We launched the Consumer Insights newsletter earlier this year to provide readers with a targeted way of learning more about targeting. With the explosion of big data and analytics, new ways to track audiences and buying behaviour and the ability to leverage mobile location-based tools, there is a real hunger for insights to keep pace.
Of course, marketers have always been collecting information about consumers – but the internet changed everything. A decade ago, Adam Froman founded AskingCanadians. Along with others, he knew an online panel approach to surveying consumer opinion would get faster, deeper and cheaper results than traditional telephone surveys.
On the Toronto company’s 10-year anniversary, we asked Froman to reflect on the major ways the business of amassing consumer insights has become. It turns out that, as a result of technology, the customer journey is a lot more complex than anyone would have imagined. But because of technology, it’s also lot more understandable and even predictable.
“Marketers and researchers now have the ability to ask questions at any point along the customer journey, through a multitude of customer touchpoints and technologies,” says Froman. “And surveys have become more integrated into the overall customer experience, requiring more thought on how to engage consumers to share their opinions.”
Advances in the collection of data have been dramatic and a lot of commentary in the press has focused on the need for marketers to leverage the right data points in an ocean of data points. But Froman stresses there is still a lot of progress to be made on collection, and that getting smarter about collecting the right data will lead to quicker, actionable insights. This is an area AskingCanadians is focusing on, drawing a research community today of more than 600,000 Canadians.
“While smartphones and mobile technologies have had a significant impact on how data can be collected, the concept of automating the research process is emerging as the next major trend,” he says. “We see this as a huge opportunity that will enable marketers to gain actionable insights faster than ever before.”
As a way to capture some of the key changes in consumer insights he has been able to draw over the past decade, Froman compared a series of 10 digital consumer attitudes and behaviours and how they’ve changed over that period:
Then/Now
Percentage of Canadians who report that technology is important to them: 29% vs. 68.6%
Percentage of Canadians who own a smartphone: 12% vs. 75%
Percentage of Canadian households without a landline: 4.8% vs. 26%
Percentage of Canadian internet users: 72% vs. 93%
Percentage of Canadians that have made an online purchase of over $100 in the past 2 months: 36% vs. 61%
Percentage of Canadians that have viewed a video online in the past two months: 68% vs. 90%
Percentage of Canadians that use a social network 54% vs. 82%
Percentage of Canadians who use Facebook 24% vs. 77%
Percentage of Canadians who participate in online forums 38% vs. 55%
Percentage of Canadians that have used their mobile phone to browse the web/search 4% vs. 64%
