Five New Marketing Trends

The current issue of CMO magazine has an article forecasting five emerging tools for market research. They are:

1. Internet Data Mining -- Using Google, BlogPulse and other search tools to "mine" websites, lists, discussion forms and blogs for insights into new trends
   
2. Virtual Focus Groups -- Bringing focus groups into cyberspace, creating virtual malls, stores and clubs to see how people behave in them... and what they buy
   
3. Decision Markets -- "Investors" can buy or sell "shares" in products or concepts to test their popularity
   
4. Neuromarketing -- Perhaps the most farsighted technique, neuromarketing takes subliminal marketing to the extreme by using MRIs and other neuroscience technologies to gauge subjects' reaction to marketing approaches
   
5. Automated Behavior Recognition -- Observing how shoppers behave in stores, using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to track shopping carts, for instance
   

Many of these tools are in place now, and may or may not affect how marketers choose and sell products in the future. The last two are clearly intrusive, and may prove too controversial to use on a wide scale.