Uruguayo takes on the challenge of promoting market research in Latin America
Uruguayan businessman Alain Mizrahi, the only Latin American elected to the Esomar association's board of directors, which promotes market research in 130 countries, will take on the challenge of boosting that industry at the Latin American level and influencing its global direction.
This was expressed today an interview with Efe the current executive director of the consulting group Radar, who after being elected as one of the eight members of the board of directors of the global entity that brings together more than 6,000 professionals in the area of market research and public opinion He said the charge puts "a huge bag on his shoulders."
"It is a more honorific position than anything else, but it is to have the possibility to learn a lot (...), always having a window to the world is relevant, useful, rewarding, but also (this position) gives me the possibility to influence my modest measure in the course of the profession worldwide, "he said.
Mizrahi said that the fact that he is the only Latin American elected to the position by members of Esomar makes him feel "a little scared", since the other Latin Americans that make up the association put their support in him.
"Many of my colleagues in Latin America have put a lot of expectation in that, we have been trying for many years that there is always a representative of the region in the council, sometimes we have achieved it, sometimes not. not only from Uruguay but from Latin America, "he said.
In this line, the researcher stated that there are certain challenges to face in order to promote the development of market research in Latin America are the diffusion at the level of companies and the promotion of that area in the academy, since in the total volume of business the region represents only 3%.
"Still in Uruguay and in the other countries (...) there are many companies that pretend to work without information and that do not perceive sufficiently the utility of having that to make strategic decisions or tactics of communication, distribution, product development, of customer satisfaction, "he said.
Although he assured that there are some countries where the weight of market research is already greater, as in Chile and Argentina, the entrepreneur noted that in others "the habit" of working with research information is not sufficiently developed yet. with respect to other regions.
Mizrahi, who identified the researchers themselves as the main responsible for this problem, said that work should be done in two areas, on the one hand disclosing what they are and how they contribute to companies and on the other strengthen academic training.
On the other hand, the Uruguayan asserted that new technologies have changed the way of carrying out research to the point that today artificial intelligence can be used to carry out market studies or survey public opinion data.
"Today you can make people who load fuel in a station scan a QR code with their cell phone and that automatically leads them to answer a survey on their cell phone while the manager of the oil company can be anywhere in the world watching the evolution of the results ", exemplified.
Esomar, based in Amsterdam, was founded in 1948 as the "European Opinion and Market Research Society", but currently brings together a global community of more than 40,000 professionals among individual and corporate members of the market research industry.
The association, which is the world's largest in this sector, chose this November its new board of directors, which will have the Spanish Joaquim Bretcha as president and the American Kristin Luck as vice president for 2019 and 2020.
