For 20 years I’ve worked for a market research firm, and my market research involved gathering data in localized areas. Increasingly with the world wide web, any business is a world business. The world is the new market. Even businesses that you think would be strictly local have a presence on the web. An example of this would be restaurants. For most restaurants, it is very unlikely that someone will fly from Japan to San Diego to try the latest lasagna. But in this day in age, it behooves any business, including restaurants, to have a social networking presence on the web. This gets their name out, allows people to interact on line, and order on line. A side effect of this online presence is that they get to present their unique style and vision to the world, even if they can’t always present their flavor. Oftentimes this does lead to tourist interest and the sales of cookbooks and franchises.
My market research career now requires that I find out what is going on all over the world on the web. What kinds of websites are other people creating? Who is clicking in? Who is on top with Google? What percentage of business is coming from on line marketing and what percentage is coming from yellow pages, local marketing, repeat business and word of mouth? Increasingly, social media marketing is taking the internet by storm, so we’ve had to add this as a major category when we consider source of business and effective marketing strategy. One way in which I have enjoyed the way that this has impacted my market research career is that I can now work from home. Almost all of my work can be done on line. Even local research can be done on line rather than going to the library. The firm that I work for eventually decided that there was a great cost savings in not providing workspace for employees. I am lucky that they passed this savings on to the employees by offering a better health insurance package.
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