2018 is an important year for all of us here at Nebu. The company turns 25! On Thursday, June 14 we are organizing a party to celebrate this great event! Everyone who is or has been part of the Nebu journey will be invited, so please keep an eye on your post box! 

Nebu's anniversary gave me an opportunity to reminisce about the events of a quarter of a century. In a series of blog posts, I’d like to take you on a trip down memory lane and tell a little bit more about how we started, how we came into Market Research and about some of our highs and lows.

The first Nebu office, located in Fred's house in Uitgeest

It was in 1993 that Fred and I started working together. A long time ago, but I still remember this as if it were yesterday. Just in case 1993 doesn't mean as much to you as it does to me, I'd like to bring up a few iconic events that happened that year. In 1993:

In a series of three blog posts we're considering implications of the GDPR in regards to marketing research industry. The previous two blog article touched upon how GDPR might influence conducting CATI and WAPI interviews. In this one I'd like to ponder on how the new legislation may affect conducting CAPI surveys, as well as Mixed-mode studies and mode independent research projects.  

Mode specific considerations: CAPI

As CAPI mode is a personal (F2F) interview, it gives a chance for collecting different type of data than in WAPI or CATI mode, that also needs different handling:

In a series of three blog posts we're considering implications of the GDPR in regards to marketing research industry. The previous blog article touched upon how GDPR might influence conducting CATI interviews. In this one I'd like to ponder on how the new legislation may affect conducting WAPI surveys. 

Mode specific considerations: WAPI

As you could read in our previous blog post, the EU GDPR affects all companies, that deal with data of EU citizens. Every company needs to be aware their data flows, whether it is related to ‘generic’ customer data, or data is collected for well defined purposes.

Having an overall data-flow, attached to the company procedures in practice, will be your biggest help pinpointing risks, vulnerabilities, or improvement possibilities. Having said that, it has to be one of the very first steps, describing the INs and OUTs of all your data you need to deal with.

Next, and two of the most important, steps are classifying the data, and your role related to it - this requires continuous attention from your staff, as soon as new processes are established, that affect the data-flow. In our previous blog post we described the roles and data classification types. Not all data requires attention - this though sounds to be a case easy to deal with, you still need to guarantee, that a certain point you do not start mixing this data with personal identifiers or sensitive data. For the data, that you need to handle with high attention, the following factors have to be considered:

• in what format that data exists (do not allow yourself to merely focus on data sitting in databases, as there are files, emails, documents, tables around and this is still just digital data, there can be data on paper as printed lists, in sound recordings, etc)
• How is the data transferred between destinations, does the transfer method have the appropriate characteristics in terms of security, control and accessibility
• storage location chosen
• who can access the data in each destination
• who is accountable for the data in each destination
• lifecycle of data - when does it appear in your system, how and when it can be removed, or whether removing is an option at all

This list may look a bit abstract at first glance, but let’s examine some market research practices (without the aim of completeness) per different mode, and pinpoint challenges from these aspects.

Mode specific considerations: CATI

CATI interviews can start on two different paths:

• start with an RDD (or semi-RDD) sample
• start with a ‘normal’ sample

In both cases, you can end up in a few “feels tricky” situations. First and most important, is that you need to be aware of laws, that apply to your activity. This includes whether or not RDD sample is allowed to use at all, and also indicates, if do not call lists (blacklists) have to be applied.

After publishing our previous blog post (about a new Nebu Dub InterViewer functionality helping users to comply with the upcoming GDPR), we've received a lot of inquiries regarding solutions that already exist in the system, and future developments to be released to clients before 25th of May 2018, when the new legislation comes into force.

First of all, we've made the GDPR a priority from Dub InterViewer development point of view. We've analyzed the requirements and obligations of the legislation with regards to the marketing research industry, which has resulted in a list of (planned) developments, as part of our release cycle before May 2018. In summary, this boils down to:

Today we're celebrating the first day of spring! But it's not the only reason to celebrate. Perhaps you didn't know that the 21st of March is also the International Day of Forests was established on the 21st day of March, by resolution of The United Nations General Assembly.

Each year, more than 13 million hectares (32 million acres) of forests are lost; an area roughly the size of England. As go the forests, so go the plant and animal species that they embrace – 80% of all terrestrial biodiversity. Most importantly, forests play a critical role in climate change including global warming: deforestation results in 12-18 percent of the world's carbon emissions – almost equal to all the CO2 from the global transport sector. 

Together with EcoMatcher we've prepared something special to help the marketing research industry greening the world, tree by tree, survey by survey.