Next week I will be in Munich, attending the market research conference Research & Results (26th + 27th of October) as a visitor.

During the last year I learned really a lot about the entire social media monitoring industry. Thanks to our data clients, who gave me during lots of interesting chats and discussions a great insight into the challenges and beauty of their work!

Now, on the other hand I do not know so much about the classic market research environment. I therefore hope that the quite useful looking sessions as well as meeting lots of people from the industry will give me a deeper insight into that area of services.

The only thing that I do know, though, is that even in classic market research social media sources from Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other communities become increasingly important. When browsing the offerings of the different suppliers exhibiting at R&R, I found that quite some of them even help companies to set up their own communities and blogs and help them to draw their customers to it. That way the companies get an insight of what people there think about their brands and services.

However, not everyone engaging with a brand or service is involved in these especially created environments. It is at least as important, if not much more important, to monitor what is going on outside ones own bubble.

Anyway, I hope to learn a lot more during next week about how market researchers think as well as their methods of collecting the information most valuable to their customers!

Drop me a line if you fancy catching up over a coffee or so, or simply call me. I might also check Twitter once in a while.

Anja Rauch

P.S.: We couldn’t resist setting up a Liveboard for #rr2011 …