About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.

Vikram leads the forecast team, which is responsible for producing all forecasts within M&S research. He is focused on the consumer commerce areas including retail, travel, and financial services. He is keenly involved in understanding the evolution of consumers' online behavior and technology adoption.
Vikram came to Forrester Research through its acquisition of Jupiter Research, where he started in July 2000. Prior to Jupiter, Vikram worked at IRI, a leading market research company, where he worked closely with some of the leading CPG companies.
Vikram often appears on TV, radio, and comments in the press on the US online retail and travel industry. He has been quoted in The L.A. Times, Business Week, The New York Times, CNN Money, and American Banker. He has also appeared on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and Radio, NPR, Fox Business News, and ABC.
Vikram earned an M.B.A. from Virginia Tech and a B.Com from N.M College in Mumbai, India.

Lithium And Jive Lead The Way, With KickApps Close Behind
In Forrester's 60-criteria evaluation of community platform vendors, we found that Lithium Technologies and Jive Software led the pack because of their mature tool sets and depth of services offered....
This model allows you to assess your IT/marketing partnership readiness along the three critical dimensions of people, process, and technology. Use this model to identify strengths and weaknesses of...

ForecastView Spreadsheet
Online Display Advertising Forecast: Offline and online advertising spending by marketers. Segments online display spending by media format, pricing scheme, and share of spending through ad networks....
Competitive Strategy In The Age Of The Customer
As Delta Air Lines can attest, there is perhaps no industry as susceptible to empowered consumers as the travel industry. Travelers' growing use of social media, strong adoption of smartphones, and...
Executive Overview: The Cross-Channel Attribution Playbook
Traditional campaign measurement focuses on simple, one-sided metrics, often giving credit to the last interaction an organization had with a customer and delivering an incomplete view of marketing...

Consumers' preferences for customer service channels are rapidly changing. And it's not just the younger generation of consumers — there's disruption and change across all ages and...

New Consumer Viewing Behaviors Force The Industry Into A New Future
Since its invention, TV has beaten back many challenges to retain its place as the king of the media plan. That won't change anytime soon, but the way advertisers plan and buy their campaigns will....
Benchmarks: The Marketing Mix Optimization Playbook
Few marketers have a structured approach to optimizing their marketing mix, often missing the opportunity to deliver better results with the same level of investment or to effectively reallocate...
Mint.com wanted to increase traffic from new and returning users to its site as well as deepen engagement and exposure to monetized elements. By employing a suite of game mechanics — including...
Direct Integration With Social Channels Creates The Richest Engagement And Data Opportunities
Across the globe, more and more consumers are interacting socially than ever before. When it comes to loyalty, social channels provide an opportunity for brands to engage with members beyond the...
A Four-Phase Approach To Preparing To Engage With Your Customers
Many marketers are launching communities to engage their customers in an authentic dialogue around their companies, brands, and products. However, once they've launched, brands often find that they...
Measurement And Staffing Challenges Keep Social From Taking Off
As more European consumers use social media, more European interactive marketers are adopting the channel as well. But there are still key challenges to overcome. First, marketers fail to measure the...
ForecastView Spreadsheet
Social Media Forecast (U.S.): Online social media spending by companies. Segmented by spending on integrated campaigns and agency fees. Agency fees spending broken out by company size. Spending is...
Executive Overview: The Marketing Mix Optimization Playbook
When making their investment decisions across the marketing mix, senior marketers face the constant challenge of coping with the proliferation of communication and engagement platforms while facing...

What are some best practice examples of integrating television with social media — not just in content/programming terms, but also in advertising terms?
Start Small And Engage The Enterprise To Overcome A Regulated Environment
The Cleveland Clinic was not the first healthcare firm to experiment in social media, but it achieved success where others failed. A pragmatic assessment of the barriers it faced in developing social...