Joseph Rydholm is the editor of Quirk’s Marketing Research Review, the industry’s most popular and influential trade magazine. Here, Joe quotes Quartz, an online news source that focuses on the forces and factors they see shaping the global economy. (The Quartz commentary is shown in italics.) Joe then muses on what he thinks these forces may have on the marketing research world.

Between ever-cheaper smartphones and “dumbphones,” which cost as little as $10, plus the dawn of banking, messaging, and social networking services that can run on any device, the possibility that everyone on Earth could be connected is more real than ever….How will new form factors, like watches and face-based computers, change our experience of the Web?

Possible Impacts on Marketing Research: It’s obviously a ways down the road, but what could Google Glass or things like the Pebble watch mean for marketing research? Is “wearable computing” just an extension of the Internet or a whole new form of interaction for respondents and researchers or consumers and companies? 

Digital Money 

... the Web, mobile phones and new sales terminals are making possible payment mechanisms that improve on credit card transactions or do away with them all together. That’s a lucrative business, which is why the payments sector has seen some of the highest pre-IPO valuations of any in Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, the rise of bitcoin and its imitators means that a stateless virtual currency could become a serious intermediary between other currencies or payment methods in its own right. And in emerging markets, payments via mobile phone are already turning telecoms companies into banks. 

Possible Impacts on Marketing Research:

Could the accruing of several micropayments over time hold more appeal for survey respondents than entries in sweepstakes that “no one ever wins”? And do those payments (micro or otherwise) have to be in monetary form? Will, as Quartz terms it, a “stateless virtual currency” take over as a preferred form of payment for participation in research?

Questions:

1. How do you think these forces will affect business and marketing research? 

2. Which topic will have the greatest impact on business? Why?