Educate Customers about Apple Pay

• Although awareness, is reasonably good about the launch of Apple Pay in UAE, majority lack knowledge about it (is like a black box to them).
• It is very important to educate about Apple – How it works; Why to use Apple Pay; How it is better than other mode of payments; Where can this be used, etc.

Reassure on Security & Privacy

• Security and privacy are major concerns amongst customers. These concerns would largely be a reflection of their concerns with mobile/digital payments. Banks, Payment card stakeholders must work together to address these concerns for a higher take up.
• Banks, Payment card companies can conduct BTL activities in malls/shopping stores to educate people about it in an engaging manner

Usage Campaigns

• Targeted campaigns with offers/promotions to register and use Apple Pay would help
• Some banks are already making such offers (25% discount on first 5 transactions, AED 100 for the first transaction, etc) – this is encouraging. (some details for reference below)

Banks have to scale up their communication in order to get better traction on Apple Pay.

Bank	Tagline	Promotional Offer
SCB	Standard Chartered with Apple Pay. Easy pay. Easy go.	Get upto 25% cashback on your first 5 transactions
HSBC	Wakeup call. Bought with Apple Pay.	Get 10% cashback upto AED 100 OR 10 times Air Miles upto 15000 Miles (3 or more purchases)
Emirates Islamic	Ahlan apple Pay. The easy way to pay now available with the leading Islamic bank	Add your EI card to Apple Pay and get AED 100 on your first usage
ENBD	Say Hello to seamless payments with Apple Pay	None so far
RAK Bank	Introducing RAKBANK with Apple Pay. The Simply Better way to pay	None so far
Mashreq	Mashreq with Apple Pay. Easy payments made possible.	None so far

Saudi Women2Drive: Men react with cautious optimism

Reveals a recent survey by 4SiGHT Research & Analytics among men in Saudi Arabia

73% – Will Change Lifestyle of Women in Saudi Arabia

67% – Will Increase Monthly Household Expenses

73% – There is a need for Society to be ready for the Change

65% – Will Impact Saudi ArabianValues and Culture

A recent survey by 4SIGHT Research & Analytics reveals that 27% will travel daily and 76% will travel often by metro.

70% Residents in Saudi Intend to Use Riyadh Metro

75% Residents in Saudi mention it to be a positive development. Reveals a recent survey by 4SiGHT Research & Analytics

For visualizing the brand image data, we use one of the following charts in our report

1. Association data – Brand Image Profiles
2. Biplot Representation

In this issue, I am going to talk about one more way to visualize the brand image data. It is known as Moonplot.  Before we talk about of Moonplot, let us look into the above chart types.

1. Association Data – Brand Image Profiles

The most simple and elegant way of showing our association data. It involves removing the brand size effect and normalizing the scores across the rows and columns. The positive associations are shown as high positives and negative associations are shown as high negatives, the range determined by the Standard deviation of the whole distribution.

Pros of Brand Image Profiles

• It is simple DIY analysis.
• Easy to interpret & build a story in the report
• No specialized software needed for generating BIP’s

Cons of Brand Image Profiles

• Difficult to explain to clients who are not used to this analysis
• Difficult to understand the take out due to large sets of numbers involved
• Looks simple in the report

• 2. Biplot Representation

Biplot is a type of principal component analysis used to understand the strong points of a brands in a relative plot. All the attributes and the brands are plotted to a common central point.

Unlike the BIP the Biplot provides more information about the brands and attributes involved. The attributes and the brands plotted further from the center are the ones which are more discerning. For example: in the below chart the attribute ‘Most expensive’ and ‘Offer different products’ are the two most distinguishing attributes whereas the brands Kibi, Hochland, Gela Amol, Ramak, Mihan, Manimas and Pegah are more differentiated on these aspects compared to the other brands that has clustered in the middle.

• 3. Moonplot

To address the shortcoming in the above two charts, we can use Moonplot to show the association data much better. The only difference between the Moonplot and the biplot is the way the attributes and brands are displayed. The biplot displays the brands and the statement in the same space while the Moonplot separates out the brands from the statements. The font size of the attributes defines their relative importance to the category. The more pronounced attributes have bigger fonts while the less pronounced attributes have smaller fonts.  Similar to biplot, the more differentiating brands are father away from the central point while the less differentiating brands cluster at the central axis.

Moonplot Interpretation through attribute area of influence
(The cones when drawn from the brand gives the brands areas of influence)

Cons of Brand Image Profiles

• Need specialized software for generating Moonplot
• For studies where the brand association is not very discriminating the brands will just crowd in the middle making the Moonplot unusable.

A month ago, we published a short survey conducted in UAE and KSA on Blockchain technology. It is a short market scan to understand the consumer understanding of Blockchain and its associated cryptocurrencies. When we prepared the write up to be circulated among our clients and partners, I put together a slide on the future impact of blockchain technology in various sectors. Trust me I tried hard to find a relevant use case of Blockchain technology in Market research. I was really surprised I couldn’t find any.

The biggest challenge in Market research has always been the quality of data we get. The primary market research industry has largely relied on the interviewer to get the respondent we need based on the target quota that has been set. However, these systems have largely been set up for failure. With reducing market research project and increasing living cost, the interviewer quality has been depreciating drastically in the last few years. The online panel providers stepped up to match the cost and meet the changing MR requirements. However still they act as a black box. Your questionnaire goes in and the data comes out. As a researcher, you never get to know the respondent and never get to evaluate his eligibility conditions. Most times you don’t even get a clean data that matches the market reality.

What if we have a solution developed around the identity blocks of an individual?

Imagine in the future if we have a social media website that is built on the blockchain which gives control of data ownership back to the users. The data ownership of the users can exist as an independent block from their personal identifying information. The users can then be incentivized to share this information for data mining and analysis. But will all the user information be relevant? Not necessarily, we should have a validating protocol that only pulls in the information of the user who meets our target criteria and also we can fine tune it to pull out only relevant blocks of information. When you are doing a study on online Ad campaign impact, you don’t need the information on what they have ordered for dinner last night. I understand that the above example assumes the presence of an integrated social media where all the apps and other services exist within in the social media ecosystem like WeChat in China. But these scenario is much preferred than the current system where everything exists in isolation and our usage data is sold without our permission for targeted advertising. These future social media will keep a record of information shared in the blockchain database so that the user can be assured of their privacy.

It makes no sense for a Market research company to start such an endeavor but they can partner with any organization that embarks on the exercise so that they get reach quality data for analysis and reporting. The above example might be relevant only for behavioral research. For the other types of research like product test and attitudinal research, we will still have to rely on our precious recruiters to get the target respondents we need.

1. Blockchain Social Media: https://medium.com/blockchain-review/blockchain-technology-and-social-networks-a569a38c020e

It all started with BITCOIN, the poster child for blockchain protocol which caught the public imagination in 2017 due to its dramatic increase in valuation. While the blockchain protocol was created in 2008 as a means to bypass the central regularly authority, it never reached to its full potential as its users largely saw it as a investment instrument rather than a alternate currency (or a validation token for smart contracts).

Far from being an instrument of barter, it has morphed into a digital value creator giving unreasonable returns on its investment. Its market price volatility is almost synonymous with the heart beat of its novice investors.

Some cryptocurrency numbers of interest:

• Total market capitalization of all Cryptocurrencies – Approximately 500 Billion USD#1
• Total market capitalization of BITCOIN – 170 to 325 Billion USD #2
• Total Initial Coin Offering (ICO) Projects in 2017 – 435 #3
• Total market capitalization of ICO Projects in 2017 – 5.6 Billion USD #3

This document summarizes the findings of a market understanding study recently conducted in UAE

1. https://cointelegraph.com/news/total-crypto-market-cap-back-over-500-bln-bitcoin-pushes-11k
2. https://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap
3. http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-much-raised-icos-2017-tokendata-2017-2018-1

REFERENCE

1. Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott & Alex Tapscott
2. https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/ups-bets-on-blockchain-as-the-future-of-the-trillion-dollar-shipping-industry/
3. https://blockgeeks.com/guides/smart-contracts/
4. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/10/this-indian-state-wants-to-use-blockchain-to-fight-land-ownership-fraud.html
5. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/financial-services/us-fsi-rec-blockchain-in-commercial-real-estate.pdf
6. http://www.digitalistmag.com/digital-economy/2017/12/19/using-blockchain-for-media-rights-management-ad-revenues-05644369
7. https://cointelegraph.com/news/do-it-yourself-ipos-on-a-blockchain
8. https://blockchain-helix.com/your-personal-avatar-and-the-blackbox-of-identity-blockchain-revolution-theory-by-don-tapscott-implementation-by-blockchain-helix
9. Blockchain bank – https://www.circle.com/ae/
10. http://www.arabianbusiness.com/banking-finance/389967-saudi-arabian-monetary-authority-signs-deal-with-ripple
11. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blockchain-energy/as-energy-markets-evolve-blockchain-powers-up-idUSKBN1EG0V1