Fresh from Munich, the respondi UK team headed to London to support and sponsor a new phase of MRS events. Customers Exposed. It promised ten provocative views of the modern consumer and offered guidance on how we can better understand them, and better exploit the opportunities.

It certainly delivered on its promise. Caroline Hayter, a Strategist from Acacia Avenue, delivered a fascinating presentation about working with and marketing to Millennials. They strive to choose “product first, brand second” which clearly wreaks havoc with our outdated market research & marketing procedures.

Today’s consumers are sophisticated and connected. After a crushing recession, consumers are back in the driving seat and their demand for quality and value is stronger than ever. Jason Nathan of Dunnhumby certainly clarified the wealth of data which is out there to support the brands, retailers and ensuring the consumer gets exactly what they want.

Ultimately, all consumers want are authentic brands. Easier said than done?

Mustering the small amount of energy we had left after Munich and London, we headed to Edinburgh for our final conference of the month, the International Shopper Insights in Action. Wow what an event (even with LIVE infographics for each session)!

It was a rather specialist event for us to attend as a fieldwork agency. However, during the conference the demand for a high quality panel became more and more apparent; a panel with transparency and one which is able to utilise qualified and engaged samples throughout the whole ‘path to purchase’ route, regardless of methodology.

As shoppers are unreliable when it comes to their own behaviour, brand and retailers have a huge job on their hands to understand and predict this. However, shoppers are humans and the key is to get inside the modern shopper’s mind. We heard from Alki Manias, of Incontext, about utilising virtual shopping scenarios and Sims allowing participants to act as instinctively as they would in store – offering clients a faster, smarter and more profitable approach to shelf placement, category research and branding.

We were also extremely lucky to have two fantastic key notes. One of them was by Nathalie Nahai, CEO at The Web Psychologist, who let us in to the online world of the Secret Psychology of Persuasion. The second was that, none of us researchers or marketers should forget to work with the 3 system brain; primal, emotional and rational – in case any of you had forgotten!