FUTURE TALENT MEETS THE INDUSTRY

ESOMAR Online Research 2009

Jing Zhao Name: Jing Zhao
Nationality: Chinese
University: Northwestern University, Chicago, USA
Title of course/programme: Market Research
CONTACT ME

How do you see the market research industry evolving and how can you contribute to it?

Marketing Research began with realizing the significance of demographic information to business. During Web 2.0 generation, it develops in an incredible speed in several facets:

  1. The marketing research approach becomes more sophisticated. You can not only do survey online but also focus group. It sounds unbelievable but it does happen with heated discussion.

  2. The information gathered from marketing research is much richer. Demographic is still important when companies want to figure out their target customers, though they will not satisfy with stopping at that point. Marketing Research needs to tell a complete life story about customers as detailed as you can, what music they listen to, which way they download music, where they go to shop, how they consume media.

  3. Though the information is richer, the cost is lower. Researchers have more alternatives to use less money to gather more information.

  4. The coverage a marketing research can reach is much bigger than before in a short period of time.

I keep pace with the development of the marketing research as an integrated marketer. My study is concentrating on Direct and Interactive Marketing. Direct marketing is an efficient way to track customers’ behaviors when they do business with the company and it will provide complex data for company to do research about their customers. I also learn Search Engine Marketing so that I can observe people’s online activities through the data. In doing so, I am able to provide more efficient marketing solution and serve the customers better.


What are in your opinion the necessary skills for market researchers in the present environment?

As a market researcher in the dynamic environment, three necessary skills I think must be owned:

  1. Judgment. In the new era of marketing research, we are not lack of information. So researcher need to make decision which you want to know before the research and how you will use the information you get from the research. Particularly in direct marketing, there will be tons of data and making a correct judgment not be mislead by the data is critical.

  2. Adaption. Market researchers need to have quick learning abilities to adapt to the dynamic environment. Absorbing new technologies and mastering it quickly can help us with our research.

  3. Story Telling. Marketing research is not bored and dry as laboratory research so market researchers need to be a good story teller to bring the data to life.

How do you see your career unfolding and what are your aspirations?

To do marketing research is my dream job because I have the infinite curiosity to learn people. When reading the book “Why we buy’, I long for a day that I can be the observer in the stores as an invisible person or being the monitor in a focus group. I am also excited about doing marketing analytic because when I face infinite numbers, I generate pictures of people’s behaviors instead of individual number. Those are my short-term goals and I want to do marketing strategy using the insight from marketing research to solve business problems after that because that is the final goal of marketing research. It needs to help solve problems. My another mission is to apply what I learn in the states to China in order to raise the awareness of the significance of marketing research, introduce more sophisticated systems to collect data and the thinking of generating insights from data.

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