Market research news
The blog of the market research agency IntoTheminds lists opinionated articles, examples of alignment with marketing theory, highlights and bad buzz, carefully selected by Pierre-Nicolas Schwab, his team and influential experts.
Vitality offers Apple watch to monitor your activity : one more insurance into big (health) data
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
A few weeks ago we were discussing on this blog the trend of the insurance market to collect very intrusive data. I had the opportunity to raise my concerns at several conferences and got the impression that people were not…
Thierry Mugler popup store creates sensory customer experience
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Thierry Mugler opened à popup store for a very short period of time to promote his new perfume #HateToLove. This ephemeral retail space was located 14 rue de Turenne in Paris. Despite the limited space available, Mugler managed to create…
Digitalization : why I will not use my insurance mobile application
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Digitalization in the banking and insurance sectors has led to massive job cuts. In this article I discussed this trend in the banking sector and I debated on TV of this trend in the insurance sector (see here, in French).…
Artificial Intelligence : why we need respectful algorithms
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Developments of artificial intelligence are a source of concern for several reasons. First of all AI threatens jobs, privacy and our perceived freedom. Second, 99,99% of the population doesn't really understand what AI is and where it originates. In today's…
Big Data : 4 types of filter bubbles
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
The question of the existence of filter bubbles (also called cognitive bubbles) is central to the fields of Big Data and algorithm design. Among different books, I was very much influenced by the Dominique Cardon's book on algorithms and society.…
Re-Belle jams : an ethical project against food waste
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Here is a very nice project we discovered at SIAL 2016 : jams made from fruits and vegatables that were removed from the shelves and that should have thrown into the bin. It can be seen as the extension of…
Food and drink innovation: what are the success factors?
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
020At the food fair SIAL 2016 more than 2000 innovative products were presented. In other words some 10% of the world's yearly food innovation was concentrated in one place during one week. Amazing opportunity for a market researcher like me.…
Retail innovation : visit of Paulig Kulma coffee store in Helsinki
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
We just visited Kulma, the newest concept store of Finland-based coffee brand Paulig and it's an amazing place. This experiental store, combining a roastery, a bar, a coffee store, a barista insititude opened at the end of summer 2016 on…
SIAL 2016 : first conclusions from a busy week
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Like every 2 years I spent a few days attending the world's biggest food fair : SIAL 2016. Each and every year this fait gets bigger and 2016 was no exception. SIAL 2016 remains a primary source of information for…
Made.com : retail innovation at its best
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Want to experience a truly innovative store : pay a visit to Made.com, a brick-and-mortar shop which offers a truly unique customer experience. Introduction Made.com is an online brand offering design furniture at democratic prices through bypassing intermediaries. Their Parisian…
Big Data and Ethics : how recommendations work at Meetup.com
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
There have been many interesting talks at the RecSys 2016 conference in Boston. Yet, the presentation given by Evan Estola of Meetup was especially inspiring to me. It wasn’t the regular technical speech you may expect in that kind of…
Big Data : why ethics issues need to be addressed urgently
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Artificial Intelligence is increasingly present in our daily lives : speech recognition, automatic translation, personal assistants, chatbots, recommendation algorithms. These technological advances are also subject to criticism and questions on ethics. What happens with our data, will algorithms govern us,…
Predicting consumers’ behaviors: the importance of explicit feedback
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
In today's article I'd like to present a new perspective on the evolution of consumer behaviors' modelization in the last 30 years or so. These modelizations are windely used in today's world of Big Data and recommendation algorithms. Introduction Understanding…
Banks are laying off : only because of digitalisation ?
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
ING : 3500 jobs cut. Axa : 650 jobs cut. BNP Paribas Fortis : 1000 jobs cut. As the Financial Times pointed out, some 100,000 jobs will be cut in the banking sector in 2016. Read again. One hundred thousands.…
RecSys 2016 conference : trends in recommendation on TV
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
The ACM Recommender Systems conference opened on 15 September 2016 in Boston (MA) with the RecSys TV workshop, one day dedicated to recommender systems in the broadcasting sphere. Presentations by Verizon, Comcast, Netflix, the University of Lisbon were the highlights…
Road trip in west and south Iceland: an incredible experience
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
This long post is a short report of our recent trip to Iceland. Making this trip was part of the good resolutions I took in 2016 and I'm so happy I did it. I've already explained briefly what I learned…
My summer readings : the outstanding, the good and the worse
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Summer is usually the time for me to rejuvenate my creativity and get prepared for the second part of the year to come. I love to chain-read to encourage ideation. This year I packed my beloved Kindle with a few…
Why you should not wear health devices
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
So far insurances had to rely on your declarative questionnaires to evaluate the risk you represented. Those have been found to be very intrusive; so intrusive in fact that Belgian consumers' defense organization Test Achats has urged insurance companies to…
Users change their behaviors to please algorithms
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Technology and especially algorithms have invaded the public space. According to Alain Damasio “Freedom is not a desirable concept anymore”. Security and ease-of-use now comes first, as the success of recommendation engines tends to prove. We are surrounded by computer…
Facebook : how do people perceive NewsFeed curation algorithm
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Curation algorithms aren’t fundamentally different from recommendation engines (see the article we just published on the latter here). They select what you ought to see, for instance on your Facebook Newsfeeds. Two studies have addressed customers’ perception of automated curation…
Retail design : beautiful optician store in Paris
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
We are always attentive to innovative retail design (read for instance our report on the recently opened Joe Sayegh store) and we found a store that is worth a visit . Parici is an optician store located 14 rue du…
Recommendation algorithms : how big is the Filter Bubble in actuality
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Recommendation algorithms have been accused to trap users in a filter bubble, to promote the balkanization of information and hence to reduce serependity. The biggest opponent of recommendation engine is probably Eli Pariser who invented the very term of “filter…
Big Data: let your customers improve your segmentation
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Companies are keen on obtaining as much data as possible on their customers to improve behavioral profiling. Yet, few companies harness the power of their customers to enrich their data with new types of data, allowing new segments to be…
Joe Sayegh opens amazing new store in Paris
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Joe Sayegh just opened a store at 29 Rue du Roi de Sicile in Paris. This is the first B2C store of this brand which was long reserved to architects, designers and … very rich people. We couldn’t resist visiting…
