effectively use consumer research as a way to understand/predict behavior, we must uncover ways to measure not only what consumers tell us, but how they feel. So, it's all about the emotion (rarely measured effectively) and not so much about a rational decision making process (what we typically measure). Many companies are experimenting with different areas of neuroscience including facial coding and brain scans.
While neither of these topics are new, many of the presentations were able to contextualize the ideas in a way that really got our team thinking and excited.