MRIA VUE Magazine, March 2012

vue

the magazine of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association

MARCH 2012

Canadian Publications Mail Agreement #40033932

AND DIGITAL FOR ALL Interview with

Hugh McGuire

Using Higher-Quality Measures in Surveys SMEs Drive Innovation ‘Dare to Compare’ Part III Knowing Who Should Be Surveyed in Comparative Ad Testing

MARCH 2012

vue VUE MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY THE MARKETING RESEARCH AND INTELLIGENCE ASSOCIATION TEN TIMES A YEAR

Cover: Hugh McGuire In this month’s features: (L to R) Hugh McGuire, Gordon C. Bruner II, Paul Hague and Caroline Harrison ADDRESS The Marketing Research and Intelligence Association L’association de la recherche et de l’intelligence marketing

FEATURES 14 INTERVIEW WITH HUGH MCGUIRE The founder of LibriVox talks about the rise of digital books and how they are changing the way we read, the way books are distributed, and the way libraries will serve their communities in the future.

by David Hamburg 18 USING HIGHER-QUALITY MEASURES IN SURVEYS The creator of Marketing Scales explains how marketing researchers can access and assess appropriate and reliable scales that have already been developed, tried and tested by academic researchers.

by Gordon C. Bruner II 20 SMEs DRIVE INNOVATION To understand small and medium enterprises, we need to understand how they are different from corporations, what drives them, how they behave and, above all, what they need.

by Paul Hague and Caroline Harrison 22 ‘DARE TO COMPARE’ PART III: KNOWING WHO SHOULD BE SURVEYED IN COMPARATIVE AD TESTING The third instalment of Vue’s “Dare to Compare” series examines some of the nuances of choosing the right survey population in comparative ad testing.

by Ruth M. Corbin and Andrea Krepelka

COMMENTARY 4 Editor’s Vue 6 President’s Letter 10 Message from the Executive Director

INDUSTRY NEWS 25 27 28 29

Our Real Competition Is Not One Another Qualitative Research Registry (QRR) Research Registration System (RRS) People and Companies in the News

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 30 Musings on the CMRP Designation 31 The Dean Bids Farewell

COLUMNISTS 32 CSRC 32 QUALITAS 33 Brave New World

2600 Skymark Avenue, Bldg. 4, Unit 104 Mississauga, Ontario L4W 5B2 Tel: (905) 602-6854 Toll Free: 1-888-602-MRIA (6742) Fax: (905) 602-6855 Email: vue@mria-arim.ca Website: www.mria-arim.ca PRODUCTION: LAYOUT/DESIGN LS Graphics Tel: (905) 743-0402, Toll Free: 1-800-400-8253 Fax: (905) 728-3931 Email: info@lsgraphics.com CONTACTS CHAIR, PUBLICATIONS Stephen Popiel, PhD, CMRP Tel: (416) 271-8454 stephen.popiel@TD.com EDITOR-IN-CHIEF David Hamburg, Hamburg Consulting (514) 748-1827 david.hamburg@sympatico.ca MANAGING EDITOR Anne Marie Gabriel, MRIA amgabriel@mria-arim.ca ASSOCIATE EDITOR Christian Mueller, PhD, CMRP christianmuellerphd@gmail.com COPY EDITOR Siegfried Betterman Interested in joining the Vue editorial team?

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Original articles and Letters to the Editor are welcome. Materials will be reviewed by the Vue Editorial Team. If accepted for publication, they may be edited for length or clarity and placed in the electronic archives on the MRIA website.

The opinions and conclusions expressed in Vue are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association.

Publishing Date: March, 2012 © 2012.

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association or the author.

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RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO The Marketing Research and Intelligence Association L’Association de la recherche et de l’intelligence marketing 2600 Skymark Avenue, Bldg 4, Unit 104, Mississauga, Ontario L4W 5B2 Canadian Publications Mail Agreement #40033932 ISSN 1488-7320

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Editor’s Vue David Hamburg

Just a little longer before we make it to spring and get those monster snow tires back where they should be – in storage.

But alas, the seasons of change churn on, each one delivering its own set of challenges for the plucky entrepreneur, who is the focus of this month’s issue.

Our feature interview is with Hugh McGuire, the founder of LibriVox and of PressBooks, a new WordPress book publishing platform that makes it easy to generate clean, well-formatted books in multiple outputs. He is a shining example of the new entrepreneurial spirit in our digital world.

According to B2B International’s director, Paul Hague, and the company’s global marketing manager, Caroline Harrison, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the force driving today’s economy, accounting for over 99 per cent of all businesses in any country. While, the economy may dip and dive, leaving behind a wake of unemployment, a staggering 90 per cent of SMEs carry on business as usual, untouched and unscathed.

Entrepreneurs may be fascinating case studies, but let’s just say that their relationship with marketing research is … complicated, at least according to Affinnova’s Jeffrey Henning in his concise article, “Our Real Competition Is Not One Another.”

We should now take a walk down the hallowed halls of academe to perhaps illuminate the nuances of marketing research, as illustrated by Southern Illinois University marketing professor Dr. Gordon C. Bruner II in his fine piece on using higher-quality measures in surveys.

And once we’re discussing the fine degrees of marketing research, Ruth M. Corbin and Andrea Krepelka’s third instalment of Vue’s “Dare to Compare” series examines some of the nuances of choosing the right population for surveys.

But enough business talk. Spring break is here: time to step out and enjoy.

Encore un peu de temps et le printemps sera là, et nous pourrons mettre nos pneus d’hiver monstrueux là où ils devraient être – dans une remise. Mais hélas, les saisons de changement font la ronde, chacune livrant ses propres défis pour l’entrepreneur courageux qui est le centre d’intérêt du numéro de ce mois.

Notre principale entrevue est avec Hugh McGuire, fondateur de LibriVox et de PressBooks, une nouvelle plate-forme d’édition de livres de WordPress qui permet de créer des livres soignés et bien formatés dans de multiples productions. Il est un brillant exemple du nouvel esprit entrepreneurial de notre monde numérique.

Selon Paul Hague, directeur de B2B International, une entreprise de recherche marketing vraiment mondiale, les petites et moyennes entreprises (PME) sont l’élément moteur de l’économie actuelle, représentant 99 % des affaires, quel que soit le pays. Bien que l’économie connaisse des hauts et des bas, entraînant du chômage, étonnamment, 90 % des PME continuent de fonctionner comme d’habitude, intactes et indemnes.

Les entrepreneurs pourraient peut-être servir d’études de cas fascinants, mais disons simplement que leur relation avec la recherche marketing est … compliquée, du moins selon Jeffrey Henning d’Affinnova dans son article « Our Real Competition is Not One Another ».

Promenons-nous maintenant le long des couloirs sanctifiés des universités pour comprendre peut-être les nuances de la recherche marketing, grâce à l’illustration qu’en donne le professeur en marketing de la Southern Illinois University, Gordon C. Bruner II, Ph.D., dans son superbe article sur l’utilisation de mesures de plus grande qualité dans les sondages.

De plus, étant donné qu’on discute des niveaux raffinés de la recherche marketing, la troisième tranche de la série « Dare to Compare » de Ruth M. Corbin et Andrea Krepelk examine certaines des nuances impliquées dans le choix de la bonne population pour les sondages.

Mais, ça suffit pour le jargon de métier. La semaine de relâche du printemps est arrivée : c’est le temps de sortit et de s’amuser.

David Hamburg, Market Research Consultant, Hamburg Consulting Editor-in-Chief, Vue / Rédacteur en chef, Vue • Email: david.hamburg@sympatico.ca • (514) 748-1827 • david_hamburg 4

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Letter from the President Kimberlee Niziol Jonas

I am sure you are familiar with the phrase “time flies when you are having fun” – and I must say that the past year has flown by. It has been my privilege to serve as your president.

At the beginning of my presidential year, I invited you to embrace change and be innovative as we looked for opportunities in the year ahead.

Working together this year, we have achieved many things to be extremely proud of – I know I am proud – and I’d like to reflect on some of those accomplishments: After careful deliberation, your national board of directors adopted the International Chamber of Commerce/ESOMAR Code on Market and Social Research, augmented by several of our own Canadian-specific addenda, as a successor to MRIA’s current Code of Conduct and Good Practice. The process of transitioning to the ICC/ESOMAR code is well underway and, once that process has been completed, we expect the new code will enable the association to be more proactive and nimble in addressing emerging standards-related issues.

Germane to one of those key Canadian-specific addenda to our industry code, revised disciplinary procedures were approved by the MRIA board, giving the association more flexibility and authority to deal with complaints of professional misconduct in a rigorous, fair and expeditious manner.

We launched MRIA’s suite of online CMRP courses. Eleven of our twelve CMRP core courses are now available online, giving students and members across the country convenient, cost-effective, self-paced study access to the body of knowledge for our professional designation.

In the government relations realm, we secured an exemption for marketing and survey research from the scope of the new Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), and survey research invitation emails are not considered to be “commercial electronic messages.”

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Je suis certaine que vous connaissez l’expression « comme le temps passe vite quand on s’amuse » – et je dois dire que l’année qui vient de s’écouler a passé en flèche. Ce fut pour moi un privilège de vous avoir servis comme présidente.

Au début de mon mandat, je vous ai invités à accepter le changement et à faire preuve d’innovation alors que nous cherchions des occasions favorables pour l’année à venir.

Grâce au travail que nous avons accompli ensemble cette année, il y a beaucoup de réalisations dont nous pouvons être très fiers – je le suis en tout cas – et je veux en rappeler quelques-unes : Après des délibérations sérieuses, votre conseil d’administration national a adopté le Code international ICC/ESOMAR des études de marché et d’opinion, auquel nous avons ajouté plusieurs annexes propres au Canada. Ce Code remplace le Code de déontologie et règles de pratique actuel de l’ARIM. Le processus de transition au Code de l’ICC/ESOMAR est bien engagé et, lorsqu’il sera terminé, nous prévoyons que l’Association sera en mesure d’être plus proactive et agile dans le traitement des questions émergentes en matière de normes.

Les procédures disciplinaires révisées et approuvées par le conseil d’administration de l’ARIM sont contenues dans une des annexes propres à notre industrie au Canada et procurent à l’Association plus de souplesse et d’autorité pour traiter avec rigueur, impartialité et promptitude les plaintes de mauvaise conduite professionnelle.

Nous avons lancé un ensemble de cours en ligne pour la désignation PARM. Onze de nos douze cours de base de cette désignation sont maintenant en ligne, offrant ainsi aux étudiants et à nos membres partout au Canada un accès commode, rentable et autocontrôlé à un ensemble de connaissances pour notre désignation professionnelle.

Dans le domaine des relations gouvernementales, nous avons obtenu l’exemption de la recherche marketing et sondage

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The MRIA office brought in-house the call centre and technology support function for the Research Registration System – a vital industry self-regulation mechanism – enabling better customer service, monitoring and reporting.

dans la nouvelle Loi canadienne anti-pourriel, et les courriels d’invitation à participer à une recherche-sondage ne sont pas considérés comme étant des « messages électroniques commerciaux ».

In a similar self-regulatory vein, we used our experience operating Canada’s long-standing QRR (Qualitative Research Registry) to help the QRCA (Qualitative Research Consultants Association) and MRA (Marketing Research Association) move dramatically forward toward launching the first parallel registry of qual research participants in the U.S.

Le bureau de l’ARIM a rapatrié le centre d’appel et la fonction de soutien technique du système d’enregistrement des sondages – un mécanisme d’autoréglementation vital – nous permettant d’améliorer le service à sa clientèle, son contrôle et ses rapports.

We strengthened our inter-association relationships throughout the year – with ESOMAR, QRCA, MRA, CASRO (Council of American Survey Research Organizations), AMSRS (Australian Market and Social Research Society), AMSRO (Association of Market and Social Research Organisations, another Australian association), MRS (the U.S.-based Marketing Research Society) and ARIA (Americas Research Industry Alliance). With respect to ARIA, our association was one of four founding members of this currently nine-member-strong regional alliance, which now has connections to the new Global Research Business Network (GRBN), comprising ARIA for the Americas, EFAMRO (European Federation of Associations of Market Research Organisations) for Europe, and APRC (Asia Pacific Research Consortium) for the Asia Pacific region.

We provided the marketing research and intelligence community with several outstanding opportunities throughout the year to come together to discuss and learn about industry issues and trends, to network, to do business, and to socialize together. Our very successful 2011 national conference in Kelowna was just one such occasion. This year, don’t miss the opportunity to “Sample the Edge,” that is, the leading edge of our rapidly changing industry, at the 2012 national conference in St. John’s, Newfoundland, from Wednesday, May 30 to Friday, June 1.

And last but far from least, a key priority for my presidential year was to lead the development of a new strategic plan for our association, addressing the continuous evolution of our working environment and industry. A large of number of you, as members and as association leader stakeholders, have had a hand in the process. Our new MRIA strategic plan is visionary and aspirational, rooted in the twin themes of embracing change and of addressing the influence of emerging technologies on how we as research professionals gather data, how we interpret data, and how we communicate. The finishing touches are being put on that new plan at this time,

Toujours dans la veine de l’autoréglementation, nous avons misé sur notre expérience dans le fonctionnement du RRQ (registre de la recherche qualitative) qui existe depuis longtemps pour aider la QRCA (Qualitative Research Consultants Association) et la MRA (Marketing Research Association) à progresser de façon spectaculaire vers le lancement aux États-Unis du premier registre parallèle des participants aux recherches qualitatives.

Nous avons consolidé nos relations inter-associations tout au long de l’année – avec l’ESOMAR, la QRCA, la MRA, le CASRO (Council of American Survey Research Organizations), l’AMSRS (Australian Market and Social Research Society), l’AMSRO (Association of Market and Social Research Organisations, une autre association australienne), la MRS (Marketing Research Society) et l’ARIA (Americas Research Industry Alliance). Quant à l’ARIA, notre association est un des quatre membres fondateurs de cette alliance régionale qui compte aujourd’hui neuf membres et se trouve maintenant liée au nouveau Global Research Business Network (GRBN), un réseau regroupant l’ARIA pour les Amériques, l’EFAMRO pour l’Europe et l’APRC (Asia Pacific Research Consortium) pour la région de l’Asie-Pacifique.

Nous offrons à la collectivité de la recherche et de l’intelligence marketing des occasions exceptionnelles de se réunir au cours de l’année pour discuter et s’informer au sujet des enjeux et des tendances au sein de l’industrie, et d’échanger socialement.

Notre conférence nationale 2011 à Kelowna très réussie était une de ces occasions. Cette année, ne manquez pas « Sample the Edge », le thème qui traite de la fine pointe de notre industrie en évolution rapide, lors de notre conférence nationale 2012 qui se tiendra à St. John’s, Terre-Neuve, du mercredi 30 mai au vendredi 1er juin.

Et finalement, la principale priorité de mon année de présidence a été de diriger l’élaboration d’un nouveau plan stratégique pour notre association, en tenant compte de l’évolution constante de notre milieu de travail et de notre vue March 2012

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and I look forward to its being fully shared with you after board approval at the end of March.

It has been said that change has become a way of life leading to a better life.

“Look at your past. Your past has determined where you are at this moment. What you do today will determine where you are tomorrow. Are you moving forward or standing still?” – Sales trainer Tom Hopkins

industrie. Un grand nombre d’entre vous, membres et intervenants clés de l’association, avez participé à ce processus. Le nouveau plan stratégique de l’ARIM est visionnaire et ambitieux, ancré dans le double thème de l’acceptation du changement et de la compréhension de l’influence des technologies émergentes sur la façon dont nous, professionnels de la recherche, recueillons, interprétons et communiquons les données. Nous effectuons maintenant les derniers ajustements au nouveau plan et j’ai hâte que nous le partagions avec vous après que le conseil d’administration l’aura approuvé à la fin mars.

What’s remarkable is how consistent and sustained the association’s advancement and progress have been since its inception over seven years ago.

On a dit que le changement est devenu une façon de vivre qui mène à une meilleure vie. « Regardez votre passé. Il a défini où vous êtes maintenant. Ce que vous faites aujourd’hui déterminera où vous serez demain. Avancez-vous ou restez-vous sur place? » – Tom Hopkins, formateur en vente.

Je crois fermement que nous allons de l’avant et que nous devons être très fiers du progrès considérable que l’ARIM a I strongly believe that we are moving forward and that we accompli et continue d’accomplir. should be extremely proud of the significant progress MRIA Une grande partie du mérite de nos succès de l’année pashas made and continues to make. sée doit être attribuée au personnel dévoué de l’ARIM, aux A large measure of credit for the past year’s success must go membres du conseil d’administration national 2011-2012, to the dedicated MRIA staff, the members of the 2011–2012 aux présidents de portefeuille, et aux bénévoles partout au national board of directors, the portfolio chairs, and the volpays qui ont siégé aux conseils d’administration et aux counteers from across the country who serve on the boards and mités de chapitres, de divisions et de conseils. Leur passion, committees of chapters, divisions and councils. Their passion, dévouement et travail acharné ont été essentiels à la réalisadedication and hard work were essential to the achievement tion de nos objectifs. Mais, bien que les efforts collectifs de of our goals. And while the collective efforts of the team notre équipe aient été impressionnants, nous n’aurions pu have been impressive, we couldn’t have done it without you, y arriver sans vous, nos membres, dont l’appui financier et our members, whose financial and moral support have been moral a été déterminant au succès considérable de notre instrumental to our association’s significant success. association.

As I look back on my presidential year and, more broadly, En songeant à mon année comme présidente et, de on MRIA’s story to date, what’s remarkable is how consistent manière plus générale, à l’histoire de l’ARIM jusqu’à mainand sustained the association’s advancement and progress tenant, ce sont les progrès si constants et soutenus accomplis have been since its inception over seven years ago. depuis sa création il y a plus de sept ans qui ressortent le plus.

And as I look ahead, I have every confidence that MRIA’s En songeant à l’avenir, j’ai tout à fait confiance que le rensolid track record will continue. Handing over the reins, I dement solide de l’ARIM se poursuivra. En passant les rênes, know the association is in strong and capable hands with je sais que l’association sera guidée de manière vigoureuse et Sandy Janzen as your incoming president, and I wish her compétente par Sandy Janzen, notre nouvelle présidente, et je every success in her presidential year. lui souhaite beaucoup de succès tout au long de son mandat.

Kimberlee Niziol Jonas, Market Research Manager / Directrice de la recherche marketing, GlaxoSmithKline Email: kimberlee.a.nizioljonas@gsk.com • (905) 814-3500

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Message from the Executive Director Brendan Wycks

Government Relations and Advocacy Update, and March Highlights This month, I want to update you on a key MRIA government relations and advocacy initiative for our industry, and share a couple of March calendar highlights.

Government of Canada Procurement Strategy for Communications Services

Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) is currently reviewing how the government purchases communications services, which include advertising, public opinion research, audiovisual production, strategic communications, and events management. Collectively, these services represent approximately $181 million in annual expenditures.

PWGSC recently launched national consultations on a draft procurement strategy for communications services. The strategy is intended to bring in a more standardized approach to procurement.

Last month, MRIA made a written submission as part of these consultations, making the following points:

Compte rendu sur les relations gouvernementales et la défense de nos droits et points saillants en mars Ce mois-ci, je tiens à vous donner un compte rendu des principales initiatives de l’ARIM en relations gouvernementales et défense des droits de notre industrie, et partager avec vous quelques points saillants de notre calendrier en mars.

Stratégie d’approvisionnement des services de communication du gouvernement du Canada

Travaux publics et Services gouvernementaux Canada (TPSGC) révise actuellement la façon dont le gouvernement achète des services de communication qui incluent la publicité, la recherche sur l’opinion publique, la production audiovisuelle, les communications stratégiques et la gestion d’événements.

Ensemble, ces services représentent environ 181 millions de dollars en dépenses annuelles.

TPSGC a lancé récemment des consultations nationales sur une ébauche de stratégie d’approvisionnement pour les services de communication. La stratégie vise à appliquer une approche plus normalisée à l’approvisionnement.

Le mois dernier, l’ARIM a rédigé une soumission dans le cadre de ces consultations afin de souligner les points suivants :

We broadly agree with the general approach taken by PWGSC in this strategy and with many of the recommendations made therein. We note that government procurement of public opinion research (POR) is already structured under a standing offer process and, as such, some of the strategy’s recommendations are already in force for our industry.

We would like to offer a number of “tweaks” to help improve the strategy report:

De manière générale, nous sommes d’accord avec l’approche globale de la stratégie TPSGC et avec un grand nombre des recommandations qui s’y trouvent. Nous constatons que la passation des marchés de services de recherche sur l’opinion publique (ROP) est déjà structurée en vertu du processus des offres à commandes et que certaines recommandations de la stratégie sont donc déjà en vigueur dans notre industrie.

Nous tenons à suggérer quelques petites modifications pour aider à améliorer le rapport sur la stratégie :

Canadian Industry – Market Information. The report states that “the federal government is moving away from conducting communication services internally and in turn relying more on industry to meet its needs for communication services.” While we support this trend, we note it is definitely not the case for public opinion research (POR) services, where the government’s procurement of such services has been in

L’industrie canadienne – Données sur le marché. Le rapport indique que « le gouvernement fédéral s’éloigne de la production interne des services de communication et, en contrepartie, compte de plus en plus sur l’industrie pour satisfaire à ses besoins en services de communication. » Bien que nous appuyions cette tendance, nous prenons note que cela ne s’applique pas aux services de recherche sur l’opinion publique (ROP) où les marchés publics dans ce domaine

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steady decline over the past five years. In this regard, we believe that the “average spend” … (nearly $26 million for POR) is misleading, given that the decline in spending has been dramatic and the government’s current annual POR expenditures are closer to $8 million (as reported in the Public Opinion Research Directorate’s annual reports of 2008–09 and 2009–10). It is our understanding that significantly more POR research is being conducted in-house by federal departments and agencies, something which clearly exacerbates the dramatic decrease in government procurement of POR services during this period. Again, this trend is completely opposite to that identified in the strategy as applying to other communications services.

Accordingly, we recommend that the federal government decrease the volume of POR work conducted in-house and, consistent with other communications services, rely more on industry to meet its needs in this area.

Supplier Feedback. It is indicated that “there is now an increased level of satisfaction among suppliers who supply … public opinion research services.” Given the time-consuming, cumbersome process put in place by the federal government to govern POR procurement, including the need for ministerial approval of all projects and plans no matter how small, we are not in a position to agree with this assertion, and are not aware of any evidence to support it. Therefore, in the absence of any supporting evidence, we would recommend that this statement be removed insofar as it relates to POR. Definition of the Communication Services Category to Encompass New Trends. We fully agree that communication services are rapidly changing due to ongoing technological developments, and this is no less true for POR. Given the recommendation to review industry practices and to establish new procurement instruments for social media, we would urge PWGSC to continue to consult MRIA to ensure that any future processes accurately reflect new trends and do not adversely affect POR suppliers.

diminuent constamment depuis cinq ans. À cet égard, nous croyons que « les dépenses moyennes » … (presque 26 millions de dollars en ROP) sont trompeuses, puisque la réduction des dépenses a été dramatique et que les dépenses annuelles courantes en ROP du gouvernement sont plus près de 8 millions de dollars (comme l’indique les rapports annuels 2008–2009 et 2009–2010 de la Direction de la recherche sur l’opinion publique). Il nous semble qu’il y a une quantité considérable de ROP qui se fait à l’interne dans les ministères et organismes fédéraux, une situation qui a nettement exacerbé la réduction dramatique des marchés publics en services de ROP au cours de cette période. Encore là, la tendance est complètement opposée à celle que la stratégie applique aux autres services de communication.

Il s’ensuit que nous recommandons au gouvernement fédéral de réduire le volume de ROP effectuée à l’interne et, tout comme pour les autres services de communications, de s’appuyer davantage sur l’industrie pour satisfaire à ses besoins dans ce domaine.

Commentaires des fournisseurs. Le rapport soutient que « le niveau de satisfaction est maintenant plus élevé parmi les fournisseurs qui offrent … des services de recherche sur l’opinion publique. » Étant donné le processus d’approvisionnement chronophage et lourd que le gouvernement fédéral a instauré pour régir la ROP, dont la nécessité d’obtenir une approbation ministérielle pour tous les projets et plans, même les plus petits, nous ne pouvons accepter cette affirmation et nous ne connaissons rien qui puisse en attester. Donc, faute de toute preuve à l’appui, nous recommandons que cette déclaration soit retirée, dans la mesure où elle fait référence à la ROP. Définition de la catégorie des services de communication englobant les nouvelles tendances. Nous sommes tout à fait d’accord que les services de communication changent rapidement à cause des développements technologiques constants, ce qui s’applique tout autant à la ROP. Vu la recommandation d’examiner les pratiques de l’industrie et d’établir de nouveaux instruments d’approvisionnement pour les médias sociaux, nous conseillons vivement à TPSGC de continuer à consulter l’ARIM afin de s’assurer que tout processus futur tienne compte des nouvelles tendances et n’affecte pas négativement les fournisseurs de ROP.

Amélioration du processus d’approvisionnement. Nous faisons écho à une grande partie des commentaires de fournisseurs Improvement of Procurement Process. We echo much of the réclamant que « les sollicitations et les exigences en matière supplier feedback “that government solicitations and proposal de propositions du gouvernement soient simplifiées. » requirements be simplified.” In particular, we strongly urge Notamment, nous recommandons vivement au gouvernement the government to place “emphasis on quality rather than de « mettre l’accent sur la qualité plutôt que sur le prix le moins élevé. » lowest price.”

On a final general note, we recommend that the government increase the sole source limit for awarding contracts, currently capped at $25,000. This amount has not been raised in quite a number of years, and may not reflect today’s

Enfin, nous recommandons que le gouvernement augmente la limite actuelle de 25 000 $ s’appliquant aux fournisseurs uniques dans l’attribution de marchés. Ce montant n’a pas été augmenté depuis de nombreuses années et ne représente peut-être pas la réalité présente de la portée de vue March 2012

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reality in terms of modest contract scopes. As well, since the $25,000 cap includes taxes, the net amount actually representing the service offering has effectively decreased by eight per cent with the introduction of the HST in Ontario and other provinces.

Fraud Prevention Month

March is national Fraud Prevention Month. Fraud Prevention Month is an annual education and awareness campaign organized by the federal government’s Competition Bureau and the Fraud Prevention Forum, of which MRIA has been a long-standing member. The forum is comprised of more than 140 public and private sector organizations, representing consumer and volunteer groups, government agencies, and law enforcement bodies. Its members include MRIA, the RCMP, Microsoft Canada, Visa Canada, the Consumers Council of Canada, the Ontario Provincial Police, the Canadian Bankers Association, Industry Canada, the CRTC, the Canadian Marketing Association, the Advertising Standards Council of Canada, and the Competition Bureau.

The theme for this year’s campaign is “Building Consumer Confidence.” Working with the CRTC and other Fraud Prevention Forum members to coordinate efforts, MRIA will issue a media release this month to announce the results of our latest VoxPop survey on the effectiveness of the national Do Not Call List and the incidence of “mugging” and “sugging” in Canada.

marchés modestes. De plus, puisque la limite de 25 000 $ inclut les taxes, le montant net réel pour le service offert a diminué en fait de 8 % depuis l’introduction de la TVH en Ontario et d’autres provinces.

Mois de prévention de la fraude

Mars est le Mois national de la prévention de la fraude. Il s’agit d’une campagne annuelle d’éducation et de sensibilisation organisée par le Bureau de la concurrence du gouvernement fédéral et le Forum sur la prévention de la fraude dont l’ARIM est un membre de longue date. Le Forum regroupe plus de 140 organisations des secteurs public et privé représentant des groupes de consommateurs et de bénévoles, des organismes gouvernementaux et des organismes chargés de l’application de la loi. Parmi ses membres figurent l’ARIM, la GRC, Microsoft Canada, Visa Canada, le Conseil des consommateurs du Canada, la Police provinciale de l’Ontario, l’Association des banquiers canadiens, Industrie Canada, le CRTC, l’Association canadienne du marketing, le Conseil canadien des normes de la publicité et le Bureau de la concurrence.

Le thème de la campagne cette année est « l’accroissement de la confiance des consommateurs ». En collaboration avec le CRTC et d’autres membres du Forum sur la prévention de la fraude, l’ARIM a publié un communiqué ce mois-ci pour annoncer les résultats du sondage VoxPop sur l’efficacité de la Liste nationale des numéros de télécommunication exclus et sur l’incidence de la sollicitation et du marketing déguisés en entrevue.

2012 MRIA Annual General Meeting

L’Assemblée générale annuelle 2012 de l’ARIM

Each year, March also marks the end of MRIA’s annual governance cycle. This year, our new 2012–13 board of directors will take office on Monday, March 26, in conjunction with the association’s annual general meeting in Toronto. Members are encouraged to attend the AGM that evening, at the Hotel Intercontinental (220 Bloor St. West, Toronto), an event that will be paired with a Toronto Chapter speaker event, wrapping up with a social reception.

Chaque année en mars, l’ARIM marque la fin de son cycle annuel de gouvernance. Cette année, notre nouveau conseil d’administration 2012-2013 entrera en fonction le lundi 26 mars, au moment de l’assemblée générale annuelle de l’Association à Toronto. Nous encourageons les membres à venir à l’AGA ce soir-là, à l’hôtel Intercontinental (220, rue Bloor Ouest, Toronto), où l’événement sera jumelé avec la présentation d’un conférencier invité par le Chapitre de Toronto et se terminera par une réception.

Brendan Wycks, BA, MBA, CAE, Executive Director / Directeur général, Marketing Research and Intelligence Association / L’Association de la recherche et de l’intelligence marketing Email: bwycks@mria-arim.ca • (905) 602-6854 ext./poste 8724

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2012 EDITORIAL

CALENDAR

Thank you for the support you have shown for Vue magazine over the years and we look forward to counting you among our print and digital advertisers in 2012. We welcome inquiries from advertisers, authors, students and the business community.

Be Heard Be Seen Be Vue’d Month

Editorial

Submisson Deadline

January / February

MOBILE RESEARCH

January 3

March

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

February 3

April

FINANCIAL

March 2

May

MR IN MINING RESOURCES (and nat’l conf 2012 )

April 3

June

MEDIA AND JOURNALISM

May 3

July / August

TOURISM

June 4

September

EDUCATION

August 3

October

GOVERNMENT AND DIVERSITY

September 3

November

BRANDING AND ADVERTISING

October 3

December

THE FUTURE - LOOKING AHEAD

November 2

F E ATURE

Interview with Hugh McGuire

The founder of LibriVox, PressBooks and Book Oven talks about the rise of digital books and how they are changing not only the way we read, but also the way books are published and distributed, the nature of self-publication, and the place of bookstores and libraries.

David Hamburg

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Hugh McGuire, how about starting off by introducing yourself to our readers.

I’ve done a lot of book experimenting with what publishing will look like in the future. My most successful project is LibriVox, which is an open-source endeavour where volunteers make audio recordings of public domain books. We give the recordings away for free. The website [http://librivox.org] gets something like 650,000 visits per month, and our catalogue is now getting close to 5,000 books in 29 languages from around the world. This is a non-commercial project run by volunteers with a tiny budget to keep things running; we’ve been running this for about six years now.

I’ve also been experimenting with other kinds of things around podcasting aggregation. I recently started a commercial audio publishing company called Iambic, which tries to take some of the same approach as LibriVox but applies it, in partnership with publishers, to working with books that are in copy.

long-form books on digital devices. We went from one per cent digital device readers in 2008 (in the U.S.) to twenty per cent now. This colossal growth will only continue.

Soon it will be mainstream.

Exactly. They used to question how much time people wanted to spend in front of their screens, but we’ve seen a great evolution in technology. I think it really kicked in with the iPad, which was designed to accommodate long-form writing, and it turned out that people love these tablets.

You’ve written a lot about the new role of libraries.

Why will we even need libraries anymore?

I think that space will remain very relevant, although the idea of a library as a place that houses lots of books will change. As people do more reading on digital devices and prices drop, it will change the complexion of the kind of services that libraries provide. In fact, it already has. Libraries will always be a place where people can interact and

These ventures are about democratizing digital publishing and about who gets to be a producer, making publishing a lot easier.

I had another company called Book Oven, out of which came PressBooks, which is a really easy platform to allow book publishers to be more efficient about how they distribute their books in the digital marketplace. It’s focused on the production side, where people can get a print-ready book that they can print on demand or send to a printer.

These ventures are about democratizing digital publishing and about who gets to be a producer, making publishing a lot easier. I think what’s interesting is that digital publishing allows producers of content to focus on making that content and getting it to the people who want it, and to spend less time worrying about the details and the expense of producing media, the way we used to.

exchange information. If that’s the case, their role will be helping our society navigate through all this change and perhaps be preservers of information as well. At least they can curate local historical information. I think it’s a difficult time for libraries, because everything is changing so quickly.

They have built such a valuable long-term service for society, but that value is changing.

Kind of like a glorified hub.

Libraries have to figure out how to deliver to people and how to engage them, things that many are already doing, but there’s still a lot of hesitation in figuring that out.

Your ventures could best be described as Publishing: The Next Generation.

What about bookstores? They’re facing even bigger challenges. It seems that the ones still in business are becoming kind of lifestyle stores where they sell much more than just books, while the book offerings shrink.

That’s it. I say that I do research and development on Internet publishing. That seems to be my tagline these days. It’s really about trying to figure out what book publishing will look like in this digital age. Since I’ve had a long-time interest in books, this is where my focus has been. Since 2007, with the introduction of the Kindle and the iPhone, it has been demonstrated that people are very much willing to read

That’s interesting. I always wondered if there was a big enough market to support the explosion of the superbookstores that emerged during the ‘90s. They put most of the independents out of business, but now it’s their time to struggle. We’ve already seen massive closures in the U.S., and I think we’ll see more. We’ll probably end up with small boutique bookstores that cater to different kinds of vue March 2012

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booklovers. The middle-of-the-road bookstore will have a hard time in the future. I look at my buying habits and see that I buy only the occasional paper book; the rest are digital. A lot of bookstores will probably become literary salons.

age to secure big funding. Companies like mine are trying to figure out where the really big opportunity lies. You have the monsters like Google, Apple and Amazon; but where are the opportunities for players like us?

How will all this great proliferation of books, not to mention free online reading, affect small titles in the

What’s the song and dance that you have to do to attract a venture capitalist to invest in an Internet

future? Will we see fewer new writers?

start-up? What are they looking for?

Actually, people are reading more than ever. There’s a flowering of Internet sites and great blogs dedicated to reviewing books and talking about literary culture. People are also writing more than ever. The self-publishing boom is absolutely phenomenal. We’ve gone from about 200,000 self-published titles on the shelves to something like a million; and that will just keep on growing.

There are a few key things they want: They often say that they back people first – someone who either has experience or has done interesting enough work that the investor wants to back it. They want to back an entrepreneur who can figure out a winning opportunity; it’s a hard road in the startup world. Then they want to know that the market you’re in is changing and will be big enough to make some money in a number of years. This is huge. You need a market of some significance. The third but probably least important point is that the idea makes sense.

Of course, these businesses often evolve into something totally different than what they set out to do. The start-up entrepreneur needs to figure out what the idea is that excites the market. And it can happen from the pivot, like it did with Twitter, which started out as a podcasting aggregator tool, but they built this little tool inside that was interesting.

The venture capitalists made their investment based on that, and Twitter as we know it eventually emerged.

Then again, how do you make money on that? If you can get the kind of adoption rate, the way Twitter has done, then you can afford to worry about that later. In the meantime, you try to invest as little money as possible and try to get the money later.

True, but hardly any of those authors are making money.

But that’s always been the case. Very few writers make a living writing novels, and I think it will get harder. They will have to become more engaged as marketers and selfpromoters. You can lament that shift, but nothing can be done about it. The cat’s out of the bag, and the question remains: How will we all adapt to the new digital world of publishing?

Meanwhile, the opportunities are there for authors to connect with readers and get their writing out in the world, but they’ve got to figure it out. The money will be made on places like Amazon and the Apple world. The money just gets spread out much thinner, with just a handful of distributors dominating.

And speaking of money, Hugh, you are also an Internet entrepreneur. How do you explain all the venture capital being poured into these niche

Easier said than done.

You bet.

start-ups that don’t make a dime?

You might get a success rate of one in ten, and that makes for weird economics. But every once in a while there’s a big slam-dunk that makes it all pay off. Still, I find it strange the way the money flows in the start-up world. There are a lot of people making bets on companies that they hope will revolutionize a particular sector.

Hugh, it’s been an education talking with you about the brave new world of digital publishing and venture capital. Thanks for your time, and good luck in your

What’s been your experience with venture capitalists?

Hugh McGuire works at the intersection of book publishing and the web, building tools and communities that bring digital and books together. He is the founder of PressBooks.com and LibriVox. He be contacted at (514) 464-2047, hughmcguire@gmail.com or @hughmcguire

Understand that I have only raised a modest amount compared to some of the staggering funding that happens all the time. But there will be a few companies in the digital book business that do something so extraordinary that they man16

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ventures.

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Using HigherQuality Measures in Surveys

Developing reliable multi-item scales to take consumer measures is a labour-intensive undertaking that may, ultimately, end up reinventing the wheel. The creator of marketingscales.com explains that marketing researchers can access and assess appropriate and reliable scales which have already been developed, tried and tested by academic researchers.

Gordon C. Bruner II It is typical in surveys to use a single statement or question to measure an attitude, intention or behaviour of interest. Yet measurement experts generally agree that such measures tend to be unreliable.

If development of high-quality measures is not in the budget, what are researchers to do to increase the quality of their survey results?

The answer may lie with academic researchers. For decades, they have been developing sensitive measures of marketing-related variables. Scholars tend to use multi-item scales, especially for the most important constructs in their studies. Though multi-item measures require more space and more of the respondent’s time, scholars firmly believe they are necessary when precision is important. The greater sensitivity 18

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of the scales improves the accuracy of a study’s results as well as the quality of conclusions based on them.

First, let’s back up and remember that much of the information researchers want to gather from consumers nowadays is psychological and difficult to measure reliably with just one item. In other words, there is unlikely to be one perfect item that fully measures the construct of interest. Thus, any one item that is used has an unknown amount of error.

What is known is that one-item measures tend to be notoriously unreliable. And if they are unreliable, then they cannot be valid. This lack of precision and consistency is exacerbated when calculating the relationship between two constructs, both of which are measured with scales of low reliability. The correlation is lower than it would be if

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measured with scales of higher reliability. This problem can be remedied by using properly developed multi-item scales.

Further, knowing the reliability of a scale is a critical step in estimating its validity.

The many benefits of multiple items does not, however, require the use of dozens of items, as in many old-school psych tests. The items used in a scale are intended to be merely a representative sample of statements regarding the construct, and there is no need to include every possible statement that could be made. The bottom line is that having a scale with three to eight well-selected items should be sufficient in order that this scale be a reliable and valid one.

Admittedly, there is more to it than that, especially when you are trying to identify the best small set of items that will achieve the various types of validity; but the point is that aiming for something greater than one item and smaller than ten is a worthy goal.

Granted, this level of quality has its costs. To achieve reliability and validity, a great deal of effort is normally expended to develop and refine a scale in one or more studies. These are not measures that you just throw together and assume are good enough. Although they require a lot of time and care to develop, thousands have been developed over the decades and published in academic journals. But few practising researchers have easy access to the journals or the time to track down wanted measures. And it doesn’t end there.

Since most constructs have had several alternative measures developed over time by various scholars, it is prudent to compare the alternatives and determine which one is best for a particular purpose. That kind of time is rarely available to non-academic researchers. Even academics find the task to be a challenge, possibly explaining why so many measures of constructs are created, even though perfectly good ones are already available. It is so difficult to find scales and compare alternatives that it may, indeed, seem to be easier to throw them together and hope for the best.

Another cost of using multi-item scales in a survey is that they require more of a respondent’s precious time. Researchers must decide if they can afford such costs. It could be that greater precision is more important for some constructs than for others. In other words, if using multi-item scales to measure all psychological variables in a survey requires too much space or time, then the compromise is to use the highest-quality measures for the most important variables and simpler, one-item scales for the others.

For example, a survey conducted on a routine basis to track customer satisfaction with a company should use a high-quality scale for measuring satisfaction rather than a one-item scale of unknown reliability. In contrast, the other

things in the survey – how useful customers consider the company website or whether they believe the economy is improving – can be measured with one-item scales.

The point is that researchers should understand the importance of using validated scales. Thousands have been developed and tested. But there has been a logjam that is keeping information about these scales from flowing easily between their developers and potential users. These scales have been bottled up in academic journals, rarely visible to industry researchers. With these sophisticated scales hidden away, the tendency has been for practitioners to create measures as best they can, rarely knowing the quality of their measures or realizing how easily measurement quality could be improved.

This logjam between academia and industry began to break in the 1990s with the publication of books containing reviews of thousands of multi-item scales. But, any one book has a limit on what it can contain. More recently, I have launched a first-of-its-kind scales database, with the goal of gathering measures together in one place and making them more accessible to researchers around the world. Called Marketing Scales, this growing online service currently has over 2,500 reviews of a very wide variety of scales, available at $5 per review, or less if reviews are bundled – see www.marketingscales.com The value of such a service is that when researchers are planning a study, they can search the database with the goal of finding scales appropriate for a particular questionnaire.

By doing so, researchers will avoid having to spend time developing high-quality measures and wondering if the measures they have thrown together are unreliable. And by knowing, ahead of time, the previous users of a particular scale and something about that scale’s quality, a researcher can make a more informed selection among the alternatives available. Ultimately, researchers will be able to have more confidence in the quality of their studies and the conclusions drawn from them.

All measures are not of equal quality. Because of this variance in what they measure and how well they do it, I encourage researchers to draw upon the work routinely performed in academia, adopt the scales already developed and refined for consumer research, and reap the benefits that come from using higher-quality measures.

Dr. Gordon C. Bruner II is a full professor in the Marketing Department at Southern Illinois University. He is most wellknown for writing books that reviewed the scales used in marketing research (the marketing scales handbooks). Most recently, he created marketingscales.com, the largest database of measures used in consumer studies. vue March 2012

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F EATURE

SMEs Drive Innovation Innovation is the lifeblood of corporate success and progress, but the entrepreneurial spirit is more often found in small and medium enterprises, which make up 99 per cent of all businesses. To understand these businesses, we need to understand how they are different, what drives them, how they behave and, above all, what they need.

Paul Hague and Caroline Harrison

Every day, the news brings us more threats of a double dip, a currency crisis, a lending squeeze, and another dose of economic pessimism. And where does all this bad news come from? It comes from big businesses. At the first hint of an economic squeeze, large corporations cancel business travel, delay their push into new territories, and begin squeezing all the costs for what they’re worth. The government and the media pick up these loud noises, and they feed them to the public.

However, below the radar and unseen by media and governments are millions and millions of small companies that carry on as always. Our marketing research and business intelligence company, B2B International, in a recent survey of thousands of small businesses across ten countries, showed that 90 per cent of all small businesses will carry on unscathed and untouched by the vagaries of big business.

It tends to be small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that drive innovation. Big companies innovate processes rather than products. In a swathing generalization: Large companies can be both slow at adapting and very defensive of their strong positions, whereas SMEs have a greater ability to be nimble and have, in effect, almost nothing to lose by trying out new ideas.

Many innovative products in the marketplace – those simple ideas that solve niggling day-to-day problems – do seem to come predominantly from small companies. One 20

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reason for this circumstance could simply be because there are more of them; after all, small companies, those employing less than fifty people, account for over 99 per cent of all businesses in any country. Another reason, though, could be that they have owners who know their customers, see what is needed, and have the interest, drive and enthusiasm to carry an idea through. True entrepreneurial spirit!

So, could SMEs be considered the Cinderellas of the business world? While large companies and governments are stressing about the threat of recession, small companies just get on with it – they are survivors.

Small companies are run by people who really know their trade. Most of them have been in existence for more than ten years, compared to the job-hoppers in large companies, who switch positions like musical chairs. The owners of small businesses have seen the good times and bad times, and they know how to deal with them.

At a micro level, boom times and recessions are irrelevant to the small business. Small businesses are chameleons and are able to adjust quickly to change – positive or negative.

Small businesses, by their very nature, are optimistic. No one would ever set up in business with a view to failure. This is not to say that the small business person is a risk-taker. Once the business is up and running, the proprietor will look after it as if it were a baby.

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Small businesses rent properties, consume utilities, spend their money at local wholesalers, and require the services of lawyers and accountants. People selling to small businesses do not need a purchase order number: the decision-maker who writes the cheque is very often the person who picks up the phone. Things happen quickly and easily in small businesses.

Governments and large corporations do not understand small businesses, whose culture is completely different. Big businesses speak and sell to big customers and, because they do not comprehend the culture and language of small businesses, they are missing a huge opportunity.

Understanding small businesses is the starting point in doing business with them. It is not enough to think about their trade and activity. Knowing whether a company supplies accounting services or makes X-ray machines is not particularly helpful. It is more useful to know if the company has plans for growth or suffers cash flow problems, or whether it is traditional or modern in its business methods. This type of segmentation will ensure that communications aimed at small businesses resonate.

If we want to do business with small companies, we have to understand them. We need to understand how they are different, what drives them, how they behave and, most crucially, what their needs are – and here, as ever, is where marketing research can play an important role.

It is interesting, therefore, to take a look at the connection between SMEs and marketing research. SMEs tend not to use marketing research, in its formal sense, because it is prohibitively expensive. However, there is no doubt they should tap into some sort of intelligence – and this intelligence needs to comprise independent views, rather than those of family or friends. The companies need not spend thousands of dollars.

Take the example of Innocent Smoothies (see the box below).

In the summer of 1998, after developing their first smoothie recipes, the founders of Innocent Smoothies were still very nervous about giving up their proper jobs.

To test the waters, they bought £500 (about Can$800) worth of fruit and turned it into smoothies, which they sold from a stall at a small music festival in London. A big sign asking “Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?” was placed beside two bins – one saying yes and one saying no. People were being asked to vote by putting their empty bottles in the appropriate receptacle. At the end of the weekend, the yes bin was full, and so they resigned from their jobs the very next day. The rest is history. How’s that for an innovative and cost-effective way to garner public opinion?

Now let’s look at research and innovation. While marketing research can never hope to provide a cost-efficient service to a small start-up, there are huge opportunities for larger companies to use it, and to greater effect. At present, many corporations tend to use marketing research, in its formal sense, but rarely for something truly innovative. For example, they may undertake product testing, but they almost always do so for a product modification rather than a completely new product aimed at a completely new target market.

As new technologies and new techniques enable developments in marketing research, surely the marketing research industry has a duty to encourage innovation by saying, “We can help large companies – who, let’s face it, could be viewed as a bit boring and staid – to come up with truly new products by using innovative methods of marketing research.”

Conventional research can, in fact, be very negative about new products. Most human beings find it a huge leap to understand something very different, something that is outside their comfort zone; as a result, it’s human nature to shy away from the idea and dismiss it.

If you show a brand new product to 100 people and nine out of every ten say it’s no good, should the idea automatically be shelved? Marketing research convention dictates that you’re probably looking for something in the region of a 60 per cent approval rating before the idea will be taken any further. Yet even if just one out of every ten people like an idea, with a worldwide population of seven billion, there is still the potential of a pretty sizable target audience.

And when an idea catches the imagination and gathers momentum, who knows what can happen? So do we need to consider different methods of research and all be a bit more adventurous and positive in our attitude?

Businesses large and small – and everything in between – all play their part in creating the business environment as we know it. And we as marketing researchers must play our part too.

Paul Hague is the founder and director of B2B International, and Caroline Harrison is the company’s global marketing manager. B2B International is a marketing research consultancy with a thirty-year history of providing customized business-tobusiness marketing research and intelligence studies on a global scale. It has offices in New York, Chicago, Manchester, London, Brussels, Moscow, Beijing and Shanghai. For more information about the company, go to www.b2binternational.com vue March 2012

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‘Dare to Compare’ Part III

Knowing Who Should be Surveyed in Comparative Ad Testing The third instalment of Vue’s ‘Dare to Compare’ series examines some of the nuances of choosing the right survey population in comparative ad testing. The choice can determine the survival of an advertisement.

Ruth M. Corbin, CMRP, and Andrea Krepelka

The 2011 election campaigns across Canada have given advertisers plenty of object lessons. Elections are the ultimate high season for comparative advertising, political ads comparing one party to another on any number of factors – policies, values, track record, even integrity.

The name attack ad, applicable to some, leaves little doubt as to their “comparative” content. In Ontario’s fall election, for example, the Liberal Party was accused of advocating cross-dressing and kissing booths for public school children. Liberals called the opposition’s claims false and misleading. Barely is there time to say the words “cease and desist” before an election is over.

Now imagine that one political team sued another for misleading statements and chose to take survey evidence into court. Who would constitute the relevant universe for such a survey? The answer is straightforward: It would be voters. Voters are the people to whom comparative election ads are directed, the people who care most about the advertised issues, the people materially affected by false or misleading information. Lost votes are the “damages” that an injured party might claim.

With regard to other types of comparative advertising, the choice of whom to survey in order to substantiate a claim or a complaint is more complex. This third instalment of Vue’s “Dare to Compare” series examines some of the nuances of choosing the right population. Perhaps surprisingly, the decision can prove pivotal to winning or losing the right to keep an advertisement on air.

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The Importance of Choosing the Right Population

From the earliest time that surveys were accepted as expert evidence, identification of the right and pertinent population has been at the top of the list of must-haves. In the Supreme Court of Canada case R. v. Prairie Schooner News Ltd., Justice Dickson wrote, “Essential to admissibility … is selection of the proper universe, i.e., that segment of the population whose characteristics are relevant to the question being studied” (quoted on p. 17 of Trial by Survey: Survey Evidence and the Law, by R. Corbin, A.K. Gill, and R.S. Jolliffe; Carswell Publishing, 2000). He was explaining the exclusion of survey evidence on the topic of community standards with respect to obscenity. The survey had polled an ad hoc population of students and railway employees in one Manitoba city. The court considered the sample too narrow to represent the community standards of all of Canada.

The Prairie Schooner case has resurfaced in many Canadian legal and regulatory decisions since its original publication, in the context of explaining the significance that judges and regulators are prepared to give to the choice of “universe” in survey evidence (see “Reasons for the Decision,” available at http:// publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2011/ccri-cirb/LR122-2010-525-eng.pdf).

Pertinent population is the term frequently used in case law to identify the universe of customers or consumers whose views matter in a dispute. Surveys submitted as evidence in litigation have been discounted and even discarded when the wrong universe has been surveyed. The high cost of surveys can make such an outcome a financial tragedy.

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An Example from Frozen Diet Foods

A case between Weight Watchers and Stouffer’s, producers of “Lean Cuisine,” provides a cogent example (see Weight Watchers Int’l, Inc. v. Stouffer Corp., 744 F. Supp. 1259, 1272-73 [S.D.N.Y. 1990]). Weight Watchers sued Stouffer’s over advertisements which claimed that certain of Stouffer’s foods were equivalent to the so-called “exchange” value of comparable Weight Watchers menu options. In other words, Stouffer’s seemed to imply, Weight Watchers diet followers could readily substitute Stouffer’s products, and continue on their determined road to healthy weight loss.

Both sides submitted survey evidence in respect of claims of confusion and misleading advertising. The court wryly observed, “As might be expected, each side’s expert on market research came to a conclusion that disfavoured the other.” Stouffer’s survey was given entirely no weight, due to methodological flaws.

About Weight Watchers’ survey, the judge said, “I accord [it] slight weight, with strong misgivings about its improper universe.” The universe of the Weight Watchers surveys was defined as women between the ages of 18 and 55 who had purchased frozen food entrees in the past six months and who had tried to lose weight through diet and/or exercise in the past year. The court’s analysis is instructive: “The [Weight Watchers] studies did not limit the universe to consumers who had purchased a diet frozen entree, or who had tried to lose weight through diet as opposed to exercise; therefore, some of the respondents may not have been in the market for diet food of any kind, and the study universe therefore was too broad. Sloppy execution of the survey broadened the universe further when interviewers mistakenly included participants who did not qualify even under [the intended criteria]. For example, on some of the qualifying surveys, not all of the questions qualifying participants for the universe were answered; therefore, it is

impossible to discern whether the respondent fit within the defined universe. Flaws in a study’s universe quite seriously undermine the probative value of the study, because to … be probative and meaningful … surveys … must rely upon responses by potential consumers of the products in question. … Respondents who are not potential consumers may well be less likely to be aware of and to make relevant distinctions when reading ads than those who are potential consumers.”

An Audience of Purchasers/Influencers or Consumers?

Additional refinement needs to be given to the concept of “potential consumers,” as used by the court in the Weight Watchers case, above. The purchaser and product consumer may not always be the same person. An advertising claim needs to be tested against the language of the claim.

Testing an ad about prices of a 24-case of beer would likely require an audience of beer purchasers, whereas testing an ad claim about the preferred beer for taste would likely require an audience of beer drinkers (whether or not they are the ones who go out to buy the beer). The overlap between the two is not a problem: the screener qualifications just need to ensure that a respondent is in the required category.

Cat litter provides a colourful case in point. Church & Dwight Co., the maker of Arm & Hammer Super Scoop cat litter sued Clorox over its ad campaign for Fresh Step cat litter (Church & Dwight Co., Inc., v. The Clorox Company, 2011 WL 18879 United States District Court, S.D. N.Y.). The ad showed cats refusing to use litter boxes containing Super Scoop but readily using (“preferring”) boxes containing Fresh Step. The ad announced that cats like Fresh Step “because Fresh Step’s scoopable litter with carbon is better at eliminating odors than Arm & Hammer Super Scoop.” Reference was made in a footnote to a scientifically controlled test of cat behaviour in everyday consumer households. vue March 2012

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F EATURE

The problem was that the reference to offensive odours was anthropomorphic. Who knows what odours cats want eliminated? “Cats do not talk,” complained Church & Dwight in their submissions. After legal proceedings had been launched, Clorox announced it was pulling the ads, undertook not to rerun them, and the case was dismissed (see Jonathan Stempel’s February 2, 2011, Reuters article, “Lawsuit over Clorox Cat Litter Ads Dismissed,” available at www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/02/clorox-churchanddwight-catlitter-idUKN0225993320110202).

Sufficient Geographic Coverage

In-person advertising testing poses the inevitable question of how broad the audience has to be to satisfy the standards of a court or regulator. For claims directed at a national audience, Advertising Standards Canada recommends sampling from at least four of Canada’s major geographic regions (see Advertising Standards Canada’s “Guidelines for the Use of Comparative Advertising,” April 2010, available at www.adstandards. com/en/ASCLibrary/guidelinesCompAdvertising-en.pdf).

In the writers’ experience, this level of coverage for national claims has also proven satisfactory to the Federal Court of Canada. For disputes focused on selective parts of the country, the choice may be different.

The case of NHL [National Hockey League] v. Pepsi-Cola Canada Ltd. ([1992] 6 W.W.R. 216) confirms that single-city pilot tests may prove insufficient. It concerned Pepsi’s “Diet Pepsi $4,000,000 Pro-Hockey Playoffs Pool,” an under-thecap instant win game in which prizes were tied to the outcome of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Pepsi was not one of NHL’s licensed sponsors of the playoffs and was accused of passing itself off as one, through “ambush marketing.”

A test of consumer impressions was conducted on a single day at three shopping centres in the Greater Vancouver region. Justice Harding found the survey scope insufficient, expressing bewilderment that the expert would “insist that the results of her survey could be extrapolated to represent the perceptions of consumers across Canada.” The survey evidence was dismissed in its entirety.

have a reasonable likelihood of being exposed to the allegedly offensive advertising.

• Whether participants have the qualifications for purchase.

Tests of rental car advertising, for example, might reasonably be restricted not just to those in possession of a driver’s licence, but to those of sufficient age to qualify for renting a car (25 years or older).

• Whether past purchasers, future purchasers, or both should be part of the pertinent population.

• Where two product categories are being compared for possible substitution (such as dental floss and plaque-fighting mouthwash), whether the pertinent population should be consumers of “our” product, “their” product, or both.

• Whether sufficient quality controls accompany an Internet survey to make an Internet panel an acceptable universe.

Conclusions

Choice of research audience comes into play at two stages of decision-making in comparative advertising. The first is the substantiation stage. An advertiser should substantiate a claim in advance, testing the ad on the very audience named or implied in the claim. If there are caveats to be made (given the parameters of the supporting research), then it may be appropriate to disclose one or more of the caveats in the body of the ad or in a perceptible footnote.

The second stage of decision-making occurs at the time of a competitive complaint. The complaint itself may require supporting research, particularly if the complaint is about a misleading impression rather than a statement which is factually false. If so, the offended competitor may need to show that purchasers of its own product are likely to be misled in a manner that can affect the competitor’s reputation or business.

For big-picture thinkers in the world of advertising and market analysis, the topic of survey universe for claim substantiation may seem mundane, or technically obscure. Yet issues about the pertinent population in survey evidence can affect the outcome significantly when warring advertisers go to court.

Other Relevant Qualifiers

Published comparative cases provide not a clear list of do’s and don’ts, but a clear list at least of the issues that have been open to debate. Additional to those issues discussed above are the following: • Whether the audience is broad enough or too broad to capture the population whose views are most material to the potential damage caused by a misleading comparative ad.

• Whether the survey audience qualifies respondents according to their media habits, to ensure that those tested will 24

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Dr. Ruth M. Corbin, CMRP, is the managing partner of CorbinPartners Inc., adjunct professor of intellectual property law at Osgoode Hall, a member of the board of MRIA’s Research Agency Council, and the co-author of two books on survey evidence in the Canadian court system. Andrea Krepelka is an investigator and project coordinator at CorbinPartners Inc., where she utilizes a diverse background in communications, marketing, music, and corporate administration to look at marketing research in non-traditional ways. She can be reached at akrepelka@corbinpartners.com

I N D U STRY N E W S

Our Real Competition Is Not One Another Jeffrey Henning “It’s kind of odd how you talk to your competitors,” a friend told me after I was telling stories about some of my social media encounters with others in the industry.

“Well, some of them are our direct competitors, but they’re not our real competitor,” I said.

“Who’s your real competitor?”

“Gut instinct. Entrepreneurs who think they don’t need research because they intuitively understand their market.”

In fact, as I talked to him, I realized that I could segment entrepreneurs into three types, based on how they approach marketing research.

Type 1: Entrepreneurs who think they don’t need research and are wrong. A former colleague of mine left to start his own business. He brainstormed a list of opportunities (great first step), then narrowed it down to the one his gut instinct told him was right (bad second step).

Like many entrepreneurs, he thought he couldn’t afford marketing research. He willingly invested his time and effort in building the product and launching a new website, but he was unwilling to invest in understanding prospective customers through research. Sadly, in four years, his business made less than $40,000, and now he’s taken a full-time job. Entrepreneurs of this type don’t stay in business long.

Type 2: Entrepreneurs who think they don’t need research and are right. Start 100 businesses without research and some of them will succeed, due to sheer luck. Because such businesses have succeeded without research, the entrepreneurs think that they have a tremendous instinct for their industry and that they don’t need to do marketing research going forward. This is how you end up with enormous businesses that do very little research.

Take Southwest Airlines, which started with three airplanes serving three Texan cities. Herb Kelleher studied his competition but didn’t do traditional research. In fact, the company only started an MR department in the past few years.

In another example, just this week a prospective customer admitted to being intrigued by concept optimization, but the company had relied on gut instinct so far, and doing so had worked well.

When I’m confronted with such successful companies, I always wonder: How much bigger would they be now had they refined their approach with research?

Type 3: Entrepreneurs who know they need research. Fortunately, some entrepreneurs recognize the value of research. Entrepreneurs in three industries are especially cognizant of the need for MR: retailers (even businesses with just a single store), venture-backed companies, and freemium websites.

Retailers recognize the importance of location and will often do extensive studies to understand the relative merits of different locations for their new store. Companies with venture capital have the resources to invest in marketing research projects, and many have a board of directors that expects and even demands such research. Freemium websites (free to join, with a premium for special features) are often driven by analytics and experiments using the real-world behaviour of their site users.

I’m pretty certain there is not a fourth type of entrepreneur: those who think they need research but don’t really need it. Launching a new company, a new brand, a new product, a new product line, or even new advertising or packaging forces entrepreneurs to confront a lot of unknowns about what potential customers really want. Every entrepreneur needs research.

The visionary and charismatic founders who shaped their companies through luck and instinct inspire others to follow their example – not realizing they won the “don’t need research” lottery.

So, if all of us direct competitors band together to promote the benefits of research, we can grow the industry and defeat our leading indirect competitor: the idea that gut instinct alone is enough to grow great companies.

Jeffrey Henning, PRC, is the chief marketing officer of Affinnova, an American concept optimization firm. Before that, he was with Vovici (Perseus), a leading provider of online survey management. An alumnus of Arizona State University, Jeffrey has the Professional Researcher Certification through the Marketing Research Association. vue March 2012

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I N D U ST RY N E W S

GET YOUR CMRP DESIGNATION! The CMRP (Certified Marketing Research Professional) designation signifies a high level of knowledge and capability in marketing research theory and practice, and adherence to rigorous ethical standards set out in MRIA’s Code of Conduct and Good Practice.

BY ACHIEVING A DESIGNATION YOU: • Confirm your broad competency and mastery of theoretical and practical knowledge required to maximize value to your organization and clients; • Better position yourself for career advancement and greater earning power; • Demonstrate your commitment to continued professional development and to upholding the highest level of professional ethical standards.

The CMRP can be obtained by writing the Comprehensive Marketing Research Exam (CMRE).

The next CMRE will be held on June 29, 2012. Application deadline: June 1, 2012. Apply now!

CMRE PREP WORKSHOP: PREPARE FOR THE EXAM! A Prep Workshop is available for those who want to brush up on material and on exam techniques, to prepare for the CMRE. This two-day CMRE Prep Workshop will be offered in Toronto on June 14-15, 2012 and in St. Johns, Nfld. on May 29-30, 2012. The enrolment to this unique Workshop is limited to 15 registrants per workshop, so don’t delay and reserve your seat TODAY.

MRIA Institute for Professional Development

For more information on the CMRE, please visit: www.mria-arim.ca/EDUCATION/CMRE.asp or contact us at education@mria-arim.ca 26

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I N D U STRY N E W S

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH REGISTRY (QRR) In accordance with federal privacy laws, MRIA’s Qualitative Research Registry (QRR), or Registre de la recherche qualitative (RRQ) in French, was created to provide an ongoing, user-friendly vehicle for tracking those who do not want to be contacted or should not be contacted for qualitative research studies.

QRR is a comprehensive do not call list of those who have recently participated in qualitative research studies, those who have asked not to be contacted further, and those felt by recruiters and moderators to be best served by not being contacted.

These respondents are marked as “do not call” in accordance with established MRIA Standards.

All field and full-service companies are encouraged to submit a list of their qualitative respondents for entry into the QRR system each month, including those who do not wish to be contacted.

Participating firms will receive monthly updates of respondents to be screened from qualitative recruitment samples. QRR works effectively to increase the quality and integrity of the qualitative research process, by serving as a control to ensure respondents are not contacted more frequently than is necessary.

However, the ability of the system to function effectively is directly related to the co-operation received from firms who provide recruitment services.

If you are a full service research firm or field supplier that is currently participating in the Qualitative Research Registry program – thank you very much and keep up the good work!

If you are not currently participating, please get involved! If you are interested in submitting to QRR, please visit the MRIA website at www.mria-arim.ca/QRD/QualResearchRegistry.asp for further explanation and guidance on how to submit qualitative research participants’ names, along with the required electronic forms.

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH REGISTRY SUBMISSIONS SHOULD BE SENT TO: QRRQ@MRIA-ARIM.CA Submission templates and payment forms can be found at www.mria-arim.ca/QRD/QualResearchRegistryForms.asp

THE FOLLOWING COMPANIES HAVE SUBMITTED NAMES TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH REGISTRY FOR DECEMBER 2011 ATLANTIC Tann Research/Head Count Opinion Search R.I.S. Christie

ONTARIO R.I.S. Christie Consumer Vision CRC Research Nexus Research Opinion Search Barbara C. Campbell Recruiting Quality Response Ideaspace Research House Inc. Tann Research/Head Count Valyra Research

QUEBEC R.I.S. Christie Research House Inc. MBA Reserche CRC Research

WEST Research House Inc. Opinion Search CRC Research Trend Research R.I.S. Christie

Rules of Conduct and Good Practice for Members of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (2007), Section C Rules Specific to the Conduct of Qualitative Research: 20. Recruiters should provide accurate data to the Qualitative Research Registry, where such exists, on a consistent basis and check all respondents against the Registry.

21. Moderators buying recruiting services should give primary consideration to recruiting agencies which submit to the Qualitative Research Registry, where such a service exists, on a regular and ongoing basis.

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I N D U STRY N E W S

RRS

RESEARCH REGISTRATION SYSTEM Since 1994, the RRS has allowed respondents to verify the legitimacy of a research project; helped legislators and regulators differentiate between legitimate survey researchers and unscrupulous telemarketers, phishers and scammers; and protected the industry from unnecessary and unwanted regulation.

RRS

MRIA’s Research Registration System (RRS) has long been a cornerstone self-regulatory mechanism for the marketing, survey and public opinion research and market intelligence industry in Canada.

Combined with other self-regulatory initiatives such as our Code of Conduct and Good Practice and our Charter of Respondent Rights, the RRS has paid huge dividends in protecting the industry’s positive reputation and good name with Canadians.

All Gold Seal and Basic Corporate Research Agency members of the Association are obligated to register all of their research projects with the RRS, and ClientSide Corporate members are encouraged to require their agency suppliers to do so.

MRIA’s Research Agency Council provides strategic, policy-level oversight of the Research Registration System, and receives aggregate data-only on the System’s performance.

Questions about the Research Registration System should be addressed to Sylvie Corbeil-Peloquin, Manager, Member Services, at 1-888-602-6742 or 905-602-6854, ext. 8726 or scorbeil@mria-arim.ca or, in her absence, Executive Director Brendan Wycks at ext. 8724 or bwycks@mria-arim.ca.

Rules of Conduct and Good Practice For Members of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (2007):

Section A (5) Members must uphold the MRIA Charter of Respondent Rights.

Charter of Respondent Rights, Article 2

THE FOLLOWING COMPANIES HAVE REGISTERED RESEARCH PROJECTS WITH THE RESEARCH REGISTRATION SYSTEM DURING DECEMBER 2011: GOLD SEAL CORPORATE RESEARCH AGENCIES Acrobat Research Ltd. Advanis Inc Advitek Inc. BBM Analytics BBM Canada Blue Ocean Contact Centers Canadian Viewpoint Inc. Consumer Vision Ltd. Corsential ULC Elemental Data Collection Inc. Harris/Decima Inc. Hotspex Inc. Ipsos Reid Corporation MarketQuest-Omnifacts Research MBA Recherche MD Analytics Inc. Nanos Research NRG Research Group Opinion Search Inc. R.A. Malatest & Associates Ltd. Research House Inc. Research Now Tann Research Services Inc. Tele-Surveys Plus / Télé-Sondages Plus TNS Canadian Facts BASIC CORPORATE RESEARCH AGENCIES Arcus Group Goss Gilroy Inc. Illumina Research Partners Network Research Field Services Inc Nexus Market Research Inc. Panoptika Inc. Quality Response Inc.

You can verify that the research you have been invited to participate in is legitimate in one of two ways. You can either obtain a registration number and the MRIA’s toll-free telephone number for any research registered in the MRIA’s Research Registration System or you can obtain the contact information of the research director who is conducting the study.

www.mria-arim.ca/RRS 28

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I N D U STRY N E W S

PEOPLE AND COMPANIES IN THE NEWS • To read more news online, or to submit your “People and Companies in the News”, simply fill out our online form at www.mria-arim.ca/PEOPLE/People.asp.

• The Vue editorial team reserves the right to select and edit your submission for appearance in Vue. • MRIA is neither responsible for the accuracy of this information nor liable for any false information.

Fresh Intelligence Hires Leaders in the Industry to Meet the Demands of Their Growing Business William (Bill) Ratcliffe, PhD, CMRP, joins the Research Leadership Team as product development officer. In his current role as CEO of Collected Conscience, Bill brings over 30 years of experience in Marketing Research including, SVP North America at Brainjuicer and President at Millward Brown Canada. Christian Mueller, CMRP has been appointed to chief methodologist. With over 25 years of experience in Marketing Research, including 16 years as Vice President at Synovate (recently acquired by Ipsos and previously known as Market Facts), Christian brings to Fresh Intelligence the benefit of his expertise in diverse product categories such as financial services, retail, packaged goods, hospitality, travel and tourism. Christian has a PhD in psychology, and will be reporting to Olga Churkina, director of research. www.freshintelligence.com Research Now Appointments www.researchnow.com Craig Stevens as Chief Revenue Officer for the Americas Research Now, the leading global online sampling and data collection company, announces the appointment of Craig Stevens to Chief Revenue Officer for the Americas as a direct result of the reorganization of the company’s executive management team.

Madhu Rajendran to Its Operations Leadership Team As Vice President of Operations, Rajendran will oversee the Enterprise and Healthcare client services groups for the Americas. Prior to joining Research Now, Rajendran served as an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he worked with executive management and client service teams on a variety of topics including strategy, operations and organization effectiveness.

Melanie Courtright Vice President of Research Services Courtright brings with her over 16 years of experience serving clients in the research sector, having commenced her career with an eleven-year stint at NOVO 1, where she held several senior roles including Vice President of Client Services. She later joined DMS Research, an AOL company, where she played an integral role in the creation of online market research, and held titles such as Vice President of Marketing and Account Management Director.

CIRQ Announces ISO Certification of Market Strategies International and of Kantar Operations North America The CASRO Institute for Research Quality (CIRQ) has awarded certification to both organizations for compliance to the ISO 20252 Standard for Market, Opinion and Social Research. ISO 20252 establishes globally recognized terms, definitions, and service requirements for project management in research organizations. www.cirq.org New Book, “The Listen Lady,” Offers Plain Language Social Media Research Guidance to Researchers Annie Pettit, a boundary pushing market researcher in social media listening research, has published “The Listen Lady.” Using social media data as another source for insight is becoming an essential technique in need of a knowledge base. The book reflects the current market research meme of storytelling and is written as a novel instead of a textbook. The book carefully outlines strengths and weaknesses, as well as issues with sampling, sentiment analysis, content analysis, and ethics while sharing the ideas under the guise of a business owner learning to employ the technique for herself. Annie Pettit, PhD is one of the original thought leaders in social media listening research and one of the authors of the ESOMAR, CASRO, and MRA social media research guidelines. annie@conversition.com

People and Companies in the News sponsored by:

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This is an advertisement.

MRIA Institute for Professional Development

Musings on the CMRP Designation

BY SHANE SKILLEN, FOUNDER & CEO, HOTSPEX MARKETING RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION I’d like you to ask yourself an important question: Are you a professional?

Because if you believe you are, you should designate yourself as such and there is an easy way to do that. It’s by getting your Certified Marketing Research Professional Designation.

I decided to get mine even though many people would ask: “Shane, you’re the CEO of a research company. It’s quite big and doing very well, why would you need your CMRP?” I thought it was important because it demonstrates my commitment to standards and best practices. Furthermore, I actually learned some new things from the preparation courses and study guides. I now proudly designate myself as a CMRP and I find some of our clients are starting to care about it. So you might be thinking what’s in it for you?

Well, like I said, you’d designate yourself as a professional with a commitment to good standards and practices, but most importantly it’s going to help your career out in ways that you might not see at the outset. I can tell you that when resumes come into our HR department, the ones that have the CMRP designation do stand out. CMRPs demonstrate a commitment to the ideals and standards of the industry and they are typically very strong researchers.

So if you’re thinking about doing it, I strongly encourage you to take action. It’s not going to take you that long or cost you that much and the benefits will last a lifetime.

Check out the video on YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/MRIAipd

CMRP PATHS/COSTS/TIMELINES Exam Challenge

Online Learning

In-Class Learning (Early-Bird)

In-Class Learning (Standard)

8 years

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Additional Expedited Paths Available for Georgian College RAP Graduates, Algonquin College MBIR Graduates and University of Georgia MRII Graduates 30

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For More Details visit www.mria-arim.ca/EDUCATION/default.asp

P ROFE SS IONAL DE VELO PMEN T

The Dean Bids Farewell …

MRIA Institute for Professional Development

Musing on the Duality of Time and the Bittersweetness of Goodbyes The dean of MRIA’s Institute for Professional Development from 2010 to 2012 says her farewells, reflects on her years at the helm of the institute, and welcomes the incoming dean.

Jeannette Bellerose, PhD, CMRP Ah, the strange duality of time! You know the feeling: You feverishly await a significant date while, during the same intermin-able time, you are unable to find enough hours in your days to accomplish all your tasks. My two-year term as dean of MRIA’s Institute for Professional Development comes to an end at the next AGM, in March 2012. Looking back at the depth of the relationships I’ve established and at all we have accomplished together, it seems more like ten years. Looking forward at what still needs to be accomplished, I’m left wondering where all the time went.

Of all the institute’s activities I’ve overseen during my term, the better-known ones are likely (hopefully!) the online core courses and the implementation of the Maintenance of Certification Program (MCP). By now, many of you have taken one or more of our online courses. Some of the most recent writers of the Comprehensive Marketing Research Exam (CMRE), on February 3, might in fact have been able to do so precisely because of the fact that core courses are available online and on demand. CMRPs can now easily keep track of their learning, their sharing of knowledge, and their honing of leadership skills – on the excellent MCP point tracking tool (www.

CMRP-MCP-Tracker.com) developed by the MRIA staff.

What might be less familiar to members is all the work accomplished behind the scenes. In preparing the CMRE for the June 2010 sitting, it became evident to me that some information and processes required updating. The core curriculum was still largely based on MRIA’s School of Marketing Research syllabus, conceived in 2001. It was thus revised and, among other updates, now includes marketing intelligence as one of the key areas. There is now a better alignment between the core courses and the core competency requirements.

The study guide provided to CMRE candidates was thoroughly revised, to reflect the updated core competency require-

ments, and augmented with more practical examples. More systematic processes for tracking CMRE writers’ feedback on the exam and students’ evaluation of our courses were put into place. The CMRE content was revised to ensure a good balance in assessing key marketing research areas and consistency across exam versions. In addition, the CMRE marking process was totally revamped; it now includes clearer guidelines, marking keys, and a process for calibration across markers.

There is still a lot to be accomplished. Fortunately, the new dean, Stephen Popiel, PhD, CMRP, is both extremely capable and strongly supported by Fergus Gamble, CMRP, the portfolio chair; Fania Borok, the manager; Daniel Borok, the coordinator; and the six members of the Certification Advisory Committee.

What lies ahead for Stephen will be a mix of consolidation and innovation, as was the case for me. He is very well equipped to take on these challenges.

I’ll admit that I’m looking forward to being able to attend to my day job during daylight hours again. However, the strong relationships I’ve established with other portfolio leaders, the Advisory Committee members, and the MRIA office staff – as well as the knowledge acquired in the process of this volunteer work – will last forever.

To all members contemplating putting in some volunteer time with MRIA, I say: “Get involved and give it your 110 per cent – it’s worth it.”

Jeannette Bellerose, PhD, CMRP, served as dean of MRIA’s Institute for Professional Development from 2010 to 2012. She is a co-founder of Arcturus Solutions, a research consulting firm based in Ottawa.

With over twenty years of experience in applied social and marketing research, Jeannette has worked on both the client and research supplier sides. She can be reached at deanmriainstitute@mria-arim.ca vue March 2012

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COLUMNISTS

CSRC

QUALITAS

Engaging Your Suppliers, Getting to Better Insights Kristian Gravelle and Kira Murdock

The Reflexive Parallel between Entrepreneurs and Autoethnographers

Kraft Canada

Lindsay Porter Ipsos Reid – Qualitative

“No man is an island,” wrote John Donne in the seventeenth century. Apparently, it is still true for 21st century marketing researchers. The Client-Side Researcher Council (CSRC) believes that fostering strong relationships with our suppliers leads to better insights.

A recent CSRC survey of 375 client-side MRIA members was fielded to gain insight into how we engage with suppliers.

With only 29 complete surveys and 9 partial completes, we must treat the results as qualitative. However, we have been able to mine the verbatims to get a taste of the range of opinions.

First, all respondents had used an external research supplier in the year preceding the survey. Some used suppliers simply to provide access to additional resources (data sets and research teams), while others tapped into suppliers’ strategic thinking and innovative approaches to problem-solving.

Second, the importance of insights was frequently mentioned.

Some respondents indicated that they were satisfied with the insights from their suppliers, while others asked for more insights.

In either case, tailoring the message to the audience was essential.

Third, researchers indicated that partnership is important.

Some respondents requested that suppliers act more like business partners; however, others acknowledged that suppliers need better context from clients in order to deliver better insights.

CSRC is planning a number of upcoming activities to dig into these areas and highlight the best practices fostering strong business partner relationships with suppliers.

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Entrepreneurs and autoethnographers have a number of similarities in the ways they think about and understand their world. Both can illustrate the benefits of reflexivity.

Entrepreneurs are interested in how they themselves think and behave within a broader context. They then analyse the data they have garnered from observations and actions, and translate them into insights to further their performance and development.

Similarly, autoethnographers engage in the process of selflearning, researching and self-understanding. They seek to describe and systematically analyse their experience in order to understand the personal within their cultural experience.

Entrepreneurs engage in “action learning sessions,” in which they demonstrate their thoughts, attitudes, opinions and behaviours, among other things. Learning by experience and discovery, they allow themselves to absorb what they are doing, and they discuss their behaviour with others. This is the favoured method in the creation of knowledge in an entrepreneurial framework, as well as in the autoethnographic approach. Again, much like autoethnographers, entrepreneurs engage in a process of critical self-reflection to further understand their thoughts, attitudes and behaviours.

Autoethnographers have learned to guide themselves in a reflexive approach so that they can have a truer understanding of themselves and of their world. Doing so helps them to develop a higher level of awareness of their own thoughts,

COLUMN I STS

feelings, attitudes and behaviours so as to further understand why they think the way they think or do the things they do, uncovering deeply rooted insights.

In a similar fashion, entrepreneurs utilize that reflexive framework and guide themselves down a path to gain a depth of self-knowledge and clarity. The purpose is to uncover those fundamental insights that can then successfully guide their future actions and improve, not only their personal performance, but also their personal development.

BRAVE NEW WORLD A Future-Focused Lens on Consumer Behaviour Corrine Sandler Fresh Intelligence Research Corp.

Cutting-edge trends build effective marketing campaigns and provide forward-thinking, proactive decision-making.

Fresh Intelligence has formed a strategic alliance with the Future Foundation, a global consumer research company, in order to utilize the company’s nVision offering. An online trend tool, nVision is designed to accurately track existing and emerging trends, across 23 markets, by conducting a multiwave quantitative study coupled with a qualitative component.

An example of an existing and quantified trend tracked over time is found in consumer volatility and disloyalty: in the era of the empowered and informed consumer, no brand will have anything other than a temporary lease on the consumer’s interest and affection. In particular, the rise of mobile and the Internet – with all of their recommendation and price comparison apps – has made today’s consumer better resourced. The Internet also introduces a certain amount of distance between providers and their customers; today, brand patronage can so often be ended with the click of a button alone.

As more shoppers become educated in the potential value and ease of switching loyalty, and as the middle classes swell across the globe (encouraging many to sample new and competing offers and innovations), retaining loyalty remains a key challenge for companies, meaning that brands must strain even harder to control churn.

A trend has the potential of becoming a long-term influence on the future of a market. However, it can be very difficult to tell the difference between a fad and a trend before it reaches the buying public – a costly misapprehension, and one that explains why it is imperative to monitor trend predictions and marketing analysis all year long.

As trends cannot be considered isolated occurrences, the nVision system can further track which trends within our universe of sixty-plus global trends are most closely related to others – bringing us one step closer to understanding the ever evolving consumer mindset.

Volatility and disloyalty can be measured if you believe they constitute a trend that threatens your brand, product, market or company. It’s one thing to know about the trend, and another thing to do something about it. vue March 2012

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NOTICE OF ANNUAL AVIS D’ASSEMBLÉE GENERAL MEETING GÉNERALE ANNUELLE Toronto, Ontario, January 19, 2012 Notice is hereby given that the Annual General meeting of Members of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA) will be held as follows: Monday, March 26, 2012 6:00 p.m. (local time) Intercontinental Toronto Yorkville Hotel 220 Bloor St. West, Toronto, Ontario All members-in-good-standing of the Association are encouraged to attend the AGM. An Agenda for the meeting will be communicated to members in the near future.

Visit www.mria-arim.ca for more information.

By order of the Board of Directors Rick Hobbs, CMRP Secretary-Treasurer

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vue March 2012

Toronto, Ontario, le 19 janvier 2012 Avis est par la présente donné que l’Assemblée générale annuelle des membres de l’Association de la recherche et de l’intelligence marketing (ARIM) se tiendra comme suit : Le lundi 26 mars 2012 18 h 00 (heure locale) Intercontinental Toronto Yorkville Hotel 220, rue Bloor ouest, Toronto, Ontario On encourage tous les membres en règle de l’Association d’assister à l’AGA. L’ordre du jour de la réunion sera communiqué aux membres sous peu.

Visitez www.mria-arim.ca pour obtenir de plus amples renseignements.

Par ordre du conseil d’administration Rick Hobbs, PARM Secrétaire-trésorier