ESOMAR 2002 Congress Awards

An international jury has selected the best papers presented at ESOMAR's just completed 54th Congress. With the theme 'Consolidation or Renewal? From research to customer insight', the Congress attracted around 1000 participants from more than 70 countries.

The Fernanda Monti Award for the best paper in any field worth EUR 2,500 went to 'The operation was successful but the patient died. Why research on innovation succeeds, but innovations fail' by Omar Mahmoud, Senior Manager, Consumer & Market Knowledge (CMK), Procter & Gamble Europe SA, Switzerland.

This paper argues that new products fail because of our irrationality and our inability as individuals and groups to avoid many of the errors that affect decision-making. The presentation outlines the errors, cites examples, and gives recommendations for improving the innovation decision-making process. Usually failure is attributed to a poor proposition (weak advertising, parity product, high price, etc.) or to the marketing plan (inadequate media, low distribution, etc.). This however does not explain why failures continue in spite of the growing knowledge about the factors driving success and failure and the rigorous product launch process that is usually followed.

Two further awards each carrying a prize of EUR 1,500 were made for the best case history with an interesting research application and the best methodological paper.

The first of these awards was won by the paper 'From brief-taker to business catalyst: Case study of a new research paradigm' by Kristin Hickey, Business Development Consultant, The Leading Edge Market Research Consultants Pty Ltd. and Robyn Wunder, George Weston Foods Baking Division, Australia. This paper highlights inefficiencies in the current market research process and illustrates, through live case study example, the benefits of adopting a new approach to better leverage the skills of our industry and the value it contributes to clients. It includes key insights on how the research industry might become more critical, more relevant and more inspiring to marketing professionals of the future.

The second award went to 'Evaluation of the Financial Value of Brands' by Oliver Hupp, Senior Research Consultant, GfK AG - Brand & Communication Research, Siegfried Högl, Managing Director, GfK Marktforschung GmbH and Dr. Henrik Sattler, Professor of Marketing, Retailing and Management Science, University of Hamburg, Germany.This paper highlights the problems of current approaches in the evaluation of the financial value of brands. On the basis of these findings a new brand evaluation approach is introduced. By considering all relevant facets of a brand evaluation, this new method aims to satisfy the requirements of eligible and reliable brand evaluation demands. The approach focuses on integrating the psychological brand strength with an evaluation of strategic options concerning marketing. This approach is demonstrated by a case study conducted in the German beer market.

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