We were delighted to see Roxana Strohmenger take up the notion of prediction markets as an opportunity for market research success. Citing Surowiecki, she gets straight to the heart of what makes prediction markets so powerful:

The beauty of this method is that it is not relying on asking individuals to make predictions about what they will do in the future but rather what they think other people will do. Research has shown that we are unreliable witnesses to our own motivations. However, as social animals, we are actually very good at noticing what other people are doing, sensing why they might be doing it, and predicting what they will do. Therefore, a crowd can successfully predict the future and ― for a market research professional’s purposes ― can predict which products will do well and which will fail in the marketplace.

She’s also clearly focused on the ROI impact for market research:

Prediction markets have typically been used during the discovery stage, when market researchers are ascertaining which ideas should continue on for extensive research and development. Rather than spending significant amounts of time and money on a target population using monadic testing for each idea put forward, researchers instead use prediction markets to quickly and inexpensively determine which idea is predicted to be the winning concept and then run that concept through the product development life cycle. When comparing against findings from monadic testing, companies that have used prediction markets have repeatedly found that the results are exactly the same in terms of what is deemed the winning concept. And instead of taking several weeks and paying significant amounts of money for these studies, they have reduced the research process down to several days and reduced their costs by the order of 50%. This is definitely a methodology that should become a staple of any market research professional’s tool kit.

This material was from her blog post, “A Cool Research Methodology That I Predict You Will Use,” from Jan 18, 2011. We look forward to keeping up with Ms. Strohmenger’s coverage of this sector.

If you’d like to see your brand serving as the focus of a case study on successful market research, get in touch.

Dawn Keller, formerly with Best Buy, evaluates ROI of prediction markets and how business leaders need to consider the “cost of not doing” and “cost of alternatives” in this equation.

 Excerpt from Dawn Keller’s blog, The Answer is in the Crowd

From what I’ve seen in the marketplace (both first and second hand), Prediction Markets frequently face the same bottom line scrutiny as any other enterprise application, tool, or resource. How much value will it generate and when? Arguably, the business case should be extra tight when evaluating something new and unconventional. And prediction markets fit the bill. They are not yet widely adopted; they stem from newfangled trends such as crowd-sourcing; and most egregiously, they challenge traditional management orthodoxies.

 Here’s what companies often say:
This seems very promising, but I’m not sure it’s worth the cost.  What kind of returns can I expect?  What is the value of this new information?

Here’s the cost-benefit equation those comments imply:
Market value = market benefit - market cost
    or …
ROI = market benefit / market cost
   where …
        cost = price of Prediction Market solution + cost of internal time & resources
        benefit = value of the information (generated by the market)
Not to get hung up on the math, but these simple equations are missing at least three variables:

1. the cost of not doing
2. the cost of alternatives
3. the multiplying factor of the company’s management “skill”

The cost of not doing

Here, I’m simply flipping around one of the original questions.  Instead of only asking what is the cost of doing something, sophisticated leaders also evaluate the cost of not doing something.  In other words, what is the risk of passing on a particular opportunity, or ignoring a particular problem?  Those risks should be considered, and considered as costs.

Read more from Dawn’s blog on the ROI of prediction markets and how prediction markets can address your business needs.