Market Research Valedictory Lecture

Colleagues from both academia and business were present on 27 January 2011 for Lawrence Bailey's guest lecture on Market Segmentation, Qualitative Research and Conversations Across the Garden Wall.

The garden wall of the lecture's title was Lawrence's metaphor for the potential divide between the two sectors.

The lecture reflected Lawrence's career-long wish to get qualitative researchers in the commercial world to talk to their counterparts in the academic world, and vice versa. He discussed the differing assumptions with regard to qualitative research practice that exist across the proverbial garden wall.

Drawing upon highlights from a long and successful career in market research, Lawrence examined how qualitative research can be effective in achieving market segmentation. He focussed on pioneering work on the psychographic segmentation of potential users of services as diverse as the American Express card and the DAB digital radio.

Effective working between market researchers and their clients, he believes, will result in more focussed marketing through better understanding of the messages to which different markets are receptive, their underlying motivations and their desired outcomes.

He ended with a warning to "beware the rise of the dreaded Survey Monkey" and what he termed DIY market research and with a wish to see the enhanced professional standing of the market research community.

http://youtu.be/WdQREwSRu7g