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Maru Group was founded to disrupt the insights industry. Our blog provides you with knowledge gained from our propriety software ecosystem. Learn how Maru's enterprise software uses data to discover insights and hear directly from our Advisory experts on the latest industry trends.

Monica Low Monica Low

The 5 Best Practice Rules For Unstructured Data In Customer Experience Programs

Unstructured data in Customer Experience (CX) programs needs to be analyzed and delivered at speed, essentially real-time. The program also must be able to go deep with understanding to optimize insight and action.

These principles of speed and depth are core to the Maru software ecosystem and are central to the delivery of understanding executed by our users either within the enterprise or via our advisory experts.

In the many proven use cases that we see there are a set of 5 best practice rules which guarantee outstanding delivery from unstructured data programs.

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Monica Low Monica Low

Lighting up – Cancer, cannabis, and the importance of deeply understanding the patient treatment experience

“You have cancer.”

Those three words begin a cycle of physical and emotional turmoil for almost 2 million patients each year.

Two years ago, that was my sister. She was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). Like any cancer diagnosis, this brought my entire family up short. While a diagnosis of NHL is typically a bit less traumatic because the probability of treatment success is relatively high, my sister was an exception. She was diagnosed with a high-risk variant called B-cell NHL or “double-hit” lymphoma which has a significantly worse prognosis and requires extremely aggressive chemotherapy.

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Monica Low Monica Low

Disrupting the status quo – The three characteristics shared by enterprises that succeed through consumer insights

If anyone believed that COVID-19 and its associated restrictions may have given enterprises a chance to slow their pace and plan the way forward on a relaxed schedule, then they have been sorely disappointed. The global pandemic has accelerated digital transformations, fueled technological innovation and investment, and disrupted the workforce in ways that few could have imagined just 18 months ago. Unsurprisingly, rapid change has impacted insights delivery too.

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Monica Low Monica Low

Taking The Pulse: HENRYs (High Earner, Not Rich Yet) Are Focused On Finding Ways To Prioritize Health And Wellness.

For our last topic in the 3-part series on HENRYs (High Earners who are Not Rich Yet), we dive into health and wellness.

Using our proprietary software, Maru ran a three-day discussion with this niche group in the US. Maru’s Instant Qualitative platform allowed us to efficiently moderate a discussion and engage with HENRYs on areas related to financial sentiment, travel, and wellness. We have been exploring what we learned with this group in a series of releases – all aimed at taking a pulse on how HENRYs are feeling, behaving, and thinking during these unprecedented times.

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Monica Low Monica Low

The 3 Golden Principles To Maximize The Value From Unstructured Data

When sharing the Maru Text Analytics capability with clients, one of the first questions we are often asked is ‘What level of accuracy can I achieve?”

Speaking to people keen to use automated verbatim analysis tools, they’ve often been promised 100% accuracy from this sort of technology in the past, only to find that this is never the case.

Accuracy is frequently dependent on a number of different factors. Using Maru’s Text Analytics, maximum accuracy is achievable but it needs to be considered in a framework of best practice golden rules for unstructured data analysis.

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Monica Low Monica Low

Happier Times Ahead: HENRYs (High Earner, Not Rich Yet) Are Keen To Cautiously Return to Pre-Pandemic Travel Behaviors.

Continuing with our 3-part series on HENRYs, those High Earners who are Not Rich Yet, we discuss a topic that appears close to the hearts of this group – Travel.

Using our proprietary software, Maru/HUB, we studied this niche group in the US through Maru’s Instant Qualitative platform. It allowed us to efficiently moderate a discussion over three days and engage on the topics of financial sentiment, travel, and wellness. We will be exploring what we learned with this group in a series of releases – all aimed at taking a pulse on how HENRYs are feeling, behaving, and thinking during these unparalleled times.

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Monica Low Monica Low

Super Bowl LV Was A Happy Event But It Achieved Miserably Low TV Ratings. Understanding Emotions Can Help The Event Push On.

The NFL Super Bowl is a unique event. It stands head and shoulders above all other sporting cultural events in America in terms of popularity, our research has revealed. But the recent Super Bowl LV was an odd affair. The stands were filled with 30,000 cut-outs of people, mixed in with 25,000 actual fans. Some advertisers skipped the game. The legendary half time show received mixed reviews from the critics. The game lacked excitement; it was a very one-sided affair. Streaming was up but it had the lowest TV rating of any Super Bowl in over 50 years. Yet, this does not mean all was lost.

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Monica Low Monica Low

HENRYs (High Earner, Not Rich Yet) Risky Lifestyles Are a Valuable Opportunity for Financial Services Companies

What do you call a 24–40-year-old with household income of over six figures, yet still lives on the financial edge? A HENRY – a High Earner who is Not Rich Yet. Where HENRYs typically have expensive spending habits, they are bogged down by debt (>$50,000+) and/or don’t have a large nest egg of savings (less than the amount of three months’ salary available in non-retirement fund accounts). This translates to a potentially perilous situation for HENRYs. If a HENRY were to stop working, their financial picture would alter dramatically. Work incomes, not investments or savings, prop up the lifestyle that a HENRY leads. Between paying off debt, supporting living expenses, and the upkeep of an often lavish lifestyle, HENRYs can find themselves living pay cheque to pay cheque. We heard from a HENRY who summarized a typical way of living as “Money is meant to be spent. I do recognize the need and value in saving, but when it comes time to make big purchases, I don’t hesitate”.

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Monica Low Monica Low

Utilities Are In a Bind And The Only Way Out Is Innovation

Utilities in the US are caught between a rock and a hard place. An estimated 80 million Americans are struggling to pay their bills, including their utility bills. It is projected that Utilities will be stuck with unpaid bills totaling $35-$40 billion dollars by Spring. And that money will be owed by people who are ill equipped to pay it off, if at all.

We believe that Utilities can work through this situation providing they embrace the need for innovation and act right now.

Our recent whitepaper, Customer Focused Utilities, draws on our research on consumer opinion, a utilities roundtable discussion we led, and a scan of industry, public, and social media. From that work three critical themes emerged.

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Monica Low Monica Low

3 Consumer Defined Areas Crying Out for Innovation in the Food Category

Exploring consumers own innovations is a brilliant and insightful way to provide new stimulus for the innovation cycle and the concept development process. We recently explored cooking and food on our flexible HUB Instant Qual application and gave our respondents the freedom to invent the coolest kitchen gadget they could imagine.

We discovered that most of them invented gadgets that fell into three areas: Planning, Prep and Cleaning. The brilliant consumer creativity that we uncovered, expressed through invented gadgets, revealed areas where people want new solutions, new ideas. These gadget ideas express underlying needs – genuine opportunities ripe for sparkling innovation.

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Monica Low Monica Low

The 4 Critical Delivery Areas for Robust Cybersecurity Practice by CX and Insights Software Providers

Questions of Cybersecurity and Compliance are rarely out of the headlines these days. It is a serious set of issues for Enterprise working with Software vendors. For the vendor appropriate delivery requires a serious commitment in resource, policy and continuous assessment.

To help Enterprise inform thinking on the suitability and credibility of Software vendors we have defined below the four main themes that should be evidenced by CX and Insights Software providers.

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Monica Low Monica Low

Search Companies Can Thrive If They Understand The Users Emotional Experience

In an age where the Internet is simply an indispensable part of life, the use of a search engine is foundational. It is the way in which we find takeout food, restaurants, household furnishings, fashion – and yes even friends and lovers. In short, search engines are the machine that powers our modern world. We’ve assessed how people feel about search: we’d note that every search is a brand experience which generates an emotional response that needs to be understood by search companies looking to cement brand relationships with their users.

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Monica Low Monica Low

Innovation is Essential for The Changing Sports Landscape: The Case of Super Bowl LV

Super Bowl LV had the lowest TV rating of any Super Bowl in over 50 years, and it was cause for much hand-wringing. But a focus on television broadcasting obscures the fact that the way people interact with sports is changing, with people embracing video highlights and moving away from watching entire games. And while the way people relate to sports is transforming, our research reveals that the Super Bowl remains by far and away the most popular and exciting cultural and sporting event in America.

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Monica Low Monica Low

Millennials and Gen Z Don’t Have the Same Feelings About Canada’s Big 5 Banks as Older Generations Do

Canada’s big 5 banks have stood the test of time, generating generous profits through good times and bad. They appear so solid that they seem to be carved from the unyielding granite of the Canadian Shield. But a look beneath the surface using our unique tools reveals a weakness.

Millennials and Gen Z don’t have the same feelings about these banks as older generations do. And they have a more favorable perception of more modern online financial services companies like Tangerine and PC Financial. As these generations accumulate more wealth, they will determine the future of Canadian banking.

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Monica Low Monica Low

The Key to Accelerate Better Customer Experience Outcomes is Understanding Emotion

Great CX programs shape the roadmap to deliver better experiences. Yet most programs are focused exclusively on metrics which summarize how the customer rationally thinks about a touchpoint post the experience. This focus on the rational misses the crucial emotional element of a brand experience. We have evidence that brilliant customer outcomes are the result of using these rational metrics that show the business what needs improving combined with Emotional CX measurement which uncovers how it needs improving.

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Monica Low Monica Low

3 Ways To Ensure That Agile Programs Drive Outstanding Insight Generation

The increasing need to work efficiently and effectively with tightening budget and resource means that Agile research tools and platforms have become a staple of any good research toolkit. Well-executed Agile research delivers insights at the speed of business. To meet the highest standards and have speed the software platform used must have the right capabilities.

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Monica Low Monica Low

Meal Kits Show The Way For Breakthrough Innovation Opportunities In The Food Category

Meal Kits exploded onto the American food scene in 2012 with the launch of Blue Apron, HelloFresh, and Plated, followed by Home Chef a year later. By 2019, the North American market for meal kits had slowly but steadily grown to an estimated 1.7 billion dollars, although companies struggled with profitability and retaining customers. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, interest in meal kits increased as people found themselves at home, staring into the cupboard, searching for inspiration.

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Monica Low Monica Low

Is Ryan Reynolds the new George Clooney?

When Ryan Reynolds bought into Aviation Gin in 2018 it made some people wonder if he was headed in the same direction George Clooney took with his Casamigos Tequila brand: turn a hobby into a business worth something to a company like Diageo.

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Monica Low Monica Low

The Digital Payments Revolution – An Industry Roundtable

The payments landscape was undergoing a revolution as the world became increasingly digitized, and then the pandemic hit. While it is too early to fully understand the long-term effects of COVID-19, the entire payment industry must prepare for the impact of the ‘new normal’.

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Monica Low Monica Low

Consumer Trends 2020: Spending Behavior in an Unprecedented Year

Maru’s MoneyScreen interactive payments innovation platform evaluates consumer perceptions of payment concepts, both traditional and groundbreaking, that may or may not be in-market yet. This tracker helps us, and our clients, assess and keep a pulse on how the payments world is constantly innovating, and which payment methods or brands are resonating with consumers.

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