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Current Research Priorities

Download 2008-2010 Research Priorities booklet

Request print version of 2008-2010 Research Priorities booklet

The 2008-2010 Research Priorities are the result of a three-step process of focused discussions at Trustees Meetings and MSI conferences, an open-ended survey of MSI member company trustees, and an online quantitative survey sent to all MSI member company trustees.

The Top Priorities

After consulting with the trustees, a master list of 16 different potential priorities was established. The challenge was to consider those topics that are not only currently “on the plates” of the trustees but to also think about what areas are likely to emerge as key factors impinging upon their businesses over the next few years. As a result of these deliberations, the following 6 topics emerged as the key areas for MSI investment over the 2008-2010 period:

1. Accountability and ROI of Marketing Expenditures
2. Understanding Consumer/Customer Behavior
3. New Approaches to Generating Customer Insights
4. Innovation
5. Marketing Strategy
6. New Media

Accountability and ROI of Marketing Expenditures

Accountability and ROI of marketing expenditures continues to be a key area of concern as it was one of the three capital topics from the 2006-2008 “Connected Customer” priorities. Given that economic conditions are likely to be tight over the next two years, companies are more interested than ever in understanding and measuring the returns being obtained from marketing investments. This includes the returns to advertising, both long and short term, as well as money being spent in the digital communications environment. Accountability in B-to-B industries needs to receive special emphasis as does assessing the investments being made in operating marketing organizations within the firm.

Understanding Consumer/Customer Behavior

Understanding customers is one of the basic activities of marketing managers and continues to receive high priority. In a dynamic marketplace, firms need to continually find ways to understand the decision-making processes of both consumers and individuals and groups within organizations. In today’s digital environment, understanding peer-to-peer communications and how they affect decisions is particularly important. Understanding channel members’ behavior was also highlighted by trustees as a crucial input to marketing decision making.

New Approaches to Generating Customer Insights

Hand-in-hand with understanding consumer/customer behavior is the need to develop new tools to generate insights from these buyers. MSI has traditionally been at the forefront of introducing new marketing research methods to its member companies. Areas of high interest include ethnographic methods, virtual/simulated shopping approaches, and new ways to track customer behavior and contact points with marketing communications. Measuring group preferences is an area that needs more attention as there are currently few methods to understand how members of a buying center value attributes of products.

Innovation

The development of novel approaches to new product development has been a capital priority at MSI for a number of years. Innovation can, of course, be defined broadly to include not only new products but design, organizational issues, and other areas. Given the significant growth in the service economy, service innovation requires attention. Many companies today have developed approaches to integrate their customers into the innovation process, often called co-creation. Continued interest is high in new approaches to testing product concepts with an eye toward forecasting their demand.

Marketing Strategy

Many survey respondents placed a high weight on continuing to develop new knowledge on the development of innovative marketing strategies. Marketing managers continue to seek new approaches to segment markets and position brands. What are some new ways to create customer value in products and services? With an increasing number of metrics available to measure the impact of marketing efforts such as online communications, new business models accounting for these market responses are under consideration. Incorporating demographic shifts and concomitant changes in tastes and habits are critical to new marketing strategies.

New Media

Discussion groups held with MSI trustees and chief marketing officers indicate that all marketing managers need to understand how to use the new media, including social networking sites, blogs, mobile, and others. Key research areas include how much to spend and how to evaluate the effectiveness of the resulting spending. An interesting question is: What is the role of the “old” media such as TV, print, and radio in the new communications environment? Finally, the task of integrating a common value proposition across all media needs to be better understood.