Businesses are supposed to be built around, or even within consumers these days, that’s why research is becoming more and more important when it comes to any kinds of business development, but should companies trust their customers?

Polls, surveys, and focus groups are what most companies use for consumer insights, I don’t doubt the accuracy of the surveys and I know companies and agencies are getting very good at conducting them. The problem is, do consumers know what they really want themselves?

In the world that’s driven by creativity and innovative ideas, it’s tricky to just rely on consumer research. If Apple developed products based around a survey on whether people would want to have a phone with only one button, iPhone would never exist. If Mark Zuckersburg built a platform based around a school research on whether people would want a space where everyone can “connect”, Facebook wouldn’t be created.

Numbers don’t lie, but people do, even when we don’t mean to. People tend to respond in ways to reflect what they want/ hope to become subconsciously, instead of what they really think.

Companies should make sure they know exactly what insights they can expect through research, it’s surprising how multinational brands trusted well-conducted research blindly and failed without knowing the reason.

Oscars Academy Awards have finally ended, after all the buzz on the Internet, it’s time to round it up and see what the buzz was all about. Social media was actually a big part of Oscar, it actually predicted some of the results.

Key findings from this research:

• There are 389955 unique conversations on social media in the past 7 days (March 1st – 8th)
• In the past 7 days, 505987146 Twitter users are exposed to a Tweet about Oscar
• More blogs talked about Oscar than other channels until Twitter took over 4 hours before Oscar began
• There are 98735 unique Twitter users tweeted about Oscar when it’s happening
• Brazilian Loves Twitter, 7.5% of the Oscar related conversations online are from Brazil
• Portuguese (17.3%) and Spanish (10.5%) are the most popular languages on Oscar topics after English (68%)
• Overall, Twitter is the most popular channel for Oscar related topics (Discussions from Facebook private profiles are not included)
• Before Oscar began, more people talked about Kathryn Bigelow (59.80%) than James Cameron (40.20%) online
• Avatar still had a bigger buzz (54.80%) than The Hurt Locker (45.20%)
• Up was most talked about among other nominees in Best Animated Feature Film

Research Keywords: “Oscar AND movie”, “Oscar AND film”, “Oscar AND director”, Oscar AND Actor”, “Oscar AND Actress”, “Oscar AND award”, “Oscar AND (James Cameron)”, “Oscar AND (Kathryn Bigelow)”, “Oscar AND Avatar”, “Oscar AND (Hurt Hunter)”, “Oscar AND (Up AND Movie)”, “Oscar AND (Fantastic Mr.Fox)”, “Oscar AND (Secret of Kells)”, “Oscar AND (Princess and the Frog)”.

Photo Credit: Reuters

It’s not surprising that social networking sites are becoming more and more important for most Internet users. Most of the teens these days own a Facebook profile, for both networking and playing online games.

Teens are extremely active on Social Media

From a recent research conducted by Pew Internet, 63% of teens in America go online every day, and 73% of these teens are on social networking websites, a huge growth from 55% in 2006.

Teens Hate Twitter

Twitter is not where they mostly communicate, only 8% of the wired teens use Twitter, far less than using SMS on mobile phones as 66% of them do.

After all the celebrity buzz, many teens signed up for Twitter accounts just to keep track on celebrities, but Twitter is obviously not the main communication channel among friends yet.

Teens are going mobile

75% of teens have a cell phone and love going online wirelessly. With the major growth of smart phones and all upcoming wireless devices, will teens jump on to Twitter as the major communication tool in the future?

Get the full report here

Photo Credit: Sean Dreilinger

Apple iPhone was designed in the US, started in the US, and most of the great features and apps are based around the US. But apparently people in Asia love iPhone more than any other countries.

Source: Google Trends Insight

For a digital product like iPhone, it makes sense to approximately calculate popularity of the product by search volume, the crowds that are interested in purchasing iPhones are always the ones that have at least basic knowledge on the Internet; therefore, the main source of information for these crowds would be through online search.