My experience at ESOMAR Asia Pacific Conference 2010, Malaysia

I was selected by ESOMAR to attend the Asia Pacific Conference this April in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia through their Developing Talent Initiative. It was a life-changing experience for me and it gave me a whole new perspective towards market research and global relationships.

What is ESOMAR?

ESOMAR is the world organization for enabling better research into markets, consumers and societies. It is a prestigious community with more than 4,600 members in over 100 countries. ESOMAR’s aim is to promote the value of market and opinion research in illuminating real issues and bringing about effective decision-making. To facilitate this ongoing dialogue, ESOMAR creates and manages a comprehensive programme of industry-specific and thematic conferences, publications and communications.

What is DEVELOPING TALENT INITIATIVE – Future Talent Meets the Industry?

ESOMAR has developed a programme aimed at encouraging the brightest students to enter the industry and to start a dialogue between University and Business school professors. This highly successful initiative has extended many invitations to students around the world including MICA. They want to show the students that the business dynamics require a market research profile which is not only rigorous and based on knowledge of methodologies and statistics but also needs skills that prepare new comers in this industry to handle the complexities of everyday business. ESOMAR events are also a great opportunity to learn and to allow students to get in touch with industry experts and their companies worldwide.

The APAC Conference

Asia Pacific 2010
Eyes on Asia
Kuala Lumpur / 25 - 27 April

Theme of the Conference

There is a widespread sense that we have talked for 20 years about Asia as representing the future. Now the global economy has positioned Asia as a driving force of the world economic recovery. Asia is no longer the next thing but the thing. In this context, business must find the way to invest in innovation and capabilities. How can market research help business exploit the opportunities that the economic situation is bringing to the region? How can local Asian market research companies leverage global opportunities to expand and grow their business? And what are clients looking for? How can local and international companies best utilise existing skills and maximize resources?

The answers to these critical questions will be the engine that drives the Asian research industry to react and adapt quickly to the new context.

Students selected to attend the conference

ESOMAR had selected 4 students from across Asia to represent their country’s young talent at the conference. The following students were selected from Asia-Pacific, including me:

- Benjamin Jozef F. de Leon University of Asia and the Pacific, Philippines

- Tanvi Gupta MUDRA Institute of Communications, India

- Mark Wong Kah Yuang Singapore Management University, Singapore

- Wenqi Zhu Communication University of China, China

The ESOMAR APAC Team

The conference was held at the JWT Mariott Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In the conference, the four of us were given an opportunity to work as a part of the organizing team of ESOMAR and to interact and network with all the participants from across the globe. We attended all the presentations followed by the networking drinks and dinner. We got an excellent opportunity to work on the back-hand operations of an international conference along with overseas colleagues in the same team. In the above photo, the two senior members on the left are the Presidents of ESOMAR - Gunilla Broadbent and Finn Raben.

There was a plethora of innovative ideas and thoughts spreading across the sessions as the presenters from across the globe presented their research papers. The papers were from all across Asia including India, China, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and also other countries like UK, Germany and USA. Most of the papers focused on the Indian and Chinese context but yet had a universal applicability. Some of the papers that I found very interesting are described below.

Synergistic co-creation: A blend of art and science. This paper was presented by Deepa Soman and Prakash Dadlani from Godrej, India. They spoke about how “synergistic partnering” between client, agency and consumer can create wonders in the market. They spoke about the process of ideation, design and implementation of innovation in developing remarkable products by using innovative research.

Shoppers of Asia was a paper written by Korakoj Nirutnapaphan from Bangkok. It was also co-authored by MICA alumni, Himanshu Vashishtha and Aruni Ghosh. It was a very interesting comparative study of the differences and similarities across markets in different asian countries, with a focus on shopper’s store selection behavior.

Relevant pieces to the Chinese media puzzle was presented by Don E. Schultz and Martin P. Block. It gave a revealing comparison between consumers’ media consumption in China vs. the USA.

Will Twitter change the way that market researchers communicate? Was presented by Ray Poynter from UK. This was one of the best presentations I have ever attended in my life. It was an interactive session where Poynter projected a live Twitter screen and live comments from the conference attendees were showing up every minute. The hashtag #ESOMAR was being used to tweet the proceedings of the conference. Live feedback to the ongoing seminar was appearing on the screen simultaneously as the speaker was presenting. This would allow the speaker to adapt to the audience needs real-time. It was only after this experience, that I was inspired to use twitter productively. And till now, I have been using twitter to stay in touch with all MR professionals from across the globe!

Measuring emotions: Is China different? Was presented by Raimund Wildner and Laena Liu. They had created a tool that researchers can use to measure emotions quantitatively. Also, this tool had to be tweaked to be applicable to China because the tool used cultural elements as the base of measurement.

Billion dollar baby: Leveraging mobile technology for research applications in India was presented by proud MICA alumni Madhumita Chakraborty and Sandeep Arora. They spoke about how the mobile penetration in India can be tapped by marketers and researchers as a tool for data collection. This paper was selected as one of the best papers presented at the conference and was nominated for the global award for excellence. It was a very proud moment for all of us because the two best papers selected at the conference were both authored by MICAns!

Listening to the sounds of silence was presented by Shobha Prasad from Drishti, India. This was a very out-of-the-box presentation and was very much appreciated by all. She said that in qualitative research, most of our analysis is based on what respondents “say”. However, she explained that more often there is a lot of valuable information in the “silences” of consumers, what they leave unsaid. Silence may play a role to convey opinions and feelings. This gave me a fresh new perspective towards qualitative research.

There was also a great line of panel discussions spanning across different topic areas. One interesting topic that was covered was about how can research be done on “hard to reach” respondents especially when the universe size is very small and obscure. This panel discussion was moderated by Pravin Shekhar from Krea, who is also the ESOMAR India Representative.

I also got an opportunity to meet some key people from the world of marketing and research. I got an opportunity to interact one-on-one with the one and only Don Schultz – The Father of Integrated Marketing Communications! I have been reading books written by him and we have been learning the definition of Advertising and IMC as defined by Don Schultz. It was an immense pleasure and a dream come true to come face to face with such a personality. He is a very warm person and very supportive to young students who want to achieve something big in life. He gave me some recommendations about further studies and career paths when we all sat together and had lunch at the same table.

Me with Don Schultz- The father of IMC

I also got an opportunity to interact with the chairman of TNS worldwide, Mr. John Smurthwaite. He was very keen on playing a role in helping students kick-start their career and to help them develop a good future in the market research industry. I received a very warm welcome into the MR industry by the senior members and it further boosted my enthusiasm and respect towards the MR industry.

What I have gained from this experience

This was my first trip outside the country, and I went all alone. It was a very liberating experience for me as I got to experience a whole new world all by myself. There was a certain level of fear at the back of my mind about going to an unknown country all by myself, but the entire experience has made me a much stronger and bolder person. This was the first time I got to interact with many people from different ethnicities and nationalities and it instilled a greater confidence in me to understand the global culture much better. It made me realize that no matter what country we are from, all humans share the same feeling of passion towards innovative ideas and self development. We all worked together as one team, as one fraternity. Personally, it was very beneficial for my future career growth as well since I got to network and build connections with the who’s who of the MR industry.

I must say that we were literally “pampered” by all the senior members of the research fraternity because we were the only four young “talents” at the conference. The entire MR fraternity is very supportive and welcoming. I can’t wait to complete my studies and be a part of the MR industry.

My profile, my views towards the furure of Market Research and my future career plans can be viewed at ESOMAR's website in Future Talent Meets the Industry section here.