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This is a question many marketing managers are asking today.  One of our own, Utpal Dholakia, Associate Professor of Marketing at Rice University investigated that question — and it appears that “Facebook changed customer behavior for the better.”   The quick and dirty answer is here on Fast Company.  A longer discussion and better description of the experimental design can be found here at Harvard Business Review.  HBR is the better source, but I was not sure if registration was required to see it. both articles are short and to the point.  Thanks for a great study of a timely issue Utpal.

This might be a good example of an experiment that could be used with market research or some useful data when talking about Facebook or other social media in Promotion.

Customer ratings and reviews are not only useful to other customers — marketers can use this information to improve products.  Of course some customers are more vocal — and some products solicit more comments — than others.  Would people care about sink mats?  Like the author of “Rubbermaid Proves the Value of Listening to Customers,” (The 1to1 Blog) I was surprised to see that customers writing reviews.  In my previous life I worked in sales and marketing with Eastman Kodak.  I also saw the power of customer comments when one of my fellow sales reps tape recorded interviews with fine art photographers about what they liked and didn’t like about black-and-white photo papers.  When the R&D folks who engineered and manufactured the paper heard these interviews it had a huge impact — and better products soon followed.  The potential for this form of low-cost market research to influence new-product development, product quality, and various other elements of the marketing mix is tremendous.

Campbell’s Soup engaged in unusual consumer research to make decisions on soup packaging — and consumer will see the results this fall.  The video below and article, “The Emotional Quotient of Soup Shopping,” The Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2010 – subscription may be required, if you do not have a subscription, try entering the title of the article in a search bar for the back door to the article).

For two years, Campbell researchers studied microscopic changes in skin moisture, heart rate and other biometrics to see how consumers react to everything from pictures of bowls of soup to logo design.

This “neuromarketing” approach is a fresh attempt among consumer-good companies to understand how consumers really respond to marketing and advertising.

This video example might supplement a class session on packaging or marketing research.

For most brands, online buzz is not a very useful metric.  But for some brands – think Apple iPad, Google Android, and Sony, awareness of the buzz might help marketing managers understand their markets better.  A blog called Buzz Study reports on analytics from Social Radar — and a top 50 list of social brands (click here for the November 2009 list, the most recent as of today).

To create the Top 50 list, we used Social Radar to analyze millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts to aggregate a list of the words and brands mentioned most frequently on the Web during November 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during November 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

For another example of this type of online analysis, take a look at the Buzz Study post, “Apple iPad:  What Happened in Social Media” (February 3, 2010).  I found it interesting to see that they can track not only the amount of online chatter, but whether it is positive or negative as well.  This might make an interesting example of “observation” in a class session on marketing research .

I will try to send you a variety of post Super Bowl advertising links on Monday.  But if you are looking for something real-time, check this out.  If you click on the “Learn More” link in the widget, you can read about the research methodology that Media Curves employs.  It might be interesting in class to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the approach in a market research class.

MediaCurves.com is conducting a study with thousands of Americans on the 2010 Super Bowl commercials. Participants of the study will evaluate the ads shortly after they air during the game. As the preliminary results come in, an online widget (see right) will be updated with the ads’ scores and overlaying “curves” to represent real-time interest levels.

The top 20 commercials from the previous year’s study are displayed until the first commercial from the 2010 Super Bowl is ready. After the study has concluded, the widget will be updated with the final results.

As marketers move to social media, they are trying to figure out how to measure the success of such campaigns.  An Adweek article posted this morning notes that advertisers may soon have a new way to measure the amount of online buzz (see “New Campaign Metric:  Social Chatter,” January 27, 2010).

But, “Does Chattter Matter?”  An article in the November 2009 issue of the Journal of Interactive Marketing, “Does Chatter Matter? The Impact of User-Generated Content on Music Sales“  (by Vasant Dhar and Elaine A. Chang, pp. 300-307) shows some evidence that in the music industry online chatter matters and predicts future sales.  We could use more academic research to show what types of products benefit from online chatter.

This article in BtoB (January 21, 2010)  “Case study: How IT company increased response on U.K. e-mail campaign,” offers instructors several benefits.  While the article is short, it shows how an American firm had to adapt its communications approach to get a better response from UK buyers.  The case study includes the adaptations made in an e-mail campaign and the before and after click-through rate.  It is also a good example of the use of e-mail, an important component of the promotion blend in B2B.  Check it out.

This viral video features the popular socialite Kim Kardashian.  It has jumped into the Visible Measures top 10 viral videos this week — debuting at #2 with more than 600,000 views in the past week.  This video could be offensive to at least some of Carl’s Jr.’s customers, but running the ad as a viral video appears to avoid some of that because the customers most likely to be offended probably would not watch it online.  On the other hand, the ad would seem to appeal most to younger (maybe even older) men — but promotes a Carl’s Jr. salad, not exactly the meal this target market is likely to buy.   Smart idea?  What do you think?

I have always enjoyed The Copernicus Mzine, an online publication for Copernicus Marketing (a consulting practice).  Their Fall/Late Winter edition includes an interview with Kevin Clancy, the Chairman, titled “Get More Out of Your Marketing Research.”  Kevin talks specifically about tracking research designed to keep tabs on current programs to see how well they are working.  Kevin has written seven book — I have read (and recommend) both Your Gut is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head and Marketing Myths That Are Killing Business,

This article and video combination describe how companies can monitor “tweets” on the social media service Twitter to help them forecast sales.  “Follow the Tweets,” Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2009 (subscription required – no subscription click here).   The video below is an interview with one of the authors.

We believe executives can make accurate predictions about sales trends by analyzing tweets that mention their products or services, and we have created a model based on Twitter’s keyword-search function to help them do that.