Global market research firm Synovate and Duke’s Fuqua School of Business will partner to create the Duke/Synovate Shopper Insights Center for Leadership and Innovation.
According to a Jan. 3 Synovate news release, the center will focus on advancing research in shopper decision making, creating demand generation through the shopping experience and providing an integrated view of consumer and shopper marketing.
“We really love to bring major corporations into our world and have them connect to our top-flight faculty so that faculty can help them solve business problems and see first-hand these problems in the real world,” said Wendy Kuran, associate dean for centers at Fuqua.
The key leaders in this new partnership are Gavan Fitzsimons, R. David Thomas Professor of Marketing and Psychology at Fuqua, and Mark Berry, executive vice president of consumer and business insights at Synovate.
The center will conduct research for six to 10 clients—including L’Oreal, Nestle, Anheuser-Busch and Kellogg’s, among others—who will be the investors and pay $75,000 each to fund the research, Berry said. These companies will remain on the board and participate until the research money has been spent.
“The idea is that we are partnering with Synovate, a world-class marketing group, and the business school at Duke has a world-class reputation for research on more of the theoretical perspective,” Fitzsimons said. “The partnership will bring out the best of theory and practice.”
At this point, the center exists primarily in relationships between people rather than being based in a physical space, Fitzsimons noted. He said that research will be conducted in the lab spaces that Duke already has in place, and group meetings will take place in Fuqua as well as at the Washington Duke Inn and Golf Club.
Ph.D., MBA and undergraduate psychology students will ideally be involved in conducting this research, Fitzsimons said. Students may also be asked to participate voluntarily in some of the studies, for which they would receive payment or products to take home.
From this partnership, Synovate will build upon some of Fitzsimons’ current research on consumer behavior. Companies such as L’Oreal are also very excited to use Duke students for youth-oriented research, Berry said.
Fitzsimons said studies conudcted by the new center probably will not begin until late spring or early summer. Each of the member companies will send several members of their staff on a retreat so that the companies can learn from Duke, Synovate and one another.
“From an institution-building perspective, Fuqua will build a much closer relationship with Synovate and member companies, which is good for students because many of these places would be good places for them to work,” Fitzsimons said.
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