SUCCESS MAKING

Idea Generation and Finding Trends With Advanced Research Methods

Marketing is all about coming up with new ideas and adjustments to marketing efforts in order to respond to a changing target market and to competitive pressures. We review some resources that may be used to help spur innovative thinking including spotting trends in the market. This topic area also includes state-of-the art marketing research methods and techniques used for idea development and other purposes.

www.Google.com/trends – The power of Google’s database is put to work with this tool that offers a look at trends for search terms going back several years. By entering a search term it presents a graphical representation of searches by month. Also allows for analysis by region and even cities in a region. Could be very useful for determining the location of new markets or test markets, seeing what’s hot and what’s not, and for identifying when sales of cyclical products may be changing.

Perfect Brainstorming – It will take a few minutes to get a feel for the information on this site but it does contain the key elements that explains a widely used idea generation research technique.

www.Trendwatching.com – Interesting site that offers a monthly newsletter examining a consumer trend that appears to be occurring somewhere in the world. Also provides access to all previously reported trends.

www.Wordspy.com – The creation of new words are often the sign of a trend and this site provides a regular updated list of new words including examples of usage. Site includes a subject index to quickly locate terms.

What You Really Want to Buy (neuro marketing research using customer brain scanning) www.BusinessWeek.com

This Is Your Brain on Advertising (the science of neuro marketing market research) www.BusinessWeek.com

Ears Wide Open (more evidence of open source marketing) www.FastCompany.com

Want Fresh Ideas? Try Crowdcasting (open source marketing research) Business 2.0, at money.cnn.com/magazines/business2

Big Blue Brainstorm (online brainstorming) at www.BusinessWeek.com

Eight Tips for Better Brainstorming at www.BusinessWeek.com

Crowdsourcing: Consumers as Creators (another example of customers helping design products) at www.BusinessWeek.com

Staples Solicits Inventive Ideas From the Public Wall Street Journal (via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com)

Build an Army for Your Ideas (what to do with an idea) at www.FastCompany.com

5 Hot Products For the Future Business2.0 , at money.cnn.com/magazines/business2

Consumers Driving New Product Innovation (why companies do and do not listen to customers) at www.ECommerceTimes.com

Infolust (consumer need for access to instant information) at www.Trendwatching.com

Blog Buzz Helps Companies Catch Trends in the Making at www.WashingtonPost.com

Being Spaces & Brand Spaces (ideas for new services in open spaces) at www.Trendwatching.com

Trend Unit – Why We All Should Be Trend Watchers at www.Trendwatching.com

Virtual Anthropology (how to spot trends) at www.Trendwatching.com

About the Author

He has a background as civil engineer and geoscientist. He has worked mainly within the oil and gas industry from the mid 1980s. He has written a few fictional novels as well as being the author of some professional litterature within oil and gas sector, he is now an editor of some web sites.

www.lulu.com/stig

www.ec-ba.com