TEN THOUGHT LEADERS: 21st Century Stars - Statistical Data Included

American Demographics, March, 2000 by Robert Lederer

Ten thought leaders who are driving the future of consumer intelligence, and eleven to watch.

Extraordinary change is afoot in the consumer research community. Global market research is becoming an imperative. "New media" channels are undoing "old media" mass-marketing strategies. Technology advances are reinventing the way intelligence-gathering gets done. No wonder understanding consumer behavior - and what that means for American business - has become such a complicated endeavor. So it seemed like a good time to take a look at the innovators who are redefining the field - the men and women who know what's up, and what's ahead. Herewith:

Retail

AHEAD OF THE CURVE

Willard Bishop, president, Willard Bishop Consulting, Barrington, Illinois

WHERE HE'S BEEN

Vice president, research, the Supermarket Institute, forerunner of the Food Marketing Institute (FMI)

WHY HE MATTERS

When supermarket retailers and manufacturers must cope with a new problem, or an opportunity requires some measurement, they turn to Bill Bishop. Two years ago, for example, when the idea of loyalty marketing in supermarkets first began to gain widespread industry attention, Bishop laid out the principles of a successful loyalty marketing program in a presentation to the FMI at the Market Techniques Conference in Los Angeles. His conclusions: It's not enough to know who the frequent shoppers are. You must figure out - from the information generated by their cards - how these people shop and what they buy, and then use that information to market to each of them. And, don't forget, you also need to determine what they are spending at other supermarkets, mass merchandisers, and drug stores.

But the food marketing industry is very slow to change, and can be especially disinterested in exploring anything new if it's costly. Bishop helps retailers and manufacturers find low-cost, mutually beneficial information solutions. Encouraging that kind of teamwork hasn't been easy; historically, retailers and manufacturers have been antagonists. Bishop has pushed the industry to see the bigger picture and the opportunities that are available through information. For the first time, much of the industry is finding and applying the link between what people think and what they buy - and why. Supermarkets haven't done that in the past, and Bishop's work has gone a long way toward facilitating that shift in mind-set.

WHAT'S ON HIS MIND

Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork. "There is no question that the cooperation between retailers and manufacturers is getting better. Different types of research are being done by retailers and CPG firms, including some that draw a tighter connection and integration between behavioral research measures and attitudes."

Print

AHEAD OF THE CURVE

Stephen Douglas, general partner, Douglas/Jones Group, New York City

WHERE HE'S BEEN

Senior magazine research executive, Newsweek; vice president of research and development at U.S. News & World Report

WHY HE MATTERS

An expert in print audience research methodologies and the creator of a series of landmark audience accumulation models now being confirmed by Mediamark Research Inc., Douglas has consistently challenged the conventional ways of conducting print research and is always seeking new solutions to help marketers and media achieve sales and communications goals. He is one of the visionaries leading the drive to develop innovations that will make electronic "all media" audience measurement possible in the next decade, including passive technologies that will automatically record the television stations consumers watch, the radio stations they listen to, even the magazines they read, and measure when and where that exposure takes place.

WHAT'S ON HIS MIND

Go back to the fundamentals. "How can we improve response rates? Some possibilities: Ignore non-English-speaking persons for audience measures of English-language publications; if respondents aren't in the geographic definition of the market under study, they should be removed; obtain better telephone household penetration data from the phone companies." Sounds elementary, but the extent to which such rules are ignored is startling. Douglas has seen the future, and thinks it belongs to passive electronic measurement technologies that could blow these response-rate problems away...as long as participants remember to recharge the bracelets every night.

Digital

AHEAD OF THE CURVE

Dennis Gonier, president and CEO, Digital Marketing Services, Lewisville, Texas

WHERE HE'S BEEN

Senior partner, M/A/R/C Group; senior vice president, Target Based Marketing, a division of M/A/R/C

WHY HE MATTERS

In the mid-1990s, when almost no one was taking online research seriously and only a handful of companies were brazen enough to open a business to do it, Gonier founded DMS as a joint venture with America Online and the M/A/R/C Group to do one thing: gauge consumer opinions via the Internet. By 1997, his efforts had convinced a handful of the most important traditional research companies in the country to enter into an alliance with DMS; they included ASI Market Research, Custom Research, and Roper Starch Worldwide, which took the leap into online to see what it had to offer.