Recruitment, retention, recruitment, retention, recruitment, retention!

The goal remains the same as professional and trade associations are plagued by similar ongoing pressures that lurked back 20 plus years ago. However, the job of providing a unique value that meets the expectations of members and justifies membership dues is a tougher task today given the current economic challenges and the widespread use of  technology, which now supports networking capabilities through social media and more available access to industry information, two key benefits once exclusive to many associations.

The cord blood banking market has matured substantially over the past few years, creating new threats for market participants, as well as novel investment opportunities. Serious threats to the industry include new accreditation requirements that have increased the cost structure of cord blood banks, expensive cord blood transplantation procedures, difficulty with educating obstetricians about cellular therapies, and more.

The outbreak of a hospital associated infection (HAI) known as CRE (carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae) has raised concerns about hospitals and the medical devices they use. However, it is often the case that a problem for one business is an opportunity for another. With hospital infections on the rise, there is now a focus on services that can help hospitals sterilize facilities and devices.

Social media can play an important role in understanding a brand’s audience. A large amount of users engage in social networking — Facebook alone has 1.2 billion monthly active users. Social media can be used to investigate your target audience and create an appropriate research plan. In this article, I will discuss a few ways market researchers can utilize social media for their research needs. 

The Business-to-Business (B2B) market is different in fundamental ways from the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) sector. Typically, B2C transactions occur through an intermediary, such as a retailer or agent, while B2B refers to transactions that take place between businesses and are generally upstream from consumer transactions. This blog post will discuss the eight key criteria that distinguish B2B markets with implications that directly affect market research.

Banks are notoriously averse to adopting new technology. Many big banks remain attached to their legacy IT environments and are very concerned about cloud security and privacy. As big banks look to move functions to hosted environments, payment processing and document management are good starting points. Small banks find it easier to adopt cloud-based services as they are not weighed by a legacy IT environment.

For the past few years, talk of 3D printing and all the different things it can do has amazed the scientific community and the rest of the world. But now, 3D printing is impacting the lives of children in need in an entirely new way.

While LTE and LTE-Advanced deployments are still underway, wireless carriers and vendors have already embarked on R&D initiatives to develop so-called “5G” technology, with a vision of commercialization by 2020.

Digital technologies have disrupted industry after industry, and consumer packaged goods are up next. Amazon, notably, continues to launch new services and sales platforms such as Prime Pantry and Subscribe & Save—along with its Prime Air plans for delivering products by drones to consumers, notwithstanding recent regulatory setbacks from the FAA. Traditional retailers are thinking more boldly as well, with Walmart focused on “winning at the intersection of digital and physical.”

The global smoking cessation market is going from strength to strength, globally, with ever increasing products coming to the market both prescription and over-the-counter (OTC). Most notable are the range of Vaping (e-cigarettes/smokeless cigarettes) products, a market which was estimated to be worth over $3 billion across both 2013 and 2014. So, where has this market come from?