Articles

3.6.2010 Web-Tracking Research Emerging

As social-media continues to grow, marketers place more emphasis on listening to consumers. Replacing "asking" with "listening" has been a hot topic at market-research conferences for the past couple of years. But now some researchers are finally doing more than talking - they're taking steps toward replacing surveys with web tracking.

Already online-buzz tracking has gone from exotic specialty to growth industry, with entrants popping up like mushrooms after a heavy rain on the promise that marketers can monitor brand health by observing and analyzing people's spontaneous comments in social media and other web venues. At forums such as the recent Advertising Research Foundation Re:Think conference in New York, market researchers talk increasingly favorably about such "listening" approaches.

Some are suggesting "listening" can be a dominant form of research in the future. In an ARF presentation, Jonah Berger, a Wharton marketing professor, noted the reason 90% of word-of-mouth about brands comes offline rather than online is because offline conversation tends to be more casual, while people usually have a higher threshold of being interested and emotionally involved in a subject to make a comment online. "What we see with online content is more emotion," Mr. Berger said. "Content that makes us feel emotions makes us want to go out and talk to other people."

B.L. 3.6.2010

Source: Doug Portland/ARF