Peter Mouncey
In his editorial for the first IJMR of 2012, Peter Mouncey introduces the new Young Research Writer Award and the MRS Silver Medal winner before briefing readers on the talks given at the IJMR Research Methods forum, which was centred on the theme of "Does research reflect reality?" Papers included in this issue of the journal cover brand choice modelling; a more traditional vi ...

Ian Lewis
In this Viewpoint, Ian Lewis explains the 2011 Cambiar Future of Research Study, which addressed certain questions on the future of market research: is the industry facing transformation? what will 2020 look like? how is the profession doing today? what are the barriers and enablers for becoming a thought partner? And what are the implications? He concludes with what the change ...

Sara Sheridan
The winning entry to the first IJMR Young Research Writer award. The challenge addressed by the author is the measurement of audiences in a digital world where 'media can be consumed across a range of platforms, places and times'. The Switched On methodology is applied to measure these audiences and is based on three tenets: memory is flawed, selective or 'too keen to please'; ...

Rosie McLeod
A runner-up finalist entry to the first IJMR Young Research Writer award. In this, the author demonstrates how research can be used to facilitate learning, insight and programme management in an emerging economy through the case study of a Kenyan charity: Sponsored Arts for Education (SAFE). The author's role was to bring a systematic research process that would promote the tea ...

Charlie Richards
A runner-up finalist entry to the first IJMR Young Research Writer award. In this, the author argues the case for applying an innovative ethnographic-based methodology to answer the question 'How do we understand how people have come to be doing what they are doing?' The biography of respondents is highlighted as being essential for research - pasts must be considered as well t ...

Joel Williams
This paper outlines new evidence on what happens when questions from major social surveys are asked of online survey panellists. The paper shows how difficult it is to control for 'panellist bias' and produce unbiased population estimates but also that, for some statistics, panel data can provide a surprisingly close match to the gold standard surveys of government. ...

Charles Pattie and Ron Johnston
Partly in response to declining local party memberships, and partly as a feature of the growing modernisation and centralisation of constituency campaigns, Britain's major political parties have in recent elections turned to telephone canvassing methods to contact voters. This is despite a body of research on the efficacy of different methods of contacting citizens, which sugge ...

Len Marchant, Phil Prescott and Nic Jackson
This paper describes a framework for understanding and researching brand choice. The underlying model starts from the assumption that purchasers faced with alternative brands will select what in their judgement suits them best. It develops the theory and the mathematics as simply as possible, and goes on to describe the marketing implications. It explains how to build a working ...

Jennifer Rowley, Rosalind Jones, Magda Vassiliou and Sonya Hanna
This article reports on the use of the card-based game method in semi-structured interviews in three separate research projects. The essence of the method is simple: cards are created with words or images to represent the concepts or terms that are central to the topics in a semi-structured interview; the cards then act as visual cues to facilitate focus and prompt reflection. ...

Bertrand Belvaux and Nathalie Guibert
This paper aims to advance segmentation methodology in international settings. We suggest two techniques that, inserted in current international segmentation methodology, can help researchers find and validate possible transnational segments using various consumption dimensions. In order to facilitate the choice of an appropriate path, we suggest comparing the international seg ...

Michael R. Hyman and Jeremy J. Sierra
For various reasons, survey participants may submit phoney attitudinal self-reports meant to bypass researcher scepticism. After suggesting reasons for this new category of problematic survey participant – the mischievous respondent (MR) – and reviewing related response bias, faking, inattentive respondent and outlier literatures, an initial algorithm for removing such responde ...

Iliana Katsaridou
In this book review, Illiana Katsaridou looks at "Sensory Marketing", a presentation of evidence on the importance, interpretations, effects, implications and limitations of sensory marketing. The book is split into sections, each addressing one of the five human senses plus a review of the future implications of sensory marketing. The authors affirm that the aim of the books i ...

Kathy Hamilton
Kathy Hamilton reviews "Understanding children as consumers" which takes as its starting point the active role that children play within consumer culture, focusing primarily on children between 8 and 12 years old. David Marshall has edited a collection derived from a mixed set of disciplines including marketing, consumer research, developmental, applied and social psychology, m ...