Today is an exciting day. Yes, first of all, it’s the election day. But for me, even not considering the election, it’s still exciting because today I found new meaning and prospect of market research as a career!
From a career panel held in a class today, I got the chance to hear three young, promising professionals who used to study at BU COM, and now working in market research and communication industry, sharing their work experience and understanding of their jobs and the industry. DJ serves as a Social Data Strategiest at Crimson Hexagon (a startup company providing social media analysis and big data analytics software and services); Chris started his career as a Community Associate at Communispace (a market research firm that works with online consumer insights communities); while Rachel is currently a Brand & Buzz Coordinator at HubSpot (a leading 
company providing inbound marketing software and services). Before diving into more information about their jobs and companies, I’d like to share two interesting numbers with you: 1. None of the three companies existed 15 years ago; 2. None of the three professionals’ job title existed 5 years ago. That’s the reason I name this post as “it(market research) is an innovation machine”. When the traditional market research analytics marries with “social” (no matter it is social media data, online communities or online marketing), it injects strong energies and allows 
uncountable possibilities to the market research industry. The merger has turned the industry into an innovation machine.
Why is this merger so powerful? If you want to know the answer, please follow my post “Market Research as a Career: It’s an Innovation Machine! (2)” tomorrow!
A Future Market Researcher 
haha it’s more exciting than the traditional method..as through these platforms people are giving out information much more actively:)
Yeah, I agree. For the big data, though it did a good job of gathering info and data on behavioral level, the psychographics and the “insight” are missing.
What I want to say after reading this new post is that, I am not amazed by you market research guys any more… Yes, you guys are REAL superwomen/supermen! You are able to know 3W of customers: what they want, when they shopping (online), and where they purchase. The most magic thing is, you can precisely predict and even tell the 3W to customers before they themselves realize it.
You also mentioned about the issue of privacy and security, which puzzled me as well. Few days ago I read an article regarding the re-targeting customers. The story was about a girl clicked a jean on a shopping website, and then she was exposed to all the same brand jean advertising when she browsed other shopping websites. She finally realized that the jean definitely tracked her and she was pretty annoyed. Obviously the marketing guys in this case were kind of creepy, now I am wondering if market research guys are responsible for monitoring and analyzing customer behavior, and marketing guys do the tracking things later (I don’t mean to offend them, just based on what I’ve understood so far..)? How do you maximize the privacy and security protection of online shopping customers?
Cynthia, thanks for your comment and question. Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer clearly. From a market researcher viewpoint, it is important to make sure we get the data legally and ethically. The follow-up marketing steps are really out of the researchers control, but undoubtedly, protecting users’ privacy and security is important. If lots of users of social media and e-commerce website are pissed off, I don’t think they are willing to offer their information any more.