Marketing Research at the Turn of the Decade: Four Key Trends that Affect Research Presentation to the Ottawa Chapter of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association June 11, 2009

2 Marketing Research : Four Key Trends that Affect Research 1.Our Society: Diverse in Many Ways 2.The Future of Telephone Surveys: Change is in the Air 3.The Rise of Online Research 4.Rethinking Online Research

3 1.Diversity: the following socio-economic indicators of diversity will affect marketing research: - diverse in culture (country of birth; language(s) spoken) - diverse in education (including level of literacy, numeracy) - diverse in income - diverse in age These factors are distributed unevenly across regions of Canada A seven community comparison approach follows…

4 Our Diverse Society: Large Centres, Not-so-large Centres and Small Centres (in 000s) (2006 Census of Canada)

5 Our Diverse Society: % Immigrants & % Persons Speaking Neither French Nor English at Home: 1981 to 2006 (Census of Canada)

6 Our Diverse Society: % of Population in Seven Centres that Cannot Speak Either of Canadas Official Languages (2006 Census of Canada)

7 Our Diverse Society: % of Persons 15 Years or Over with No Certificate, Diploma or Degree in Seven Centres (2006 Census of Canada)

8 Our Diverse Society: % of the Adult Population 16 and over at Proficiency Level 1 or Lower Building on our Competencies: Canadian Results of the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey, Statistics Canada, 2003 Level 1 Prose Literacy Ability to read relatively short text to locate a single piece of information… Level 1 Numeracy Simple, one-step operations… counting, sorting dates… simple arithmetic operations or understanding common or simple percents such as 50%.

9 Our Diverse Society: % of Population 65 and Over in Seven Centres Across Canada (2006 Census of Canada)

10 2.The Future of Telephone Surveys: Change is in the Air

11 2.The Future of Telephone Surveys: the Challenge of Cell-Only Households Sources: Centre for Disease Control and Prevention: National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), Mediamark Research Inc. and Statistics Canada: Residential Telephone Service Survey (RTSS)

12 2.Proportion of Households with Cell-Only, by Region, December 2007 Sources: Statistics Canada: Residential Telephone Service Survey (RTSS)

13 The Rising Phenomenon of the Wireless Mostly Household: USA Source: Centre for Disease Control and Prevention: National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)

14 The Shrinking Landline Population: Households in the USA, December 2008 Source: Centre for Disease Control and Prevention: National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)

15 2.The Future of Telephone Surveys: Other Challenges Influencing Response Rates call screening expansion of the marketing research industry fatigue poor survey practices Best Practices in Public Opinion Research: Improving Respondent Cooperation for Telephone Surveys

16 2.The Future of Telephone Surveys: Implications of Declining Response Rates Cost of surveys to increase To date, validity of surveys not at risk (Ambrose and Halpenny, 2006) Extremely low levels (below 10%) raise risk of non- response bias from hard-to-reach segments (young or below-average education) D. Ambrose, G. Halpenny, Whither Response Rates: Do They Still Matter? Presentation to the MRIA Annual Conference 2006

17 2.The Future of Telephone Surveys: Implications of Rising Proportion of Cell-Only Households RDD Sampling will no longer be a complete frame This is likely to be especially acute among single-person households, better-educated respondents and if US trendshold true in Canada, younger and lower-income Telephone samples will have to include cell numbers Impact on length of interview and costs

18 3.The rise of online research

19 The Rise of Online: Proportion of Billings for Quantitative Research in Canada, 2006 and 2007 Source: Marketing Research and Intelligence Association

20 Proportion of Canadians with Home Internet Access 1997 through 2007 Source: Ekos Research Associates, Rethinking the Information Highway

21 4. Online Research: Meeting the Challenge of a Still Imperfect Instrument New Technologies and Government of Canada Communications, Agriculture and Agrifood Canada,2008and Statistics Canada: Residential Telephone Service Survey (RTSS) Maximum Reach of Landline vs. Online Nonresponse bias is the key issue rather than low response rates per se: Hence, there is little empirical support for the notion that low response rate surveys de facto produce estimates with high nonresponse bias. Nonresponse Rates and Nonresponse Bias in Household Surveys Robert M. Groves Public Opinion Quarterly Volume 70/Special Issue 2006/Number 5/pp

22 Main Reasons for Not Using Internet New Technologies and Government of Canada Communications, Agriculture and Agrifood Canada, 2008, 426 respondents who did not have access to the Internet (weighted), telephone survey

23 Use of the Internet: by Age Group Yes response to Do you personally use the Internet? This includes using New Technologies and Government of Canada Communications, Agriculture and Agrifood Canada,2008, Telephone survey of sample of 1,718 respondents (weighted data)

24 New Technologies and Government of Canada Communications, Agriculture and Agrifood Canada,2008, Telephone and online samples; Statistics Canada, 2006 Census of Canada Comparison of Unweighted Telephone and Online Samples with the Census: by Age

25 Use of the Internet: by Education Yes response to Do you personally use the Internet? This includes using New Technologies and Government of Canada Communications, Agriculture and Agrifood Canada, 2008, Telephone survey of sample of 1,718 respondents (weighted data)

26 New Technologies and Government of Canada Communications, Agriculture and Agrifood Canada,2008, Telephone and online samples; Statistics Canada, 2006 Census of Canada Comparison of Unweighted Telephone and Online Samples: by Education

27 Challenges Canadian society diverse Generation gap and wide disparities in education Literacy and numeracy Numerous issues facing telephone surveys Cell-only and cell-mostly households an issue

28 Challenges (continued) Decline in landline coverage trails US Internet rising but lacks full coverage Nonresponse bias as well as low response rates Education and Age Factors