Role Players

Mark Lepine is Managing Director for the Asia Pacific region. He is responsible for all sales and operations for SSI in the Asia-Pacific region including, Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.
Prior to joining SSI, Lepine was a regional director for Forrester Research building its infrastructure and business in Hong Kong. Before Forrester, he led a firm that enabled western companies to establish businesses across Asia Pacific. Mark is based in Hong Kong.
Topic:- New! Improved! Product Evaluations using Mobile
Innovation may not necessarily be about doing something new. Often it is a case of simply doing something better, perhaps using new technology. In starting to think and innovate with the mobile we do not always need to be 'blue sky', we can also take a hard critical look at the things we already do. In this presentation we outline a new approach to conducting product evaluations, both shelf tests and in-home usage tests. Following this presentation, the audience will:

1. Learn that mobile can deliver powerful consumer insights
2. Be inspired to identify mobile opportunities when and where a fit exists
3. Be amazed how motivated participants can be when undertaking product "missions"

Vishikh is an engineering graduate with an MBA in marketing. He joined the market research fraternity after his post-graduation and has since worked with Mode Research, TNS Mode and GfK. He is currently Managing Director South Asia Kantar Millward Brown with the primary responsibility of ensuring business health & commercial success of the organisation. Vishikh has a rich & varied experience of over two decades. He has worked with clients across sectors & industries (consumer, technology, media, retail, automotive, healthcare) and in the pursuit of resolving their business issues he has handled a wide spectrum of research studies. Vishikh is married, with two school going boys. His wife, Charu, is an economics lecturer. And like a true Bharatwasi – he is passionate about movies & cricket. He also enjoys reading.

Topic:- The Business of Brands

Overview:- In the ever changing consumer landscape – brand building is perpetually a 'work in progress'. What are the hallmarks of a strong brand? And what are the key tenets of building a great brand? Have these evolved as well with the changes in consumer & media landscape? These are some of the questions that the talk will try to answer backed with data & relevant case studies.

Alexander Wheatley is a graduate of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method from the London School of Economics. He is a member ofLightspeed's multi award winning'QuestionArts' Innovation department. Applying his analytical and creative skill-set to explore, evaluate, and present upon the challenges of online survey design and data analysis. From respondent engagement to sentiment analytics, Alex and the Innovation department's research covers all aspects of successful survey design in the modern environment. Winning over 25 industry awards for research spanning text analytics to respondent honesty; Alex and the team make full use of the wealth of data and resources at his department's disposal to facilitate pioneering research. In 2016 Alex was awarded the ESOMAR Corporate Young Professional Award for his research into political poling.
Topic:- Understanding the culture of decisions – using a more open approach to survey design to understand how Indian consumers' decision making differs to other nations.

Overview :- Over the last 5 years Lightspeed have been looking at how you can use open ended question to better understand how people make decision.

Part of this research included working with Netquest to invite 7,000 consumers across 7 different countries to talk about how they make shopping decisions, in a unique experiment to map out the language of shopping across category and culture.
This presentation will look at the results in India, and tell you what they did and what they learnt about the culture of the decision making process across the world.
Take always:

1. Qualitative approaches to quantitative surveys
2. Understanding consumer decision making
3. Placing Indian consumers in a global context

  Market researcher with two decades of experience in shaping marketing strategy of global brands. He has with a master's degree in Communication from MICA, India. In his previous avatar, he was MD, Nielsen Middle East And Africa. He is currently CEO of SixthFactor consultancy, a new age market research firm providing clarity to clients for profitable decision making. With over a decade in the region of C'suite discussion with clients in Fortune 500 companies like P&G, Levers, Mars, Nestle, Pepsi, GM, Visa and with local giants such as Almarai, Emaar, Etisalat, dU, Saudi Telecom, Al Jazeera as well as leading government bodies like Prime Ministers Office, Saudi Tourism, RTA, Ministry Of Economy (UAE), pointed to the need to make research actionable which can help clients achieve their objectives. This has led to him following his passion to move consumer insights to the next level using market research, advance analytics cognitive psychology, behaviour economics, neuroscience and new technologies available. Today he works with clients supported by a panel of global experts in these fields to enable real change.
 A 'thought leader' who speaks and presents regularly in global and regional conferences and contributes to newspapers, periodicals and magazines within the marketing field. He has been on the board of numerous councils and organisation such as Retail ME awards, SuperBrands Council, Asian Brand Council, Gemas Awards ME. An entrepreneur, ready to take on any challenge, guided by an unprecedented quest for knowledge, eager to provide research with a fresh perspective whilst constantly trying to find meaning in consumer choices Always interested in innovation and new ideas, his passion being behavioral economics and Neuromarketing. Himanshu is someone who thrives on challenges and adventure. A happy-go lucky person who is into sport and nature adventures.

Topic : Targeting the Reptilian Brain: Leverage Behavioural economics and Neuromarketing to gain marketing advantage.

Overview :- 95% of the decisions, judgements and choice is influenced by our System 1 thinking, or the reptilian brain - we think much less than we think we do - and so do our customers. In this interactive SixthFactor talk discover the basic principles of Behavioural economics as well as Neuromarketing and some quick tricks on how you could use this to improve your marketing effectiveness by targeting the reptilian brain of your customers.

  Saurabh is an Executive Director and Business Head at Blackbox Research, a leading commercial and public policy and commercial research firm in South East Asia. He has been advising fortune 500 companies and governments across the region for over a decade on public policy issues, organisational reputation, branding and communication strategies. He is a seasoned analyst on social and political issues and has counselled clients in the private sector, non-profit, think tanks and public policy spheres including fortune 500 companies, United Nations, USAID, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The World Bank as well as Indian and Singapore Government. He holds a master's degree in Research and Marketing from University of Leeds and has completed a fellowship from Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, USA. He also received training from Harvard Kennedy School in designing behaviour interventions and measurement science.

Topic : What Brands can learn from Governments?.

Overview :- What - How governments use research (Case in Point - Singapore Research Story). What can brands learn from it? Why - Analogy between private sector and public sector research – Finding similarities in differences How - Essentials of converting data into content [Bringing all pieces of puzzle together]

Audience Benefit :-

1. A unique cross cultural perspective to looking at data à Why SG gets it right [most of    the time]
2. A peek into public sector space which is alien to many in research fraternity
3. Ignite thinking and conversations on cross pollination of ideas