The Simply Smart conference was hosted in Dubai on September 28 by Toluna, a global online market research company. It brought together a distinguished group of regional market research leaders to discuss the state of the sector as uncovered in Toluna’s most recent report on the future of market research, Agile research landscape, Smart simplification in an ever-changing world. This report is the result of polling over 400 marketers and research professionals to understand industry’s perspectives, challenges, and opportunities.
Eliza Frascaro, Head of Research, SE & MEA explained the aim of the report: “After almost three years of disruption and change, we wanted to know where our industry is and where it’s headed. We wanted to understand where brands are planning to spend their budgets now and in the next couple of years, what their priorities are, what they expect from technology providers and partners, and the role of DIY, assisted and full-service projects in their day-to-day. And if the survey’s regional results, which included Dubai and KSA, were enriching, the insights we got from the discussion here today were truly enlightening.”
The panel discussion included guest speakers from well-known industry players in UAE and KSA as well as house-hold brands: May Kanounji, Managing Director at Bloomingwear; Ziad Skaff, Director of Research and Audience Intelligence at MBC Group, Ahmed Sulaye, Director Middle East & North Africa at Why5; Ghada El Mahdy, Senior Insights Manager NAMET Hub at Colgate Palmolive and Carla Issa, Middle East Research Lead at Accenture. They were joined by Georges Akkaoui, Enterprise Account Director and Office Leader at Toluna MEA and Manisha Juneja, Research Manager at Toluna’s Dubai office.
Together, they dissected the highlights of the report and contrasted some of the global findings with their own perspectives.
May Kanounji commented: Post the pandemic, agile research became critical in the retail industry as brands today are increasingly turning to analyzing their data for insights to optimize their operations and unlock opportunities to serve their customers better. However, today urgency matters; business has never moved faster. Consumer trends and sentiment change at an even faster speed and the best-informed marketers and product developers are typically the ones that win. But faster access to results does not necessarily mean giving up on data quality. Fast data can still equal good data and this is what we need today!
Ahmed Sulaye elaborated “the Simply Smart Dubai talk was a great initiative for bringing curious researchers and regional experts together to discuss key challenges faced by market research buyers and how Tech adoption and Human upskilling can be part of the smart simplifications approach that will ease these challenges for researchers globally and in our region.”
From his end, Ziad Skaff commented: “Market Research is pivotal for business decisions and today, after an intense and unusual long COVID period that impacted societies and altered consumer behavior, the practice’s role is beyond critical to comprehend those changes and maneuver in the new reality. Toluna’s event provided a much-needed forum at this time and part of the world where we’re witnessing significant transformations affecting both brands and consumers alike. Discussed topics were beneficial and comprehensive, and brought up interesting recommendations and insightful thoughts especially around the industry’s technological revolution to support the fast-growing marketeers’ need for instant insights and reliable data”.
Ghada Al Mahdi pointed out the importance of understanding the market, understanding people, saying: “It’s of paramount importance as it is the foundation for every growth of the brands. It’s a momentum that we keep moving all the time and enhancing our understanding and getting a deeper insight every day”
On the MEA findings, Georges Akkaoui said” : we saw here today that the region is mostly aligned with the major global trends in our sector. Our speakers agreed that there’s a push to get out there and do more market understanding, stay closer to consumers, understand them as people, and not just which products or features they prefer.”
Akkaoui also commented on the role technology is playing in allowing brands to keep up with the changes in the region’s booming markets, something everyone agreed was heightened by the pandemic: “when we speak about tech adoption, it’s important to keep in mind that tech adoption not only gives us the ability to gather data faster, but it also has the power to simplify the process altogether and get you better insights and better, faster decisions. Having said that, when being able to tackle speed and simplicity – at once, then we are talking about scalability. This brings us back to another of the main takeaways from Toluna’s report, that our industry is looking for scalability every step of the way.
Marco Gastaut, Managing Director Italy, Spain, MEA & Chief Sales Officer DACH at Toluna, introduced the region to a host of upgrades in Toluna Start, Toluna’s consumer intelligence platform. The latest multi-country package means that platform users can now launch the same questionnaire in multiple countries at the same time in one single project. Gastaut commented: “Toluna Start’s multimarket tools allow teams to conduct research in multiple markets in a simplified way with the quality and speed we know they demand. We’re talking about powerful capabilities from data gathering to analytics, specifically designed to cater to multi-country surveys. This development is especially relevant to this region, as brands seek to keep up with consumers’ needs and behavioural changes in these booming economies.”
