The Value of Getting a Little Bit Lost for a While
What can getting lost teach us about qualitative research? Richard Walker explores why the best insight can come from leaving enough room to discover what you weren’t expecting.
Activation Starts Before The Brief
A final debrief is not activation. Andrew Wiseman explores why turning research into action starts before the brief, with decisions, stakeholders and implementation considered from the outset.
Synthetic Data: Useful Shortcut, or a Shortcut Too Far?
Synthetic data could make research faster, cheaper and easier to scale. But can synthetic respondents really replace real people? Anthony Shephard-Williams explores where synthetic data may help research, where caution is needed and why #Real still matters.
No driver, no problem? What my first driverless taxi taught me about technology adoption
What happens when people actually experience a technology they’ve only imagined before? Anthony Shephard-Williams discovers that his perceptions of driverless taxis changed remarkably quickly after his first ride, and explores what this means for researching genuinely unfamiliar innovations.
Where Did the Bank Holiday Go? A Blog about Misremembering and Recall Bias
How much can we really trust people to remember an experience? Richard Walker reflects on the fleeting nature of memory, and what it means for research when we ask people to recall experiences weeks or months later.
Are Researchers a Bunch of Snobs?
Andrew Wiseman asks whether market researchers have become too obsessed with the latest shiny methodology. From AI and gamification to focus groups and telephone interviews, he explores why the best research method is the one that answers the question, not necessarily the one that looks most innovative
Morrisons’ AI Smart Trolley: The Road to Victory or a Preston Dead End?
Morrisons is trialling an AI-powered smart trolley in Preston. Gareth Hodgson asks a more fundamental question than whether the technology is clever: does it actually solve a problem customers care about, and could it deliver a genuinely differentiating and commercially scalable proposition?
RIP Snaps. Reflections on a Discontinued Classic and Understanding Brand Health
What can a discontinued crisp tell us about brand health? Quite a lot, actually. Richard Walker reflects on the shock disappearance of Spicy Tomato Snaps, and what it says about nostalgia, brand relevance, consumer behaviour and the difference between loving a brand and actually buying it.
Can You Afford to Be Considered? What Changing Consumer Behaviour Means for Brand Tracking
Consumer behaviour is changing, but is brand tracking changing with it? Colin Auton explores why traditional measures of consideration can miss the situations, needs and barriers that actually shape decisions, and how Category Entry Points can deepen consumer understanding. Consumer confidence is up. Well, sort of. The latest GfK Consumer Confidence Index jumped six points […]
Is 40 Enough? Why There’s No Magic Number for Sample Size
Anthony Shephard-Williams explores one of the most common questions in research: how many people do we need to speak to? He explains why there is no magic sample size, why bigger is not always better, and how the right approach depends on the decision you need the research to support. One of the questions we […]