Industry Speakers - Day 2

Over almost two decades, Imogen Randell has developed a deep understanding of consumer behaviour.
Her work as a social researcher is at the macro level – how social values are changing and what this means to business. This focus is complemented by her position as Managing Director of market and social research agency, Quantum Market Research. Quantum specialises in Australian culture and insight running its own cultural change monitor, AustraliaSCAN.
Joining Quantum in 1997, Imogen has diverse experience working across a broad range of research issues, from communication development to understanding how to drive behavior change on behalf of Government and corporate organisations.
Imogen is kept busy with her two daughters and her love of skiing, running and wine.

Presentation
'The reality gap'

The last 20 years has seen some major changes in our society - from social media, touch screen phones, our waistlines, to the growing acceptability of gay marriage - and yet, at our core, have we really changed that much?

AustraliaSCAN has been measuring social values in Australia since 1992 - the year Whitney Houston had her major breakthrough hit, Paul Keating called 'the recession we had to have' and home loan interest rates hit 18%. Many events have occurred in the past 20 years but which ones stand out and have shaped us and which ones have simply past us by in a blur? We are living longer than ever before but are we any happier with our lives? And how hard is it to achieve the basic things that we desire in life? While the world around us has shifted, how are we coping and what is the reality of our lives? What is the gap between our desires and our ability to achieve them?

JOHN YOUNG
Senior Qualitative and Indigenous Research Specialist
Colmar Brunton

John has been involved in the market research industry for over 20 years having worked at Colmar Brunton and Infometrics in Wellington (NZ) and Colmar Brunton Social Research in Australia for the last 11 years. As well as his more mainstream qualitative work, John has been heavily involved in one on one in-depth and group interviews with minority and marginalised groups such as Indigenous community members, mature age job seekers, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, people managing a disability, the unemployed and the young and homeless. Across these projects John has completed well over 3000 depth interviews and 600 focus groups/workshops.
John has been the lead researcher in all of CBSR’s Indigenous research over the past six years and has a wealth of experience in conducting research with Indigenous audiences having conducted social research projects for both Federal and State Government agencies in Alice Springs, Darwin, Katherine, Tennant Creek, Yuendumu, Ltyentye Apurte (Santa Teresa), Bagot, Belyuen, Wadeye, Galiwinku, Maningrida, Ngukurr (NT); Brisbane, Cairns, Townsville, Mt Isa, Charters Towers, Cardwell, Aurukun, Coen, Mossman Gorge, Innisfail, Doomadgee, Dajarra, Badu, Mabuaig, Saibai, Sue, Masig, Erub, Bamaga, Umagico, Seisia (Qld); Perth, Broome, Derby, Mowanjum, Beagle Bay/One Arm Point (WA), Sydney, Dubbo, Wagga Wagga, Wellington, Armidale, Kempsey, Taree, Nowra, Batemans Bay (NSW); and Melbourne, Mildura, Robinvale, Shepparton, Latrobe Valley and Bairnsdale (VIC).
John graduated from Victoria University in 1997 with a first class honours degree in economics and history. John has a background in adult education having worked as an economics lecturer for three years at the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand and Victoria University.

Robert Corrie works for Colmar Brunton research in the capacity of Project Manager. Robert has an Associate degree in Community Development and Management and has extensive work experience in Indigenous communities across Cape York Peninsula. Robert’s most recent engagement was with the Department of Human Services, Centrelink delivering the welfare reform component of Income Management to the Welfare Reform sites. Robert is a member of the Yupungathi and Wuthati tribes which occupy partly both west and east coasts of Cape York Peninsula.
Robert’s experience has been mostly with a focus on Cape York issues with an understanding that there is also a national body of Indigenous peoples that fall in the bracket of low socio-economic disadvantage around Australia.
Robert has worked extensively on the Cape York Welfare Reform Social Change and AFL Remote Regional Development Program evaluations for FaHCSIA. During both projects Rob helped train and coach local research assistants. Robert is also the project manager for the delivery of the data capture systems for the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (Footprints In Time).

Speaker Biography

With a background in psychology, social research and evaluation, David is an Account Director at Colmar Brunton.
David has over 12 years’ experience in the design and implementation of social research and evaluation for a broad range of public and private sector clients. He has managed research and evaluation projects with a particular focus on the assessment of the appropriateness, effectiveness and efficiency of Government programs; measurement of community attitudes; evaluation of social policy; and the development of quality measurement systems. David’s particular interest lies in research and evaluation with potentially sensitive populations including Indigenous Australians, people affected by natural disasters, prisoners, people with chronic and terminal illness, and people from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse backgrounds. David’s area of expertise is the blending of a range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies to form tailor-made project designs that provide meaningful and actionable recommendations for clients. David has a BA (Hons), MPH (in progress). MMSRS, MAES.

Presentation
'Participatory Research In Action'

Historically Indigenous people have had little say in what research they are subjected to, how it is conducted and what it will be used for. Recently CBSR conducted a program evaluation in Wadeye which sought to overcome these issues by using an innovative participatory action research approach that places the community at the centre of the research process.
The approach involved: seeking the community’s consent for the research to take place via gaining written permission from clan leaders; involving the community in the design of the evaluation methodology and data collection instruments; employing and training local researchers to collect the data; sharing and asking for feedback on the initial results of the research; and presenting back the full results of the research upon the completion of the project.
The success of this methodology was born out by the very positive response from the community - people were happy to participate and enjoyed having their say about a program they believe is making a difference. This approach is helping to build the capacity of local Indigenous researchers as well as helping Indigenous communities to better understand how they can use research to meet their own needs, priorities and aspirations.

Sam Everingham has worked as a professional researcher since 1993. He draws on an academic background in medicine, psychology, public health and research methods. Over his career Sam has managed over 400 qualitative and quantitative projects for a large range of Australian public, private and not-for-profit sector organisations.
Over the last ten years, he has developed a reputation for cutting edge healthcare research, largely through his own consultancy - Stethoscope. He specialises in senior level consultation which requires sensitivity and nous, delivering insights which have shaped service delivery, social policy and access to novel medical therapies and diagnostic techniques.
In 2004 Sam initiated Australia’s first consumer healthcare syndicated studies – one detailing consumer attitudes to generic medicines; the other investigating the use of complementary medicines in six therapeutic areas. His work in drawing out insights in regard to complex therapeutic areas and the growing power of the patient in therapeutic choices is second to none.
Recent clients have included Bayer, Cibavision, Headspace, SANE, the Commonwealth Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Abbott, Novartis and Shire Pharmaceuticals.
Through his own experience creating a family through surrogacy, Sam has more recently become involved in advocacy research for Surrogacy Australia.

Presentation
'A child at any cost? Understanding how Australians are accessing surrogacy'

Many Australians who access surrogacy overseas to create a family are committing a crime. However in an age where infertility levels are rising and the nature of families is changing, the commercial surrogacy industry is booming, with Australia one of its most important markets. Despite the threat of two years gaol and a $110,000 fine, increasing numbers of Australians continue to utilise overseas surrogacy arrangements.
A key need was to understand what sort of Australians are accessing surrogacy and why local legal alternatives - permanent foster care or altruistic surrogacy - are failing to attract intending parents. The client also wanted insights to better inform public debate.
This paper builds on limited qualitative data, providing the first Australian quantitative insights into parents and intending parents through surrogacy arrangements
It discusses methodological considerations in guaranteeing high response rates, developing trust in online settings, and therefore honest reporting of what was often criminal behaviour. It discusses the use of government data available under FOI to better quantify the size of this market and its growth.
The paper also highlights attitudes and behaviour of intending parents in the face of criminal laws, attitudes to donor anonymity and openness with children about their origins.

Victoria has over 12 years experience working in social and government research. After beginning her career in the social and government team of a global company, she continued to specialise in the sector when moving to the then boutique of Blue Moon in 2005 (now GfK Blue Moon). Her current role is to manage the-ever expanding social and government team at GfK Blue Moon.
During her time at GfK Blue Moon, Victoria has realised the dream that all social and government researchers hold, that of doing research that truly has an impact on the world in which we live. Having worked across a number of government communication projects, Victoria sees the product of the research conducted by GfK Blue Moon regularly in advertising on television, in newspapers and on bus tops across Australia. In addition, having a role in the design of a world first such as plain packaging of tobacco products has produced a career highlight to be remembered.
Victoria is a member of the Australian Market and Social Research Society and holds Qualified Practicing Market Researcher (QPMR) accreditation.

Benita Tan joined GfK Blue Moon in 2009, specialising in quantitative research for commercial and government clients. Her market research career kicked off in Singapore where she managed regional multi-country studies for some of the world’s favourite brands in the FMCG and services area before moving to Melbourne in 2007, where she got her first taste of government and social research.
Benita is a self-proclaimed generalist with extensive experience running large scale trackers, NPD, Brand positioning, ad testing, usage and attitude studies, shopper research, customer service campaign evaluation, segmentations, the list goes on. So it's of no surprise that her career started off in a very different area - teaching speech and drama. But that's another story.
She holds a BA in Film, Media and TV studies and a BComm in Marketing from the University of Auckland NZ, is a full member of the AMSRS.

Presentation
'How to lose customers and help make history: The story of plain packaging design research'

This paper is a case study of a research program that had at its aim the antithesis of what is the usual objective in market research. We didn’t want to create attractive, aspirational packaging designed to win customers, maintain loyalty or establish the brand relationship. Our task was to help design packaging that would eliminate the valued brand relationship that keeps customers loyal. We wanted to help our client reduce demand.
On 21 November 2011, the Australian Government passed legislation mandating that all tobacco products in Australia be sold in plain packaging from December 2012. The legislation bans the use of company logos, brand imagery, colours and promotional text and requires that all tobacco products be packaged using a colour officially known as ‘Pantone 448C’. This legislation is a world first.
The vehemence with which the tobacco companies are fighting this legislation via legal channels, public relations and mass media advertising indicates the possible impact of plain packaging legislation. Once successfully achieved in one country, other governments may follow with similar legislation in an effort to save lives and costs of health care caused by tobacco related illness. The world is watching what will happen with ‘Pantone 448C’.

Graham Chant is the Managing Director of ChantLink, a leading market strategy & research organisation. Graham has been involved in the research industry for around 30 years, including a period as a Senior Lecturer in Market Research at Monash University. Prior to that Graham worked as a Partner in a management consulting organisation.
He has been involved in consulting activities in Australia & overseas, including qualitative research, quantitative research & experimental & research design across a broad range of industry types including financial services, telecommunications, retail, FMCG & pharmaceuticals. This experience has involved segmentation & positioning research, satisfaction research, communications research, social research & new product research.
Graham is a registered Psychologist, has a Masters Degree in Psychology, is an AMSRS Fellow, & has held past roles as Chairman of the Victorian Division of AMSRS & President of AMSRO.

Catherine Paton is the General Manager, Group Culture & Diversity at the Commonwealth Bank. In her role she is responsible for developing the Group’s strategies relating to culture and diversity and implementing relevant initiatives to achieve the organisation’s culture aspiration and diversity goals.
During her time in this role, Catherine has led the program to embed the organisation’s values and behaviours, reinvigorated the Group’s Diversity Strategy and established clear measurable diversity goals. A current area of focus is her responsibility to establish and lead the program that raises awareness and identifies actions to address unacknowledged bias.
Prior to her current role, Catherine has held a variety of positions within the Commonwealth Bank in the areas of marketing, market research, corporate reputation and sustainability.

Presentation
'Organisation Culture: Case Study of CBA culture change'

This paper addresses the overall issue of organisation culture change by providing an overview of organisation culture and its importance to organisations.
This is followed by a detailed case study of research conducted by ChantLink on behalf of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia illustrating a successful example of culture change along with insights as to the key research issues that warrant consideration when undertaking organisation culture research.
This paper is of major importance to the Australian research industry given the importance of organisations achieving appropriate organisational cultures. In addition there appears to be few research papers on this topic in the context of AMSRS conferences.

Born in Wales, Anna graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in Social and Political Science. She centred much of her career in London, agency and clientside, and crossed the equator in 2010. Recruited to develop the Nunwood Asia Pacific region, Anna is often to be found in Sydney.

She has gathered an array of experience during her 16 year career. She has spoken at conferences in Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and UK. Her particular interest is in innovating qualitative methodologies – building from principles emergent in theatre, art, psychology, coaching and gaming. Her client black book ranges from Creative (media, advertising, design, NPD) to Commercial (fmcg, telecoms, cosmetics, retail) to “Complex” (social and political organisations).
She is an established member of the British Psychological Society, Market Research Society, ESOMAR, Association of Qualitative Research, and a new member of the AMSRS.
Anna loves research, especially around brands, communications and psychology. She loves travelling, especially to her home in France. And she loves stories, in any form.

Ann graduated with a degree in Social Psychology, before beginning her career in the commercial world, working for Nestle UK.

Building on her experience gathered in confectionery, Ann has subsequently worked over the last twenty-five years in a variety of roles, covering the whole gamut of advertising, design and market research.

From frozen food manufacturing to car technology to travel and tourism, Ann’s clients have benefited from her passion for uncovering and sharing the consumer voice. She emphasises the need for applicable commercial insight to help drive her clients’ business forward.

Ann has been with Nunwood for 9 years, starting in the UK and emigrating to open the Nunwood New Zealand office in 2010. Ann has a particular passion and specialism in Retail Research and Shopper Insight, both qualitative and quantitative. She works across the whole of Nunwood’s Asia Pacific business, including with Woolworths in Australia.

She is a member of the Market Research Society, the Association of Qualitative Research and the AMSRS.

Presentation
'The power of the visual'

A picture paints a thousand words...
But does every picture speak the same language to the same audience? Are there ways of communicating visually which simply shouldn’t see the light of day? And do we really use the full range of visual communication elements, with a good understanding of their main principles?
Could we inadvertently be turning people off our message, rather than onto its actions?
This paper explores a series of images to understand if meanings are shared across cultures... we consider where the visual can cause more challenges than it addresses... we think about how visual can be used in gathering insight...and we outline the principles around the three categories of visual communication most commonly used in debriefing research.
We also take a quick look at why visual representation (properly used) is so important for the communication of research findings. Exploring the psychology behind visual communication, we start to appreciate how visuals impact on emotion, understanding, memory of - and, ultimately, engagement with - a message.
Drawing from international case studies, academic research and the world of the artistic, this is a journey into the Power of the Visual.
You’re guaranteed to approach Clipart more cautiously everafter...

Paul Chong is ORC International’s Regional Director, Asia Pacific. He has over 20 years of experience in market research and is one of Australia’s leading innovators in the field of strategic customer based research. Paul was previously the joint managing director and a major shareholder of NWC Research, which was acquired by ORC in 2007.
He has worked extensively across Asia Pacific and Australia, and is an expert in conducting customer research across multiple countries, cultures and languages.
He specializes in utilizing customer experience and marketing research to create strategic business metrics, building competitive intelligence research programs, developing customer loyalty models and tailoring research results to reach different business audiences. He has successfully applied this expertise across technology-related and services industries, and in business to business and consumer markets.
Paul is a full member of the Australian Market and Social Research Society (AMSRS), and an accredited Qualified Practicing Market Researcher (QPMR).

Presentation
'Sharpening your predictive powers: Techniques to become better fortune tellers'

The holy grail of market research is to accurately predict or anticipate consumers’ future behaviour. More often than not, we rely on measuring current or intended behaviour to be able to anticipate the future.
However the “current” behaviour is actually “past” by the time the results reach the decision makers and intended behaviour is merely a poor imitation of actual behaviour. Further, market research behavioural models typically assume that the consumer makes conscious and rational decisions and that these models do not deal with irrational and sub-conscious decisions very well.
These models come under more pressure when you factor in that 30% of the world’s population are living outside their country of origin, and that our previously mono-cultural marketplace is becoming increasingly culturally diverse.
Throw in social media, web 3.0 ... little wonder our ability to accurately predict future behaviour is diminishing.
This paper challenges the status quo, discusses various techniques and offers case studies which enable us to ‘sharpen’ our skills and ability to more accurately forecast the future.

Liz Duniec is the Founding Director of ORIMA Research, a medium-sized research firm of 45 staff with offices in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney, which specialises in conducting market and social research for public sector agencies.
Liz has an academic background in organisational psychology. She has over 20 years of experience in market and social research, particularly in relation to attitudinal and behavioural change. She specialises in communications research and in strategic government research to support program evaluations and policy development.
Prior to starting ORIMA Research in February 1997, Liz was a Director of Interaction Consulting Group for 3 years, where she led the firm’s research consulting practice. Liz commenced her research consulting career in 1990 with Coopers and Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) in that firm’s public sector consulting group in Canberra.

Presentation
'Public perceptions of the credibility of market/social research'

Market and social researchers don’t often get the chance to examine whether the research they produce is considered credible by audiences. This is, however, an important issue. If market and social research findings are consistently called into question and/or the research industry itself isn’t seen as credible, it could jeopardise future levels of research participation by the public and research commissioning by clients.
In order to shed more light on this issue, ORIMA Research conducted six focus groups and 500 CATI interviews with members of the public to explore the following:
• Public knowledge of, and attitudes towards, market and social research;
• Public perceptions of the credibility of market and social research; and
• The impact of these attitudes and perceptions towards research behaviours.

Will joined the Ipsos Social Research Institute in 2008 and has worked across a range of social research and evaluation projects in the areas of public health, government and social services and road safety. During his time at Ipsos, Will has been has been working on developing the organisation’s existing literature review expertise. A particular focus of this work has been to draw the systematisation of some kinds of academic literature review together with the efficiencies and pragmatic objectives of contract research.
Will is a member of the Australian Market & Social Research Society, the Australasian Evaluation Society, the Public Health Association of Australia, and the Australian Association of Social Marketing. He is a member of Ipsos SRI’s Public Health, Program Evaluation and Social Marketing portfolio teams.
In 2007, Will completed a PhD in Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Art History and Theory, with First Class Honours in Gender Studies, from the University of Sydney. He has published papers in peer-reviewed journals and has presented research at local and international conferences. Prior to joining Ipsos, Will worked at the University of New South Wales Journalism and Media Research Centre.

Presentation
'What is literature review for?'

Social research methodologies for contract research are for the most part extensively theorized, discussed and refined. Literature review, however, is relatively poorly theorized, rarely discussed, and unrefined as a contract research method.
This paper will first of all outline an argument about what literature review can be used for. It will then map out the historical development of literature review, with a focus on locating ‘expert’ or ‘literary’ review methods in relation to the more recent methodology called ‘systematic review’.
‘Systematic review’ was designed for the very reasonable purpose of eliminating the selection bias that is an inevitable feature of ‘expert’ or ‘literary review’. However, the systematic review methodology is not one that can be wholly integrated into contract social research because it is time consuming and expensive and systematic review questions are generally much more narrowly focused than social research clients require.
This paper will then return to the question of ‘what literature review can be used for’ to reconsider both the issue of bias and the systematic review method. It will then seek to map the principles and methods of a pragmatic kind of systematic literature review for contract research.

Simon recently completed his PhD in Choice modelling at the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS), University of Sydney. Prior to completing his PhD Simon worked as a Research Analyst / Manager for 6 years at a market research company who specialise in pharmaceutical market research. Simon is currently employed as the Business Manager at CenSoC (Centre for the Study of Choice - UTS). CenSoC are world leaders in developing and applying state-of-the-art techniques to understand decision making and choice behaviour.

Presentation
'Choosing the best choice: Innovations in choice modelling'

Choice modelling is not a new technique. However, there have been a number of innovations in the last few years that are rapidly changing the landscape. It is important for market research practitioners to keep up to date with these changes and actively get involved in researching / piloting new choice modelling methods to improve the accuracy of the results we report to our clients.
This paper will provide case studies and examples of innovations in choice modelling, including:
­ Laboratory experiments involving the use of eye tracking and Electroencephalography (EEG) technology to measure brain activity as means to obtain additional information about how respondents process choice experiments.
­ Group decision making: Typically in choice modelling we request individuals to complete our surveys and experiments. However, many decisions are made by groups of individuals (e.g. households, firms). Special group decision making experiments can be developed which allow for the preferences of all agents to be taken into account in the modelling process.
­ Alternative methods to collect (stated response) choice data: Best – Worst Scaling and Configurators.

Pascal Bourgeat is director of consulting, cognitive and behavioral science at Ipsos Australia. Pascal has over 25 years experience in research in Europe, Asia and Australia. His experience and current work range from innovation research to demand forecasting, consumer attitude and behavior/choice models, , psychometric testing, advertising and market response modeling, customer experience and customer satisfaction, improving business performance through customer acquisition, share of wallet and retention modeling as well as segmentation for FMCG, service and public sector, etc.
Pascal is equally experienced in the client service as he is with research design, analysis and modeling to drive business outcomes. He has a B. Comm, a post-graduate degree in organizational and decision theory and a PhD in Management Science specializing in consumer behavior modeling.

CON MENICTAS
Managing Director
Strategic Precision

Speaker Biography

Con is a quantitative researcher, modeller and data miner. Con also lectures in market research, statistics, price modelling, decision modelling and segmentation at both undergraduate and post-graduate level. Con’s PhD deals with research methodology on the measurement of brand equity using choice modelling and structural equation modelling to further develop an information economics model of brand equity. His academic journal publications span branding, human machine learning, research methodology, health care and psychopathy. Con is the Managing Director of Strategic Precision.

Presentation
'Crossing the blue line: A CSI examination of the workhorse and the show ponies'

Driver analysis underpins much research conducted for consumer products, the services sector and government. Data used are often messy with a fair (sometimes very high) degree of correlation between potential predictors (collinearity).

Methods such as LMG, PMVD or Ridge have become popular alternatives to the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, the workhorse of the linear model to address collinearity issues. LMG or PMVD, when faced with collinearity, produce reliable but biased estimates.

Because of the indiscriminate use of biased methods in driver analysis, often under the guise of advanced and more sophisticated methods, clients are likely to rely on research information that is misleading, and sometimes grossly so.

We have developed carefully constructed data sets which control for sample size and the degree of correlation between predictors. We then compare the BLUE estimates of OLS to those of various methods designed to increase reliability in order to highlight the extent of their bias.

This paper provides a road map for those at the analysis front and suggestions for client service people and research buyers. We recognise that research data are often less than perfect and this paper will help researchers minimise the risk of producing erroneous results and misleading their stakeholders.

MELANIE RANDLE
Senior Research Fellow
Institute for Innovation in Business and Social Research
University of Wollongong

Melanie is a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Innovation in Business and Social Research at the University of Wollongong. In this role she is responsible for managing marketing-related research projects funded by the Australian Research Council. This involves multiple research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative data collection, archival analysis, triangulated data collection, online questionnaires, cross-cultural research and longitudinal studies. Over the past decade Melanie’s research has focussed on social marketing research, specifically using marketing concepts to attract more volunteers and foster carers. Prior to entering academia Melanie spent eight years in numerous marketing roles in commercial organisations. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Canberra, a Masters of Business (Marketing) from Charles Sturt University and a PhD from the University of Wollongong.

DOROTHY DUDLEY
Director
The Ipsos Mackay Report

Speaker Biography

Dorothy is the Director of The Ipsos Mackay Report, Australia’s longest running syndicated qualitative social trends research program. In this role she investigates what’s on the minds of Australians on a range of business and social issues and presents regularly to conferences and client strategy days on the implications of the Report’s insights for their businesses. She has been a researcher for over 20 years after commencing her career in marketing positions for organisations such as Arnott’s Biscuits and has been a qualitative specialist for the past 15 years.
Reflecting her passion for social research Dorothy is also an educator at the Australia College of Applied Psychology where she teaches undergraduate courses in Applied Social Research and Contemporary Social Issues. She has a particular interest in Australia’s aging population and has recently completed her Master’s degree research on the topic “Understanding the Nature and Existence of Personal Goals in Retirement”.
Dorothy’s fascination about what makes people tick is reflected in her varied qualifications. She holds a Bachelor of Business (Marketing), a Graduate Diploma in Counselling and a Master of Applied Social Science.

Presentation
'Do strangers in strange places say strange things? A pilot study examining alternative methods of group-based research'

Each year, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on qualitative research in Australia and the majority of this takes the form of focus groups. Information resulting from these groups is used to inform important commercial, social and political decisions, however little consideration is given to the validity of the data produced or the appropriateness of the method used. This project compares the commonly accepted “typical focus group” method with a unique alternative approach: the “unfocussed group discussion technique”. Our aim is to determine whether the information collected (and in turn the answers to the research questions) differs depending on the method used, and if so how. We conduct two parallel studies which pose the same research question using the two alternative methods and compare the resulting data on multiple dimensions to identify any differences. It is proposed that the results of this pilot study inform the design of future research on the validity of group-based research methods.

Huw Hepworth is an Account Director at Painted Dog Research and has worked on a wide range of local, national and international projects during his 8 years in market research. He has worked on research projects across a wide range of industry sectors, including fashion, property, financial services, government, FMCGs and retailing / shopping and for clients in all life stages, from start-ups to blue chips. In 2006, he was awarded the Mike Larbalestier Scholarship for WA by the AMSRS and in 2009 he was awarded the George Camakaris Best Paper by a Young Researcher at the AMSRS National Conference.

Presentation
'Heart, mind, will, body, environment, tribe: A framework for considering consumer behaviour'

After decades of focus on cognitive decision processes as the key to consumer behaviour, attention has shifted towards understanding the role of emotional processes when information is processed and decisions are made. Driven by increasing neuroscientific understanding of how unconscious processes can impact on action, emotional components are now seen as the true key to driving behaviour change.

Arguably the pendulum has started to swing too far towards the emotion / unconscious factors. Numerous books, articles and reports paint human behaviour as almost completely driven by invisible forces that people are unable to comprehend even while under their influence. Neuroscience offers new insights into how the unconscious brain works, but there are concerns that the nature of those findings may be overstated in the marketing sphere, or will be soon overturned as further discoveries are made.

This paper and presentation will provide a framework for the considering these how cognitive, emotional, conative, physical, environment and cultural factors should be considered both in isolation and in context to each other. It will provide a usable framework that can be taken away by the audience and will be usable across a wide variety of different industries and for a variety of applications.

Speaker Biography

Jem has worked in the research industry in Australia, Europe and South America for over 25 years.
He has run his own research, trend, insights and communication businesses for 20 of these years all with a reputation as pioneers in their field: Kaleidoscope, Heartbeat, Vivid and Cat.Dog.
Jem won the best paper award at ESOMAR (Barcelona, 2006) and locally at AMSRS (2008). ESOMAR then selected the 2006 paper in the top 10 most influential research papers of the last decade because of the way it challenged the way research is collected, analysed and used.
He is a regular conference speaker on trends and insight and is an advisor to many multinational clients on strategy and consumer attitudes, thinking and behavior.

Presentation
'Who’s kidding whom?'

As the qualitative research industry grows some fundamental questions are continually asked:
How do we get rid of groupies and get more ‘virgins’?
Can we define our samples tighter to ensure we get the ‘right’ people?
Should we do more groups in-home or are central locations fine?
What are the best techniques to get the richest insights from respondents?

The answers to these questions are the subject of sales pitches and the opinions of research suppliers and buyers. But they are just subjective opinions.
In previous conferences we’ve had papers on ‘What women want’ and ‘What men really want from women’, we thought it was time someone asked a more fundamental question: what do respondents really want?
We have run an online community and conducted some focus groups in a self–funded piece of research to help the industry answer some of these questions.
In presenting this paper we will show how we can get a better ROI on one of our major assets: the general public.

We will reveal:

Why Groupies are gold
Why over-engineered screeners are killing research
Why moderators need to lift their game
Why creativity doesn’t happen on demand
And who’s kidding whom

BRIAN FINE
CEO
Australia Online Research

• CEO Australia Online Research
• Chairman QOR & Research Panel
• Fellow and QPMR of AMSRS
• Adjunct Professor UTS Business School since 2006
• Founder and previous chairman of AMR Interactive and The ORU
• Awarded ‘Best Paper’ at 2009 AMSRS Conference
• Nominated ‘Best Paper’ at 2006 ESOMAR Online Conference
• Previously President of AMSRO and National Chairman of AMSRS
• Has worked with online research since 1999, when an affiliate of Harris Interactive
• Worked with Media Metrix and Jupiter Research as their Australian partner in the early 2000’s

Presentation
'The who, when, where and how of smartphone research'

The Smartphone market is currently the fastest-growing segment of the mobile handset market and it will continue to outpace the overall handset market for the foreseeable future.

The speed by which research can be conducted and the population penetration achieved via a Smartphone is unparalleled by other data collection methods of today. As such, the research community is very interested in understanding the representativeness of data collected via a Smartphone. If the quality of Smartphone research data is high, we envisage more and more data collection to be sought via this technology.

This case study, which looks at both the PC and Smartphone platforms in parallel, highlights what types of questions and how many of them can be migrated from PC online to Smartphones. The participation levels by demographics, particularly younger respondents and the satisfaction scores of each platform, will highlight the likely future of smartphones as a mainstream research data collection methodology.

This paper shares findings of many key issues in which the market research literature is largely silent regarding Smartphones. The paper addresses the relevance of the Smartphones to the market research industry as either a replacement survey methodology, or as a mere supplementary data collection method.

Duncan Rintoul is the chair of AMSRS’s Social Research Network and a PhD Candidate at the University of Wollongong, based at the Institute for Innovation in Business and Social Research. His studies are about the impact of dynamic response formats on data quality in online surveys, so the topic of this paper is pretty much his obsession (in a good way) for the next few years. He’s not just a quantie though – he’s more of a mixed-method guy, specialising in research and evaluation that supports progress in health, human services and other tricky social policy areas. Before going back to school, Duncan was an Associate Director (Social Policy) at Urbis.

Jon Puleston, Vice President – Innovation at GMI, is one of the big guns of survey gamification research. Since the mid-2000s he has been working hard and fast to develop new ways of asking questions in online surveys that make them more fun, more engaging and more creative. In 2011, this work earned him the UK Market Research Society’s Award for Innovation in Research methodology, Best Methodological Paper at ESOMAR Congress and the ARF Great Minds Quality in Research Award. Think Dr Who – the new one – and you’re getting close.

Presentation
'Beyond colour and movement – Measuring the impact of dynamic survey answer formats on respondent behaviour'

In December 2011, GMI and the University of Wollongong fielded a massive multi-country survey experiment, with more than 3,800 responses from seven markets: Australia, USA, Japan, Singapore, India, South Korea and China.

The study included 18 mini-experiments, each pitting a dynamic response format or a game-style question against its more conventional ancestor. Examples include:
• role-play scenarios that turn questions into ‘quests’
• gambling and competitive point scoring techniques
• graphics in questions, scales and response options
• more visually-oriented response formats – drag and drops, slider scales and so on.
The goal was to see how well these ‘creative questioning techniques’ perform in non-Western cultures, and whether they help reduce the cultural response style biases that cause so many problems when conducting multi-country surveys.

The main findings from that study were presented at ESOMAR Asia Pac in April 2012, earning Jon and Duncan the Best Paper Award.

This AMSRS paper focuses particularly on the Australian response set, showing what these techniques achieve here as opposed to overseas.

The presentation will also push forward the conversation about the kinds of measures currently being used to assess the impact of new question and answer formats, and where this important field of ‘research on research’ needs to go.

Caroline completed a PhD is Psychology at Macquarie University in 2005. Prior to commencement of her PhD, Caroline completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) majoring in Psychology at the University of Wollongong. For both her Honours and PhD theses, Caroline used quantitative research methods to examine the roles that consciousness and attention play in human decision making.
After completing her PhD, Caroline worked as a Research Fellow on projects at Macquarie University and the University of Southampton, UK. These projects concerned various aspects of human cognitive function, including social cognition. Caroline then worked as an applied social researcher specialising in public health at the Ipsos-Eureka Social Research Institute. Caroline joined ORIMA Research as a Senior Research Consultant in October, 2011
Caroline enjoys the challenge of developing methodologically rigorous research solutions within specified budgets.

Sandra Mihajilo is a Senior Research Consultant at ORIMA Research where she specialises in communications research which includes tracking and evaluation of various government campaigns.
With an Honours Degree in Econometrics, Sandra began her career in academia where, working as a Research Assistant, she published several papers in peer-reviewed journals in the areas of economics, finance and political science. Since then she has worked as a Marketing Econometrician at Starcom MediaVest Group and most recently as Senior Consultant at Lewers Research.
With advanced technical skills and qualifications and 6 years of experience spanning academic, commercial and government research, Sandra is experienced in end-to-end project management and complex data analysis. She is passionate about research and particularly enjoys finding solutions to ‘tricky’ research problems.

Presentation
'The future of survey sampling: Investigating the accuracy of landline RDD and online panel approaches'

The current study aims to build on research examining different sampling methods by comparing the accuracy obtained using (a) a landline only RDD sample, and (b) an online panel. Accuracy will be determined by comparing primary and secondary demographics back to ABS benchmarks. Responses on weighted non-demographic variables – including a series of attitudinal statements – will also be compared to benchmarks.
Hypotheses: Following on from the recent studies conducted by Yeager et al (2009), the current study will test the following hypotheses:
Are there any significant differences in primary demographics between the benchmarks and those obtained from the online panel sample and RDD landline only sample before weighting?
After weighting on primary demographics, are there any significant differences in secondary demographics between the benchmarks and those obtained from the online panel sample and RDD landline only sample?
Are there any significant differences in non-demographic factors between the benchmarks and those obtained from the online panel sample and the RDD landline only sample after weighting?