LifeWithBlockchain: New ways for market research!

Working in the market research department of a large consumer appliances manufacturer means handling large amounts of data every day to analyze markets. This data is mainly provided by Germany's largest market research institute and costs millions of Euros each year.

1. What is the pain point?

The institute covers many markets and retailers but does not include important e-commerce channels like Amazon. Also, they never managed to take root in the USA, which is why our company has to rely on a consumer panel that is not really trustworthy.
Apart from the high costs and the coverage problems, it also takes a lot of time to renegotiate the contract every couple of years. Furthermore, data is only availabe with at least one month delay.
Therefore, we are constantly looking for alternatives but the problem in general is that there is no institute that covers every market, every retailer, every channel, etc.

2. How could this pain point be reduced or eliminated in a blockchain-world?

A blockchain solution could provide higher quality insight data for companies and does this at lower costs. Consumers, retailers and market analysts could be connected via a blockchain, without the intermediary (the institutes). One could think of a solution where both, consumers and retailers, are incentivized to provide their data. Participating retailers, for example, could register sold items on a blockchain, which makes them available immediately and reduces the delay problem. One could think of an app for consumers, where they can record every purchase and receive rewards (like the Payback model). Companies, on the other hand, would be able to buy panels and view the data through a web-enabled dashboard. Data triangulation would be guaranteed by involving retailers and consumers so the overall data quality would be higher!

What do you think?
#LifeWithBlockchain
Thanks also to Pascal Mehrwald (@pascalmehrwald), Benjamin Pabst von Ohain (@benpvo), Prof. Dr. Isabell M. Welpe and the TUM seminar team.