For its first Online Panels conference, ESOMAR recruited one chair and three program directors: Reg Baker (Chair), COO, Market Strategies International, USA; Monique Morden, EVP, Angus Reid Strategies, Canada; Steve Schwartz, CMRI, Group Quality and Vendor Management, Microsoft; and Michael Bartl, CEO, HYVE, Germany.

The 2009 gathering in Chicago ended with a wrap-up panel of the four conference leaders. And their overriding message: Online research is off life support.

Reg Baker, COO, Market Strategies International, USA

• "The most sensitive issue of all to me is the fine line that divides research from marketing [in online communities]. And this is not just a vague ethical issue. It's a legal issue that gets down to our ability to function as an industry. Europeans, in particular, are very sensitive to the problems that will rain down on our industry if the authorities discover that we're doing things that really are not any different than direct marketing."
• "It strikes me that, throughout my career, marketing research was always tied to survey research. Now that link has been broken. There are fewer surveys and a lot more other things. Have we lost our standards to the IT geeks and the venture capitalists? And what does this mean for privacy and confidentiality?"
• "We've been talking about Web 2.0 for so long. Now, it's time to digest the discussion and discover what specific techniques and ways work best."
• "The future is different than the past in ways we cannot imagine . We need to reevaluate and possibly reinvent."

Monique Morden, EVP, Angus Reid Strategies, Canada

• "Our industry keeps going through changes, with the economy and technology as drivers of that change. It's happening at a greater speed than ever before. And we have to respond, adapt, take chances, and experiment."
• "There is no agreement on the best way to use Twitter. But we can't wait for discussion to come to a consensus. We have to go ahead and get the information, analyze it, and interpret it."
• "Is there a parallel between social media and contextual media? There is no right or wrong answer. We need to [build in continuum between the two] with our tool kits, to come up with the right situation at the right time, but build best practices."
• Merging qualitative and quantitative: "Clients look at small segment-a survey with 10 or 30 people-and get directional, qualitative information. But, it's hard to get from [qualitative to quantitative]. Quantitative becomes qualitative when audiences are smaller. It isn't one or the other-it's a collision of two worlds. And that's both new and good."
• "For me, the jury's still out on text analytics that use [emoticons]. It's an open-ended question."
• "In longer [exercises of] co-creation, there's a lot of context that text analysis software [cannot manage]. How do you process words and conversations?"

Steve Schwartz, CMRI/Group Quality and Vendor Management, Microsoft.

• "One common theme [of the conference] is that it all comes down to the respondent-about how we react to the person providing data. It's researching with people, not just bringing it to them."
• "There's a great deal of pressure on the market-research ecosystem to do a lot with our respondents…. It's like [former Harvard president and current Director of the White House's National Economic Council] Larry Summers said a couple of years ago: Nobody ever washes a car rental. They haven't invested the time or the respect in something they don't own. To a large extent, the things we talk about come down to that relationship. But there's another model: Leasing cars. We do take ownership in that product, we care about the history of the vehicle. There's a richer, deeper investment. It's not a single-time car rental. It's an on-going relationship."
• "There's a real danger in unstructured data. It loses a lot of nuances. Graphic representation comes to mind as one solution. But a lot of research needs to go into the field before we can use it. The information is there, but need a framework for it. Where do we go?"
• "Invest in panels…. Understand the relationships. Simply [protecting against] fraud and investing in quality makes it less expensive in the end. [That means] deeper engagements. As well as upfront investments. And [it means being] willing to made a trade-off: This is not a transitional relationship but an engagement relationship over time."
• "We have to integrate new tool kits with our clients and suppliers. Some of them tend to be conservative, [preferring] telephone and face-to-face programs. New programs may have new measures that they won't be able to compare with the old way of doing things."
• "When you have thousands and thousands of people online, how do you interpret what they say? You might hear 70,000 conversations in blogs and text-scraping… but how do you interpret it all?"

Michael Bartl, CEO, HYVE, Germany

• "It's a major challenge to transfer traditional [research methodology] into Web 2.0. New media can reduce costs and increase speeds."
• "The new methods of co-creation and ethnography mean that 'co-creation' is more than just a buzz word. It's the future. They're the next big topics. And we have to be cautious that these two streams don't drift apart."
• "Acquiring information is becoming easier and easier. It comes to you don't have to choose it. The challenge is to transform and integrate that information into a business process."
• "Market research is just about acquiring information from consumers. It's about creating value. How should a researcher talk to a [product] developer? To a designer? It's a new kind of friendship, a new kind of partnership."
• "Sometimes, it doesn't matter if [a sample] is not representative…. You have to make room for experimentation. You may fail sometimes, but research environments should allow for new tools and experiences."

Selling through social media to senior marketing management has its distinct challenges, according to Tom H.C. Anderson, founder and managing partner of Anderson Analytics.

In a keynote round-table presentation to the 2009 ESOMAR Online Panels and Beyond Conference, Anderson shared a piece of research that, in essence, identified the points of fatigue among senior marketing executives and how that response had changed in just a year.

When asked which industry "buzz words" they were most tired of hearing, 19.4% in the 2009 Anderson Analytics survey answered, "Web 2.0" (as opposed to a fatigue factor of 9.1% in 2008). "Social networking" drew a 12.2% response (2008: 6.0%); its companion, "social media," checked in at 11.3% (compared to a miniscule 0.8% in 2008).

But, despite their disinterest, Anderson advised that social media - a cluster his firm collapses into the Social Network Service/Site (SNS) moniker - attracted 60% of the entire online U.S. population in May 2009. Furthermore, about nearly 25% of those on the outside - who currently are not engaged in any kind of SNS - said they planned to sign up within a year.

Anderson speaks to 1,000 panelists per month. The May segmentation study included both SNS users and non-users. The study also revealed the primary attractions for participants and would-be networkers. "There are two principal reasons," Anderson explained. "One, they do it because it's fun. And, two, they do it because it's valuable for business. And there's generally convergence when they discover both."

A number of non-users, by contrast, said they were time-starved and also concerned about privacy issues. Some were even grumpier about the prospects of social media: "They're the pessimists - the laggards who will either be late to join or not join at all."

Some Anderson Analytics discoveries about SNS users:

• Facebook has the largest share of unique SNS participants, followed by MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn
  
  
• Women in all SNS outnumber men 55% to 45%.
  
  
• LinkedIn is a more male-oriented SNS; on Facebook, women outnumber men.
  
  
• Facebook has marketing appeal as a business-to-consumer play; half of all Facebook users return every
  day.
  
  
• LinkedIn is more business-to-business focused.
  
  
• Just under a quarter (24%) of all Facebook users are U.S. based. 
  
  
• Most LinkedIn subscribers (55%) live in the U.S. After the U.S., the next largest LinkedIn markets are India, the U.K., and the Netherlands.
  
  
• Although SNS users skew heavily under the age of 24, one of the fastest growing audience segments includes women 35 and over who participate on Facebook.
  
  
• Mothers end up on social networks at the invitation of their children.
  
  
• Baby-boomers use SNS to share information with their families as well as keep in touch with their networks.
  
  
• Active SNS Participants, on average, check into their SNS five days a week.
  
  
• On the days they do use their SNS, participants are likely to log in on four different occasions.
  
  
• On the days they do use their SNS, participants are likely spend a total of 60 minutes interacting with other SNS members.

SNS users would seem to sacrifice television to pursue their digital interests, "and this trend is becoming more important for advertisers." Among SNS users, "there is less activity on any of the other media - whether it is television, newspapers, magazines, or radio."

According to Anderson Analytics, non-users spend an average of 24 hours a week in front of the television; SNS enthusiasts total only 20 hours. And the print side of media also suffers in households where SNS plays a prominent part. Almost a quarter of the SNS users said they do not subscribe to any newspapers or magazines; by contrast, only 15% of the non-users have abandoned print publications at home. "If [they] do it right, there's a huge opportunity open [to the SNS community)."

Although Anderson conceded that sampling can be compromised by the open-forum of social networks, he told the ESOMAR audience that the nature of SNS makes it "hard to [falsify data] simply because you're joining people who you know. When Anderson Analytics asked its May panel, "Have you ever created a second anonymous profile containing imaginary/false information in order to experiment/understand how the social network worked?" only 10% of the sample responded positively. "With social networking, your true identity is tied to what you say." And, when someone speaks a digital untruth, "an algorithm finds the falsehoods."

In September 2006, when a voice no less persuasive than one of the chief market researchers for the world's largest advertiser cautioned that the industry soon would "be on life support" if it did not react immediately to changing market conditions, the sense of urgency was palpable.

"[It was a] sense of convergence of associations, of thinking, of developing problem-solving approaches," remembered Joel Rubinson, chief research officer of the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF). "It was a period of stormy weather for the marketing-research business. Procter & Gamble had publicly stated that it had received online research results from successive projects that appeared to be inconsistent.  And others shared similar experiences. Questions were raised publicly about 'professional respondents.' The trustworthiness of online research was in question."

The good news, he told an audience at the 2009 ESOMAR Online Panels and Beyond Conference in Chicago, was a new industry-wide "sense of convergence of associations, of thinking, of developing problem-solving approaches." For the ARF, that interest manifested itself in 2008, when, "in a spirit of collaboration and transparency, leading buyers and sellers came together" to develop an initiative that would "put us on the path forward."

The ARF's Online Research Quality Council (ORWC) started by assembling committees in support of what Rubinson called  "the equivalent of a million-dollar piece of research on research that would explore the knowledge gap."

Seventeen panel companies worked with supporting online and mail efforts to contact more than 700,000 panelists, who participated in more than 100,000 online interviews in three different waves. And, as data became available, what Rubinson termed an "industry solutions" committee began to "translate insights into an action plan." Critical to the effort, he added, was the element of "always buyers and sellers in partnership, always in open and frank discussions."

Stan Sthanunathan, vp/marketing strategy & insights at the Coca-Cola Company, and Steve Coffey, chief research officer for The NPD Group, agreed to serve as ORWC co-chairs. Senior market researchers from such organizations as ABC, ARS Group, Bayer, Capital One, ESPN, Estee Lauder, General Mills, General Motors, Ipsos Mendelsohn, IRI, Kantar, Kraft Foods, Microsoft, Nielsen, P&G, Surveys & Forecasts, Synovate, Target, and TNS signed on to volunteer their services. Their goal: "establishing standards, benchmarks, and recommended best practices."

In late September, 2009, the committee presented Foundations of Quality (FoQ) - the first draft of its overarching research-on-research study. "What we've come up with is a process, not a service or single solution," Rubinson said. "It's intended to bring structure to the conversations that buyers and sellers are having - or need to have - about data quality and about how to control the root causes of problems.

"We believe it will help buyers and sellers achieve their shared goal of providing valid and consistent data in a way that is effective, efficient, and does not violate privacy guidelines. At this point, it's a factually informed process with templates, definitions, metrics, and declarations."

Because "marketers need trustworthy research to inform their decision-making, they also need to have confidence in unexpected results," Rubinson told the ESOMAR assembly. With FoQ1.0 on hand, "we're entering a vetting period. The granularity of the report addresses what we believe are fact-based and onerous discussions. We're trying to bring structure to on-going discussions between buyers and sellers…. No one wins if we don't share the same goal. No one wins if the trustworthiness of the information is not universally embraced."

Rubinson likened the process to the competitive nature of category management. "Buyers - a Kroger, for instance - plays its cards close to its chest. And a seller - a Unilever, for instance - takes a similar position. Category management says, 'Hey, we're all in this together. Our shared goal is category product growth. And the best way to get there is working shoulder to shoulder."

As the FoQ work continues to identify the "root causes" of "industry reliability and consistency problems," the ARF CRO continued, a new Quality Enhancement Process needs to follow through to "leverage learning" and discover "what must be managed by structured processes… and provide a foundation for buyers to have the flexibility to discover the best how for all industry solutions.

The process, in practice, engages  a variety of resources; marketing, research, consultants, and service suppliers. "We need to align [these various constituencies]," Rubinson explained. "Consistent information will provide us the foundation we need to move ahead. It also will encourage innovation, to help us build a better mousetrap."

The Committee worked in three phases:

• The Panel Level started the process with panel-profile snapshots and panel-consistency reports.
• The Sample/Study Level developed research-program sample-sourcing plans, sample-sourcing transparency reports, and study de-duplication declarations.
• The Survey Level shifted the focus to response quality, with key considerations including study consistency-and-engagement reports as well as survey-design best-practice guidelines.

Some early findings from the first FoQ wave include:

• "In multiple waves of 17 panels - tested a few weeks apart - the panels replicated their own answers. But different online panels produced different answers. [That means] major changes to a panel, switching panels, or changing the mix of panels from which respondents are sourced can lead to results that are not comparable across studies."
  
  
• "Purchase intent for a concept was related to panelist longevity (newer panelists were more favorable).  Online panels varied in their longevity profiles."
  
  
• "Even after considering many factors, study results still varied across panels, due to multiple panel characteristics working together to produce variation.  No weighting scheme was able to completely smooth out this variation, which  underscores the need for sample sourcing control."
  
  
• "Taking multiple surveys per month (up to 10) [worked most effectively] in terms of respondent engagement."

Rubinson added that the FoQ findings will be tested in real-market, real-research conditions in November, 2009, with participating marketers including Bayer, Capital One, the Coca-Cola Co., General Mills, General Motors, Kraft Foods, Microsoft and Unilever.

Kim Dedeker, the market researcher who singly put an entire industry on the endangered-species list in September 2006, told the 2009 ESOMAR Online Panels and Beyond Conference, "We are off life support…. We are working toward a common goal, inspiring the industry to come together for better decision support.

"And, on the product side, we have protected the integrity of the industry. In the end, we're moving toward the sustainability we need not just to support decisions but also to lead strategic decisions."

In 2006, at a Research Industry Summit on Respondent Cooperation, Dedeker famously pronounced, "Without transforming our capabilities into approaches that are more in touch with the lifestyles of the consumers we seek to understand, the consumer-research industry as we know it today will be on life support by 2012."

"I've had so much visibility over the last three years," Dedeker said at the 2009 ESOMAR assembly in Chicago, "I felt as if I'd declared that the emperor doesn't have any clothes. Whether that was naïve or bold, I'm not sure…. But it was important to overemphasize the need for quality. Online quality was our most serious Achilles heel."

At the time of her declaration, Dedeker was speaking from the powerful podium she assumed as Procter & Gamble's vp/global consumer & market knowledge. In May 2009, she resigned from P&G to join WPP-owned market-research agency Kantar as chair of the Americas.
Of the changes in market research, Dedeker told the ESOMAR audience, "Hundreds of us are making it come to reality…. It's a broad industry effort of discussion, collaboration, and spirit. But we still have a lot of work to do on the quality issue -making sure we're not just protecting quality for sake of quality, but for enabling better decision-making in the future."

Dedeker, who serves as chair of the Advertising Research Federation's Online Research Quality Council, called 2009 "a watershed year" with "only good things to come. The only question is, 'How high is up?'"

The optimism comes in sharp contrast to the remarks that triggered industry-wide concerns about practices and standards. In addition to her "life support" rallying cry, Dedeker took to the pages of the October 2006 Harvard Business Review to more fully articulate her concern:

"The area I feel is in the greatest need of help is in representative samples. I mention online research, because I believe it is a primary driver behind the lack of representation in online testing. Two of the biggest issues are the samples do not accurately represent the market, and professional respondents.

"It's difficult to get responses from people who represent the target market in online research. This is primarily because the percentage of people who have online access and will actually join a panel is an extremely small portion of the overall population. Some data suggests that only 1 in every 5000 people who receive an invitation to join a panel actually do. So, it's virtually impossible to recruit a representative sample from this design.

"Also, those who are available, have less time and energy to connect with us as marketers and researchers. We need to be respectful of their time and relevant to their lives. When we field a survey with 100 questions or more, we're not respecting our consumers' time. When we ask them questions about products or categories they don't care about, we're out of touch. And with each interaction, not only are we risking the accuracy of the research we're conducting today, but we're potentially damaging our relationship with that consumer for the future.

"Secondly, there is a great deal of data that indicates there is an issue with professional respondents. ComScore has reported that 0.25 percent of Internet users are responsible for 30 percent of online surveys. This group completed, on average, 80 studies per quarter in calendar year 2004. And members of the survey panels of the 8 leading research firms each belong to an average of 7 other panels.

"To further prove the point, P&G asked one of our own suppliers to do some methods research and they found that about 20 percent of their respondents willingly admitted to being on 5 or more panels. For my money, I'd bet it's higher….

"At the end of the day, poor research quality can lead us to provide wrong counsel or direction to our brands. And we as researchers have a responsibility to deliver valid data to the company. We have to find the data/insights that convey the true voice of our consumer to provide sound consulting to our businesses."

Global Web usage is anything but universal in its consistency, according to a new social networking report.

The Global Web Index (GWI), an analysis of Web behavior and social media from 16 key markets and 32,000 consumer surveys, finds that distinct differences appear from a variety of perspectives, including cultural (or geographic), generational, and gender.

Trendstream, which owns and markets the GWI, analyzed data collected through market-researcher Lightspeed online access panels. "GWI is an attitudinal tool that provides timely global usage trends of online social media," according to Bonnie Breslauer, Lightspeed's global development director. "It provides a global perspective on web usage, particularly how it impacts consumer behavior, marketing communications, purchasing, as well as attitudes and outlook."

Its most recent findings were based on a July 2009 survey of 16,000 respondents in 16 markets (representing 70 percent of the global digital universe) between the ages of 16 and 64 who identify themselves as "active" Web users (i.e., they access the Internet at least once a month). Survey participants spent about 30 minutes on the GWI survey in their local language and identify themselves by age, gender, income, region, and monthly volume of Internet usage.

The broad-stroke conclusions of the GWI study include:

• Social media has been adopted globally, but its uses and penetration vary by country and consumer segment.
  
  
• Consumers increasingly want to share opinions and value two-way interaction with products and services.
  
  
• In social-media conversations, a small active group largely leads by communicating to a much smaller passive group.
  
  
• As the medium evolves, understanding trends among customers and prospects is discoverable through social-network exchanges.

If there were any doubts about the digital embrace of Web 2.0, the GWI results points to a shift in user habits from email to social networking: although email continues to grow, social networking and the development of community sites are growing at an even faster rate.  In the U.S., Europe, Australia and Brazil, use of email increased 21 percent from August 2008 to August 2009; during the same period, in the same markets, social networking expended at a rate of 31 percent.

Usage of web-enabled communications like email and social media is dependent upon the presence of the necessary technology. In this respect, developing markets essentially missed the phenomenon that was Web 1.0 and jumped right into Web 2.0 as their starting point. In the established markets that first went on line, the Web largely was treated as a distribution channel for e-commerce, epitomized by enterprises like Amazon, eBay, and pet.com. Moreover, in the early-adopter countries, disposable income has enabled further growth of such ventures. 

In a presentation to the 2009 ESOMAR Online Research Conference in Chicago, Breslauer noted, "The large emerging markets - the BRIC countries - are more socially driven. In those countries more than 50 percent of those surveyed use the web to stay in touch with friends. Notably, Brazil is the leading country globally in terms of social media usage.

"Conversely," she continued, "the U.S. and U.K. - with other more mature web markets - are still more purchase driven, using the web for research and to purchase products." And those markets also have a higher propensity to use search engines to research or find a product for purchase than other countries."

The GWI's findings about the effect of how a user's age affects his or her Internet habits also is best understood within a cultural - or a national - framework, with an implicit acknowledgement of when digital technology became widely available. And, within each country, it's also possible to break out behavior by age.

For social-media usage, Breslauer observed, "It's no surprise that age is a defining factor in social media usage. The 16-to-24 year-old users are most active in activities including staying in touch with friends, keeping their friends up to date with their life, sharing opinions and content… Other age groups also use the web to stay in touch with friends, but to a lesser extent.  And, although all ages use the Web to share their opinion, there is significant disparity by age in that activity."

Actual content creators on the web - the heavy users who are likely to be managing a social network profile or creating and maintaining a blog - tend to be younger in mature markets.

Gender considerations tend to be more predictable: Social networking, to a great extent is about keeping up to date and, said Breslauer, "Females are much more engaged. Women are more socially motivated, especially when it comes to communicating with their friends."

Social Media Usage

An inverted-pyramid configuration best describes social-media usage: Most participants are actually passive and don't participate to any significant extent. And, although the percentage of very active social media users is smallest among the universe of online social enthusiasts, they have the largest potential influence.

More specifically, said Breslauer, "Our data suggests there are three types of social media users: Passive users, who participate by viewing something or visiting an existing forum such as a chat room; light users, who work with content such as uploading photos or managing a social network profile; and active users, who actually try to influence others by creating their own websites, writing blogs, or uploading videos."

The younger the social-media participant, Breslauer noted, the more likely they are to put more trust into social-media connections: "A 'close friend' and 'family member' are the only sources trusted more than 'a good contact on a social network'," she told the ESOMAR audience. "And the 'author of a blog you read recently' is more trusted than a 'journalist for a national newspaper' or a TV news program. You can really see active, younger social-media users believe that going to the Internet for information is more trust-worthy than using national media.

"And that's a very, very strong statement."

Moreover, Breslauer added, such confidence in social networking is likely to grow not just as the younger participants mature but as the medium gains further acceptability and familiarity across all age groups. And that trust already has immediate marketing implications: "Consumers value open dialogue with a company as opposed to one-sided messaging," she said. Citing a recent report from the Independent newspaper in the UK, she continued, "social media can 'result in supporters evangelizing your brand in their own communities and thus delivering the holy grail of personal endorsement.' Importantly, people tend to respond more positively to a two-way conversation than to being bombarded by marketing messages."

In fact, the GWI demonstrates the difference between a company that actively reaches out to its customer base (24 percent of the respondents said that a two-way forum improves their opinion of a brand and 22 percent also find it a favorable experience to listen in to a forum about a brand).

One enterprise that has used two-way connections to enhance its customer service (and relationship) is Starbucks. As Lightspeed's Breslauer told the ESOMAR audience, "They have been very successful in utilizing social networks to improve affinity to their brand. They solicit ideas posted on their site and ask consumers to vote on those they like best. They then participate in an open discussion on the Web with the consumers, and then close the feedback loop by sharing which ideas they took action on."

In addition to the specific instance of Starbucks, Breslauer offered, other marketing categories (financial services, soft drinks, and automotive, to name three) can learn the social-media dynamics of embracing - and responding to - a target audience and optimize the value of the media channel. Within the automotive industry, for instance, there is any number of blogs (open discussion forums) as well as micro-blogs (tighter digital presences that offer such granular opportunities as the occasion to upload up a short video clip) that offer the chance for two-way exchanges.

And, in fact, when Lightspeed examined brand ownership across five nameplates - Chrysler, General Motors, Ford, BMW and the MINI Cooper - it found a wide range of digital experiences. Even though the research showed that owners from all five brands "wanted to ask questions directly to the company and receive answers, the first three (and the three in the most dire economic straits) were all passive in their social-networking. BMW and the MINI Cooper, by contrast, were much more engaged, texting, adding video clips, and subscribing to a variety of specific services.

Said Breslauer, "Their owners tended to be more active social-media users. And this can be a more powerful channel for these brands."

While no one would argue that all bloggers are the same, the common acceptance of the "blogosphere" seems to suggest a sharply distinct voice that helps shape consumer opinion about services and brands.

Josephine Hansom, research manager at London's GfK NOP Social Research, has identified at least three separate, distinct clusters of bloggers with a keen interest in qualitative online research methodologies.

"There's an abundance of online information," Hansom cautioned a Chicago audience at the 2009 ESOMAR Online Research Conference, "and it's important to be conscious of the context in which perspectives move from blog participants to research partners."

The social context for blogging, Hansom explained, finds its place alongside traditional media. Just as general-interest magazines find subscribers with real-life tales of celebrity life and television keeps tapping into viewer appetites for all kinds of reality programming, so does blogging celebrate confessional clusters of individuals who want their stories told.

In much the same way that Candidate Obama used the tools of Twitter, Facebook and MySpace to spread his message and build his popularity, so do bloggers use the instant distribution of digital media to create persona that travel all over the world. And, while opinions are available "at a mouse click, it's not clear what they tell is. Is there a blogger blueprint that tells the whole story?" Hansom asked.

"There's no question that blogs represent new sources of accessible data to researchers," she continued. "But bloggers are a diverse group on individuals [and that means] we still have to argue as to whether they're a useful, rich source of data."

In the current iteration of Web 2.0, she has identified three types of bloggers, each one distinguished by their:

• Motivation - the purpose of their work
• Understanding of their online audience - not just who is reading the blog, but why
• Sense of identity - the sometimes subtle difference between an online and an off-line presence
• Sensitivity to security and privacy issues - the degree to which they tend to these concerns.

Ready Meal bloggers

"Ready Meal bloggers don't bring a lot of personal baggage to the Internet space. Their recordings are what they see and do…. And not much else," explained Hansom. "They don't expect people to read their blogs and they don't seem to mind the idea that they seem to be chatting into a vacuum." Their usage tends to be spontaneous; they readily upload images from their mobile phones. And privacy issues don't get in the way of their activity. "They're not so much bloggers as they are participants in the online space."

Dinner Party bloggers

In Hansom's digital universe, these bloggers use Internet forums to update their lives and to relate what they think is important - content that, they perceive, others will believe is valuable as well. Postings often are not casual: A Dinner Party participant often research their contributions before they put them up online. And that care is a manifestation of the respect she maintains for the online world.

"Like a host, she likes to generate interest and keep an audience interested," Hansom added. Her online world, in fact, enhances her identity as she uses technology to create an identity online. And because it is a reflection of her self-perception, she cares about issues of privacy and security.

Lite bloggers

By contrast, the "Lite" blogger is a task-driven automaton. A traveler who posts a daily record of destinations is a Lite blogger, as is a businessperson who uses a blog to recapitulate weekly transactions. "Lite bloggers are task driven," Hansom told the ESOMAR audience. "They're aware of their audience, but only to the extent that readers are interested in the particular topic of discussion. "Rarely do they share any other elements of their lives."

"All three groups post online," Hansom added. "What we need to understand is the impact of the audience and the different interactions with different audiences…. When researchers use blogs for data, they need to do so from an informed point of view of the blogger's perspective."

"In two years time, marketing research will bear no resemblance to the industry it was two or three years ago," according to Finn Raben, the new director general of ESOMAR. "We know we have to change. But there's no certainty as to where we will end up."

Finn Raben, ESOMAR's new director general

On the eve of the organization's first Online Research Conference, Raben continued, "The entire research industry is undergoing phenomenal change. While the pace of that change took many of us by surprise, the economic situation has aggravated the problem. For some people, that's become a critical issue in the last 12 months. For others, it's been a problem for 24 months. But the big question is, 'What will be the new form of the research industry?'"

Raben joined ESOMAR's Amsterdam headquarters in early October, arriving from Paris and Synovate, where he had been ceo of that organization's Southern Europe operations.

An Irishman who was born in the Far East and grew up in Europe and the Middle East, Raben's career in research began in Dublin at Millward Brown IMS, which he left to join AC Nielsen. He then managed TNS' Irish business initiated a global-accounts program, working for clients such as Procter & Gamble, McDonald's and Microsoft.

In their introduction to the Online Research 2009 assembly in Chicago, the ESOMAR organizers wrote, "Web 2.0 platforms, social networks, online communities, and mobile research are rapidly entering the market-research landscape with innovative digital approaches mushrooming daily. Online Panels are just the peak of the iceberg."

Raben elaborated, "Panels are just the most apparent dynamic. But it's an evolving dynamic and there are lots of others. But it's fair to say that we're struggling to come to terms with it all … Whatever new form research takes - online panels or social networks - the most important aspect of research is how we harvest data. The mechanism by which people read information will define the scope of our challenge."

For the industry, Raben said a critical distinction that demands clarification is rooted in a simple question: "Are we consultants or decision makers? … As our clients want more value added, our role has become more nebulous. And the fog is getting thicker and thicker."

And, in time, he added, role obfuscation may not be the most severe problem: as clients ask for more and more value at lower and lower prices, "the issue is where these two [trends] intersect and research, as we know it, no longer becomes realistic."

For instance, in a new digital environment, borders are more translucent than they have ever been before. "Companies want to know, 'If we're successful in Country A, why can't we be successful in Country B,'" Raben explained. "But local infrastructure, local laws, local culture, and local language, mean we can't have research with a homogenous structure. What we do need to discover is how close we can get to being as homogenous as possible without castrating our data, without losing nuggets of information."

For the moment, Raben added, "There's a real need to translate numbers into language we all can understand. Figuring out what language best suits data is where we can provide value to our clients."

As to the specific role of ESOMAR in that process, "we need to get close to the industry, to clients, to associations, and to see how the sands are shifting. But there will be a period ahead of us in which our industry is rebuilt."

Web 2.0 platforms, social networks, online communities and mobile research are rapidly entering the marketing research landscape, as innovative digital approaches increase by the day.

In response to this media evolution, ESOMAR has expanded its classic Panel Research conference to tackle these new technologies and the social environments they create.

The first edition of Online Research goes beyond panels to explore the latest trends and developments in the online world.

Warc's US Editor, Geoffrey Precourt, will be there reporting daily on the key sessions. Check back on October 26 for his conference preview.