Exploring consumers own innovations is a brilliant and insightful way to provide new stimulus for the innovation cycle and the concept development process. We recently explored cooking and food on our flexible HUB Instant Qual application and gave our respondents the freedom to invent the coolest kitchen gadget they could imagine.

We discovered that most of them invented gadgets that fell into three areas: Planning, Prep and Cleaning. The brilliant consumer creativity that we uncovered, expressed through invented gadgets, revealed areas where people want new solutions, new ideas. These gadget ideas express underlying needs – genuine opportunities ripe for sparkling innovation.

Questions of Cybersecurity and Compliance are rarely out of the headlines these days. It is a serious set of issues for Enterprise working with Software vendors. For the vendor appropriate delivery requires a serious commitment in resource, policy and continuous assessment.

To help Enterprise inform thinking on the suitability and credibility of Software vendors we have defined below the four main themes that should be evidenced by CX and Insights Software providers.

In an age where the Internet is simply an indispensable part of life, the use of a search engine is foundational. It is the way in which we find takeout food, restaurants, household furnishings, fashion – and yes even friends and lovers. In short, search engines are the machine that powers our modern world. We’ve assessed how people feel about search: we’d note that every search is a brand experience which generates an emotional response that needs to be understood by search companies looking to cement brand relationships with their users.

Super Bowl LV had the lowest TV rating of any Super Bowl in over 50 years, and it was cause for much hand-wringing. But a focus on television broadcasting obscures the fact that the way people interact with sports is changing, with people embracing video highlights and moving away from watching entire games. And while the way people relate to sports is transforming, our research reveals that the Super Bowl remains by far and away the most popular and exciting cultural and sporting event in America.

Canada’s big 5 banks have stood the test of time, generating generous profits through good times and bad. They appear so solid that they seem to be carved from the unyielding granite of the Canadian Shield. But a look beneath the surface using our unique tools reveals a weakness.

Millennials and Gen Z don’t have the same feelings about these banks as older generations do. And they have a more favorable perception of more modern online financial services companies like Tangerine and PC Financial. As these generations accumulate more wealth, they will determine the future of Canadian banking.

Great CX programs shape the roadmap to deliver better experiences. Yet most programs are focused exclusively on metrics which summarize how the customer rationally thinks about a touchpoint post the experience. This focus on the rational misses the crucial emotional element of a brand experience. We have evidence that brilliant customer outcomes are the result of using these rational metrics that show the business what needs improving combined with Emotional CX measurement which uncovers how it needs improving.

The increasing need to work efficiently and effectively with tightening budget and resource means that Agile research tools and platforms have become a staple of any good research toolkit. Well-executed Agile research delivers insights at the speed of business. To meet the highest standards and have speed the software platform used must have the right capabilities.

Meal Kits exploded onto the American food scene in 2012 with the launch of Blue Apron, HelloFresh, and Plated, followed by Home Chef a year later. By 2019, the North American market for meal kits had slowly but steadily grown to an estimated 1.7 billion dollars, although companies struggled with profitability and retaining customers. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, interest in meal kits increased as people found themselves at home, staring into the cupboard, searching for inspiration.

When Ryan Reynolds bought into Aviation Gin in 2018 it made some people wonder if he was headed in the same direction George Clooney took with his Casamigos Tequila brand: turn a hobby into a business worth something to a company like Diageo.

Maru’s MoneyScreen interactive payments innovation platform evaluates consumer perceptions of payment concepts, both traditional and groundbreaking, that may or may not be in-market yet. This tracker helps us, and our clients, assess and keep a pulse on how the payments world is constantly innovating, and which payment methods or brands are resonating with consumers.

Remember when Bitcoin was launched, and the appeal it had when it first emerged in the shadow of the Great Recession? Most people probably don’t. It has taken over a decade to reach base awareness, but at the time, financial trust was at a low point and the opportunity for a decentralized currency emerged. Now, in the midst of a pandemic and the hugely volatile economic indicators in major economies, the appeal of investing in cryptocurrency becomes easier for the everyday American to understand. The one difference this time is – awareness.