Last week, on the 2nd and 3rd of November Buenos Aires was host to the 3rd SAIMO (Argentine Society of Marketing and Opinion Researchers) Congress, with the title “Research for Decision Making“.

This time, given that Buenos Aires is our home city, we decided that Livra Panels should participate a bit more actively. We were determined to make the congress a success, so we submitted a paper to present (it got selected!) and we became one of the main sponsors of the event. In that order

Our (awesome looking) stand, was a great way to interact with the crowd and get approached by the Argentine research community. It was great to be able to explain face to face what the benefits of online research are and how we can help them. The adoption of online research in Argentina (and most of the region) is still very low, in some cases below 1% of data collection is done online.

The Livra Team at the SAIMO stand

Our presentation, given by Diego Meller talked about The Impact of Web 2.0 on Market Research.  It focused mainly on explaining the transformation between the original web experience and what has become known as Web 2.0 and how this phenomenon affects the way we communicate and express our opinions every day.

The presentation was also supported by original data gathered in a study Livra did about social networks and web 2.0 in Latin America, 3,000 people in 6 different countries of the region were interviewed. We’ll publish some of these results later this week.

Thanks to everybody that came to visit to the stand and to SAIMO for organising and giving us the chance to present.

Our team will be attending the ESOMAR Online Research Conference in Chicago next week so if you are around please look us up! We’ll be happy to tell you more about what Livra can do for you. We can also organise private meetings during our stay in Chicago. If you are interested, just contact us.

Looking forward to see you there!

In case you missed it…

Last week, Livra Panels was one of the main sponsors in Mexico’s most important market research congress. AMAI’s “Reinventando AMAI” congress, focussed on new market research technologies and innovation.

Judging by the topics presented, the sponsors and the conversations we had with clients and other companies we can see an encouraging improvement in the adoption of online data collection in Mexico.

We want to thank everybody who visited our (great looking!) stand and congratulate Ernesto Roa, from Pearson for winning our iPod Touch sweepstake!

Laura Guerrero from Livra

Limited Edition Livra Mousepads!

Fiorella and Laura from Livra choosing the lucky iPod touch winner!

The user generated content explosion

It has been already a few years since the social networking phenomenon started developing on the Internet, even before that (through the rise of blogs) we saw very early signs of a trend that is now clear and unstoppable. Given the right tools, people will express themselves. They post their thoughts on blogs (like this one), their photos on Flickr, their videos on YouTube and pretty much everything else on Facebook (although Facebook is mostly a closed network, which means your content is only seen by your friends).

The most interesting aspect of all these networks is that most of them started as a “sandbox” or a set of tools that would allow their users to explore different ways of broadcasting content. The very nature of user generated content is that users make of it whatever they want.

Your life in 140 characters

When Twitter appeared it was difficult to understand why we would need yet another tool to broadcast our content, but its signature twist was what made all the difference: On Twitter you can say all you want as long as you limit your updates to 140 characters at a time. Originally, the idea was to provide a medium through which we could keep up with what friends where doing but it soon developed into much more. Here is a short video that Twitter uses to describe its service.

The other key to Twitter’s success was the fact that anyone could (and still can) develop a Twitter client (a piece of software from which you could read other people’s updates or update your own status) which means that now there are dozens of different ways to keep up with it (through the Twitter site, desktop apps like Tweetie, Twitterrific or TweetDeck, through iPhone apps, Blackberry apps or even through SMS and instant messaging).

Suddenly, a bunch of people started not only sharing their mundane activities but also links to interesting articles or blog posts as well as having “public” conversations about different topics (in Twitter one can post a public reply to another user).

The revolution will not be televised, but twittered?

Fast forward to today and Twitter has become a massive communication and information tool for millions of people, some studies estimate 12 million people will be Twitter users by the end of 2009. Famous technology personalities (like Kevin Rose, Tim O’Reilly, Leo Laporte, Pete Cashmore), celebrities (like Britney Spears, Oprah, Jimmy Fallon) and politicians (like Barack Obama, Al Gore, John McCain) have helped Twitter achieve its current status by making it one of the main ways that their followers or fans can keep up with them.

All major news outlets (from The New York Times to Al Jazeera) now use Twitter as an additional channel to broadcast their news.

Moreover, Twitter’s importance has been highlighted recently as it was an instrumental tool to get the word out in recent conflicts such as the Iranian elections where the press was heavily censored.

Twitter and Brands

Predictably, the corporate world discovered Twitter. The same way celebrities can use it to keep up with their fans, brands can use it to keep a direct line of communications with their customers.

Companies like Southwest Airlines, Zappos and Dell have managed to build a robust base of followers but Twitter’s most important use for brands and companies should be the ability to listen what people are saying about them and their competitors. Simply by searching on Twitter’s search you can find out if someone has been praising or cursing your brand, and even directly reply to your customer. CRM software suites like SalesForce.com are already incorporating “Twitter modules” in order to do just that.

Twitter and Research

The impact that Twitter is having on the research industry is limited but (as with any social network) the potential is very interesting.

Millions of people are voicing out their thoughts, opinions, rants and ideas publicly with Twitter without asking anything in exchange. Moreover, people are asking, discussing, arguing and collaborating on Twitter on thousands of different topics.

The challenge for the research industry will be about how to cleverly leverage all this information and blend it with other sources to produce valuable insights for our clients without biasing or arising suspicion or lack of confidence in the users.

For the first time in history anybody with access to a computer and an Internet connection can broadcast their thoughts to the world for an insignificant marginal cost, whether we ask about for it or not.

It’s up to us to use this wisely.

You can follow Livra Panels on Twitter here.

According to a report released by Cisco, broadband connections in Argentina have increased an amazing 35% during 2008.

The finding comes from the 7th edition of the Cisco Broadband Barometer, which is issued every 6 months by Cisco and IDC.

Mobile Broadband also registered strong growth of 50.4 % during the second half of 2008, demonstrating that this type of access is becoming popular in Argentina.

The penetration of broadband connections per 100 inhabitants reached 8.8 percent in December 2008, compared to 7.8 percent from the previous Barometer edition; positioning the country in the first place of Latin America in broadband penetration with Chile. Uruguay is in the second place with 7.6 percent. Even though the growth was significant, compare to Korea with 31 percent there is a big gap between developed countries and emerging ones.

The report revealed a few other interesting findings:

• • In the analysis by market segment, home connectivity representing 94 percent of the fixed connection total, while businesses account for 6 percent.
• • The distribution of mobile connections per market segment reveals the dominance of “residential” over “business” connectivity. The former accounts for 76 percent of connections, while the latter accounts for 24 percent.
• • As for the distribution per region, the province of Buenos Aires represents 55 percent of all mobile connections and 45 percent in the rest of the country.
• • The distribution of fixed connections per download speed grew in the ‘1 Mbps to 1.99 Mbps’ category. It went from 45 percent of the total connections in June 2008 to 47.3 percent in December of the same year, due to new offers by the service providers.

This is the distribution of people who access the Internet via Broadband (this includes home and work) from the Livra’s Panel:

People that access the Internet via Broadband in Livra’s Online Panel

Source: Livra Panels Incidence File May 09

More info  on the Cisco report here:

Broadband Connections Increase 35 Percent in Argentina During 2008 [PR Domain]

The research industry has a very good answer to those that question its validity in these times of crisis. When times are bad you need to make better, faster and more informed decisions. That is where market research comes in, especially online research which allows you to get faster results.

Nevertheless, big consumer marketers are seeking to shave 10 to 20% off of research budgets and the industry is being put to test.

John Quelch from HarvardBusiness.org says:

“In flush times, a rising tide of consumption can compensate for less than optimal branding, positioning, pricing, or segmentation. That is certainly not the case now. At the same time that marketers must pare down research expenditures, they face added pressure to secure high-quality data and insights”

He gives seven steps or recommendations to minimize the impact of the crisis, here is a summary of these:

• Stay focused. Savvy marketers focus their research on the products, brands, and markets that are key to their marketing strategy. In a recession, it’s essential to get a clear read on existing core customers, including those who are most loyal to the brand and those who are most profitable, rather than fritter away research resources on potential or peripheral consumers.
• Enlist trusted partners. Marketers and research suppliers who trust each other and have established long-term relationships can jointly plan how to extract more insights and make better decisions based on fewer expenditures. For example, combining data sets may reveal new leading indicators of changes in consumer behaviour. Tracking studies may have an edge over one-off projects.
• Value experience and judgement. Research buyers should tap the knowledge and intuitions of managers and researchers who’ve lived through previous recessions. In setting prices, for example, such insight can help calibrate the optimal level of price promotion offers. Experience also reveals proxies: in tough times, some marketers use research results from Sweden as a proxy for Scandinavia, rather than conducting the same research in all Scandinavian countries.
• Seize opportunities overseas. Some large multinational marketers, such as Unilever, are shifting research expenditures away from Western Europe and toward emerging markets in Asia and Latin America. Relative to the developed economies, the costs of research in emerging economies are less and the payoff from incremental insight can often be greater. Brand preferences and consumption levels in emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil tend to be more fluid. Consumer research is therefore critical to aid marketers trying to cement brand preferences early on as these economies develop.
• Go online with a dash of skepticism. Online research is cheap, fast, and the wave of the future. There are plenty of tools that allow non-expert users to create custom surveys in minutes. As an alternative to offline focus groups, custom online panels of consumers can be formed for qualitative research on new product ideas or new ads. Taking the do-it-yourself approach rather than outsourcing to a market research firm is attractive in a cost-cutting era, but you risk getting no more than what you pay for. The opinions of convenience sample of an enthusiastic online brand community may not represent all users.

• Don’t cut across the board. Just as important as knowing where to cut research is knowing where not to cut. When marketers are creating fewer new ads and introducing fewer new products, it is doubly important to use rigorous pretesting to select the strongest alternatives. In categories where the bases for consumers’ value judgements are changing, modest expenditures on copy research can prevent blowing much more money on ineffective messaging. Adding a few questions to standard tracking studies is a low-cost way to shed light on changes in customer attitudes and purchase behaviour. For key products, running conjoint studies to check on shifts in price elasticities of demand and price-attribute tradeoffs can usefully improve the profitability of pricing decisions at a time when cash is king.

• Keep an eye on the new consumer. No one has a perfect record of predicting the future, and the recession is making it harder for consumers to envision or articulate their needs. Even so, and despite budget pressures, smart marketers devote a portion of their market research to getting a handle on future changes in consumer behavior. Are consumers of your brand going to revert to previous consumption patterns when the recession ends? Or are they developing coping mechanisms that will endure, especially if the recession is lengthy? What new products and services will consumers be open to embracing? If, as in the financial services category, consumer confidence and trust in brands have been seriously eroded, how long and what steps will it take to regain them? Eventually, the recession will end, and future success depends on being well-positioned, based on sound research, when it does.

This post was based on the following article by John Quelch:

How to Use Market Research in a Recession [HarvardBusiness.Org]

According to a recently released ComScore report, Mexico has the second-largest Internet population in Latin America, with 12.7 million home and work users and total of 24.7 million users in the extended universe.

The report unveils a few previously unknown details:

• Mexican Internet users skew dramatically young: 7`% of Mexico’s online population is under the age of 34, compared to 52% of the Worldwide Population.
• As in many developing Internet markets, Mexico shows a strong focus on Communications: Instant Messengers, e-mail, Discussion/Chat, Social Networking and e-Cards.
• Young Internet users in Mexico spend far more time online than other young Internet users worldwide – the average 15-24 year old internet user in Mexico spends 26.6 hours online per month, five more hours than the average 15-24 year old. Mexican 15-24 Year olds (48% of Internet population) visit a larger number and a wider variety of websites and currently drive the poularity of Entertainment , Multimedia, Social Networking, and Photo Sites in Mexico.
• Mexican Internet users in older age groups spend less time online who compared with their contemporaries elsewhere, particularly in the 45-54 age group. They spend less time overall and visit fewer sites than their younger cohorts. Older users also make up more than their “fair share” of visiting to News, Business/Finance, Banking, Weather, and Travel sites.
• Visiting to Education sites is above average, reflecting the young profile of the market. Online newspaper visiting is above average
• While Social Networking and Multimedia are very popular in Mexico, penetration rates hover around the global average.
• Fragmented Social Network Landscape: The full category reaches 64.6% of the Mexican audience. There is not a clear leader: lots of functional sharing  overall with photo sharing sites, which are actually the Social Networking sites with the highest usage (Metroflog, Fotolog). In addition, Facebook’s growth in Mexico outpaces its global growth by almost 2x. At the current growth rates, Facebook will be the #1 Social Network in Mexico as early as June 2009.
• Older Internet users are more likely to visit News/Information sites, and as the Mexican internet market matures and overall web adoption increases, that segment of the market will drive growth in News and Information categories.
• Sports site visiting is below average in Mexico:23.7% of the online population visited a Sports site, compared to the worldwide average of 31.9% sports visiting.
• Mexico makes up 15% of the Latin American population but only 8% of online dollars. E-commerce buyers penetration in Mexico is 2%, compared to 6% in Brazil and 12% in Puerto Rico.

Livra’s online panel in Mexico is one of our most active and consists of over 235,000 people. 36% of our panel is in the 25-34 age group.

The data for this post was quoted from:

New Mexico Internet Statistics [Portada Online]

Since the “Swine Flu” outbreak started in Mexico, the world has been paying close attention to how the crisis develops. Last week we conducted a survey among 5,700 people from 8 different countries in Latin America (Argentina, Brasil, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela)  find out how the swine flu outbreak was impacting people’s lives, the level of information available, and people´s understanding of the disease.

Some of the results were to be expected, but most were surprising.

For example, despite the higher infection rate in Mexico, only 21% of Mexicans felt threatened by the disease in comparison to 35% of Colombians, 30% of Peruvians and 23% of Argentines. This may be related to how the local press is covering the story or to the fact that Mexicans are actually seeing how the threat is not that significant.

In Mexico, 23% of the people we asked knew someone who suspected they had swine flu while 7% of those interviewed knew someone who had been diagnosed with the disease.

One of the most controversial issues surrounding the outbreak is that of limiting travel from and to Mexico. The issue is particularly touchy since it has sparked passionate discussions that border with racism and discrimination towards Mexicans. The results show that the majority of people in the region feel that travel limitations are required:

These are a few other interesting results:

• 87% of those surveyed said that if diagnosed they would go straight to a hospital or doctor whereas the CDC and other health organizations recommend people to stay home and get in touch with the respective health service to avoid contact with other people.
• Only 50% of the people interviewed in Mexico are taking precautions against the disease. In fact more people in some of the other countries seem to be taking precautions than in Mexico:

• 72% of people in Mexico said they are using masks and the majority of people in the other countries said to be washing hands more often and avoiding crowded spaces.
• Over 64% of people in Mexico think that the outbreak will affect their economy.

Hope you find these useful.

Have any comments? Participate!

According to this eMarketer article (which quotes the latest comScore measurment) the Internet surpassed the 1 billion user mark. In fact, eMarketer puts the number at 1.172 billion when a broader sense of the definition is applied (counting access from Internet cafes, mobile phones or PDAs).

“Surpassing 1 billion global users is a significant landmark in the history of the Internet,” said Magid Abraham, comScore CEO, in a statement. “It is a monument to the increasingly unified global community in which we live and reminds us that the world truly is becoming more flat.”

To put this into perspective, the world’s population is currently estimated at around  6.7 billion, which means that over 17% of the world’s population are Internet users.

Here is a break down by region:

From a glass half empty point of view, the majority of people on earth still have no access to the Internet.

From a glass half full point of view, it is a sensational amount people. There is now a real critical mass to experiment on the Internet and it is difficult to imagine what impact this will have for future generations. To think that so many people can now interact with each other in so many ways while being so far away from each other is truly game changing. The fact that so many people use the Internet will also accelerate the speed at which the “non users” jump in.

From an online research point of view, this is further proof of how mainstream the Internet has become and how important it is to continue to develop innovative ways to interview people online. As the Internet population increases, users change their habits. At the moment social networking seems to be what people are doing the most and this trend seems to be here to stay.

Also interesting to see how Latin America seems to be instrumental to the growth…

Latin America, while comprising just 7.4 percent of the global Internet audience, is the region to watch, noted Jamie Gavin, a ComScore senior analyst.

“The U.S. is slowing down in its growth and momentum, but Latin America, with social networking and the mobile Internet, is expected to gain momentum over the next few years,” Gavin said.

Brazil for example, ranks 9th in the top 10 countries in terms of Internet usage:

At Livra, we are can’t wait for the next billion people to start using the Internet

Sources:

A Billion Internet Users, and Counting [eMarketer]
Internet Users Worldwide surpass 1 billion [Cnet]