Programme
Thursday 18 October
Participants registration & welcome
Opening and setting up the scene
Alina Serbanica [ESOMAR Representative, Romania]

Introduction to Session A
Alexandru Chivu [Raiffeisen Bank]

Change is the only Constant
Michalis Michael [London headquartered DigitalMR Ltd]
"Understanding the consumer" is a more timeless title than just referring to the "digital consumer". In some countries, almost all consumers can already be considered digital; in some others the speed of technology adoption is exponential. It is only a matter of time before everything will become digital everywhere.
There are new ways to:
- Collect consumer data from the web or new devices such as smartphones and wearables
- Process consumer (bigger) data using GPUs and distributed processing in the cloud
- Annotate and analyse consumer data including unstructured data
- Visualise consumer data using the likes of Tableau and Spotfire dashboards
- Manage the insight process from discovery to action
Learning from the past and understanding the present are prerequisites for any organisation that wants to stay relevant in the future. Developing countries like Romania have the benefit of being able to observe versions of their future in more developed countries.
This presentation will discuss the evolution of consumer understanding with focus on opportunities that new technologies such as A.I. enable. With these technologies we can now access and analyse online text in any language, images posted on social media or even brand equity derived exclusively from online engagement of consumers. Connecting the dots was always a skill that distinguished the best researchers among us, and with all the data proliferation it is now almost impossible to do so without drastic change.

7 Ways to Live Long and Prosper in the World of Digital Consumers
Captain's Log, Stardate 201810.18. A new species has started to populate the Earth 20 years ago, invading the bodies of human hosts. In the last few years, the members of these species have spread exponentially. They have Smart devices glued to their body, have short attention spans, like to be in control and are able to conceive things that no man has done before: using VR to eliminate pain or sending their 3D avatars to video calls with their bosses.
Much like the steam engine or the TV set, the internet is transforming the world as we know it. Some things have changed radically - like the speed with which information can be found, instant celebrity can be gained or how communication takes place. Other aspects remained the same.
In a world that still was, until a year ago, TV centric in terms of global advertising investments, how well do we know to communicate with this species, to earn their attention, hearts and minds? What old rules still appeal to the core human nature of it? Which new ones should we keep in mind, to avoid being shut out when we come to say hello?
Mining our 20 years' global experience on digital advertising research, combined with examples and case studies, we bring to you 7 ways in which we can maximize the chances that Digital Consumers stop and open up to conversation, don't interrupt our speech midway or look elsewhere. Engage!
Explore the Mind of Your Digital Consumer!
Akanksha Anu [IBM]; Andreea Arama [IBM]
"Europe can add €2.5 trillion to GDP in 2025 by focusing on digital intensity growth", stated a McKinsey report in 2016. Almost 2 years later, businesses realize that the marketplaces in which they have competed successfully in the past are disrupted due to digital innovations. Hence, they face a new set of competitive standards. Majority of executives responded to an IDC survey saying that consulting partners are not just important but critical to their businesses' digital transformation success.
The digital era has been on the rise and consumers have now evolved into digital personas. Social media and online mediums have become a treasure trove of opinions, unmet needs and critical feedback. Given that digital transformation is now a prerequisite, the focus switches towards the readiness of research frameworks to interrogate the colossal amount of structured and unstructured data available.
This submission aims to establish the importance of Online Listening and explore techniques of deep diving into world phenomena and rising trends. For companies doing business in this environment of information overload, any help to cut through the 'noise' and understand the implications for their businesses means the difference between success and failure!


Q&A
Coffee break
Introduction to Session B
Laura Cirstea [Kantar TNS]

The Modern Family
Challenges and opportunitiesTraian Nastase [iSense Solutions]
Nearly half of the Romanian families consider themselves to be modern. But what's a modern family that makes it so desirable? What defines them, what's important to them? How are the roles shifting in this new cell of society? How do you address them to remain relevant? Join us in this journey of getting to know modern moms and dads, children as influencers and grandparents trying to adapt in this ever-changing environment.

Addressing Different Generations in Social Media
Ioan Simu [Mercury Research]
Social media has fully entered the realm of media. It is no longer new media but only less traditional than others, and widely used by all kinds of audiences, not only the younger generation.
Knowing how to present brands in social media needs a deeper understanding of social media usage by different generations, and this is why we, at Mercury Research, set out to investigate social media habits across different generations.

I Connect, They Connect, We All Connect
Carmen Bododea [Kantar TNS]
It will not be long now until "the digital consumer" becomes, simply "he consumer", as the norm rather than the exceptional. As researchers and marketers, we ourselves need to forego the traditional vs. digital, offline vs. online dichotomies, as we adapt to our younger consumers or centennials (Generation Z), who only know an interconnected world. They lead a connected life, we connect the data and our research partners to consumers, while we are all (inter)connected in a world where digital is moving from emergent to mainstream. In a candid presentation, inspired by conversations around centennials and daily interactions with her "super leader" centennial daughter, Carmen explores the challenges that come with having digital as a methodology, subject of research and mind-set, using our yearly Kantar TNS Connected Life study across the globe, as well as drawing from our latest digital thinking in the Kantar network.

Q&A
Lunch
Introduction to Session C
Session chair
Flaviu Bobb, VP Client & Business Development, Ipsos Interactive Services
The Lifestyle in the Smartphone Age
The social interest of the digital consumerAlina Gheorghe [Daedalus Online]
Starting with payments made from anywhere and at any time and continuing with social networks and Selfie culture, smartphone entered in our lives and changed our way of living and seeing the world.
This is why, our study evaluates the major lifestyle changes caused by smartphone's presence.
Some of the questions to be answered:
- How often do users pay their bills using a smartphone?
- How often do they compare online with offline prices when buying offline?
- Do women text more while driving than men?
- How much popularity did Selfie culture gained among various age categories?
- How different is Romanian users' behaviour comparing to the neighbour countries?
The study was conducted online, on a sample of 3500, age between 18 and 65 y.o., respondents from the Daedalus Online Panel from 7 countries: Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Greece and Argentina.
Data collection took place between 15 August 2018 - 15 September 2018.

Electric Castle Case Study
A research program to close the generation gap, mixing role playing, digital & traditional ethnographyIoana Bobe [ISRA Center]; Lucia Cristina Manolache [British American Tobacco]
Festivals have become a favoured holiday destination for Gen Z and Millennial youths since delivering concentrated experiences and non-stop rhythm. Brands are increasingly seeing this emerging territory as an opportunity to define more meaningful brand-consumer interactions with notoriously blasé generations about traditional brand communication and living in a brand saturated world. Together with our clients we set out to discover how to approach brand activations in a festival setting and seize the occasion to understand the target group in one of the most representative contexts for the younger generation. But we wanted to take the project beyond a typical information-gathering research and amplify its impact within the client team by developing a tool to generate client-consumer engagement & empathy. The research program that we created relies on role playing to elicit pre-existing perceptions, expectations & stereotypes both on the client side and on the research team side. We then confronted this set of assumptions with the rich reality brought to light by digital and field ethnography to enliven and deepen our understanding of the target. In this presentation, we will describe our methodological approach and how it can be employed to address the specifics of the new digital generation.
We'll also illustrate our findings with actual study examples and discuss how this method has shaped BAT entertainment plan after 2 years of recurring research on Electric Castle Festival.


Market Research Online Community
A consumer closeness tool for Ursus BreweriesCristiana Vaideanu [Ursus Breweries]
Understanding the digital consumer represents the main challenge for brands for the past years. The market research industry is constantly looking to reinvent itself in order to keep up with these challenges. Market Research Online Communities (MROC) represent a dedicated tool to help brands to understand the consumers in the digital era through its versatile approach.
Two years ago, Ursus Breweries has developed a MROC as the answer to the brand need for a consumer closeness tool. Since then, the MROC has grown organically, being an important asset in the decision-making process for multiple brands in the Ursus Breweries portfolio.
This presentation will focus on a case study: Ursus Retro- just one example of how Ursus Breweries managed to integrate MROC in the business routine.
Monica Marinescu, Managing Director WaveTree.Zero, partener exclusiv al Exact Business Solutions pentru dezvoltarea de Comunitati Online de Cercetare de Piata

Q&A
Coffee break
Introduction to Session D
Alexandra Popescu [NN]

Time to be SMART in a SMART New World
Ana-Maria Gheorghe [GfK]
The brave new world changes attitudes and thinking patterns, adjusts behaviours, transforms relationships, and diversifies experiences. The consumer of the new world is active, involved, demanding and in the same time vulnerable and dependent.
But what is the catalyst of the new world? What changes the structure and the various layers of the world we live in? Who is responsible for "reformatting" the way the digital consumer thinks, reacts and decides? Who imposes, in an increasingly pace, the reconfiguration of business models for brands to remain relevant?
The time has come for the market research industry to change the paradigm. What is the deadline for us to adapt? When do we need to start re-evaluating our way of working and the role we have in relationship with our business partners?
Starting from this context, we will talk about a new consumer insights engine that thanks to artificial intelligence is able to integrate, process, and statistically analyse real sales data and information about the consumer, declarative and passive. With SMART platforms that use this real sales and consumer data, we will be able to simulate live how our partners can have instant access, from anywhere, anywhere, to information, data, analysis and answers to their business questions - WHY, WHY, HOW - to help them make real-time decisions.

Roll the Dice or Put on the VR Headset? Why not Both?
Lessons for research from a low-tech industry, board gamesOana Popa Rengle [Anamnesis]
In this day and age of technology driving so much innovation in market research, all industry studies show that qualitative research remains mostly face to face and personal. Are we, qualitative researchers, lagging behind?
On a different note, we have this marvellous example of the board games, a low-tech industry competing with videogaming and some of the most advanced technologies available, and yet, living its golden age as we speak.
This paper is about what can qualitative research learn from the success of the board games industry in order to maintain its relevance in the people understanding business, digital or non-digital.

Introduction to the Keynote speaker
Alina Serbanica [ESOMAR Representative, Romania]

Nothing Ever Happens
Siamack Salari [EthOS/EverydayLives]
We live in a digital environment where the huge amounts information to process have left us in a state where we are more likely to simply wait for information to find us. It is a far more efficient use of time to cast a cognitive net over a quantity of random information than to go in search of something specific and find that it was not that interesting or useful after all. This leaves open a potentially new level of receptivity to new ideas, arguments, products and services.
Social media, therefore, as well as:
Turning us into digital bystanders
Creating a 'trust' economy
and
Spawning a new generation of Narcissists,
it has redefined 'doing nothing'. Siamack will explore this idea using personal and client research anecdotes, to deconstruct what doing nothing means and how brands can embrace it by understanding it through the lens of 'getting jobs done'.

Q&A
Closing and goodbye
Alina Serbanica [ESOMAR Representative, Romania]


Alexandra Popescu
Head of Innovations, NN, Romania
Sessions:

Alexandru Chivu
Market Research Manager, Raiffeisen Bank, Romania
Sessions:

Laura Cirstea
Cercetator Calitativ, Kantar TNS, Romania
Sessions:

Siamack Salari
Research Fellow, Kings College London & Founder, EthOS/EverydayLives, Belgium
Siamack Salari is a leading global expert in ethnographic and customer journey research, with more than 20 years' experience pioneering developments in the field.
After running in-house research units at several major international communications agencies, he created EthOS, the world's first mobile ethnographic research app, in 2009. Since then, he has continued to push the boundaries of customer journey research with the launch of Journey HQ - a breakthrough research tool that provides marketers with unaffected, genuine insight into customers' natural decision-making behaviours.
Siamack also lectures in observational research at leading universities in the UK and in France, and is a visiting fellow at King's College London's Department of Management.
Siamack's latest adventures include an unusual innovation consultancy called Springboards4, a Skype and Coffee initiative/podcast called Skoffees, and a book he might never finish.
Sessions:

Michalis Michael
Founder and CEO, @DigitalMR_CEO, London headquartered DigitalMR Ltd, United Kingdom
Michalis is the founder and CEO (@DigitalMR_CEO) of London headquartered DigitalMR Ltd, a tech company in artificial intelligence for market research and customer insights. He won multiple prestigious awards and has published numerous eBooks and articles. Michalis is a thought leader on the future of market research, social media research, social listening & analytics, text & image analytics and online communities for co-creation and insights. A graduate of T.U. Berlin in aerospace engineering, he received his business training through courses at Harvard Business School and LBS and has been in marketing research consulting since 1991. He has lived and worked in numerous countries since, including Cyprus, Germany, Hungary, Poland, USA and now the UK.
Sessions:

Akanksha Anu
Social Media Insights Analyst - Worldwide, IBM, Romania
Akanksha Anu is a Social Media Insights Analyst in Market Development and Insights at IBM. She is very passionate about business in multicultural scenarios and cultural intelligence. She has been exposed to different cultures in her personal life and has carried the same exposure to her work life, travelling and presenting in different cities. She has a master's degree in Business Communication with a focus on e-Business and has moved to Romania recently following her passion of learning more about cultural intelligence in the workplace. The art of curating insights through a trough of unstructured data and finally weaving them into a story fascinates Akanksha. Public speaking and presentation skills are some of her other interests, which makes her an active participant in conferences and summits.
Sessions:

Alina Gheorghe
Client Service Manager, Daedalus Online, Romania
Alina is Client Service Manager for Daedalus Online.
Alina has always been sympathetic to clients' needs and she strongly believes that online research offers countless opportunities to better understand consumer’s behaviour.
After more than 8-year experience in market analysis and business intelligence for FMCG, telecom and banking industries, she switched to a more technical level and entered online market research field.
Sessions:

Alina Serbanica
Senior Vice President, Ipsos, Romania
Alina Serbanica is Senior Vice President at Ipsos, leading the worldwide Total Operations Data Privacy inside the company. After many years of being responsible for the online respondent access' platforms & systems in Ipsos, Alina decided to take a new professional path, emerging into the amazing new data privacy and data protection initiatives around the globe, including the EU GDPR new legal frame. She has over 25 years experience in market research and her broader expertise on both online and offline, on delivering market research services and on handling operations represent her great asset for dealing with the new data privacy environment, under a very dynamic pace technology, big data, social media and passive data collection have nowadays. Alina graduated The University of Economic Studies, Bucharest and has a PhD in Marketing - Market Research specialization. Since 2010 she is the current ESOMAR Representative in Romania and she is co-founder member of the Romanian Society for Marketing Research and Opinion Polls (SORMA), currently the President of SORMA.
Sessions:

Ana-Maria Gheorghe
Online Community Manager | Senior Researcher, GfK, Romania
Ana is an enthusiastic professional, with more than 6 years experience in market research. With a background in qualitative research, she is always looking for the story behind a simple answer, with a keen eye on details. Finding herself at the edge of Y & Z generations, she has been passionate about the online environment since forever. Thus, mixing both passions for market research and online, Ana is managing the "oldest" online insights community on the Romanian market for the 4th year in a row now. Being part of the GfK Digital Consumer Insights team, she is actively involved in developing and promoting emerging and innovative methodologies like MROCs (market research online communities) or SMI (social media intelligence), with the aim to accurately investigate digital consumers in their own habitat.
Sessions:

Andreea Arama
Social Media Insights Advisor - Europe, IBM, Romania
Andreea has a solid background in understanding new markets and segments, having worked for almost 8 years on a wide range of businesses and segments (Technology, FMCG, Telecom, Finance, Pharma, Building Sector and Leisure Activities). While she has dedicated some years to marketing communication, Andreea's passion remains in market research and new technologies. Her current role at IBM as a Social Media Insights Advisor combines the two interests perfectly. She explores new ways of making sense of the large amount of online data and translate it into winning decisions for the business.
Andreea has a bachelor's degree in Marketing and a master's degree in Strategic Marketing from the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies. She is a strong advocate of online courses for growing new skills in order to benefit from the vast knowledge of the global learning environment.
Sessions:

Carmen Bododea
Senior Researcher, Kantar TNS, Romania
Carmen has connected the dots between consumers, market research and clients for two decades, managing some of the most challenging customized projects within Kantar TNS. There is probably no area of research or sector that escaped her professional reach, and her experience interconnected various departments and teams, locally and internationally. As she continues making connections to uncover consumer lifestyles, attitudes and behaviours, Carmen is inspired by daily insights she gains from her daughter, the utmost connected consumer.
Sessions:

Cristiana Vaideanu
Head of Insights, Ursus Breweries, Romania
Head of Insights within Ursus Breweries. Cristiana has a rich research background earned across a range of industries working on agency and client side. Within the last years focused around beer, leading a team of professionals in extracting and using the smartest insights to answer the toughest business questions.
Sessions:

Ioan Simu
General Manager, Mercury Research, Romania
Ioan is General Manager for Mercury Research, a leading full-service research agency. His research expertise is complemented by advertising experience and academic work. Ioan holds a PhD in sociology from University of Bucharest, and specializations in political studies and business management from University of Texas, ASEBUS and University of Washington. He teaches courses on advanced analysis methods, market research and marketing.
Sessions:

Ioana Bobe
Senior Qualitative Researcher, ISRA Center, Romania
A Senior Qualitative Researcher for ISRA Center, Ioana has 9 years of experience conducting qualitative research. With a background in Sociology and Anthropology, Ioana aims to mix ethnographic sensibility with macro perspectives for more comprehensive visions of consumer lifestyles and markets. Passionate about methodological experiments, which challenge the beaten paths to take research towards a more authentic dialogue with consumers.
Sessions:

Lucia Cristina Manolache
Strategy Planning & Insights, British American Tobacco, Romania
Lucia has been an Insights professional for over 7 years. She is currently part of the Strategy Planning & Insights Department in BAT Romania where she has continued her work of merging market development competences with consumer knowledge, previously gained in IBM and Procter & Gamble. Dedicated to a more involved client approach to research that can assure a true engagement between brand teams and consumer insights.
Sessions:

Oana Popa Rengle
Qualitative Research Fairy, Anamnesis, Romania
Oana Popa Rengle has a lifelong passion for qualitative research, with 19 years of experience.
In June 2004 she set up Anamnesis as the first qual-research boutique in Romania. Since 2017 she is consulting independently on qualitative research and strategic insight integration into business. Oana also speaks at international research conferences on topics related to qualitative research, innovation and storytelling.
In 2016, Oana has received the ESOMAR BEST PAPER AWARD, in the ESOMAR Qualitative Congress, in Berlin, with the paper "Finding New Stories in Old Data", available on the ESOMAR website. The paper describes an innovative methodology of mining already existing research data in a creative problem-solving process.
In addition of being a research practitioner, she is also a certified Idea Generation and Creative Problem-Solving processes facilitator, and a psychotherapist practicing Systemic Family Therapy.
Sessions:

Traian Nastase
Managing Partner, iSense Solutions, Romania
Traian Nastase has over 13 years of experience, offering a rare research, digital and psychological expertise.
Together with Andrei Canda, he founded iSense Solutions - The Modern Consumer Company, which is one of the fastest growing market research agencies, also expanding internationally. In his PhD. thesis, Traian studies the socio-economic impact of the internet upon the consumer and marketing strategies. In his free time, he likes to write on his blog, www.traiannastase.ro, about strategies of approaching the modern consumer.
Sessions:
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