Black Friday Smartphone Showdown: Brick and Mortar vs. Online Retailers

November 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment

SmartphonesEditor’s Note:  This post was originally published a few days before “Black Friday” on the Survey Swipe blog.

This “Black Friday” is shaping up to be the most contentious yet.  Some 152 million shoppers say they will hit stores on November 25, the day after U.S. Thanksgiving, up 10.1 percent from 138 million people last year, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation.

Online retailers have traditionally had the advantage when it comes to tracking consumer behavior and using new media to build customer loyalty.  But this year traditional retailers have a few new tricks up their sleeves.

Several large American retailers already embed market research software into their smartphone apps, and other have formed research panels that gather consumer data at the point of purchase.

Survey Swipe works with retailers to create a white-label market research solution that allows retailers to have their own research app or build research functionalities right into the retailer’s existing app.

According to recent Nielsen report smartphone usage is projected to hit a critical inflection point by the end of 2011.  Forward-thinking retailers see app-based solutions as an important part of their customer strategy.

“It is simply a fact that an app-based solution can gather data more efficiently, accurately, economically than any other technology”, said Survey Swipe founder Chandika Bhandari.  According to a recent study from comScore app usage by consumers outpaced browser usage for the first time in June of this year.

“With volume like this hitting stores, retailers who have a mobile customer feedback program in place will gain insights that will pay dividends for the upcoming holiday season and beyond.  Point of sales insights are a game changer.”  said John Nelson, Business Development Director for SurveySwipe.  “The ability of brick and mortar retailers to gain deep consumer insights will be a wake-up call to online retailers.”

Stay tuned, the stage is set for the most competitive Black Friday to date…

Filed Under: Essay, Innovation, Market Research, Mobile Tagged With: , , , ,

Focus Groups are Dead: An Interview with Mike Volpe, HubSpot CMO

November 28, 2011 By 2 Comments
Mike Volpe

Mike Volpe, Chief Marketing Officer of HubSpot

Editor’s Note:  I recently attended the Social Media FTW (For the Win) conference where HubSpot‘s Chief Marketing Officer, Mike Volpe was a keynote speaker.  During his talk, Mike contrasted the analytics HubSpot gives marketers with traditional feedback, using focus groups as an example.  I caught up with Mike afterward to get his further perspectives on market research and marketing. 

Dana Stanley: For those who don’t know, could you please give a quick overview of what HubSpot does for marketers? In particular, how does it help with marketing analytics?

Mike Volpe: HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing software platform. Rather than using one tool for blogging, another tool for social media marketing, a different tool for landing pages, yet another tool for email marketing, some other tool for marketing automation and yet an additional system for marketing analytics, HubSpot combines all of that into one.

This is powerful for marketers for two reasons: first, you have one hub to manage all of your marketing which is faster and easier, and second, you can easily measure and analyze things across all these different marketing tools. For instance, HubSpot gives you closed loop marketing analytics, so you can link it to your CRM system and know not only how many web visitors you got from social media, but also how many of them became a lead and how many of those leads converted into customers. Or, you could measure how many of your leads that became customers visited a specific web page on your website or used certain functionality in your mobile app, etc.

DS: In your recent keynote at Social Media FTW, you said, “Focus groups are dead.” Can you tell me what you meant by that?

MV: Of course “dead” is strong language meant to invite a response and dialog. Focus groups still have their place, however they are much less useful or attractive today for two reasons.

First, the low cost availability of other ways of gathering information about your market and customers. You can listen to what they say in social media, you can read the reviews they write. You can analyze how they actually use your website. You can see the videos and blogs they post about your products.

Second, I think the information you can get today is a more accurate view into your customers, because it is based on their actual behavior, not how they answer questions in an unfamiliar room with 5 strangers. I’ll take the status update that someone wrote from the couch in the comfort of their own home as more accurate than the comment they made in a focus group room when they are given a $100 gift card to show up.

DS: Your company has been on an impressive growth path. How does HubSpot take stock of and incorporate feedback from customers and prospects?

MV: We get feedback in a number of different ways. We conduct usability sessions where we have someone use the product online while we watch and they talk us through what they are doing, we have discussion forums for customers that we monitor, we get feedback from the sales team on what people say when they they demo the product, we have usage monitoring built into the product that gives us reports about what customers do and don’t do in the product, we have ideas.hubspot.com where customers can submit ideas to make the product better, we visit HUG (HubSpot User Group) meetings and we regularly survey the customers as well.

DS: What do you envision market research will be like in the future?

I think it will allow for faster and cheaper insights and more witnessing of actual real life activity, not simulated activity.

Filed Under: Digital, Featured, Market Research, Marketing, Planning, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

4 Kinds of Survey Error: Sampling, Measurement, Coverage and Non-Response

November 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

family feud error

There are 4 generally-accepted types of survey error.  By survey error, I mean factors which reduce the accuracy of a survey estimate.

It’s important to keep each type of survey error in mind when designing, executing and interpreting surveys.  However, I suspect some of them are more ingrained in our thinking about research, while others are more often neglected.

Imagine if we interviewed 100 researchers and asked each of them (“Family Feud”-style) to name a type of survey error.

Which type of survey error do you think would be mentioned most frequently?  Which type would be most overlooked?

Here is my predicted order of finish in our hypothetical example.

Note for the “Feud”-challenged:  Number 1 represents the most commonly named type of error in our hypothetical survey of researchers, while number 4 represents the least commonly named.

1. Sampling Error.

My guess is that sampling error would be the most commonly named type of survey error.

In a recent Research Access post, “How to Plus or Minus: Understand and Calculate the Margin of Error,” I explained the concept of sampling error and gave 3 ways of calculating it.

Sampling error is essentially the degree to which a survey statistic differs from its “true” value due to the fact that the survey was conducted among only one of many possible survey samples.  It is a degree of uncertainty that we are willing to live with.  Even most non-researchers have a basic understanding, or at least awareness, of sampling error due to the media’s reference to the “margin of error” when reporting public survey results.

2. Measurement Error.  

I believe measurement error would be the second most frequently named type of error.  Measurement error is the degree to which a survey statistic differs from its “true” value due to imperfections in the way the statistic is collected.  The most common type of measurement error is one researchers deal with on a daily basis:  poor question wording, with faulty assumptions and imperfect scales.

3. Coverage Error.

Coverage error is another important source of variability in survey statistics; it is the degree to which statistics are off due to the fact that the sample used does not properly represent the underlying population being measured.

There was generally more concern about coverage error in the past; these days, the combination of increasing internet penetration and fast/easy/cheap online survey panels has made it possible to accurately represent many target populations.  Concern about coverage error is still an important conversation; however, it is being discussed more in academic and thought-leadership circles than by the average day-t0-day research practitioner.

4. Non-Response Error.

My guess is that non-response error would be the least named type of error in our hypothetical survey.  Telephone survey houses historically have routinely made 20 or more call-backs to households that do not answer the telephone.  This practice has dwindled due to a combination of the expense of conducting so many call-backs, and the dramatic growth of online surveys, where it is just easier to replace non-responders with fresh sample.  It is also not considered acceptable in an online context to conduct scores of follow-up emails; that would get the sender sent to a blacklist post haste.

Filed Under: Featured, How-To, Market Research Tagged With: , ,

Meet the Data Triplets: Data, Metadata and Paradata

November 23, 2011 By 1 Comment

tripletsThere are three sorts of data, and very often you need all three to understand and use the data you collect from your survey.

Here are the three sorts:

1. The Data.

The data is the data, that is the actually numbers, codes or open ended text that the respondent enters into the survey. There should probably be a better way of describing this than “the data.”, maybe raw data is a better term to use ?

2. The Metadata

Metadata describes the raw data.

For instance the raw data for question 2 may be a “1” or a “2”. The metadata would say that the value “1” means male and the value “2” means female.  Or the metadata may say that the values for question 3 could be a range of 1-100, or 32-78.

Metadata gives meaning to the raw data, and so it is vital to the analysis process of the raw data that the metadata is present.  Otherwise the raw data is just a collection of numbers with no meaning.

One of the problems with metadata is keeping it connected to the right raw data. The wrong metadata with raw data can be a disaster.

Over the years data formats have got more complex, and one of the big reasons is to keep the metadata with the data. More recent data exchange formats/protocols such as JSON (Javascript Object Notation for the technically minded) have capabilities for attaching metadata to the data, which is a very good thing.

Raw data with no metadata is just a load of junk.

3. The Paradata

Paradata is the least well known of the data triplets. In the past decade or so it has become much more important for the survey research world.

Paradata is data which describes something about the way the raw data was collected.

It is data about data.

The most commonly used form of paradata used at the moment is data about questionnaire and question timings. That is, the time a respondent takes to complete a question or questionnaire.

This type of data is now one of the cornerstones of quality measurements for web surveys.

Obviously there can be many different sorts of paradata. For open ended text questions the length of text entered by the respondent can be measure, as well as the “level of vocabulary” contained in the text.

One metric used for web surveys is that of “speeders,” that is, the number of people who complete the survey extremely quickly. The paradata for time take to complete the questionnaire is used here.

Paradata can also be useful in revealing hidden biases; for instance, using paradata in the gamificaton of surveys is a rising trend. The time taken to do something in a gamified survey as well the action can have a great deal of meaning. Some researchers claim that hidden racism, some times unknown to the subject themselves, can be revealed by measuring someone’s reaction time to specific questions.

In a future post we will delve more into exactly how paradata can be used for quality control of web surveys.

Filed Under: Featured, How-To, Market Research Tagged With: , ,

Ipsos Loyalty and Survey Analytics Strike Mobile Deal

November 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Ipsos, Survey AnalyticsWe at Research Access are admittedly big fans of mobile market research.  That’s why we’re super-excited about the deal announced today between RA-sponsor Survey Analytics and Ipsos Loyalty.

To our knowledge, this is the first instance of a major global market research player putting all their cards on the table when it comes to mobile market research.  Sure, many have tinkered around the edges, but none have made such an emphatic statement as this.

Ken Peterson, COO of Ipsos Loyalty stated it thusly: “The introduction of the Ipsos Loyalty Mobile Network is another way Ipsos Loyalty is staying on the forefront of innovation.”

Survey Analytics CEO Vivek Bhaskaran had this to say about the deal.  ”Many of you know that we believe that smartphones represent a HUGE opportunity for research and many completely new and innovative models for insight and loyalty development with come out of this crucible. We are leading this effort with our SurveySwipe and SurveyPocket platforms – for the smartphones and tablets respectively.  We’ve partnered with IPSOS to join forces and bring smartphone based data-collection into mainstream research. IPSOS has a pedigree of exploring cutting edge technologies and using it as a differentiator for research.”

We have a feeling this will be far from the last such deal in this industry.

It will be interesting to see how things play out.  You can be sure we’ll give this and other mobile research deals plenty of coverage on Research Access.

 

Filed Under: Featured, Innovation, Market Research, Mobile, News Tagged With: , , ,

Liquor Privatization Initiative Accurately Pegged by Pre-Election Online Survey

November 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

liquorSurvey Analytics is pleased to report that our recent poll of King County, Washington voters called the outcome of the State of Washington’s liquor privatization initiative with a high degree of precision.

Our political poll marks an exciting and innovative, new approach whereby public opinion researchers, public affairs firms, political consultants and political campaigns themselves can cost-effectively and efficiently take the pulse of the electorate.

1183

Back in late October through early November, we invited likely voters residing in King County and Seattle to weigh in on various ballot measures, candidates and other matters. One of the most prominent issues on the November 8 General Election ballot was Initiative 1183, which will privatize the sales and distribution of liquor.

A total of 2,001 likely King County voters took part in our survey. When asked how they would vote “if the election were held today,” 61% said yes and 33% said no, with 6% undecided. In the actual election results, 60% of ballots cast voted for the initiative and 40% against. A match-back analysis of the survey sample suggests that those who participated were closely representative of the King County electorate, in terms of party affiliation, gender and age.

Liquor Chart

Unlike full-blown telephone surveys typically used by pollsters, our unique approach can be fielded within minutes and produce meaningful results within hours. Complete cross-tabulation data and topline results are available immediately. A complete analysis of our survey and its results is coming soon.

Note: For more information on this survey, check out this post on the SurveyAnalytics Blog:  ”Voter Panels – a real-world application in predicting outcomes of voter initiatives.”  

Filed Under: Government, Innovation, Market Research Tagged With: , , , ,

Sentiment Analysis Firm Metavana’s New CMO, Romi Mahajan: An Interview

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Romi Mahajan

Romi Mahajan

Romi Mahajan is a well-known technology marketing speaker and expert; he serves on a variety of advisory boards and speaks at over a dozen industry events per year.  He most recently served as the Worldwide Director of Sales and Strategy for the Digital Marketing and Search team at Microsoft.  Prior to Microsoft, Romi was founder of the KKM Group and served as CMO of Ascentium Group.  
Romi is also one of the founders of Research Access, and he has been a vital contributor to the online conversation about marketing and research.

Dana Stanley: Congratulations on your new position as CMO of Metavana. You’ve been a regular contributor to Research Access in the past, and I hope your new responsiblities will allow time for some continued guest posting!

For those who might not be familiar with Metavana, could you please take a moment to explain what the company does?

Romi Mahajan: Dana, writing for Research Access has been such a joy that I hope you allow me to continue to offer an opinion here and there!

I’m excited about my new role as CMO of Metavana, precisely because I believe we can make a real dent in reality with this company and really serve customers and the industry.

Metavana is at its essence a sentiment engine. What this means is that our engine can parse and make meaning of the geometrically-growing and unstructured/emotional content on the Social Web. We want to help redefine the Voice of the Customer and move it into the mainstream of business planning.

DS:  There are increasingly more companies these days in what’s come to be called the field of Sentiment Analysis. I understand Metavana has some unique ways of analyzing, scoring and packaging web sentiment. Could you give us a sense of the scientific principles used in Metavana analysis?

RM: Metavana attempts to solve a tough problem that is governed by the following 4 connected notions:

  1. The Social Web is truly the “Big Data” Web. There are 250 million tweets a day and 800,000 Facebook posts an hour.  And so on…
  2. The content on the Social Web is unstructured, asyntactic, often ungrammatical, and emotion — versus ordered, clear, factual data. It’s chaos; the tower of Babel writ large.
  3. The Social Web is always-on- 24/7/365 and is worldwide.
  4. Despite all of this, the Social Web reveals important truths about each of our brands….

We believe this is not a smart engineering problem but is really a physics and non-linear math problem. That is what we’ve based our algorithms on.

DS: It wasn’t that long ago that market research was considered to be surveys and focus groups – and that’s all. How do you think Sentiment Analysis – and Metavana in particular – fits into the overall market research picture?

RM: Look, market research has its place in the world but has not quite risen to the challenge of the Internet and Social Age. Market research tends to be episodic, one-off, and sequestered in the organization. Further, market research often lacks timeliness and context. Sentiment analysis (and Metavana by extension) change this by helping organizations understand the Voice of the Customer in real-time and in the real context (emotional, etc.) — that is what will define the next phase in the market research evolution. I believe in market research and want it to shine and have its rightful place.

DS: How will you use analytics and research in your role as CMO of an exciting internet company?

RM: Beautiful question, and I won’t sugar-coat. We’ll analytics and research in the company to determine market sizing, the “nature of the beast” we are trying to slay, and what customers and partners feel and think. But in a startup you go with gut often and you hope that decades of collective wisdom are brought to bear to do the right thing!

Filed Under: Featured, Market Research, Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

Now We Have Smartphones; Shouldn’t We Try to Be Smarter about Surveys?

November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This is a presentation from Survey Analytics‘ President, Andrew Jeavons, from the Market Research in the Mobile World Conference in Atlanta in July 2011.

(By the way, it’s pronounced JEH-vons, not JEE-vons, as Andrew explains in the video…)

Andrew presented guidelines for conducting mobile surveys, and he made suggestions for adapting Net Promoter Scores (NPS) in a mobile survey environment.

Enjoy!

Filed Under: Featured, Featured Video, How-To, Mobile, Video Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How to Use Facebook for Market Research Surveys

November 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

It’s an understatement to say that there’s tremendous interest in using Facebook for market research.  Indeed, among the most popular posts on Research Access is one written last year by Survey Analytics‘ CEO Vivek Bhaskaran, entitled “Social Media Research – Using Facebook for Survey Invitations and Market Research.”

What not everybody realizes is that companies are using the power of Facebook’s large audience to conduct research every day.

While Facebook-fueled surveys are not right for every situation, they can be extremely powerful in the right circumstance.  The biggest advantage is access to a massive audience of people who do not normally complete surveys.  However, even Facebook’s large audience will not necessarily yield a sample from the target audience you are trying to reach.  In addition, sampling through Facebook Ads can be expensive, depending on the particulars of your study.

Since Vivek wrote his Facebook sampling post last year, there have been many changes to Facebook, but the fundamental principle outlined in that post still holds true.   So it’s time for an update.

Also, I will explain how to use company or brand fan pages to get valuable feedback.

1) Use Facebook Pages to Reach Your Customers and Fans.

You can ask followers of your company or brand fan page (or your personal page, for that matter) to provide feedback in several ways.

  • Post an open-ended question asking for direct feedback.  For example, “We are looking for feedback on Research Access’ new look and feel.  What do you think?”   You can add language encouraging people to post their comments on Facebook, or you can give an email address for them to contact you directly.  The feedback you receive will be useful but will not be generalizable to all customers or fans.
  • Post a poll.  Facebook now has a “Question” option in the status update box allowing you to post a poll to your fans.  Please note: you can only do one question at a time, and the results will be visible to all fans.  Interestingly, there is an option to allow your fans to add responses which you didn’t necessarily consider when creating your question.

Ask a Question

  • Post a link to a survey.  Instead of using Facebook’s built-in question function, you can simply share a link to a survey.  You should also include explanatory text in the post.  Here’s a hypothetical example Research Access could use: “Please take 5 minutes to give us feedback on Research Access’ new look and feel. Everyone who completes the survey will receive a free eBook copy of QuestionPro for Dummies.”
Post a Link

2) Use Facebook Ads to Reach a Wider Audience.

Using Facebook Ads, you can open your survey up to a massive audience which can be targeted in very specific ways.  Here are the steps for directing Facebook users to your survey using Facebook.

  • Start creating a Facebook by clicking the “Create an Ad” link in the “Sponsored” section in the right-hand column of your page.
Create an Ad
  • Create an ad with an image and a message that will drive the right type of traffic and redirect those who click on the ad to an externally hosted survey.  Select “External URL” in the “Destination” drop-down list.  Put your custom survey URL in the “URL” field.  Use the “Title” and “Body” fields to create a compelling call-to-action for survey-takers.  Be sure to include an image that will garner attention.  In the “Targeting” section, you can target your survey by geography, age, specific interests and more.
  • Define your budget and schedule.  With Facebook Ads you have a great deal of control over your ad’s schedule.  Importantly, you can define a daily budget which will not be exceeded.
  • Finally, preview your ad, then start your campaign!  Good luck.
Filed Under: How-To, Market Research, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

QR Code-Enabled Mobile Surveys: An Example

November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Editor's Note:  this post was originally published on the Survey Analytics Blog.]

My friend Scott Liang from Parametric keeps telling me – the quicker you collect feedback from the Point-of-Transaction, the better the recall and quality is. While I have absolutely no way of verifying his assertion, in todays Blackberry and iPhone induced ADHD world, it seems logical – and anything that passes the sniff test, works for me!

If we accept that premise, then what the Washington State Ferries in conjunction with the Washington State Transportation Commission is doing is pretty innovative — collecting feedback directly from commuters while they are in the ferry. As passengers are commuting in the ferry, they have options for using their smartphones via QR Codes to give feedback on the ride.

Few innovative options:

Thumbs UP and Thumbs Down:

Instead of having just one QR code that takes them to a survey, the Thumbs Up/Down model has 2 QR Codes – each representing positive or negative emotion espoused by the passenger overall. This is similar to the the universal facebook “like” button that we are all accustomed to in the web world.

FROG on Board Poster

Integrated with MicroPanel:

Users who choose to give feedback are then asked to join a panel for future surveys and feedback. This allows the commission to build a long term relationship with the passengers — the commission can then use this panel for pricing, satisfaction and other kinds of research.

Once the feedback was collected, users are given the option to go to the mobile-optimized page for MicroPanel;

Completely Turnkey:

No custom development. This entire solution is off-the-shelf. This reduces cost and complexity. SurveyAnalytics has as question type that supports creating QR Codes. This enables you to create a survey with multiple QR Codes for each option:




click-here-to-download-the-case-study



Filed Under: How-To, Innovation, Market Research, Mobile Tagged With: , , ,
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