Best Paper Awards from ESOMAR Congress

An international jury has met in Rome to select the best papers presented at ESOMAR's recent annual Congress held at the end of September, entitled "Marketing Transformation- Research for the Bottom Line" Three awards were presented.

The Fernanda Monti Award for the best paper in any field went to Laurent Flores, CRM Metrix Inc. (France) and Rex Briggs, Marketing Evolution (USA) for their paper "Beyond data gathering. Implications of CRM systems to market research".

The paper argued that the rise of new technologies such as databases and the Internet offer both new challenges and opportunities to the market research industry. CRM is reported to have grown more than 30% a year with projected total revenues of US$12.1 billion by the end of 2001. Despite embracing the Internet for data collection, few research companies have yet been able to translate research technology and talent to take advantage of this huge business opportunity. Although data collection is a key benefit of the Internet, a bigger potential benefit is the delivery of information and insights to decisions makers via the Internet. The emerging CRM industry makes this a central goal and is reaping the benefits. The paper presented both theoretical and case study findings that offer a new way to relate to market research that can potentially bring the research industry to the top of executives' priority list.

The award for the best case history with an innovative research application was won by Stephen Crompton, Allied Domecq Spirits & Wine (UK) and Jane Reid, Taylor Nelson Sofres Consumer (UK) with their paper "It's what's inside that counts ... or does the rest of the world also make a difference?"

The paper offered a case history on understanding the local positioning of an international whisky brand in eight Eastern European countries and how this was adapted in line with global thinking and implemented locally. It covered the key issues and general principles of using local country research to dovetail into global strategy, as well as indicating how the research was actioned. Ultimately, it demonstrated how local data-driven decision-making was used to position the brand within the global context.

The award for the best methodological paper went to Howard R. Moskowitz, Moskowitz Jacobs Inc. (USA) and Jeffrey Ewald, J Walter Thompson (USA) for their paper "Always On. Bringing market research down to the development engineer, closer to the customer, and into the vortex of product development."

Responding to a call by a major consumer electronics company to accelerate the pace and quality of product development, J Walter Thompson (Detroit) and Moskowitz Jacobs Inc. (New York) developed a new paradigm. The methodology incorporates current as well as new research procedures into a cost-effective, rapid, sustainable development system, with ongoing market feedback. The paper illustrated the changes in the market research approach that ensued and presented data from a case history on PDA's (personal digital assistant).

Members of the jury included John Kelly, ESOMAR President, David Smith of Citigate DVL Smith Group, Bill Moult of the Marketing Science Institute, Ann Margreth Hellberg of Molnycke and Mahmoud Aboul-Fath of Procter & Gamble.

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.