3 Ways to Use Pinterest for Marketing Research

May 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Pinterest LogoFolks around the web have been dubbing Pinterest as this year’s social media site to watch. This is propelled by the sudden growth in users and talk of how businesses have seen considerable referral traffic from the site. Brands like Whole Foods, Land’s End and Etsy have set up profiles and amassed tens of thousands of followers across their pin boards and profiles.

A quick overview for those new to the site, Pinterest is essentially a virtual cork board where you post images from all over the web. The images are “pinned” and organized into collections called “boards” which you name based on themes, topics, or just about anything you want.

For instance, I’ve created a board for my favorite iPhone & iPad apps linking to the apps in the iTunes App store. Also, as someone who likes to frequently cook (and eat) I created a board for dishes I want to cook and inspirational ways to present food. Each pin links to the original web site where it was originally published so I can possibly backtrack and find out how to make that great recipe I found or others who follow me on Pinterest can discover some new iPhone apps I’ve pinned.

Pinterest users can also do much of the standard stuff such as “like”, “repin” or comment on any image they find. Additionally, one of the ways Pinterest is different than other social networks in the way that users can follow individual boards that interest them instead of being forced to follow a user and everything they share. That allows folks who prefer to follow interests instead of a particular person an opportunity to do so.

Pinterest1

That said, I’d like to share a few ways you might use Pinterest from a different angle for some quick and dirty research.

Discover What People are Pinning from Your Website

When clicked, every image on Pinterest displays corresponding information like comments, “likes,” other images in the same board and more. The info I find interesting is the area on each pin that shows what other pins came from a specific web domain. Take a look here for instance. You can see all images pinnned from socialmedaiexplorer.com from all users on Pinterest. You can see right off the bat that people enjoy the infographics here on the site. Most popular after the infographics is an image of Jason’s recently published book. Remember, each of these images could have been pinned from any page on socialmediaexplorer.com. Pinterest conveniently collects them all in one place for you.

Want to try it on your site? Type the following into your browser and replace “yourdomain.com” with your own web site: http://pinterest.com/source/”yourdomain.com”. You’ll likely find out something interesting about what visitors to your web site find visually interesting to them.

Let’s look at another example with the folks at FastMac: http://pinterest.com/source/fastmac.com/. Here we can see, out of all the products that Fastmac sells, 99% of people have pinned images related to their USB wall socket. Not only an image of the product itself, but the actual ad image on the product page.

This by itself is insightful, but let’s take it a step further.

Understanding Customer Perception

It’s been said that your brand is not what you say it is, but what your customers say it is. That said, understanding customer perception is important. Pinterest can give you a little insight into that by simply taking a look at the name of the boards that users have pinned content from your web site. In the case of Fastmac, you can see board names like “Products I love…”, “I Want”, “Geeky”, “Home Decor”, “Brilliant”, “For the Home”, and “My Future Home”.  If only a few images have been pinned from your web site then this might not be enough for you to care about, but with hundreds or even thousands of pins it has more meaning. Additionally, by clicking each board name you will be able to see what other images that user has found worth of shuffling into “I Want” or “Products I love…” and how many other users are following each of these boards. Similar to the common Twitter metric, the number of board followers could be counted towards the “reach” of any content shared in that specific board.

Pinterest2

Again, let’s dive a little further shall we?

Capturing Descriptions, Comments & Board Names

Being able to take a look at what folks have pinned from your web site is one thing, but might it be helpful to capture it to cull through later? There is a quick way to capture all of the board names, pin descriptions, user comments, likes and repins all into one document. First bring up all images pinned from your web site as described previously. Now scroll to the bottom of the page. When you hit the bottom of the page Pinterest automatically loads up any additional images. Keep scrolling until no more images load. Next, hit “control + a” on your keyboard (“command + a” for Mac users) to “select all” . You should now see everything selected on the page. Open up a blank Word document and hit “control+v” to paste everything into the document. Depending on how many images there are it might take a few seconds for it all to paste. Unfortunately the images are not captured, but all of the other information including links to the boards and user profiles, will be in your document. You can also paste into an Excel spreadsheet. It doesn’t look pretty, but you can use it to review later.

The Wrap

Beyond this there is still more you can do to dig a little deeper to get to know some potential customers and even competitors more. You might take a closer look at the users who seem to be getting the most repins or likes on the images they share. What else are they into? Have they added more social links to their Pinterest profile so you can connect with them on Twitter or elsewhere as well? What might you find out if you looked up what people were sharing from your competitor’s web site?

Pinterest3

Were these tips helpful? is Pinterest a contender or just a fad? Share your thoughts.

Editor’s Note: I would like to thank Adam Helweh, CEO of Secret Sushi Creative for permission to republish this article, a version of which first appeared at socialmediaexplorer.com.

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

Logos Quiz: The Future of Market Research?

May 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

LogosQuizWhat if you were a marketing executive for a global brand, and I told you I had collected benchmark feedback from thousands of consumers on the top brands in the world, including yours and your competitors’?

Would I have your attention?

Thanks to my son, I recently became aware of an ingenious app called Logos Quiz which is currently the #5 ranked free iPhone app and the #6 ranked free iPad app. Like many games, this app is highly addictive.

The premise is simple: click on a partially-obscured logo and try to name the brand associated with it. If you name it, you get points. Repeat. The game contains over 500 brands, enough to keep anyone busy for some time.

Step 1

Step 1

Step 2

Step 2

Step 3

Step 3

Step 4

Step 4

This is gamification of market research in its purest form.

So which market research company created Logos Quiz?

Awkward silence.

The app was not created by a market research company. It was created by Javier Perez Estarriaga, a developer in Spain who, to my knowledge, has no prior connection to market research.

This is a classic example of disruptive innovation.

Market researchers should study Estarriaga’s example if they want to be on the right side of history.

And – just a thought – somebody might want to put a call in to this guy!

Filed Under: Gamification, Market Research Tagged With: , ,

Webinar: How to Run Discrete Choice Conjoint Analysis

May 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Steps

Editor’s Note: Today’s post was originally published on the Survey Analytics blog.

Discrete choice conjoint analysis is a popular marketing research technique that helps you determine the optimal mix of features in a new product or service.

Survey Analytics invites you to a complimentary one-hour webinar, “How to Run Discrete Choice Conjoint Analysis.” The webinar is on Tuesday, May 22nd at 10am Pacific Time / 1pm Eastern Time / 6pm Greenwich Mean Time.

Click this link to register for the webinar.

The basics of discrete choice conjoint analysis are not hard to understand. In just one hour, you will gain an understanding of how to design, conduct and analyze a discrete choice conjoint analysis project.

This webinar will help you understand:

  • What discrete choice conjoint analysis is
  • The theory and logic behind discrete choice conjoint analysis
  • When to use discrete choice conjoint in your research
  • Specific case studies of how others have used discrete choice conjoint
  • How to design a discrete choice conjoint project
  • How to write a discrete choice conjoint questionnaire
  • How to analyze the results of a discrete choice conjoint project

The webinar will feature Survey Analytics’ Enterprise Research Platform, with a newly enhanced discrete choice conjoint module, including such features as integrated d-optimal design generation, design import and upgraded part-worth calculations using maximum likelihood estimates.

The webinar will be conducted by Andrew Jeavons, President of Survey Analytics.

Anyone who attends the webinar or downloads the video and slides afterward will get one complimentary month of Survey Analytics’ discrete choice conjoint capability.

Click this link to register for the webinar.

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

5 Ways to Avoid Creating Dead Robot Respondents

May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Dead Robots“When the individual’s behavior and consciousness get hooked to a routine sequence of external actions, he is a dead robot, and it is time for him to die and be reborn. Time to ‘drop out,’ ‘turn on,’ and ‘tune in.’

- Dr. Timothy Leary

OK, it’s no longer the 1960s, but the words of Dr. Timothy Leary are eerily prescient about the current state of survey research.

Allow me to explain.

When we expect respondents to take the same old boring surveys, when we misuse their time, and when we treat them with less than full respect, we cannot expect them to feel good about what they are doing.

However enthusiastic they may be about helping us help our clients, they eventually, understandably, become “dead robots,” responding in a rote fashion until they just can’t take it anymore.

Naturally, “dead robot” respondents provide lesser quality data, and, they are much more likely to drop out of our surveys.

We could all use tips and reminders about how to keep respondents “turned on” and “tuned in.” Here are 5 suggestions for you to consider using in your surveys.

And no, I’m not suggesting using any of Dr. Leary’s preferred methods.

Note: Ivana Taylor at the QuestionPro Blog recently had an excellent post with a couple of suggestions for minimizing drop-outs, which I will borrow as suggestions 1) and 2).

1) Allow Respondents to Save and Continue Later

Your respondent is halfway done with your questionnaire, and the phone and doorbell ring simultaneously.

Why not give the respondent the option to save their progress and continue taking the survey at a more convenient time? If you don’t allow this option, you’re encouraging people to close their browser and say, “oh, forget it.”

2) Set a Time Limit and Provide a Timer

If you set a time limit for the completion of a survey, along with a built-in timer, you are encouraging the respondent to give a higher level of focus on the task.

Think about it, if you are trying to finish the survey within 10 minutes, you are concentrating and working hard. You don’t want to drop out because you are in a race with yourself and you want to see if you can meet the challenge.

And now, here are three more suggestions:

3) Keep Your Survey Short

Write your survey. Cut it in half. Then cut it in half again. Then maybe, just maybe, you can add a few questions back in.

For years I’ve been hearing people talk about the importance of keeping surveys short. With the advent of mobile surveys, that advice is even more important. Yet I keep hearing horror stories about 30-minute, 40-minute or even longer questionnaires.

Stand up for your respondents by cruelly and efficiently cutting out all the fat, and maybe even some bone.

If you’re asking respondents to fill out a questionnaire, ask yourself, “Would I do this survey?” I think the answer may be revealing.

4) Provide a Progress Bar

A progress bar is a merciful thing. And it’s a smart thing. Without it, respondents are left guessing how much longer they will be completing your questionnaire.

Without a progress bar, a respondent could drop out just a few questions from the end of the survey. With a progress bar, respondents at least have a sense of the task at hand. Honesty is appreciated and goes a long way to engendering loyalty.

If your survey software offers a progress bar option, use it. If it doesn’t, consider looking for new survey software.

5) Make the Survey Convenient

If you make the survey convenient for the respondent, they will reward you with their responses and with quality data.

First and foremost, for online surveys your default assumption should be to offer the questionnaire on a traditional desktop/laptop web browser, and offer a mobile option.

Of course, this can backfire if your survey has not been properly tested and is thus terrible looking, or even completely messed up, on a mobile device. Depending on your audience, you should also consider offering offline options as well.

These are just a few options to consider for keeping your respondents “turned on” and “tuned in.” Fundamentally, it boils down to putting yourself in the respondents’ shoes and creating a questionnaire that you yourself would realistically complete.

Please share your ideas for keeping respondents engaged in your survey in the comments section below.

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

Tips on Gamification for Respondent Engagement

May 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

SSI

SSI’s Jackie Lorch and Jared Schiers recently did a very well-attended webinar on respondent engagement for the American Marketing Association. The session was called “Getting engaged with your research respondents: how to take your targets from first date to long-term relationship.”

Lorch and Schiers covered a lot of ground, including addressing both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation of respondents and reviewing the ways in which some research panel stewards have not lived up to the promises made to respondents.

What I found particularly interesting in this webinar, though, was Lorch and Schiers’ section on gamification.  They made some great points.

They pointed out that many of us have gotten a mandate to find ways to use gamification to drive business goals.

They cautioned that gamification should be used judiciously – researchers are not in the entertainment business, after all.

It is not gamification, for example, when you simply add images and “bells and whistles.”

The opportunity, rather, is to add game elements in order to capitalize on people’s natural “achievement motivation.”

Further, gamification “is bigger than gaming; it’s about creating a framework to increase focus and get people to think harder and in a different way about their answers.”

Gamification capitalizes on respondents’ intrinsic motivators rather than extrinsic rewards.

Lorch and Schiers outline four elements to consider when creating an effective game:

  • Create a framework – this focuses people’s thinking, promotes concentration and promotes a feeling of competence and achievement.
  • Make it a competition – this will focus the respondent’s mind on the task and add some tension.  The competition can be with oneself.
  • Create a character – selecting an avatar allows respondents a sense of autonomy and control through which they can express their feelings.
  • Let people compare themselves to others – this promotes relatedness, the feeling that respondents are not acting alone, allows people to learn and adds some fun.

Lorch and Schiers also warned we should not go overboard by creating entire game experiences. We should also guard against introducing bias.

After the webinar I had a chance to catch up with Lorch. I asked her how SSI uses gamification in their business. “We use elements of gamification in managing our panels and communities to make them into places people will want to visit again,” Lorch said. “And if we’re asked to program questionnaires for our clients, we work with them to incorporate gaming elements if they suit the project needs. In most cases our clients program their own questionnaires, and we’re seeing some of our clients doing some very interesting things with virtual realities, scenario planning and the like, taken from the world of gaming.”

She added, “Using gaming techniques can help us achieve two key goals at SSI: building sample frames that are as large and representative as possible;  and making sure the people we select from those frames give accurate information. If we give people an experience that’s enjoyable  – especially for demographic groups that are difficult to find, like young males — then people are more likely to come back and take a survey with us again in the future. And some surveys are frankly, too long and not very interesting. Without a live interviewer, it can be difficult to keep people’s attention. By using gaming elements, we can avoid monotony, and even, with the use of an avatar for example, mimic the experience of having a live interviewer guiding people through the questions and providing encouragement.”

I also asked Lorch what one piece of advice she would give clients who are interested in gamification.  “Don’t be tempted,” she said, “to start with a gaming idea, then fit your survey into it. Start out the traditional way: figure out the research questions that need to be answered, and who the target population is. Then work with your survey design and programming team to see where gaming could be incorporated to improve the quality of the data. As we said in the webinar — we’re not in the entertainment business.  Gaming brings us into a world of creativity and exciting possibilities– but we mustn’t lose sight of our research and sampling roots!”

This was a very informative session. I look forward to hearing more about SSI’s gamification efforts in the future.

Click this link to view SSI’s webinar and get a copy of the slides.

Filed Under: Gamification, Market Research Tagged With: ,

A Conversation with Srivats Srinivasan

April 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Srivats Srinivasan, a really interesting guy and Research Access contributor who runs a digital agency called Nayamode. Srivats filled me in on his Event Mobilizer app, which provides conference attendees the opportunity to give real-time feedback and provides them in-the-moment information. He also gave insight into running a creative technology shop in this day and age.

Dana Stanley: Thanks for taking some time to chat.

Event Mobilizer Feedback Screen

Event Mobilizer Feedback Screen

Srivats Srinivasan: Absolutely. My pleasure.

Dana Stanley: Your latest solution is something called Event Mobilizer. This is really cool; can you tell our readers a bit about it?

Srivats Srinivasan: Sure. The idea is that traditionally, people have gone to events, anything from a corporate event, whether it’s for their internal sales force or just a marketing event, or it could be an event for their partners or their customers. Or think of events which are on the lines of large trade shows, whether it’s a Consumer Electronics Show or something else, which are organized at these convention centers and basically get thousands of attendees over several days.

If you think what the experience has been traditionally, it can be overwhelming, in terms of the amount of stuff there is, and the amount of stuff there is to see, the number of booths you need to go to, the number of sessions you’d like to attend. And that information, while it’s always available on your laptop, as in on their browser, it’s not easily accessible when people are actually at the event. And traditionally, organizers have handed out paper schedules, paper feedback forms, and so on and so forth, which honestly, in this day and age, are little bit outdated.

This is where our Event Mobilizer app comes in. It’s a cloud-based, hosted solution that is platform independent. So basically, it’ll run just as well across iPhone and Android and Windows Phone and BlackBerry without any download, without any installation. And provides some really, much needed and compelling features for the users.

And those features are everything from the basic, ‘What’s the schedule,’ to how do I provide feedback, whether it’s on this booth, or on this session, et cetera, to I need a virtual concierge to answer questions, to a networking module which allows people to basically opt-in for networking.

Event Mobilizer

Event Mobilizer

Our approach is that we offer a little bit of an a la carte kind of approach to our customers on this. As in, “There are a dozen different things you could do here. Which are the things that you actually want to offer?” And they also get the ability to offer a very customized UI and UX for their users, so that it’s very specific to them. And they can actually make it their own.

So that’s something that, like I said, has been already deployed and is now getting deployed for several other customers. And we’re getting a lot of interest in it from, literally, places all around the world.

Dana Stanley: And for the conference or Event Organizer, I suspect there’s some kind of analytics they can tap into during the event.

Srivats Srinivasan: Absolutely. So the beauty of this is partly because it’s completely cloud-based. So everything is real time, everything is always up to date. And that includes all of the numbers and reporting that we can do. And the reporting is everything from how many people are accessing this, to what kind of feedback are we getting on this, to what kind of information are people looking for the most, or where are people come from, where are they going to, et cetera.  So there’s a whole bunch of rich reporting that’s made available through a pretty rich admin back end that we provide that the organizers can get access to in real time.

Dana Stanley: So, for people who may not quite be familiar with Nayamode, could you give an overview of what you guys do?

Srivats Srinivasan

Nayamode CEO Srivats Srinivasan

Srivats Srinivasan: Sure thing. Nayamode is an integrated digital marketing firm based out of the Seattle area. And we’ve been in business since late 2005 and currently work with several Fortune 500 companies, such as Microsoft, Wipro, Conde Nast, amongst others. But we also work with several much smaller firms, start-ups and similar, that are in the Bay area or other parts of the country.

When I say integrated digital marketing, our focus is on how do we combine rich, creative work with smart technology solutions. Because if you think about it, traditionally, people have turned to firms for one or the other. And I believe that in today’s world, you actually should not have to choose. And you need somebody who can bring all of those competencies under one roof. And that’s exactly what Nayamode does.

To give you a sense of the services that it covers, it ranges from core content and collateral for our customers that can be both offline and online, extends of course to how do you take those and create an online presence for them, via regular dot com websites or internet portals for our customer companies, to one of our fastest-growing areas, which is in the mobile arena, which is, how do you actually extend our customers’ campaigns into mobile devices, whether they be smartphones or tablets, et cetera.

And then finally, because of our technology strengths, we often come up with custom solutions for specific problems that off-the-shelf solutions would not work.

Dana Stanley: That’s all very interesting and very current. How do you balance the technology and the artistic or creative side of what you do?

Srivats Srinivasan: That’s a great question. There’s a couple of different ways in which we do this. The part that I did not mention earlier is that I think of us as a truly global firm, in that we have our headquarters here in the Seattle area, but we also have our development arm offshore in India. And one of the interesting things about how we bring our solutions to bear is that the marketing or creative side of our solutions are delivered from our Seattle offices, whereas our development is done largely out of our India offices.

Now, this is not this is not really so much a cost play as much as asking where can we go to really find the maximum efficiencies in terms of the right resources, as well as how can we optimize for literally a 27 by 7 kind of operation. So to answer your question, how do we find the right balance, I think we find the balance in terms of where we find the people to perform those functions. And we do not bring, say, the creative side or the technology side in a gratuitous form to our customers’ problems. Our approach is very much on the lines of, let’s understand what your situation is, what is the problem you’re trying to solve, and what’s the optimal solution for this.

And sometimes, it’s going to be largely a creative solution, and oftentimes it’s going to be largely a very technology-oriented solution. And that’s how we allocate our time and effort and resources to that particular problem.

Dana Stanley:  You’re truly operating in the new way of doing business, which is having people distributed, and sourcing people where people are that have different skills. And it must be an interesting challenge to get the best of everyone and yet have account managers and the like who understand two quite different disciplines, creative ad and campaign creation and technology.

NayamodeSrivats Srinivasan: You’re absolutely right. And this is something that, honestly, we’ve taken a few years to really fine tune and hone. Because what we do today and how we do it is certainly different from how we were doing it, say, three or five years ago. And that’s not a surprise, because there’s obviously a learning curve involved, and there’s really an understand of how do you maximize both the productivity and efficiency in how we’re doing things.

And I think the best testament to how we’re doing is the fact that our customer base is continually growing and most of our business comes from referrals. And I often joke that our best sales people are our customers, because they’re the ones who actually do the most for us.

Dana Stanley: That’s so neat that you have been reinventing and evolving how you do business. And it’s very fitting, given the name of your company.

Srivats Srinivasan: Thank you. Yes. In fact, people often ask me ‘what does Nayamode mean?’ And I tell them, that there’re are a couple of different meanings. One is Naya in Hindi means new, and mode is just a way of doing things. So I tell our customers, when you work with us it’s a new mode of doing things, not necessarily something that you will be exposed to, but that’s how we are delivering, that’s how our execution model is based on.

But Nayamode also means a new turn in Hindi. And it was a new turn my life when I started the company after spending several years in corporate America.

Dana Stanley: Excellent. What are some examples of challenges that clients have when they turn to you for solutions? What are the pains that they’re experiencing or the opportunities that they see before them?

Srivats Srinivasan: Let me take a few different examples to illustrate that. I think the classic example would be, you’re either a new company or you have a new product or a new campaign that you’re trying to launch and you need an agency that can actually literally hold your hand through that process.

And that’s where we come in, literally from starting up front with consulting on, thinking through what problems we’re trying to solve, and what’s the best means to actually go and solve that problem, to figuring out what the execution plan needs to be. And then that plan will often be a combination of creative and technology pieces. And then actually executing that.

So as an example when we work for some of our customers over at Microsoft, who use us for their product or campaign launches, we’ll come in early in the process, help define what the plan is, help identify what the various options are by way of solutions, and then those could translate into a whole bunch of core collateral and content that we create for them.

It would translate into a whole bunch of digital assets that we create for them, assets such as everything from online properties to web banners and so on, to actually creating the online presence for them, whether it be a dot com site or a SharePoint site or another CMS, extending it to mobile devices, which is becoming more and more a requirement these days. And then doing the last couple of things, which are driving traffic to their site through search optimization or search marketing, obviously, driving the right analytics and reporting for their campaign, and then in certain cases also integrating social media aspects to their efforts. So that, hopefully, gives you a sense for the prototypical example of what we do.

Now, we’ll often also come in to solve a specific point problem that our customers may have. For example, they may be in the middle of a campaign, but a piece of it isn’t working well, or their website isn’t doing anything for them and they need somebody to come in and really change how that’s working. And that’s something we might do.

Or another example would be, just recently we’ve been working with the Windows Server team at Microsoft and helping create all the core content and collateral for them for their upcoming Windows Server 8 launch. So the point is, we can do either pieces or all aspects of a product, program, or campaign launch for our customers.

Dana Stanley: Interesting. As a Research Access contributor, you know quite well that our readers tend to be focused on marketing research and, more broadly, analytics and data. How do you incorporate analytics and data and reporting and customer insight into your services?

Srivats Srinivasan: One of the fundamental principles that I’ve always believed in, even when I was in the client side several years ago, whether it was at Microsoft or Coca-Cola or Johnson & Johnson when I was running large marketing campaigns or other programs was, you’ve got to be able to measure it. Because if you cannot measure it, you really don’t know what your money’s doing for you, or whether your efforts are really being successful.

So if you start with that premise and then you figure out, OK, what are the aspects that I want to measure– And that’s going to vary depending on what kind of a campaign or program you’re trying to run. Everything from whether it’s visits or satisfaction or downloads or what have you. I think that’s really a function of what problem you’re trying to solve.

And then thinking very clearly upfront about, OK, these are the problems I’m trying to solve, and this is how I’ll know whether I’ve got toward or closer to my solution. Then have some very clear idea around, what will indicate to me whether I’m successful or not, and how do I measure that.

Now, the thing that I love about digital marketing today compared with– and I’m going to date myself a little bit here– the marketing that many of us were doing back in the early ’90s, is how much more measurable things are right now. And the ability to be able to track down to the user level, the ability to be able to get granular information on whether it’s feedback from your audience or what have you on whether they like the product, whether they’re going to recommended it, so on and so forth. That is just invaluable.

So to me, it’s really about identifying what goal you have, identifying how you’re going to measure success, making sure you’re instrumenting for the right measurement, and then, whether it’s using an off-the-shelf solution such as a Webtrends or Google Analytics or whatever, or in several of our cases where we’re actually instrumenting custom analytics for our customers. So as an example, the Digital Asset Manager is a custom solution that we deploy for several of our [INAUDIBLE]. And most of the analytics on those are actually custom built by us, because there’s specific requirements people have in solutions are very different from what would get measured by the standard analytic solutions.

Dana Stanley: Interesting. And how does mobile come into play in all this?

Srivats Srinivasan: Well, I would say you’ve got to be living under a rock to not see that mobile is becoming more and more an integral part of any digital marketing effort. And the interesting part of mobile is, a lot of people know they’ve got to do mobile, but they’re not sure what to do. And they’re not sure how they’re actually going to measure success.

And the space is evolving so fast, both in terms of users, in terms of platforms, in terms of solutions, that honestly most marketers that we know are stymied by just the rapid pace of innovation, and trying to figure out, what do I need to do? I know I need to do something, but what do I need to do?

So our efforts on the mobile front actually began in a couple of different ways. And one of them was our partnership with the Microsoft Tag team. If you’re not aware of what that is, Microsoft Tag is a proprietary version of 2D barcodes with several features that we believe are actually superior to the regular QR codes. But the point is, we were an early partner of the Microsoft Tag team, and they worked with us to actually develop a whole bunch of solutions that we could bring deploy for our common customers.

It began there, but if you really think about it, whether it’s Microsoft Tag or QR code, those are great technologies. But at the end of the day, they are triggers or means to an end. And by that what I mean is they’re a means to get people to be able to get to your mobile site or to have that mobile experience.

And that is of where we’ve evolved to right now, which is over the last year or so, we’ve been specializing more in creating those actual mobile experiences, creating a lot of technology and solutions that live on the back end, often in the cloud, that power those mobile solutions, and really enrich them and provide their end user a much more engaging experience.

So at this point, we’re largely agnostic whether our customers want to use a Tag or QR codes. And our focus is much more on, OK, now that you know you want to get your people to a mobile site, and you have the means to do that, let’s figure out what are we going to do with them. How are we going to engage them? Are we educate them? Are we going to inform them?

Are we going to entertain them? Are we going to gamify the experience? Are going to have sweeps and contests? Or are we just going to provide information that’s very time-sensitive, it’s very contextual, it’s very location-based? The idea being, find people where they are, when they are, and give them exactly what they need at that point.

And keep it simple. Because the other challenge that a lot of people run into when they’re trying to do something on mobile, is to over-complicate things, because they want to try to fit the regular desktop paradigm into the mobile space. And clearly, that doesn’t work. So you’ve got to really think through what’s the bare minimum that I need to be able to provide this person with so that it’s something that will engage them and get them hooked.

Dana Stanley: So help me understand the experience. Where would somebody encounter a tag or a QR code? And then what would happen when they scan it?

Srivats Srinivasan: Great question. I’ll give you a couple of examples which have been actually super successful in our context. And the first one is a campaign that we’ve been running for Conde Nast, specifically in several of their magazine properties, such Allure. And this is a contest that is triggered when people, readers, are going through a copy of the magazine and they see a reference to this contest. And they were asked to participate by way of Microsoft Tag in the pages. And when they see that and they read that, people effectively scan the tag, they’re taken to a mobile site where they’re entered into a mode sweeps. And then a few different steps later on, you have people who either win or come back.

And the campaign has been super successful. They’ve got about half a million scans in less than a month in one of the months that we did it. And it’s been repeated pretty much every year since then, because of its overwhelming success. The back end is reasonably complex, but I don’t need to bore you with the details. But that’s one example of where people would find a tag and how they would engage, and what the payoff is, and how successful it can be. In fact, I believe it’s the single most successful such campaign anywhere.

Another example of where people would find these tags and how they would engage would be another campaign that we’ve been doing for the Compass Group, a hospitality services company. Specifically in some of their cafeteria promotions. So an example is what we’ve done in their Microsoft Cafeteria business, where people scan a tag and they get one of several outcomes.

They can choose to get information on what are the menu choices today. They can get an instant coupon to redeem at one of the cashiers for a couple of dollars off for their mean or the coffee or whatever. They can enroll in a scavenger hunt. They can take part in a March madness contest, which was, obviously, relevant in March, and so on and so forth. Again very, very successful. It’s been now running for about a couple of years and continues to get great feedback.

One of the things we did with that more recently was to actually use tags to get feedback from customers in real time on what they thought of the food. And that was actually very well received as well and got a lot of traction, both with users as well as with the cafeterias.

Other examples would be, literally, I think most of your readers would have seen QR codes and tags. They’ve become so ubiquitous now, whether it’s at a retail or outdoors or in a magazine. They’re pretty much everywhere now, and the usage is growing exponentially out here.

Dana Stanley: Well, thank you so much for telling us about Nayamode and about Event Mobilizer. And I look forward to working with you on Research Access in the near future.

Srivats Srinivasan: It has been my pleasure, Dana. Thank you so much.

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

Kristin Luck on Women in Research

April 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

WIRe LogoLiving in Los Angeles in 2007, Kristin Luck had a conversation over cocktails with a group of other women working in market research.

They quickly found they agreed on the need for women in the market research profession to support one another.

The result was a networking group for LA-area women in market research called WIRe (Women in Research).

Luck gives particular credit to Elaine Coleman, now of Resolve Market Research. Coleman was new to Los Angeles at the time and was interested in meeting other women in research.

The group started out as an informal cocktail hour but has slowly grown to host more formal events.

“The mission for the group,” Luck said, “is to encourage empowering and nurturing relationships among women in market research.”

The group does that through a combination of informal get-togethers, networking events, and a new mentoring program launching in 2012.

Since 2007, the organization’s presence and scope have grown. In 2011 WIRe grew significantly, launching a website, holding more frequent events, expanding beyond Los Angeles, and welcoming more members to its Facebook presence.

Today the group’s networking meetings are held quarterly in Los Angeles and New York, and their first event in London is scheduled for May 24th.

“It’s exciting to see how the group has evolved and grown over the last few years,” Luck said.

Luck continues to run the organization along with Cassandra Rowe, Senior Manager of Consumer Insights at Netflix.

Kristin Luck

Kristin Luck

After stints at Lieberman Research and ACNielsen, Luck co-founded a highly successful market research technology firm, OTX Research (now Ipsos OTX MediaCT) along with Shelley Zalis. Her second technology venture, Foresight Consulting Group, was acquired by Decipher in 2007, and she has led that firm’s growth as president since that time.

As Luck rose through the market research industry ranks, she experienced a change in her surroundings. She said that market research is an industry that’s traditionally been dominated by women, but those women tend to be in lower to middle management positions. Luck pointed out that looking at the Honomichl 50, the CEOs who are women are a small percentage as compared to their proportion in the industry as a whole.

“I think it’s really important,” said Luck, “if you’re a woman in a senior management position – we’re all busy and we all have a lot going on – but it takes so little time just to give back to somebody and help them make that next step or give them advice.”

Luck says she is often asked about inclusion of men in the group. “We haven’t excluded men from the discussion or from any of our events. Even though our focus is on empowering and nurturing women in research, we’re a man-friendly group. I think it’s really important that men are part of the dialogue about women in research.”

WIRe events are purposefully kept informal, with no speakers and no sales pitches. Only recently has WIRe brought on sponsors. Luck cited ESOMAR as a key supporter.

The most formal presentation in recent meetings has been a screening of a film called “Miss Representation,” a documentary about how women are portrayed in the media, business and politics.

Luck said one of the lines in the film really resonated with her: “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

“It’s tough as a woman to understand what your career path is,” Luck said, “and how to get into a senior management position if you don’t see women in those roles, and you’re not being actively mentored and nurtured by other women that are in those positions.”

Asked what she would say to up-and-coming women in market research, Luck said she would advise “paying attention to your personal brand and getting passionate about something and figuring out what you love about the industry.  I think that you naturally excel at things that you love doing. You really have to stay focused on keep your eye on what the next step is and it’s important not to get pigeonholed in any one place. There comes a time where you have to leave and do the next thing.”

You can find WIRe at womeninresearch.com and you can follow them on Twitter with the handle @womeninresearch.  

Filed Under: Career, Featured, Market Research Tagged With: , ,

Why Recall Must Die: Capturing the Point of Emotion

April 24, 2012 By 7 Comments

Emotions

Living in the Past

Market research relies heavily on human memory. Attempting to measure recall about what respondents thought or felt about a product or service is a standard approach for market researchers.

Surveys often consist of long lists of memory tests. So many surveys contain phrases like, “Thinking about the last time you used XXX”?  And of course, focus groups always rely on the subjective recall of emotional states.

The assumption underpinning the standard market research operating procedure of directed recall is that we can reach into our experiences and retrieve complex information.

But is that true? Can respondents accurately retrieve memories and emotional states in response to a survey questionnaire?

Most market researchers give little to no thought to their reliance on recall. They fail to challenge themselves to better understand respondents, and in so doing they fail their clients and themselves.

Market research lives in its respondents’ past. The problem is that the current market research modus operandi of asking respondents to recall memories and emotions may be faulty at its core.

Memory is increasingly being understood by academicians as fluid rather than a concrete object that can be picked up and read at will.

The dominant theory of memory for many years has been so-called “working memory”, with researchers such as Alan Baddeley, Graham Hitch and Nelson Cowan producing a robust literature. These researchers concentrated on the cognitive aspects of memory, acoustic and visual buffering systems, episodic memory formation processes, and, finally, longer term memory processes.

In parallel, neuropsychologists and neurophysiologists searched for the “holy grail” of memory research, identifying what was known as the “engram“ – the physical imprint that a memory must somehow make on the brain. More recent work seems to be getting researchers closer to understanding the physiological nature of memory.

Almost all of this is resolutely ignored by market researchers.

Researchers tend to see memory as a concrete object, something that can be brought back and returned to memory. It can be lost like an object too. When we simply can’t recall things, we say we have lost the memory, as if we possessed a thing such as a key.

In Wired Magazine’s March 2012 issue, Jonah Lehrer provides an interesting summary of recent research on memory, focusing on the work of Karim Nader at McGill University in Canada.

Research on alleviating the terrible symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has begun to challenge the idea that memory is like a set of photographs we can access, look at, and put away again in the same condition.

PTSD can be regarded as a super-strong memory. A memory has been imprinted so powerfully that it cannot seem to fade away, as many memories do over time. PTSD is a breakdown in forgetting.

Nader’s research overturns the idea that memory is static, that it is a concrete object that can be read repeatedly in the same way. He found that the process of recall can cause the memory to be rewritten, so that we constantly modify memories as we recall them. Hence there is hope for victims of PTSD.

There is no engram.

Memory is not static; it can be amended by the conditions under which we recall it. Recall is rewriting memory.

The ability for us to forget is vital for us to function in our lives. As the famous Russian psychologist Alexander Luria documented in his book “The Mind of a Mnemonist,” remembering everything can be crippling for someone. The man in Luria’s book, called “S”, was not able to forget. He lived a confusing, cluttered life.  Everything he did or heard brought back a flood of memories and feelings from the past.

Without forgetting we can’t have new experiences. We have to forget: we have to forget childhood, we have to forget most of what we do to remain able to function in the future.

The necessity of forgetting is itself forgotten by market research. There is a pervasive idea that respondents actually can remember all these subtle impressions and emotions and then record them on a 11 point scale days or weeks after an event.

The truth is, mostly, they can’t. We have to forget most of what we experience. Trips to the mall or the supermarket are low on the list of things we have to remember because, mostly, they don’t matter. What grades your child got last week are a much higher priority.

The obvious problem is that market research needs those impressions that are forgotten. While we may not be able articulate with any accuracy what we have felt, the emotional residue will influence behavior in the future.

The core dogma of recall has to be rejected.  The problem becomes: what will replace it ?

We can’t have interviewers follow all of our panelists or respondents around and constantly monitor what they do in the hope of catching those fleeting moments of emotion about products or services that they experience. Those memories of emotions are soon lost, washed away in the stream of consciousness that allows us to function from day to day.

The Point of Emotion

It’s not often that new technology is really a revolution. Too often, vendors hype technology way beyond its boundaries.

However, smartphones just may deserve the hype. The smartphones that 65% of the US population now carry around with them have astounding processing power and connectivity. This power is being harnessed to give us a view of the consumer which is radically different from anything we have seen before.

Consumers are also using smartphones in various settings that were heretofore unheard of: on the toilet, while waiting in line for coffee, in transit, and just about anywhere there is idle time for the consumer. Smartphones and their addictive connectivity have users carrying these devices every waking moment in their lives.

Our need to be connected drives this smartphone ubiquity. This also presents an opportunity for research and feedback to live “in the moment” – in real time, not in recall time.

We call this the Point of Emotion (POE).

The Point of Emotion is the point in time when a consumer is using a product – drinking coffee, using toothpaste to brush their teeth. Technology allows us to capture emotions as they happen.

There will be many technologies that will allow us to leverage the Point of Emotion, the current technology we see as the most significant is QR codes.

Smartphones with QR code embedded feedback systems allow us to capture four critical pieces of paradata:

  • Timestamp – When the emotion was experienced.
  • Location – Almost all smartphones have GPS or wifi-enabled location triangulation.
  • Context – Embedded QR codes give granular context about products.
  • Unique Device ID – Unique identifers enable linking of data from different temporal phases.

Researchers, rejoice! We no longer have to rely on recall to capture the customer’s viewpoint.

The Point of Emotion is closer than ever. It’s for this reason that mobile technology is truly a revolutionary force in market research. There are millions of people carrying around technology that gives us a window into their lives. All we have to do is shed our own biases and make of use of what’s right in front of our eyes.

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

The 10 Most Memorable Moments from MRMW Amsterdam

April 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Market Research in the Mobile WorldThe Market Research in the Mobile World Conference in Amsterdam is now completed. On my way home to the United States I’ve had a chance to think about which moments to me were most memorable to me personally.

Some of the moments I’ve chosen are whimsical, while others are serious. Some are substantive, and some are not. That is the very nature of an “in-person” conference; it is not simply the academic points which leave the greatest impact. It is often the interpersonal, very human moments which leave the greatest impression on us, a point perhaps worth remembering as we increasingly focus on all things digital.

That said, here are my 10 most memorable moments (not necessarily in order).

- When David Brudenell of Pureprofile displayed a graphic of a giant gravestone representing the death of the old market research paradigm.

- When Betty Adamou of Research Through Gaming tweeted her sketches of selected speakers.

- When Robert Moran of the Brunswick Group emphatically stated we should do away with the term “market research.”

- When, during the Research Club event at Escape, Chelsea scored against Barcelona and a fan in front of me exploded with joy.

- When Ken Peterson of Ipsos Loyalty said the day he met Vivek Bhaskaran of Survey Analytics and SurveySwipe was a day that changed his life.

- When the conference was suddenly interrupted by sounds coming through the sound system that could only be described as having come from a seriously disturbed person, the room exploded in laughter, and Jasper Lim of the Merlien Institute ran out of the room to find the culprit (he did, and he returned with a classic sheepish grin on his face).

- When Kristin Luck of Decipher queued up a jazzy tune to play while conference participants attempted her mobile questionnaire challenge.

- When Tom de Ruyck told an anecdote about his market research university students co-creating a new course name, resulting in a dramatic increase in enrollment.

- Picturing Lenny Murphy up in the middle of the night back home in the United States as he tweeted away as if it were broad daylight.

- When I met in person people whom I had heretofore only known online, including Ray Poynter, Edward Appleton and Elias Veris.

Share your own most memorable moments in the comments section below.

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

MRMW Live Blog – Day Two

April 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

3:54 p.m.

Elias Veris of Insites Consulting discussed the use of mobile in MROCs. He said mobile qual gives you an in-depth understanding of the hows and whys; it’s about digging deep. The 21st century method of digging deep is MROCs. MROCs are about engagement and social dynamics, they are longterm and asynchronous, and they are about unsolicited and maturated feedback.

Insites uses gamification to help keep people engaged. They award points, allow people to “level up” if they post enough content, and they give challenges. One example of a challenge given to MROC members was asking them to “prove” their city is cooler than others, which led to a strong outpouring of participation.

Veris said the right inflow at the right time will enrich your online community. It’s about the picture shared, the social pressure (feedback generates more feedback), and the discussion stimulated.

Veris said not all their participants engage via mobile, but mobile participants are more engaged. Mobile is personal and contextual. He said mobile and MROCs are friends with benefits, and different friends ask for different benefits.

3:32 p.m.

Robert Moran of the Brunswick Group spoke about his writings about the future of market research, which draw heavily on ideas taken from futurism.

Moran outlined the 6Ds that will change commerce, and eventually market research:

- Disruption Ethos
- Disintermediation
- Digitization
- Dematerialization
- Democratization
- DIY

He said futurists have two ways to forecast the future:
- the incremental approach – create the baseline forecast, the “official future,” then bend the official future in a number of different directions.
- the stretch scenario approach – take the top two uncertain drivers and create a two by two matrix

Moran then gave sample of “Toffler-esque future shocks” in market research. The first two, Moran said, are inevitable.

- moving beyond the survey
- the growth of the emerging markets

The others are:

- Data abundance
- Asking-observing shift
- Democratization
- Convergence
- Strategic imperative

Moran’s writings pose 22 possible market research futures. Three examples are:
- Power to the people – the rise of co-creative design communities
- Portal power – all data is consolidated into dashboards, which becomes the most important real estate in market research
- E-agency – market research firms are replaced by individual e-lancers

During the Q&A session Moran said we should kill the term “market research” and start over, perhaps crowdsourcing an alternative.

2:16 p.m.

Rebecca West of Civicom presented a case study of qualitative mobile data collection in a study about stroller purchasing. The respondents reported at the point of purchase via audio and text. Audio comments were transcribed and analyzed. Photos were also shared by the respondents, and those photos were assocated with the relevant text. There was extensive coding of the text responses. The audio responses were seen as particularly valuable by the client.

The stroller manufacturer got several key insights from this study, including the positioning of a celebrity endorsement, the need to market to men as well as women, and the need to explain the value for the substantial price. None of these insights came out in an associated quantitative survey.

1:52 p.m.

David Brudenell of PureProfile gave a case study if his company’s collaboration to create the Reputation Index for Australia’s major banks. Executives’ bonuses were tied to brand reputation. The incumbent was only collecting 1,000 completes quarterly. PureProfile collects a big sample size of 36,000 per year, with 4 weight sets applied daily, weekly, quarterly and yearly.

Brudenell advised that understanding why to innovate will help you understand how to innovate.

He quite dramatically displayed a message on a grave stone saying that the traditional market research value chain is dead. He added that data collection and analysis premiums are gone, that traditional market research skills are hard to fit into new technology. At the same time, the age old pressures still apply – speed and quality.

Brudenell presented a checklist to follow when creating an innovative product. This checklist was used when creating the Reputation Index.

- find a big data source
- apply old school rigor
- link data to everything possible
- collect meaningful data in modules
- automate it
- syndicate it
- make it sexy for customers

1:28 p.m.

Mikhail Zarin of Mobiety and Artem Tinchurin of Tiburon Research presented data from a test of mobile research done in Russia. Mobiety is a Russian-based DIY tool for mobile web-based surveys. Tiburon is a data collection company with access panels in Russia.

Zarin gave some statistics about internet and mobile in Russia: 67% of Russians are online; 20% of Russians surf the mobile web at least once a month; 84% of Russians have a cell phone; 34% have a cell phone only; and half of 12-24 year olds have mobile access.

There were 5 conditions:
“Mobile CATI” – voice interviews on a mobile phone
“CAWI access panel” – WAP surveys to members of an access panel
“SAWI access panel” – Smartphone surveys to members of an access panel
“SAWI river” – Smartphone surveys where respondents were invited to participate in the study at mobile top-up boxes, which are quite common in Russia (approx. 180,000 in the country).
“SAWI spam” – Smartphone survey among people on a (legal) mailing list but who were not part of a panel.

Response rate was much higher for the mobile CATI condition (52%); it was lower for CAWI and SAWI using access panels (30% and 20%), and it was much lower for SAWI river (2%) and SAWI “spam” (0.3%).

Key findings:
- representativity doesn’t exist, but rankings tend to match
- “spam” is bad; even if it is legal the sample will be biased
- SAWI access panel – workable but noticeably biased toward more affluent and active users
- SAWI river – technically works but needs further research

11:48 a.m.

Guy Rolfe of Kantar moderated a panel on the role of trade organizations in the new market research paradigm. Here are some nuggets of wisdom from that panel.

- Mike Cooke of ESOMAR indicated that the most important role for a trade organization is to represent the common interests of researchers legislatively, importantly including respondent privacy issues.

- Tom de Ruyck of BAQMAR said it is critical that organizations work together; for example, it is not necessary for there to be three separate policies for social media. De Ruyck said we are a small industry, and if we do not unite, we will not be able to distinguish ourselves from the marketing and advertising industries.

- Wim van Slooten of MOA said a lot of suppliers do not consider themselves to be part of our industry. Some newcomers are “cowboys” who are not educated on important areas of our business such as privacy.

- Mark Michelson of MMRA said his organization was founded because at the Atlanta MRMW event last year there was a wide-ranging discussion of issues including privacy and there were a lot of participants who do not consider themselves connected to or part of the market research industry.

- Michelson said that the reason market researchers have not developed policies for newer technology-related issues because technology is developing so quickly. It is in part a definitional issue. For example, what exactly is mobile?

- Cooke said we have to regulate ourselves in a real context, not a historical context. The role of government is to protect people, and it is alarming that people are willing to trade their privacy for rewards. We have to make very clear to people exactly what we are doing with respect to their privacy. Not only we but also social media has failed in this so far; people don’t fully understand what cookies are.

- De Ruyck said changing technology alters the way people want to interact with us and brands. The biggest challenge is that we debate all the time without moving forward. Otherwise cowboys from outside the industry will charge forward.

- Van Slooten said there are no standards and no codes of conduct with respect to passive data collection. Engaging in passive data collection without proper privacy considerations is a danger we need to face.

- Sandy Janzen of MRIA said one challenge is legitimizing some of the newer forms of research. We have to usher in new methodologies and educate our members about proper use, while at the same time looking into regulation and legislation.

- Michelson said trade associations’ roles are advocacy, education, community building and standards.

- De Ruyck told an anecdote about how he engaged his students in a market research course in France to co-create a new title for the course. His enrollment had been dipping from 20 to 15 and the students said the course should drop the words “contemporary” and “research.” The new title is “New Ways to Connect with Consumers.” His enrollment increased dramatically to 60 students.

- Janzen indicated we have responsibilities to the public to protect them and look to the future of how new data collection techniques may affect them.

- Cooke said the role of trade organizations is learning from the past and looking to the future. Education is a real opportunity and should be deployed aggressively for the future.

- De Ruyck said trade organizations should be curators of what’s important for members to know.

10:52 a.m.

Anne-Marie O’Sullivan of Qualvu spoke about the power of mobile qualitative video research. This methodology allows insights into real moments in real lives, without having to rely on recall. With the digital revolution, there has never been so much access to rich, real video. When you watch these videos you are absolutely with them at that time, that’s very powerful for researchers and clients.

O’Sullivan quoted Anne Mulcahy, former CEO of Xerox: “We’re drowning in data, yet starving for insights.”

Some clients have indicated current mobile research is quite impersonaal. Researchers need to collaborate with clients to turn mobile data into insights, replicating the scenario in the back room of a focus group where researcher and client collaborate face-to-face. Collaboration must be as innovative and vibrant as data collection.

O’Sullivan also showed how Qualvu’s platform enables coding and analysis of video qual data output. Ways to deliver mobile insights for impact are: present directional highlight reels, collaborate with the client on key themes, plan your report to engage cross-organizational stakeholders, and deliver voice of the consumer in reports.

10:25 a.m.

Aaron Pazurik of Confirmit said we should take inspiration from how marketers approach their subjects. By contrast, only 15% of researchers adjust their online surveys to make them suitable for smartphones. He gave examples of several poorly executed mobile surveys – one which required Flash to be enabled, and another which presented an unsuitably large grid on a small phone screen. He also noted that 65% of senior leaders want market researchers to be a strategic partner, but only 25% view us that way.

Pazurik gave 3 examples of techniques for getting deeper insights with mobile research.

1 – Doctors were given the opportunity to respond to a survey question by a voice-recording. This was quire popular among the respondents and is an example of getting better insights through better survey experiences.
2 – Best Buy ensures that people who express negative opinions or specific problems during customer satisfaction surveys are responded to immediately. This is an example of respecting the value of an opinion.
3 – Legacy, a smoking-cessation company, supplies respondents with a BlackBerry and asks them to record every instance of craving or smoking. If the respondent needs help they are routed to a specialist in smoking cessation. This is an an example of “always-on insights.”

9:53 a.m.

Kristin Luck of Decipher said her company tends to do more WAP than app-based surveys. She indicated the mobile future is about much more than apps and reminded the audience that unlike those present, many people don’t have smartphones.

Luck said researchers need to think about the “blending debate” do you take respondents out who attempt to take a survey on their mobile device, or do you offer the survey both ways, mobile and non-mobile? She has a preference for the latter. If respondents want to come in on mobile, she said, that’s what they’re going to do.

Luck listed some things Decipher has observed about mobile respondents in their surveys: they complete surveys more slowly and they give shorter answers to open-ended questions. However, they showed no clear differences in satisfaction ratings.

She also discussed what she called the tablet opportunity- tablets are particularly well suited for qualiquant investigations.

Luck gave two acronyms for remembering important privacy issues:

OMG – online tracking data, metadata and photos, geolocation
WTF – wandering device IDs, too complex privacy policies, fees for SMS and data streaming

She also gave some best practices: keep surveys short; minimize a non-essential content, and keep the look of the survey simple and minimize distraction.

Luck then conducted an experiment in the room; she handed out traditional questionnaire and asked participants to convert it to a mobile format.

Tips for doing so are:

- limit survey length
- limit total number of pages
- limit text boxes per question to one
- avoid other specifics
- avoid rating scales and grid questions
- when using grids, limit to 3 columns or fewer
- keep column text short
- keep topic to point, limit iterations

9:20 a.m.

Andrew Reid of Vision Critical presented some statistics about the dramatic growth of mobile in India and China and about the dramatic growth of mobile advertising around the world. By 2015 62% of mobile phones will be “smart.”

Vision Crtical runs over 500 community panels, most of which are dual mode (online and mobile). They also run mobile-only communities. Usability is key in mobile.

Reid outlined some key advantages of using mobile in community panels: panelists have already been screened and profiled, allowing shorter surveys; survey field windows can be greatly reduced; clients can get answers in hours; and panelists can participate when it’s convenient for them, yielding better data; surveys can be incredibly targeted; and breakout mini qual groups are possible.

Reid also spoke about augmented reality, which is a live view of a physical part of the world which is supplemented by computer generated data. He said QR codes will soon be like “MC Hammer pants”: something that existed for a short time but was replaced by something much better.

Reid outlined two ideas for how augmented reality could work in market research. In his first example, you start with a community, find out how many have smart phones, profile them, find out who fits in a segment we care about, have them download an app, give them an exercise every time they come in contact with that brand, scan the logo, push the respondent a survey, sync that survey up with the respondent’s deep profile. What we could learn from this is: occasion data, ad recall for the whole marketing mix,, and creating a link beteween encountering ads and brand usage.

He outlined another scenario for package testing, whereby the repondent enters grocery store and is asked to scan a package, then they are delivered a survey “in situ.” This methodology could also incorporate gamification.

8:52 a.m.

Simon van Duivenvoorde of Wakoopa, a passive measurement technology startup, spoke about the effects on privacy of changes in technology. He described the way people consume information by using the example of how he and his girlfriend shop for furniture for their new apartment. They bounce all over the place online, from Facebook to email to Google and beyond. He said there is not straight line anymore when it comes to the way information is consumed. Van Duivenvoorde described this process as “information snacking.” You can have information whenever you want it, however you want it, on the device where you want it.

He said this change makes researchers’ jobs difficult because it is difficult for respondents to estimate their behavior. He gave an example of a study where respondents were asked about their online behavior visiting news sites and that was compared to behavioral information from passive tracking; people estimated their news consumption inaccurately by a factor of two.

Van Duivenvoorde stated pithily that “information snacking leads to data obesity.” An important question, he said, is how do we go from big data to big insights? The change in information consumption forces a fundamental shift in the market research industry; we have gone from not enough data to too much data. The challenge is how to sift through and extract insights from data.

Another question is how we deal with privacy; this is an even bigger issue with mobile because it’s such an intimate device. There has been a shift in consumer perception about privacy. People now understand their data is worth something. In 2008 50% of people would give up their information for something; in 2011 it was 62%. People understand better it’s a deliberate choice, but they want to be in control. These changes force innovation.

8:28 a.m.

Kay Schneermann of Gruner + Jahr presented data from a mobile ad awareness study conducted in Germany. The study included a control group and an experiemental group which was exposed to mobile ads for 4 established brands (Lufthansa, Marc O’Polo, DKV Insurance and Nivea) and one new brand entrant into the German market (Kinnie soft drinks). In each instance there was a significant positive effect in the experimental condition on brand awareness. Among the established brands there was also a positive effect on measures of brand image and purchase intention.

Schneermann’s conclusions from the data are as follows: mobile display ads are noticed and recognized; mobile advertising works for established and unknown brands; mobile advertising even works as a sole channel to produce an advertising impact; mobile advertising promotes the brand image and targeting means greater efficiency; and mobile advertising creates purchase intention.

Areas for future research include qualitative studies and measuring the impact of mobile advertising as compared with other channels.

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