Practitioners' research developments

Citation

Nancarrow, C. (2000), "Practitioners' research developments", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 3 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/qmr.2000.21603daf.001

Practitioners' research developments

Practitioners' research developments

ESOMAR 2000

This year's congress of the European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research took place at Vienna's Hofburg Centre in September and proved to be no place for technological dinosaurs. ESOMAR is one of the world's largest and most influential bodies representing research practitioners and for the year 2000 it took as its theme "The Impact of Networking" – how the communications revolution and "the wiring of the world" are affecting the international research industry. Speakers, both practitioner and academic, came from Europe, the USA and Australia.

The first day of the congress looked at how far networking has already changed the business and research environment. Keynote speeches included "The Death of Distance", emphasising how the communications revolution is changing customer relationships, and papers on understanding the digital economy and winning the battle for Europe's Internet consumers.

On the second day there was a look at the future. Organisations were discussed in "Rethinking the Future" and there was also a look at how technological orientation relates to business success. There was a focus on the future of marketing in the new "European brandscape" and papers on communication in a postmodern world, the effects of eCommerce on the brand and a new paradigm for customer retention and loyalty.

The final day was devoted to the future of research, and there were speeches on eResearch, eRelationships and industrial marketing research. Amongst the more intriguing titles was: "We've wired the world but unplugged our brains".

The highlights of the parallel sessions included discussion of online communities, Internet vs telephone data collection, and technology acceptance amongst post-modern consumers. On line measurement issues were considered in a panel discussion as was the controversial question "Direct Marketing and Research. Enemies or Friends?"

However, papers and panels were only part of this year's congress format and networking sessions provided a more interactive environment. The sessions called Demo allowed the demonstration of cutting edge applications in forecasting and modelling, customer research and instant feedback whilst the SPIN sessions allowed special interest networking. The special interests included eEthics, ancient Chinese networking strategies and electric circuits.

Vienna may be best known as the capital of the Habsburg Empire but this September it briefly became the hub of a very different eWorld.

If you would like to find out more about the conference and how to buy the Proceedings of this and previous conferences (for instance Net3 2000 also on Internet research) then fax +31 20 664 2922 or e-mail email@esomar.nl or visit the Web site www.esomar.nl

AQR

The Association of Qualitative Research Practitioners (AQRP) has changed its name to take into account its wider membership which includes a wider variety of interested parties. It is now simply known as the Association of Qualitative Research (AQR).

The prestigious AQR annual event, the AQR Trends Day Conference will be held on 23 November in London, UK. For more information, you can call AQR (tel. 44 (0)1480 407227 or visit the Web site www.aqrp.co.uk (may be changed by publication to www.aqr.co.uk)

Clive NancarrowBristol Business School, UWE.clive.nancarrow@uwe.ac.uk