FUTURE TALENT MEETS THE INDUSTRY

ESOMAR ASIA PACIFIC 2009

Name: Yu-Hsun (David) Liu
Nationality: Taiwan
University: National Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan
Title of course/programme: International Business Management
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How do you see the market research industry evolving and how can you contribute to it?

Market is made up of customers, so the final goal of market research is try to know more about the customers and know them well Unfortunately, marketers tends to use the wrong way that they have controlled the conversation with consumers through survey language and other structured research instruments, which made customers irritated about these bulks of marketing researches.

An interesting but strange phenomenon, seeing the good gift as a motivator, people don’t hesitate to answer the so-called “a perfect score” answer which cannot be totally representative of themselves. Therefore, this bad quality-controlled survey leads to a worse analysis; and wore analysis leads to a worst, crucial and even incurable decision. Finally it deserves the worst consequence.

So, it’s about time to have a brave new way in marketing research. In my opinion. There are two views that I want to point out, specially related to the evolving market research industry.

  1. Digital Marketing: We can’t deny that Internet has changed our life and lifestyle the most for past decade. As an intern in Microsoft Taiwan, I really feel about this the most. Internet replace the labor work of sending real mail, replace the real buying behavior outdoor, and it place the way we communicate with each others. If the real world can be mapped into the virtual world, the growth of this market is more than a number and astonishing. Needless to say, it also comes along with huge revenue and profit. But nowadays in digital marketing, there’s no any determined evaluation, concrete pricing method. So it’s the foreseeable bright future in digital marketing.

  2. Database marketing will be the big part of Market Research.
    The database marketing comes out from behavioral economics. Behavioral economics is shattering many models of shopper behavior that have stood for decades. But the real consumers in real market become hardly to tell the truth, such as what they want, how they buy a car, where they purchase these commodities and so on. So to analyze log file is going to be the final answer in my mind. Although many legal issues or privacy concerns are raised, what I’d like to emphasize instead is that trails will be left on whenever a walker passes by. So the solution of irritation seems to be solved in this possible way. But just as I mentioned above, database marketing, it has a long way to go.

I majored in Statistics in NCKU, Taiwan. Statistics is a practical science. After studying the basic and advanced courses of Statistics, I’m getting so curios of its application. Therefore, I chose business management as my further study field. That’s also why I major in International Business Management in graduate school. I want to contribute myself to be an excellent connector between the market researcher and decision maker. A good data collector is important and a good analyzer is the same; however, in this field, more than that is a gap between the data analyzer and the strategy maker. That’s why I want to be a good connector between these two groups. In the future, I expect myself to be a professional marketing consultant instead of excellent analyzer. To be honest, there’s no the best methodologies to figure out the real world. What I want to do is using the 60 to 80% of data to get the significant trend which has more than 50% chance to win. I think this is the smarter consultant I want to be.

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

Last year I won the 2nd prize in “2008 LOREAL e-Strat 8 challenge” in North Asia Zone. It inspires me and encourage me to involve into this field, and it also makes me to think more how I will this game. There are lots of message behind the appearance number. But we’re not God (in this game, this might be the system developed team) It’s too hard and too tired to be really God. But through a good research, we can understand what God wants to tell us or figure out what hints he give us. Therefore, what we need to do is try to use 60-80% of data as I said, try to find out the more than 50% winning chance. We did have higher opportunity to have a bright future.

So in my opinion, a good market researcher should equip themselves with “51% market sense + 49% research ability.” Necessary basic skill is such like probability concept, statistics analysis ability, and usage of Software such as SPSS/SAS and so on. Besides, advanced ability I think is the mindset of being a “market researcher”, not only being a “science researcher.” It’s totally different. A good market researcher should not find out the reality but the opportunity. Once we know about this, we can have the core competitive advantage in the market. We tolerate having error. But we never let any chance to win pass by.

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

I have been to many countries before including Canada, US, UK and others for more than 1 month each. I love every trip I had. And I really like the lifestyle and atmosphere that citizens in developed countries have. Consequently, I always think how to make this jump from the day we have in Asia to the brave new Asia. I’m a Taiwanese and also an Asian. That’s why I would like to spend most of time to know about “local” market. As everyone knows, Asia is a booming economic entity. Only being in the booming area and booming era, is it worthy enough for my life. I am really willing to stay at any country in Asia to see what and how the market change through market research. And before 30, I expect to see what the big trend is. Once I know that, I want to be a good consultant or marketer in Asian and step on the way that follows the big trend. All in all, I have to make me be the “51% marketing sense and 49% research ability” man.

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