Among the seven keynote speakers who will address delegates at the annual Southern African Marketing Research Association (SAMRA) Conference (2-4 June, Mount Grace Hotel, Magaliesberg) is Gunilla Broadbent, president of world research organisation ESOMAR. Broadbent will give an overview of the current state of the research industry on the pre-conference day (2 June).
Following the next morning is Mark Earls (HERDmeister at HERD Consulting, UK) with a presentation titled Herd: The Social Revolution. Says Earls: “The presentation describes a revolution in the way we see human beings and human behaviour that is challenging most of these ideas in insisting we are primarily social creatures. It will show where the new ideas are pointing – what we need to do differently in marketing in order to get up with the programme.’
Adre Schreuder (Consulta Research MD and extra-ordinary professor of Marketing at the University of Pretoria) will revisit Customer Experience Measurement from his 2002 SAMRA keynote address to 2010 and beyond. His presentation will be a scientific-practitioner overview of how the science and practice of Customer Service Measurement (CSM) has evolved over the years to where it is currently focusing on Customer Experience Measurement (CxM).
Ari Popper (President: North America, BrainJuicer) and Earl will join forces in a presentation titled From “Me’ to “We’, which will outline some of the implications for market researchers of the herd or "social" model and discuss, using practical examples and real world experiments, where to look next for methodological and analytic innovations.
Says Popper: “Specifically we will look at a new map of research that embraces Mass Anthropology, Mass Prediction, Mass Ethnography and Co-creation.’
In the final keynote address on 3 June, Martin Kingdon (CEO, Sheridan Global Limited) will evaluate the value of in-store display. Explaining how real data is translated into actionable information, Kingdon will highlight the wealth of additional information that comes from the MARI (Marketing at Retail Initiative) methodology which was introduced in 2002 in the UK and the USA and which provides metrics of display performance that may be calculated against a range of criteria, allowing the performance of the displays to be assessed.
The first keynote speaker on the final conference day (4 June), James Fergusson (Global Director Emerging Markets, TNS) will explore some key trends in emerging markets, covering the rapid change in digital access, as well as review how marketers in emerging markets are responding to this change, particularly as much of the innovation is taking place at the bottom of the pyramid.
Fergusson will be followed by the last international speaker, Haythem Guizani (Researcher. Wesford Ecole Superieure de Commerce et de Management), who, in his keynote address, will focus on brand equity, brand personality measurement and modeling.
