Gold Winner of the 2018 ESOMAR Research Effectiveness Awards 2018

Paymark was under threat from disruption and needed to future-proof. Together with their research partner TRA, they set out to build a data-driven customer segmentation based on Paymark's underutilised giant data set. They blended advanced big data analytics, third party data enrichment, and quantitative and qualitative research to produce the final segmentation of New Zealand's merchants.

Paymark's "Merchant DNA" has enabled the business to build tangible customer relationships and achieve a wide range of commercial objectives including an uplift in Net Promotor Scores and churn reduction. Paymark is now a truly 'customer obsessed' organisation, better equipped to face a new future.

Winner of the Best International Case Study at ESOMAR Foundation’s 2018 ‘Making a Difference’

Competition which the jury awarded with the motivation, “This simple and impactful case study is set for making a tremendous difference across all Not-For-Profits globally.”

Our Better World (OBW) is the digital storytelling initiative of the Singapore International Foundation. It aims to inspire online audiences into action via stories of good. Given a lack of primary research in digital storytelling for social impact in Asia upon which to call for guidance, primary research was needed. Following a collaboration with Kantar, a dual approach combining personal and digital interactions in each of five Asian markets was developed. This enabled the presenters to fuse exploratory, evaluative, and projective perspectives to not only understand current realties and their contexts, but ladder insights up into action.

Ads which trigger ANY emotion work better than those that don't. Ads which trigger the RIGHT emotion work even better. A problem, however, has always been detecting unspoken feelings; the real kinds of emotion that an ad generates. The aim of this study is to enable VF to know which emotions do their brands elicit, decide if these emotions are aligned with the brands, and to determine if emotional targeting was used earlier in the creative process – how much better would Ad performance be?

Up to 85% of brand generated social media posts are wasted.
With digital advertising approaching 50% of all advertising expenditure, we need to go beyond clicks and likes as a measure of ROI on social media expenditure. Through machine learning, a brand can now see how many posts support their intended position, how many are off target, and how many are simply ambiguous.   This presentation demonstrates how the AI tool works, highlights the role of archetypal alignment across touchpoints, delivers a practical framework where brands can specifically identify the nature of their optimal social media imagery, and concludes that understanding archetypal codes is the key to optimising ROI in Social Media.

We know that 70% of our communication is non-verbal, while verbal communication adds another 7%. Yet, interpreting non-verbal communication by humans is a time-consuming and highly subjective process.  For this presentation, we show how machine learning is making qualitative concept testing more efficient, more scalable, and more objective. We demonstrate how the latest cloud computing and machine learning technologies of emotion analytics and text mining were applied in the process of qualitative in-depth interviewing. The combination of the two methods help observe nuanced consumer responses that never before were capable of being observed and compared by humans.

In qualitative research, much can be gained by starting with broad questions which allow the respondents to express an attitude, behaviour, or thought rather than leading them with more pointed questions. But groups and depths are limited by time and budget. So can the process of qualitative exploration be applied at scale using AI and voice technology? Find out what happened when we tried.

Unrequested and often unsuitable goods sent to humanitarian disaster zones, often classified as Unsolicited Bilateral Donations (UBDs), cause disruption.  In June 2017, a project was launched to reduce the number of UBDs from Australia.  At the time, there was no existing research on motivations for this phenomenon, and so the crucial first step was to gain an in-depth understanding of the behaviour.

The unique and impactful findings from this study now offer new foundations for public messaging to effectively reduce the number of UBDs sent from Australia. Next steps are to raise global awareness of the findings and translate into communications to reduce the disruptive impact of UBDs sent to humanitarian crises zones.

We aim to help shift Japan's course towards a brighter future -- economically, as a society and as individuals -- by illuminating the true cost of gender inequality. To tackle the issue Unilever has partnered with Ipsos to conduct quantitative research to try and identify the issues that Japanese women deem most relevant to themselves and seek support for. This understanding is felt to be key to providing meaningful support to women, as well as enabling brands to connect with consumers with messaging that resonates.

The Internet Saathi program has transformed the lives of millions of women across rural India - it has provided inspiration for entrepreneurship, social change and personal growth. Join the presenters to discover the impact of the research insights for shaping the program, inspiring change and informing strategy for Saathi 2.0.

We all dream of a 'tomorrow' when we'll ‘wake up early and go for a run', ‘drink enough water', ‘stop eating junk'. Consumers too.  But can a brand inspire behavioural change?

As researchers, we looked at the principles of ethnography and the Habit Loop framework by Charles Duhigg, and fused this with evolving camera technology to pilot a study on habit formation.  We want to show that by fusing research principles, methods and frameworks, a brand can understand and influence the silent subconscious, shape behaviour, and orchestrate habits.

Typically, consumer flavor testing is conducted using a structured questionnaire. In general, Asian consumers tend to be relatively reserved and polite in their responses in some countries. We therefore collaborated in a neuro-physiological study making use of EEG, heart rate, and skin conductance, to evaluate consumers' flavor preferences more objectively for flavor development. The study was conducted among female consumers in Jakarta and physiological measurement has helped to reveal the underlying emotional responses of the consumers for two of the most preferred test flavors. This research demonstrates that we can further sensitively measure how different flavors elicit different emotions, providing further insights on how to optimize flavors to maximize consumer preference.

When can a brand benefit from laughter and is it possible to research a joke?
Through a combination of consumer investigation and semiotic decoding, we were able to arrive at a framework that we believe will help brands navigate this complex space.   While humour is very culture and space specific, we believe this approach will help researchers and brand custodians know when to use it, as well as other emotional devices for their brand's storytelling.

Home isn't a place, it is a feeling. This presentation explores the pathos of home and how it's changing, how it differs across the diverse APAC region, and how the changing nature of ‘HOME’ has wide-ranging business implications for brands and categories (Media and Content, Personal Care and Food). The presenters will also share their knowledge on how they used film to not only gather the data on such an abstract concept, but to also communicate the findings in an engaging and effective way.

Cross border shopping is common nowadays and it is critical for marketers to understand more about those consumers, and grow the business. This presentation will cover who they are, what impacts their decision, and how to speak to them effectively.

Over the past decade, eCommerce has grown exponentially, with two massive markets, the US and China, ahead of the curve. Within each market, major CPG companies have tried to optimize their product offer but selling online is different than selling offline, and tactics need to be adjusted to be successful. Sales on E-commerce platforms like Alibaba (T-Mall) and Amazon are affected by product findability and the inability to taste, feel or smell the product. Here we demonstrate how, with the sophisticated use of imagery, these challenges can be overcome.

As researchers, providing us access to data from new sources like customer data platforms, voice control, and all corners of the internet could be considered the equivalent of sticking a kid in a candy store! But are we leveraging this?

With research technologies continually expanding, global and local tech and client experts such as Cathay Pacific and HSBC will join forces on stage to discuss the future of MR technologies. Find out where they would invest when looking at the six biggest research technologies of the future. Then, all attendees are invited to be a part of a live prediction market to map out the future!  Join if you want to learn more about Blockchain, AI and the top tech trends for 2019, and uncover the emerging technology trends that will take over the business world in the years beyond.

Is it actually possible to connect all data stakeholders into an ecosystem that is truly inclusive and beneficial for all? One where all participants can share in the value created by data whilst also adhering to privacy regulations and preferences? Where the data generated is verified and trustworthy beyond doubt? In the last 12 months, Blockchain has become a hot topic with many promises being made but many are unsure if it is a solution, or merely a solution looking for a real problem. There has been plenty of discussion on what it is and whether it can live up to the hype, but we didn’t want to merely ponder this future, so we have set up a pilot project involving various industry stakeholders (including 10 major brands) to find out more and will transparently detail the experience for delegates at the conference.

Inspired by Boston Consulting Group's 2016 report on 'Rewiring Customer Insight to Generate Growth', the Philip Morris International team in The Philippines took a journey to amplify the value of the insights function.