As we officially step into our roles as Executive Directors at MSI, we wanted to reach out to provide some reflections on our current marketing research environment and MSI’s role in it.

The current business environment is in a state of rapid change, which can be both exciting and challenging. Technology is changing by the day, evolving the market environment in which companies need to operate.  This can create a playground for academics to identify new problems and customer behaviors to research.  But the speed of change is also creating challenges.  Companies struggle to keep up with the new tools available to them and what these tools mean for their customers and businesses.  Academics are also challenged to keep pace despite the time needed for data collection, analysis and validation, and of course, the publication process.  This is where we hope MSI can support the community.

MSI serves a unique role in academia and industry as a think tank that brings together academic researchers and industry practitioners by advancing rigorous research and data-driven thinking at member companies and by influencing academic research toward critical problems facing marketers in industry.  MSI accomplishes this by identifying scholars who are pursuing research programs that would appeal to industry partners, influencing academic research to address the critical questions facing practitioners, and connecting academics with industry partners when appropriate.  The challenge is to facilitate these partnerships and research goals in the rapidly changing environment that we are living in today.

In the coming weeks, please look out for more communication on new MSI initiatives to help address these issues, advance relevant academic research, and support our industry partners.  If you don’t already, please follow MSI’s various social media accounts, register on the website for news, and tell your friends who may not be as involved with MSI.

We are excited to work with the MSI community to continue building MSI as the premier think tank in marketing, and we look forward to working with all of you.

PK Kannan and Wendy Moe

MSI website: https://www.msi.org/

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