Cultural Snapshot

Have you heard the news? Tablets are hot, and by tablets I mean iPads. 15 million iPads were sold during last Christmas season while the other tablets may have sold a few hundred thousand. (Maybe) Single use tablet devices like Kindles have sold better with a few million sold.

Since many people now own iPads and surf the web while sitting on their couch, the term “Sofa shopping” is creeping into the retailer’s lexicon. (That’s fancy for “vocabulary”)

This term is starting to be used by some during the US Black Friday weekend and is used for “Sofa Sunday”. So now we have Black Friday, Sofa Sunday and Cyber Monday. While not as common or well known in Canada, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are appearing in Canada with various retailers.

Some of the results from this last holiday season look very promising for the future of online mobile retailing thanks to the iPad. The details can be found in this handy dandy report from Adobe Digital Marketing Insights. Some of the highlights are that iPad users are three times more likely to make a purchase than smartphone users, and iPad shoppers spend 50% more than smartphone shoppers and 20% more than computer shoppers.

Research done by IBM also found that mobile sales doubled from the previous year, and accounted for 11% of all online shopping this holiday season.

The trend for Sofa shopping is up, up, up and away!

Forbes magazine recently ran a blog piece by Larry Downes entitled “Why Best Buy is Going out of Business…Gradually” which created an online stir. The gist of the article was that Best Buy was going the way of the dinosaur, due to horrible customer service and an inability to adapt to new pressures in the market.

After the initial brouhaha, he published a followup with some great stats on page views, the effect of Social Media in spreading the word and some more great insights. Click HERE.

Mr Downes opined that Best buy is focused on the customer, but in an aggressive, overpowering manner, and not focused on the customer in order to serve them.

Another big problem noted is the lack of integrated IT systems. This is a common problem of many large brick and mortar retailers. No one cares that it is hard, they just want the online experience to be integrated, hassle free, seamless and just another retail outlet. That means continuity for the customer, not the company. For example, some people will browse the showroom, then use their smartphone to order online. Some will order online and then pick up in the store. Some will buy online and expect to return their items in store.

Another key point he brings up in his article is if a modern big box retailer no longer want to be a commodity seller, they should move to a premium service for a premium price. He mentions that the successful modern retailer is creating an experience and not just selling goods. Examples include Apple, Rain Forest Cafe, Starbucks, and Nordstrom.

Add Value or Adios!

None of this is retail rocket science, but sometimes you just need another set of eyes to see the forest for the trees. (Like some independent research, perhaps? -ed)

The easy answer, but not always simple to do – offer a seamless, no hassle, integrated online/offline retail experience and focus relentlessly on the customer, not yourself. Basically, be Amazon but with brick and mortar stores as well.

Finally, here is the response by the CEO of Best Buy to the brouhaha around the Forbes article and online storm of posts.

(Make sure to click through the links above to get the full story)

What is more important, Market Research or Consumer Insights? That is the question posed by Edward Appleton recently on the GreenBook blog. He brings up a few great points such as how there is a lot of research out there but not a lot of insight, and how insights help deliver a narrative and research delivers data that can be summarized.

As a Qualitative only research firm, we understand the importance of finding the insights and delivering the narrative, mostly because we find math waaaay too hard.

Consumer Insights is what is really important, but it lacks the credibility of Market Research. Maybe we just need to work on the perception of the quality of work done with Consumer Insights by reinforcing the notion of ethical and high quality research methods. Properly done, nothing can match the the richness of Qualitative insights for discovering the “why”s of consumer behaviour. Perhaps we need to work on the perception of Market Research as well.

Mr. Appleton thinks calling oneself a “great researcher with killer insights” might be “muddying the waters”, but I tend to disagree. I think that is the clearest way to reinforce the notion of high quality research methods while still providing the necessary “touchy feely” richness that makes Qualitative Market Research so great in providing actionable recommendations.

Thanks for the great article, Mr. Appleton!

Did you hear the latest same old, same old talk about too much English in Quebec? The Montreal Canadiens hired an English coach and it brought out lots of a few hundred sane, sober crazy people to complain and protest that their favourite hockey team was losing too much, most likely in English.

“The Montreal Canadiens management does not respect the status of French as Quebec’s official language,” said MQF president Mario Beaulieu in a release issued in French in advance of the demonstration. “The music played in the Bell Centre is English. All announcements made in the arena are bilingual. There are only two or three francophone players left on the team. And now they have named a head coach who doesn’t speak a word of French. Not even ‘Bonjour’.”

One supposes that if they were coached in the proper way (French), then they might start winning again like they did in the 70s. As a big sports fan, I just want the team to win whether it is English, French, Russian or Swahili.

The endless language debate in Quebec is odd in todays global, networked world but at least it is a mostly nonviolent distraction from the real problems in the world. The comedy show This Hour Has Twenty Two Minutes sent a correspondent to mine the protest for comedy gold and you can see the finished clip HERE. It was not easy for a unilingual Anglo from Newfoundland to interview angry Frenchmen protesting, but they managed to get some decent material.

While it seems like the Two Solitudes debate will never end, enjoy some laughs at the Sugar Sammy show which pokes fun at both English and French.

Plus ça change, the more it stays the same!

How is the shopper of 2012 better equipped to find deals and comparison shop? With a smartphone and a few apps, today’s shopper is becoming a threat to many traditional stores, and an opportunity for forward thinking, modern stores.

They say  a picture is worth a 1000 words, so take a gander at this infographic that describes the rise of the Social, Mobile and Local shopper.

It has been five short (long?) years since this happened…watch it again to see how far we have come technologically in five years.

Three things… a widescreen iPod with touch controls… Revolutionary mobile phone… a breakthrough internet communicator…

A widescreen iPod with touch controls… Revolutionary mobile phone… a breakthrough internet communicator…

Are you getting it?!!? It’s the same thing!

Stephen Hawking turns 70 on Sunday, and who can forget his memorable appearance on the Simpsons. He also wrote a nice little book called “A Brief History of Time”. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It has sold close to 10 million copies. Like many young people, this was the first (only?) accessible and exciting book on theoretical physics I enjoyed.

Many of the worlds greatest thinkers in theoretical physics will gather to honour Monsieur Hawking at “The State of the Universe” at Cambridge University this weekend. They will discuss all sorts of high falutin’ physics research and end with a tribute to the work of Stephen Hawking.

A tribute to a career that many feared would be short-lived after he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21. “He’s a very witty, humourous guy. It’s amazing, under the circumstances, how he keeps his spirits up and brightens the atmosphere,”

There is no market research connection here, I just thought it was interesting and worth mentioning. Read his book if you haven’t already, and see what high quality research can achieve in a different area than consumer goods. Call us if you want market research on consumer goods, we’ll leave the physics to others. We are Qualitative researchers and we find math way too hard.

Despite his brilliance in theoretical physics (and acting), even he is as baffled by the mystery of women as the rest of us. I am sure that no amount of research will ever unravel this mystery.

I’ll leave you with something for the future and filled with (theoretical) hope:

The Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, could do more than anything else to revolutionise scientists’ understanding of the universe, Hawking said. The machine could find “supersymmetric” particles, which are partners of the more familiar subatomic particles. Such a finding would be “strong evidence” for M-theory, a version of string theory that describes gravity and the other forces of nature in an 11-dimensional universe.

Update: It turns out Mr. Hawking was not feeling well and could not attend his birthday in person.

Researchers at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute have a new research lab dedicated to testing out medical issues in a simulation environment. They are attempting to create a lifelike, controlled simulation inside a lab.

iDAPT facilities use elaborate simulations of everything from an icy Canadian winter to an urban streetscape to devise new ways of preventing or coping with injury and illness.

This research is exciting and fairly new for Canada. While we do not have any kind of  a lab like that here at Sylvestre, we understand the value of doing research in the environment being researched. Many times it is alright to gather people into a focus group room, but sometimes you need to get out in the field and truly observe people in their environment.

One of the tried and true methods of “in the field” market research is the shop along. We did many shop alongs this past Fall and Holiday season with great success. I wish we could tell you about it but we have to keep that information confidential to our clients. What I can tell you is that you may see some changes next year with certain large retailers holiday plans.

We also do ethnographies which can greatly aid research projects. It is kind of a big scary word, but it means we “tag along” with people in their day to day life. Then we observe what they do, as well as what they say, and figure out why they do and say the things they do. If you would like to learn more about ethnography in a fun and breezy read, try Paco Underhill’s “Why We Buy” book. (Highly recommended)

Maybe someday we will have a snazzy lab with simulators, but for now we use real people. Give us a call at (514) 284-0878 if you would like to learn more!

Click HERE for all the details on the iDAPT research facility in Toronto.

We had our annual staff Christmas party last Friday night and in addition to the champagne and gift exchange, we enjoyed a slice of Pain Sandwich. This is the French spelling as “pain” in French is “bread”, so it is a “Bread sandwich” and not actually painful to eat.

This is an older Québécois tradition that comes from the 60’s (?) and it involves many layers of food (egg salad, ham, cheese whiz, etc) in white bread and covered in cream cheese. Typically, in many Quebec families, it is the Grandmother who makes the “Pain sandwich” for the whole family at a Holiday gathering.

It tastes much better than it sounds or looks in this picture, and I thought it was delicious and a fun Quebec holiday treat.

If you would like to hear a French round table discussion of the Pain Sandwich, click HERE.

And if you want to see how to make Pain sandwich, take a look at this video!

Merry Christmas Everyone!  :)

One of our hometown comedians, Sugar Sammy, is bringing a new bilingual show filled with cultural differences to Montreal close to his ninth birthday, this February 23rd – May 19th. Sammy was born on a leap year, so his ninth birthday is actually his 36th.

A young Anglo who went to French school, picked up English on the streets and learned Hindi and Punjabi at home.

He will unveil a bilingual show, going from one language to the other in a seamless way, capturing the essence of what Montreal is to him. He has performed in English and French (Punjabi and Hindi too), never really playing it safe with cultural sensitivities.

As Qualitative researchers who specialize in the Two Solitudes of Canada, we love the idea of a (hopefully) hit show that brings the Two Solitudes back into the mainstream popular culture. Quebec is very different than the rest of Canada and what better way to present this info than humour. I can’t wait to see the show.

If you’re not sure if you want to catch the show, here is a small sampling of Sugar Sammy…Get your tickets HERE.