SPA Future Thinking is proud to be IAB Europe’s research awards partner and has been helping leading media and telecomms clients succeed for over 15 years. As one of the fastest growing and largest independent market research companies with offices in the UK, France, Germany and Italy, we believe research should advise, challenge, educate and inspire; with the ultimate goal of guiding our clients to make the right decisions for their business.

IAB Europe will celebrate the contribution research plays in enabling successful digital marketing through the IAB Europe Research Awards. The awards will focus on seven key categories including branding, ad effectiveness, consumer attitudes and behaviour, mobile internet, social media, cross media and audience measurement.

Richard Barton, Managing Director of SPA Future Thinking said, “We are proud to sponsor IAB Europe’s Research Awards and recognise the role of great research in growing the digital media business.”

The event takes places on 30-31 May 2012 at Hotel Arts Barcelona and will be attended by William Ullstein and Stuart Knapman.  If you’d like to catch up with either of them throughout the 2 day event please contact us.

To find out more about the work SPA Future Thinking does to support digital marketing click here.

This is the time of year that one CEO I worked with always referred to as the ‘silly season’. A time of year when you can’t count on anyone being in the office when you need them because lots of people take additional time off around the plethora of Bank Holidays. His view was that you were as well to write off the months of April and May because nothing ever got done.

Perhaps it’s thinking like this that’s behind proposals to move the current May Day holiday to later in the year, October being a popular suggestion. Apparently it’s got something to do with Trafalgar Day on 21^st October – no, I must admit that I didn’t know that! I also didn’t know that the system of bank holidays in the UK dates back to 1871 when the Bank Holidays Act was first introduced. Prior to its introduction, the Bank of England recognised no fewer than 33 different saints’ days and religious holidays. The Act was later repealed and replaced by the Banking & Financial Dealings Act, 1971 which currently regulates Bank Holidays in the UK althoughseveral other Bank Holidays have been added since the Act was first passed.

Generally the UK is considered to have one of the lowest allocations of Bank Holidays in Europe if not the world, with only Mexico having fewer (7 – just to prove I’ve done my research!). Compare that to Cyprus (with 15), Spain (14) and even the USA with 10 and you can see why the argument may be for more Bank Holidays rather than moving the existing ones around.

When I first moved down to England from Scotland some 10 years or more ago, I found the whole concept of Bank Holidays a strange and confusing one. On the first Easter Sunday that I spent in England, I was astounded to discover that the shops were closed – Easter is not considered as a holiday north of the border. Scotland enjoys a completely different system with Public Holidays determined by local authorities. There are Bank Holidays – Christmas, New Year (two!!) and so on but there are also local holidays unique to each city, town and (sometimes) village. Bank Holidays are not as widely recognised in Scotland as they are in England and Scottish banks actually follow the English holiday system.

This can mean that on a ‘bank holiday’ in Scotland, the banks are open for business – confusing to say the least!

I can remember several occasions when I had a day off for a public holiday because I worked in a particular city but my kids, who attended school in a different town, didn’t. It led to some scheduling and childcare nightmares!

However, it’s not all confusion and gloom – the UK offers a greater statutory holiday entitlement than many other countries. Employees here, as you well know, are entitled to at least 28 days holiday per year whereas in Cyprus it’s 20, Spain 22 and in the USA there is no statutory entitlement to holidays at all.

So, why did I spend a couple of hours researching this on the Internet? (thanks by the way, to the TUC, Mercer Consulting, Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and Wikipedia!) More importantly, why should we as HR professionals care about any of this? Well, lots of other research has shown that even in these straitened economic times, employees value a healthy work/life balance. Holidays are an essential component of this and I’m sure that many of us are really looking forward to our forthcoming shorter working week!

What do you think? Should we have more or fewer Bank Holidays? Does the benefit of having a happier workforce who enjoy more time off work outweigh the negative impact on productivity and attendance?

This entry is taken from Discuss HR, the HR blog written for and by members of Human Resources UK of which Sheena is a regular writer.

About the author

Sheena began her career in Training & Development before moving to a generalist HR position in 1998. Since then she has held senior HR roles for several SMEs in a wide range of industries. A Fellow of the CIPD and Member of the US SHRM, she has a keen interest in Employee Development, specifically in coaching and supporting managers to enable them to get the best from their people. She was appointed as Director of People for SPA Future Thinking in September 2011.

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What is Behavioural Economics?
Behavioural Economics attempts to explain and predict the short-cuts our sub-conscious brain uses to navigate a busy world whilst only bothering our conscious with a manageable amount of the most important information.  This results in deep-routed biases in the way we make decisions, often in ways we’re not even aware of.  This has led some to question traditional market research methods and a few to suggest reverting back to localised sales testing.

Truth is researchers have been working with, and around, behavioural economics for decades.  Question order, sequential-monadic and question phrasing effects are all subtle and unconscious influences on our seemingly rational decisions that have now been neatly labelled as behavioural economic principles (priming, anchoring and framing respectively).

It’s clear that if these effects apply to clean, carefully written questionnaires, then in the real consumer world they mean the difference between purchase and ignorance.  This thinning of the fog around the workings of the sub-conscious brain, provides a great opportunity to account for and even measure these effects within research. Packaging is one such area that demands consideration.  Amongst packaging’s many functions, lies its ability to titillate the sub-conscious brain enough to attract attention and consideration in a competitive and crowded market, something shoppers can rarely if ever articulate successfully.  With the proliferation of online research can we really allow ourselves to measure packaging outside of a retail environment?

Applying Behavioural Economics to Online Research:
In fact online is one of the most effective places to apply behavioural economics principles and get as close as possible to the context of purchase.  It’s worth saying that I don’t think the answer lies in creating 3D environments, where all but the most dedicated first-person shoot-‘em-up veteran fights to find the mouse-move needed to face the fixture.  As our objective is to get the most authentic result, not the most authentic simulation, we want online navigation as automatic, familiar and subconscious as possible.

Priming and consumer choice:
Priming has been shown to have significant influences on consumers’ choices.  Even sub-consciously priming people with sets of youthful or elderly associated words, changes the speed they walk (Bargh 1996). To prime respondents with supermarket cues, rather than the East Enders episode they’ve just watched, we can show participants photographs of their retailer of choice (arriving, parking and walking through the car park) so they have similar things in their mind.  On entering retailers shoppers often pick-up a basket or trolley, and most retailers allow a slow-down zone where shoppers get their bearings – all these can be included in any orientation exercise.  This also provides an opportunity to prime them with in or out of store advertising that could be the covert variable you wish to understand.

Anchoring the offer:
Anchoring makes a litre of Tropicana look expensive next to a carton of Del Monte but cheap when placed amongst innocent smoothies.  This is the reason why you should always make sure a premium offering is available in your category even if it sells little, as it pushes up the price anchors.  My favourite example of anchoring is a Campbell’s soup promotion which sold twice as many by telling shoppers they were limited to “12 per person” (Wansink et al 1998).  Therefore we should be introducing a pack anchored within a fixture, jostling with its peers for attention, without any preferential treatment or prior notification of its presence.

Framing and effects on response:
Framing has also shown to have important effects on response.  Framing, broadly, is why a 90% fat free yogurt is more appealing than one with 10% fat.  We want simulated purchase decisions to be framed in the context of a supermarket shop not a new online toy or bland online survey.  Not only does the interface have to be intuitive enough to be easily forgotten, by framing an individual purchase decision within a wider shopping experience makes the choices more natural and not over rationalised.  To get participants used to the system and settle down into a purchase rhythm you can present a number of categories before the category of interest – gaining a more automated purchase response where you want it and allowing any child-like exploration of the new online toy to have passed.  Also within supermarkets fruit and veg come first, alcohol comes last so this should be reflected or else risk being jarred back towards the reality of conducting just another online survey.

Once a purchase is made, more standard packaging understanding can begin.  Standout can be gauged by recall from the actual purchase occasion – that automated unfocused moment – rather than playing spot the difference for a 10 second period.  Choice-based exercises can be used to gauge the persuadability of the pack once forced into our consideration set and brand/product evaluations can be made after priming with the pack with more emotional measurement tasks.

Online research has the flexibility, control and cost-efficiencies to implement the principles of Behavioural Economics, allowing collection of purchase decisions where participants think more like shoppers.  The nirvana is a shopping trip with a number of fixtures to create the ultimate online sales test.  Hundreds of shoppers would go through our virtual supermarket doors, blissfully unaware of what they were testing and what we wanted to understand – they would just shop.  Each contributing their own take, consciously and sub-consciously, on that invaluable but often over-looked packaging function –purchase. 

If you want to discuss and learn more about how we apply behavioural economics to packaging research and how best to approach testing through online please call or email Jan Worsley, Head of Innovation on +44(0)1865 336 400.

Ref:
Bargh, J. A., Chen, M. & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behaviour: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 230-244
Wansink, B., Kent, R. J. & Hoch, S. J. (1998) An Anchoring and Adjustment Model of Purchase Quantity Decisions.  Journal of Marketing Research, 35, 71-81

Choosing the best consumer research approach for Packaging is therefore essential. At SPA Future Thinking we have a suite of research solutions that we use to maximise the sales and brand equity from Packaging.

We have now also added neuroscience, behavioural and mobile observational techniques – to help you gain a more meaningful and deeper understanding of how to maximise competitive advantage through Packaging.

In particular, we provide:

• Unbiased purchase behaviour quantification at the point of purchase (on and off trade).
• Drivers of consumer appeal, including brilliantly lifelike 3D and movie interaction with your Packaging.
• Conjoint techniques to optimise design and structure
• Brand equity mapping, using explicit and implicit emotional (neuroscience) techniques
• Structural packaging evaluation, including the use of mobile ethnography to understand behaviour in-occasion
• Accurate sales forecasting using our Apollonius™ volumetric modelling and Alcoholic Drinks norms database. 

These approaches have led to the successful in-market launch of new Packaging for many leading alcoholic drinks brands.  

For more information on how we can tailor our approaches for your Packaging objectives, please call, or email, Andrew Tharme, Managing Director, on +44(0)1865 336 491.

The one day conference, an exploration of innovation in Market Research, takes place on Thursday 14^th June at The Alea Casino in Leeds, and is set to be an excellent day (and night!).

Jon will be sharing his thoughts on Ethnomethodology – the social reality of everyday life.  Intrigued?  Then get yourself signed up to attend by visiting the website.

You can follow all the latest news on speaker line up and debate topics on twitter #RMRR12 or contact us for more information on ethnomethodology.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Our joint entry for our Candidate Experience Programme in to the Most innovative use of technology category has been shortlisted as a finalist for the HR Excellence Awards 2012.

Candidate X, the research solution developed by SPA Future Thinking, follows prospective employees through each stage of the RBS Recruitment process. It brings together robust survey logic in accessing candidate opinions with innovative deployment of online analytics, reporting and action planning technology.

SPA Future Thinking, with its wide experience in undertaking consumer and business customer journey tracking, is well placed to bring this experience and knowledge to bear in supporting RBS in its candidate tracking journey.

Being shortlisted for this prestigious HR award is a fantastic achievement and recognises the quality of the work that SPA Future Thinking and the Employer Brand Marketing team at RBS are doing.

The awards ceremony will take place on 25^th June in London.  For more information about the awards click here

Noreen Kinsey, Research Director, will be presenting alongside Carolyn Scott, Shopper Insight Manager at Kimberly Clark on how in 2010, with a backdrop of promotional escalation, own label pressure and low Category engagement levels, Kimberly Clark set about re-designing their Category vision and drivers to respond to the challenging market conditions and changing retailer demands.

For more information on the MRS Shopper Conference click here or contact Noreen Kinsey on 01865 336 400.

Our learnings here at SPA Future Thinking indicate that to be successful low ABV beers need to clearly communicate more than being simply low in alcohol. For the consumer these benefits could be around refreshment, added ingredients or suitability for specific usage occasions and will help to overcome any potential concerns over quality and taste to ensure a successful launch.

To enhance understanding of consumer attitudes to the new lower ABV rates, our Concept Testing Programme identifies which low ABV beer ideas have the most potential to take forward for further development. For each concept our programme evaluates and identifies:      

• Strength of appeal and excitement of concept
• Purchase intent (pricing opportunities)
• Effect on parent brand
• Brand imagery
• Profile of potential users
• Opportunities in on and off trade
• Source of business
• Sales potential

We can work with you at all stages of concept, product and pack development to optimise and successfully launch low ABV products that fully meet consumer expectations.

To find out more please contact Andrew Tharme, Managing Director on +44 (0)1865 336 400 or email: andrew.tharme@spafuturethinking.com.

Claire Tyrrell-Williams, Associate Director at SPA Future Thinking, will be presenting at their latest conference – Local People, Local Food – on Tuesday 24th April.

The session entitled ‘The customers’ view of local food’  will focus on latest research results on what shoppers think – what they love about local food and what could be even better.

For more information on Local People, Local Food and the Making Local Food Work programme click here or contact Claire Tyrrel-Williams on 01865 336 400.

The research is based on 1,000 interviews a month with a representative sample of adults aged over 16.

Unlike other tracking studies, it is designed to show how content – from video to publishing to social media – is consumed across devices, and how different screens are used in tandem. The study is also designed to paint a clear, comprehensive picture of a given target audience: what they have, how they use it, what they think is aspirational – and what is over-hyped.

The Essential Eye, which is available as a quarterly snapshot or annual subscription, is the first such study to be launched by Essential Research since it was acquired by market research group SPA Future Thinking in September last year.

Stuart Knapman, Senior Director at Essential Research, said: “The Essential Eye has been a huge undertaking for us. It delivers considerable insights into a very fast-moving sector. The Eye is already helping to evolve and challenge our own view of the media & technology landscape.

“Our focus on media, communications and technology and our client-side experience have helped us create a very different kind of technology tracker, built to help media owners, advertisers and technology providers to separate myth from reality.”

To out more about the Essential Eye please contact Stuart Knapman or Malia Milligan by clicking on these links, or telephoning 020 7384 1297 or click on the link:

http://www.essentialresearch.co.uk/essentialeye