ABSTRACT
We're living in a “new normal” environment where consumers play an increasingly active role and where companies are adapting to the disruptive changes and challenges that this consumer generated marketing is imposing.
Marketing research as a discipline must evolve to better capture and understand the essence of this new paradigm. In this fast moving business ecosystem, the ability to better read the future will work as a competitive advantage to proactive companies, who are in the quest of foresight.
Several methodologies, some of them proposed by leading researchers, are described to tackle this need, ranging from ethnographic research techniques where the researcher walks hand in hand with the consumer to expert based methods designed to gain insights from gurus in different fields of research.
Examples are provided based on the work developed at the Marketing FutureCast Lab, a partnership between the University and 20 large corporations from different business sectors.
