Convergence is future of marketing

Time has come for various professions to work together for best results. Photo/FILE 

By BONIFACE NGAHU

I highlighted convergence of industries as one of the trends that businesses will have to watch closely this decade.

Last week, a research conference by Marketing and Social Research Association (MSRA) was held in Nairobi.

The theme was technology in research. The interesting thing was the notable presence of technology heavyweights like Joseph Mucheru of Google, Louis Otieno of Microsoft and Amolo Ng’weno of Digital Divide – also a founder of Internet provision pioneer Africa Online.

 

The chairman of MSRA Jasper Grosskurth also happens to have worked as a technology futurist in Kenya before joining research.

There were presentations by market researchers, a social marketer and a doctor.

Based on the mix of talent in the conference, it emerged that market and social research has converged with technology in a big way.

It has also converged with medicine where medical researchers are using technology that has helped to improve health results.

A doctor from Amref presented a paper on how they have effectively used short message service (SMS) to improve adherence to dosage instructions among HIV/Aids antiretroviral medication users.

This technology has been used in remote parts of Kenya, which means it can work anywhere and also collects useful data for analysis.

Researchers are also using neuroscience technology to understand how consumers make decisions, a technology previously used in medicine for diagnosis.

Engineers and computer programmers also presented market research robots, artificial intelligence models that are based on how real humans behave.

Time has come for various professions to work together for best results.

Asked where they could put their money if they were to invest, some of the technology experts said agriculture can benefit most from technology.

The issue of big data also featured with at least half of the speakers mentioning it. One of the speaker said it is like teenage sex – everyone talks about it, but not many know how to deal with it

Mr Otieno talked of the Vs of big data; volume for big quantities and variety because over 80 per cent of data available is unstructured due to complexity. In a world that is drowning in data, analysis skills possessed by researchers will be needed to derive meanings.