Winning Market Research Strategies from a Start-up

There has been a lot of buzz about the new approaches start-ups bring to consumer insights and how more tech savvy, agile companies build their marketch stack. Kilian Hughes from Joyn and Maurice Gonzenbach from Caplena will talk about Joyn’s journey of building an insights strategy focused on digital tools and AI at MRMW Europe 2020. We caught up with them ahead of their presentation.

MRMW: Without giving too much away – what is the core message of your talk and what would you like delegates to remember?

Kilian & Maurice: By building a modular toolkit of technologies and clever positioning, market research departments can become the revolving door for everyone looking for insights through user-feedback. Direct user feedback is a very valuable – but sometimes overwhelming source in order to build a truly user-centered product. Startups like Joyn thereby leverage a plethora of smart tools, like AI-driven text analytics by Caplena, to boost the output of their small team.

MRMW: Why did you choose the topic of your talk?

Kilian & Maurice: We want to show, that 1) augmented intelligence methods are actually a chance for market research to apply their knowledge in a more efficient way, drastically speeding up the time to insights and 2) that (market) research plays a vital role in thriving (young) companies, when combining the right skills, tools and mindset.

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MRMW: What motivates you to join MRMW Europe and what are your expectations?

Maurice: Originally coming from the tech sector, I am eager to getting to know the market research community in depth and fostering the creative dialog between IT and market research. And of course, I also want to spread the word about Caplena’s capabilities and solutions: Helping researchers understand customer needs in-depth through AI-assisted verbatim analysis.

Kilian: I want to share with the community the benefits of the user-centered approach of Joyn and show how automated verbatim analysis helps to understand our users better.

MRMW: There is a lot of talk about the current state of research – how would you sum up the current state of research and potential future challenges? And what do you think MRMW Europe as a conference can contribute?

Kilian: I strongly believe in knowing many different methods and how to apply them in the right situations. Furthermore, researchers constantly have to challenge the research they are doing and are open to explore and try out new methods. An experimental and open mindset is, therefore, key to success.

Maurice: Market research has acquired a deep knowledge on how to get the true feelings & intentions of customers in the last decades. But there is still a lot of potential in streamlining these processes, making them work for today’s large-scale datasets and presenting them in interactive and meaningful ways. Conferences like MRMW can facilitate this development by bringing together researchers as well as innovators from other industries.