Behavioral economist George Loewenstein suggests that if we want to understand human motivations in general we may learn more from studying non-consumption activities, such as professional mountaineering. Continue reading »

Historically, virtual stores have been used by the consumer packaged goods industry and focused on grocery, drug and mass merchandiser environments. However, marketers across a broad range of retail segments, including hardware, wireless, electronics and automobiles, are turning to virtual stores to address a variety of sales and research needs. Continue reading »

There is a lot of talk about “gamification” at the moment in Market Research circles. As well as the proponents there are quite a few detractors. They seem to see research as a “serious” subject not to be trivialized or polluted by “gamificiation”. The problem is that they fail to understand the power of games. They also fail to understand how fundamental games are to human thought. Far from being trivial, games are a fundamental necessity for us in our cognitive development. Continue reading »

By Prashant Hari

One of the main reasons I initially started my blog site Social Wizz was to blog about my and experiences in Social Media. It’s now evolving into a futurists lair….a prediction market of it’s own where I …

Now that the Holidays are over and we’ve put 2010 behind us, it’s time to start planning for that perennial tradition in Market Research: conferences and seminars! There are a bevy of events coming up that are near and dear …