Ipsos & Techneos creating ‘Citizen Journalism’ with Mobile Market Research Tools at the Royal Wedding

Thursday, April 28, 2011 by Joeline Cross
  

In an IPSOS study using the Techneos mobile platform, hundreds of smartphone owners have been asked to participate in a mobile digital ethnography study, sharing their feelings, photos and other ‘point of experience’ information that will track how the general public interact with the British Monarchy at the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Katherine Middleton.

 

Techneos Ipsos Royal Wedding Mobile Ethnography

The study will be used to gather information in real time on people’s perception leading up to, during and after the event.

 

Rather than coding the social media content that is freely created, the mobile survey, which is optimized for smartphones, asks direct questions about where people are watching the Royal Wedding to their mobile enabled panel.

 

The survey asks respondents how they feel about the British Monarchy, who they’re watching the Royal Wedding with and to take a photograph with their smartphone of what they can see now.

 

The information is uploaded in real time using the respondents’ mobile network carrier and their smartphone - whether they use an Android, Apple iOS, RIM or Windows Mobile operating system.

 

The mobile survey is taken by each respondent multiple times over the course of the day on their smartphone mobile device. Within the app they capture photos, GPS location and answer survey questions that you’d see in a typical ethnography project. The information will provide real time data on people’s thoughts and experiences that is not possible to be captured in real time using other research methods.

 

“We’re excited to be working to be working with Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange on this once-in-a-generation project,” said Dave King, Techneos CEO. “On Friday many people will be sharing their thoughts on social media through their mobiles. Ipsos went one step further and used our SODA app to gather structured data from people who are in London watching the wedding, at the point of experience, unobtrusively, in real time.”

 

The results will be published after the project has been completed.

 

A mobile digital ethnography project of this kind is particularly well suited to the United Kingdom, where smartphone penetration is at 31% (Ipsos Media CT Report Q1, 2011).

Will you be watching this historical event? Where and who with?



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Android Will Seize 45% of Smartphone Market by 2016, Says ABI Research

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 by Joeline Cross
This blog post is reproduced from an ABI Research article published in New York on March 31, 2011. Source: http://www.abiresearch.com/press/3651-Android+Will+Seize+45%25+of+Smartphone+Market+by+2016%2C+Says+ABI+Research

According to ABI Research 302 million smartphones shipped in 2010, chalking up a resounding 71% growth over 2009’s shipment levels.

Android’s success since its launch is expected to continue: some 69 million smartphones running the Android operating system shipped last year, and ABI Research expects that in 2016 Android will have captured 45% of the market.

“Android, Bada and BlackBerry have a great opportunity to fill the vacuum being left by the disappearance of the Symbian OS within the next two years,” notes senior analyst Michael Morgan.

Apple’s iOS, which held 15% of the market in 2010, should continue moderate but steady growth over the mid-term, backed by new product introductions. ABI Research forecasts 19% market share for iOS in 2016.

RIM, which held 16% of the market in 2010, is expected to lose just a little ground: 14% is the forecast for 2016. “RIM’s slight loss of share doesn’t mean falling shipments,” says Vice President Kevin Burden. “RIM has found its niche, but the consumer market will grow faster than its portion of it.”

Of the newer entrants in the smartphone OS arena, Windows Phone 7 and Samsung’s Bada are both aimed at low- to mid-range handsets. “With 4 million units shipped in 2010 (amounting to a 1.5% market share), Bada has taken off very well, very fast,” Morgan adds. “Bada may reach 10% market share by 2016. Windows Phone 7, on the other hand, which shipped in two million handsets in Q4 2010, will have to find incredible success through its Nokia channel to take more than 7% of the market by 2016.”

Burden concludes, “The overall smartphone market growth for 2010 is not really so surprising: what is more significant is the 19% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) contained in our forecasts through 2016.”

ABI Research’s “Smartphone Market Data” provides quarterly and annual data pertaining to the smartphone market, delivering global and regional data for smartphone operating systems, ASPs, vendor market shares, revenues, air interface protocols and technology attach rates.

It is part of the Smartphones & Mobile Devices Research Service which also includes other Market Data products, Research Reports, Surveys, ABI Insights, ABI Vendor Matrices, and analyst inquiry support.

ABI Research provides in-depth analysis and quantitative forecasting of trends in global connectivity and other emerging technologies. From offices in North America, Europe and Asia, ABI Research’s worldwide team of experts advises thousands of decision makers through 30+ research and advisory services. Est. 1990. For more information visit www.abiresearch.com, or call +1.516.624.2500.

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Rethinking the UK Census - just once this decade

Friday, April 1, 2011 by Joeline Cross
With the UK Census in the next few days, we thought we'd share a great article from Rachel Antony-Roberts, Research and Customer Insight Manager and Assistant Census Liaison Manager in Westminster Council’s communications and strategy unit:


http://www.research-live.com/4004783.article

The Census, particularly one completed only once a decade as in England, is fraught with issues about compliance and cost.

On one hand, paper surveys are expensive to print, transport, double enter for validation, potentially to read. The respondent is subject to question fatigue and the veracity of the information provided can be questionable. For example, during the last UK census, 390,000 people listed their religion as 'Jedi Knight', clearly using humour to distance their own personal information from the needs of the government to base social policy on their requirements. Subsequent construction of Jedi temples to meet the demand in high density Jedi Knight regions have so far gone unreported ;)

Perhaps personal interviews, face to face at the door step, are a better solution? With the interviewers armed with a portable device (PDA, Android tablet or even an iPad?) the paper and data entry costs would be obsolete and the information would be validated at entry and clarified with the respondent right away. Multiple choice answers could be randomized to prevent question fatigue or bias. There would be less data entry errors. But how would you arrange to have enough interviewers in field to interview the population that night, without omitting the interviewers themselves from the census count?

What would happen if we gave people the option to self-complete using CAMI/ MCASI, as well as online and paper ? 

Opt in for census response mode



The number of mobile subscriber connections in the UK is expected to reach 88.8 million in 2012, it's one of the highest penetration figures in the world. A new report by IEMR indicates that 55% of total connections use the prepaid payment model. Two large brands (T-Mobile and Orange) have recently merged so that there are only 3 or 4 large telecoms players in the UK market.
The Q1 2011 report 'United Kingdom Mobile Operator Forecast, 2010 - 2015' expects that in the competitive UK market, wireless carriers are battling to attract and retain customers. Consumer research by The MMA and Lightspeed Research (October 2010) found that in UK 45 percent of consumers noticed mobile advertising. Of these, 29 percent responded to it and a whopping 47 percent of people went on to make a purchase. It's clear that consumers in the UK are saying that they want to use their mobile device to engage with offers.
So with such high mobile penetration, and only 3-4 key mobile operators vying to keep customers engaged, why couldn't you use mobile to answer questions about the census? 
Rather than spending so much money on increasing compliance (even though there is a £1000 fine for not responding), why not incentivise the population by giving them credit for their phones? or credit for other mobile content? 

The respondents could complete the survey while on the couch, or doing their usual evening activities.
Rather than the costs in printing, posting, completing, posting back, double entry and a delay in gathering the information (of those that are valid) using traditional print methods, why not incentivise people with a $5 credit against their phone bill, or a chance to win something that is compelling to the population to increase compliance?

Our surveys have shown that even an incentive as small as $1 (in points) rapidly increase compliance and response speed, even when the survey involves a task. The UK Government could even offer a coupon for a free fare on the public transport system, or points at the local supermarket loyalty program - of which there is huge adoption in the UK.

Perhaps with certain segments, like those over 40, they could opt in to use the traditional paper method or go online to complete. I'm sure for the majority of the population 
respondents would prefer to complete it in a few minutes on the couch, avoid a £1000 fine and earn themselves an incentive. Using mobile apps, the UK Government would get higher quality information, validated, much faster than paper methods. And maybe a picture of these Jedi Knight worshippers ;)
There's nothing like mobile to get you an unfiltered, as-it-is photograph of someone's front door, and a GPS capture on the fly (55% of mobile users in the UK are taking photos with their phone on a regular basis). Mobile apps could give the UK government validated, valuable information about what's happening at people's homes for future social planning. 

To see how we used mobile to gather pre-census data in the USA, click here.


Update on 14th April 2011: For more information about how Census data is being used, the MRS is hosting a conference on 4 July. More information here.

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Qualitative Research on a Quantitative Scale?

Friday, March 11, 2011 by Joeline Cross
@jtimed asked us on Twitter the following question:
 
jtimed twitter post scaleability multimedia market research
It’s a thought that has been echoed by market research professionals we met at NetGain 5.0 and the CASRO Online Conference in Vegas. It’s definitely a challenge, and we are only scratching the surface, but we’ve started to find some success by looking outside of MR for solutions (necessity being the mother of invention, and all...).

Firstly, photo and video data is qualitative in nature so you can’t get around coding it in some fashion to get the most out of what you’ve collected.
Even in a very open unstructured research design, we often include a few quant type questions which helps respondents to code the content of the photo or video for us according to pre-defined options. Or you can quantify a qualitative preference like below. 
    
Coding Qual Data for Quant by TEchneos
Of course, this approach doesn’t capture everything, so you then might go to a coding specialist software and service like ‘Ascribe’ by Language Logic. They innovated in text coding, but have applied efficient time saving code book techniques to multimedia coding, too. Still, this is a time-intensive process...

So back to the quantifying of your qualitative data... Microsoft provides MS Pivot, which we’ve used to pull in metadata (i.e. survey answers) associated with photographic data – then you can start to do some dynamic sorting and get a feel for the quant story behind the mountains of qual data you’ve collected. We first explored this with Ipsos last May on our Great British Weekend (MCASI) project.
We asked respondents what they were doing, who they were with, and to take a photo and GPS capture of where they were over the course of a day. Pivot allowed us to filter the images by response data such as:
• Location
• Family
• Friends
• Food
• Media
And other activities that people were engaging in.

It’s a dynamic sort and looks like this (sorry for the lack of sound - we didn't have time to make it look very polished - we just wanted to respond to you!):



When you look around to other tools like Google Maps, you can start to create other insightful views like what follows:

Techneos Visual Maps Market Research
 
From here you can see stories evolve from the visual trends such as people watching media, feeling relaxed, eating with family, being excited about being out with friends etc..

It’s getting easier and easier to collect photos, video and GPS (heck – even barcode capture will be mainstream by 2012) as consumers become more savvy with smartphone technology and handset sales continue to increase. This will only continue to rise, as will the adoption of tablet devices built on Google’s Android and Apple’s iPad platform.

We don’t have all the answers – but we want to find them with you.

Industry trend watchers continue to talk about what to do with the large volume of qualitative data that is being captured (not to mention the space it requires to store them all) and it’s an issue that industry leaders and innovative market researchers are continuing to advance. The key point is that the information provided in photos, video, GPS and barcodes (and other forthcoming advances) in real time is valuable in offering richer insights into the consumer’s experience which is valuable to clients and researchers alike.

We can offer market researchers the opportunity to provide a holistic view of the consumer experience validated in real time as they take their smartphone from home to work, to the supermarket, cinema, restaurant and back home again. If your clients knew this was available for diary studies, mobile mystery shopping, CAMI and mobile panel, wouldn’t they ask for it?

With apps-based research that is appropriately designed to answer the research question, for the audience, for the device and for how the respondents use it, it is possible to conduct qualitative research on a quantitative scale. We want to work with you to make this happen.

@jtimed and others in our community – we’d love to hear your thoughts on this industry challenge.
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A game changing year for mobile (by comScore)

Thursday, March 10, 2011 by Joeline Cross
We came across comScore's 2010 Mobile Landscape Overview today (published in February 2011) and thought you would like to read about some of the movements in mobile/cellular activity.

A Game Changing Year for Mobile
2010 was a year of undeniable progress in the mobile arena. A wide variety of increasingly advanced devices were introduced to the market, mobile content options continued to increase with an ever-growing library of applications paired with improvements to the mobile browsing experience, while the definition of the word “mobile” evolved with the introduction of tablet devices such as the iPad. Major milestones in mobile were crossed during the year both in the U.S. and EU5 (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) markets. comScore also began reporting data on the Japanese market beginning in mid-2010 so year over year trends are not available, However, an in-depth look at the Japanese market is included in the‘Spotlight’ section, and relevant cross-market comparisons are made throughout based on activity in the back half of the year.
  • In December 2010, nearly 47 percent of mobile subscribers in the U.S. were mobile media users (browsed the mobile web, accessed applications, downloaded content or accessed the mobile Internet via SMS) up 7.6 percentage points from the previous year.
  • The growth in mobile media usage is largely attributable to the growth in smartphone adoption, 3G/4G device ownership and the increasing ubiquity of unlimited data plans, all of which facilitate the consumption of mobile media.
  • From December 2009 to December 2010, the percentage of mobile phone subscribers with unlimited data plans increased from 21.3 percent to 29.0 percent, with more phones now requiring an unlimited data plan subscription at the time of purchase.
  • During the same period, smartphone ownership increased from 16.8 percent to 27.0 percent, while 3G/4G phone ownership reached 51 percent in December 2010.
Interestingly, the availability of apps is the second highest purchase driver for smartphones.

comScore smartphone purchase consideration factors


Mobile Increasingly Embedded in Daily Life
While the total mobile media audience increased substantially in 2010 (+20 percent in the U.S., +19 percent in EU5) and all signs suggest it will continue to do so, one of the most important shifts has been the increase in the frequency with which mobile phone owners use their devices to connect to content and peers.

Across three key categories (email usage, news and information access, and social networking) the largest observed increases were in mobile users who access these services almost daily, compared to weekly or once during the month. Social networking especially saw high growth, with daily users increasing 104 percent in the EU5 and 80 percent in the U.S. For many people, mobile media consumption has rapidly moved from an occasional activity, perhaps even a novelty, to an essential service they depend on every day while at home, work or on the move. The following shows how people use their mobile phones in EU5 and USA.

comScore Fastest Growing mobile categories in USA
comScore Fastest Growing Mobile Categories in EU5


Multi-Screen Consumption – How Do Consumer Patterns Vary by Device
As the number of devices continues to proliferate, one very interesting dynamic with important implications for the digital ecosystem is the pattern of consumption across devices during the course of a day.

As an example, comScore conducted an analysis over a 24-hour period in the U.S. on online newspaper readers’ consumption habits revealed some interesting insights on the synergies across devices – PC, smartphone and iPad. Overall PC viewing accounted for 97 percent of all online newspaper views during the 24 hour period, while smartphones accounted for 2 percent and the iPad accounted for less than 1 percent. When looking at how Americans utilized these devices differently throughout the day to consume news, it was observed that morning hours saw similar relative readership across all three devices. While in the afternoon, online newspaper readership peaked on PC and while at night iPad readers consumed more news on the device than during the day.

[Update on 15-Mar-11: South by South West, the social media & technology conference held each year in Austin, Texas is buzzing with news that Mashable reported: people now read more news via internet devices than from newspapers: "Poynter’s research showed that almost half of Americans in a survey said they got at least some of their news on a mobile device or tablet. As tablet makers, app makers and news outlets continue to perfect the news consumption experience on that form factor, we’ll have a whole new breed to analyze and fret over this time next year." It really is a trend impacting content providers, technologists, businesses, advertisers and market researchers alike.]

comScore Habits of Online Newspaper Readers by Device and time of day.

Obviously for market researchers this is interesting because if we are to get qualitative insights from our respondents, we need to consider the most appropriate qualitative research design for the way people are actually using their mobile devices. In the new mobile world, consumer is king and we had better ask the right questions, optimized for the right device, taking into consideration the user experience, if we are to gather rich data for insights. If your client wants to know how 26-54 year old women spend their leisure time and why, then how would you adjust your research design to target the respondent who is on their mobile tablet at night?


Download the full report here: http://www.comscore.com/index.php//Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/2010_Mobile_Year_in_Review
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Why is there pressure to 'go mobile' in Market Research?

Thursday, March 3, 2011 by Joeline Cross
Handset penetration has reached unprecedented levels, with smartphones becoming increasingly popular in major market research markets.
smartphone adoption
One in three British (34 percent) and American (33 percent) consumers are now accessing the Internet using their mobile phone at least once a week, up from 27 and 28 percent respectively in 2010, showing that Mobile Internet has become an important part of daily life for consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. 
People are demonstrating their favour for apps with 10 billion app downloads from Apple’s AppStore and Google’s Android market has 3.5 billion app downloads and counting. According to Compete’s quarterly smartphone report people are using their smartphones:
  • at home (84%)
  • during miscellaneous downtime (80%)
  • waiting in lines / for appointments (76%)
  • while shopping (69%)
  • at work (62%) and
  • during their commute in to work (47%). 

For market researchers this means that all of those people with mobile internet enabled smartphones suddenly have a data collection device in their pocket or purse everywhere they go, and they've shown they are eager to use them for research. With their smartphone respondents can:
  • discreetly photograph a supermarket shelf
  • scan a product’s barcode 
  • answer a couple of questions about their purchasing decisions
  • capture a video of themselves using the product sample you’ve sent to their home
  • tell you instantly how they feel right at that moment
  • classify their feelings from pre-set fields you’ve created. 
Why wait for recall when respondents can tell you what is actually happening?


Has this been proven?
The increased availability and use of mobile-internet-enabled handsets has enabled us to undertake some large qualitative studies globally. MCASI/panel projects delivered on our mobile platform are revealing that respondents are enthusiastically completing even highly complex research tasks within a matter of hours of receiving the survey invitation.  For example, in one recent study for a consumer packaged goods client respondents were asked respondents to complete a baking task, share the recipe and photograph the process.

64% of people responded within 5 hours with rich text and photographs of the task in their natural environment.

100% of quota was fulfilled within 48 hours, ending the research project with full compliance 3 days early. 

This enthusiasm for using mobile research apps is making researchers take notice. 

Mobile is not always the right mode, but when Rich information is required at the ‘point of experience’ to give a holistic view of the respondent, mobile MR goes further than conventional survey research to create a clearer picture of consumer behaviour and intention. Market researchers are asking what additional qualitative insight is offered by mobile over paper or online methods. Our projects have revealed that mobile research can tell you what is actually happening - with photos, video & GPS - in real time - rather than being filtered by your respondent's recall.

That's why your clients and your boss are talking about 'going mobile'. Market Research on Mobile devices is a huge opportunity that has come about because of the changes in consumer behaviour and smartphone use.
We’ll be talking about this project and how to make the move to mobile apps based research at the CASRO Online Conference in Las Vegas later tomorrow.

CASRO-presentation-please

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Social Media & Mobile's impact on Marketing Research

Tuesday, February 1, 2011 by Joeline Cross
During 2010 marketers and market researchers watched the rapid uptake of social media and scrambled to introduce metrics and benchmarks to gauge the ROI of this new channel. They wanted to answer the question: “was public opinion more valuable if people spoke in an unsolicited fashion on directories like Yelp or Yellow Pages, business-hosted forums or consumer-to-consumer on social media channels?”

They wondered what motivated people to talk about their experiences with brands, products and services. Marketing and market research industries wondered how much clients would pay for the gathering, analysis, measurement and reporting of these conversations. Are unsolicited comments on social media a better indicator of intention to purchase or of brand loyalty? What impact would this ‘pulse checking’ information have on traditional methods of market research? What are the benefits of social media listening versus actively engaging a survey respondent for a digital ethnography, for example?

For example, Unilever employed Anderson Analytics software to “look for common themes throughout online posts and ... identify unique discussions that typically are likely to be dismissed by human analysts.”

People were commenting on forums about an ad which tastefully portrayed an older woman in a Unilever Dove commercial.



They found that of those who did express an opinion, 97% strongly supported elder people representing the Dove product, and less than 7% indicated concern in regard to the nudity. By analyzing the social media comments, they came to the conclusion that the Dove and the pro-age brand were being viewed by many as a champion for the cause of women over the age 50.

Other topics emerged alongside the expected discussion about “aging, beauty and the appropriateness of the TV commercial”, such as inter-generational issues, comments on American society and the world at large, and “intense contrast and comparison between the US and European media were also prevalent on the forum.”

Would these issues and themes have emerged using traditional survey methods that use predetermined options for respondents to select? Is eliciting structured data more valuable than finding patterns in freely contributed, unstructured feedback? These are the questions facing forward thinking market researchers today, and are causing some people to predict a re-emergence and renewed focus on qualitative (and other unstructured) research techniques.

These kinds of questions will continue to be discussed and shaped this year and with the increasing penetration of smartphones worldwide, and 100 million people accessing Facebook via their smartphones, social media is being amalgamated with discussions based around mobile marketing. 

We have seen that the intimacy of mobile devices can offer a more genuine response about behaviours, expectations and motivations from participants.

Sean Conry, VP Techneos, just presented a paper at MRIA’s Netgain Conference in Toronto, Canada where organizers of the event for the first time included a focus on how mobile and social media work can together in market research.

The paper showcased results from a recent Mobile ethnography (a form of MCASI - Mobile Computer Assisted Self Interview for the uninitiated) completed in collaboration with Ipsos, dubbed ‘The Great British Weekend’. In the study respondents were asked to note what they were doing at least four times a day over the course of a long weekend.  The idea was inspired by how people perform social media status updates using their mobile phone, and was readily accepted by respondents of widely varying demographic segments. 

The mobile phones respondents used in the 'Great British Weekend' study offered GPS tracking (validated data which was then visually mapped), instantly uploaded photographs at various locations across the weekend (capturing their environment & company), and included emotional ratings to compare and analyze. The respondents’ willingness to share and high level of engagement offered some rich real time user experience research data which is being used by the client for targeted brand decisions. As an example of the willingness for people to share, a particular respondent answered "What are you doing now?" with "I'm at the funeral of one of the top hells angels".

Great British Weekend Techneos IPSOS what are you doing

Respondents were not only familiar with the social media style approach, but they experienced minimal participation barriers on their own device and keenly participated. As you can see from the feedback graph below, 100% said that they would participate again and 77% said that they would recommend the study to their friends.
 
Great British Weekend Techneos Ipsos Feedback Score


If you’d like more information about this study, or you saw Sean present at NETGAIN, please get in touch or leave us a comment on this blog.

If you’d like more information about how social media is impacting marketing research you could register for this American Marketing Association webinar.

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Mobile Thinking: A Change of Heart

Sunday, October 31, 2010 by Samantha Singh

We came across this recent article by Robert Wenig, Founder & CTO of Tealeaf Customer Experience Management Solutions and thought you would enjoy reading it as it relates to usability issues that impact PDA surveys, Mobile CAPI and Mobile Panel apps. The link to the TeaLeaf blog is at the end of this blog post.

Perhaps my thinking was backwards.

When I first started thinking mobile, I had it in my head that the functionality of a mobile app would be a subset of the existing desktop-browser experience.

When you start thinking about the:

A.  The itty-bitty twit screen
B.  Lack of keyboard
C.  Limited bandwidth
D.  Limited OS and processor
E.  Limited storage

And then the fragmented eco-system of iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android, Blackberry, Palm, Nokia, Windows Phone with different OS levels and the like — the “subset” mentality was easy to make. Who is going to build native apps — isn’t every device manufacturer just going to try and build a browser that approximated desktop agility?

Perhaps somebody put something in my Coke, but now I’m seeing things differently. Native apps on mobile devices change the game.

Mobile applications will be a superset of Web-based applications. Why/how?

Native mobile apps can use all of the functionality/features of the device:

1.  Scanners/cameras
2.  GPS
3.  Rich media
4.  2-way video
5.  Gee — it’s a phone, so what about using the phone as part of the app?
6.  Other sensors
 
What if native mobile apps are more secure than desktop web? Out-of-band authentication, tight links to the device (IMEI, serial number, etc.)?
 
See the original post:
Mobile Thinking: A Change of Heart
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Survey shows Android gaining ground on iPhone

Thursday, September 30, 2010 by Samantha Singh

ChangeWave Research, [had reported] on big gains for the iPhone in the smartphone market, in the wake of the iPhone 4's release. As that excitement has subsided, however, it appears that Android is continuing to make big gains among consumers.

ChangeWave - Mobile Operating System Preferences: Future Smart Phone Buyers Jun 2010 vs. Sep 2010

The company's most recent survey, concluded September 23, talked to 4,000 respondents. Of the ones planning on buying a smartphone in the next 90 days, 37 percent said they would favor an Android unit, up from 30 percent in June.

The iPhone, however, just squeaked into first place with 38 percent saying that Apple's device would be their choice--and that's down significantly from 50 percent in June. BlackBerry got a slight bump from 5 percent to 6 percent, while Windows Mobile lost ground from 2 percent to 1 percent, and Palm's webOS stayed even at a nice round 0 percent.

See the original post:
Survey shows Android gaining ground on iPhone
 

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King Brown chooses Techneos SODA® mobile research solution

Tuesday, September 14, 2010 by Samantha Singh
King Brown Partners (KBP) selected the Techneos SODA Mobile Access Platform to power a study to understand US consumers’ needs, sentiments and expectations for key categories of mobile applications. 
 
Utilizing SODA, KBP added new mobile engagement features to their research repertoire making use of photo capture, two-way messaging, and alarms. Partnering with Techneos, KBP was equipped with a mobile survey solution deployed across BlackBerry devices for self-initiated one to two minute surveys over one and a half weeks. 

Continue reading this news on the Techneos website.
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What's next for mobile market research?

Thursday, August 19, 2010 by Samantha Singh

Guess what are the three things people take when they leave home? - Wallet, keys and yes, mobile phones! Imagine browsing your Facebook account and accessing the news while on a bus on your way to work, or passing time playing games on your Ipad and checking the latest stock trends while waiting on an airport for a business trip? Sound all too familiar?

Gone are the days of paper surveys or email questionnaires where you often get poor response rates. With the advancement of mobile technology, market research surveys can be seamlessly integrated into mobile apps, making it more fun for consumers to respond than traditional methods. Mobile platforms such as Revelation Mobile, FocusForums’ Iphone App and Techneos’ Soda are just some of the mobile survey platforms available in the market.

According to Frank-Thomas Naether, the Managing Director of NMRC, “Mobile research is about ‘capturing the moment’. This is highly relevant when it comes to gaining insights into the decision making process of participants. There are many tools and methodologies available in the market, some of them are really interesting and fascinating, and offers many possibilities to researchers”, said Naether. 

He added, “Mobile Internet devices will become more and more central in everyone's life. Everybody is online and communication is possible in both directions. Online tracking studies are an interesting possibility and GPS technology will offer additional valuable information on how, when and where people do what. Mobile Research is still in its infancy and the possibilities are endless”.

See the original post:
What's next for mobile market research?

Click here for an example of a study using GPS technology conducted by market research firm, Ipsos, and powered by the SODA mobile survey platform. 
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Merchants should use mobile to find out about target consumers: study

Tuesday, July 13, 2010 by Samantha Singh

The mobile medium offers various channels that are ideal for collecting information about merchants’ and marketers’ target consumers, including SMS, the mobile Web and applications.

Survey-based market research company Ipsos and survey software provider Techneos are working together to pilot new technologies and applications for mobile research.

Their latest project called “The Great British Weekend” was conducted during the May 2010 Bank Holiday long weekend using Techneos’ survey research application, service-oriented development of applications (SODA) across multiple mobile phones, including Nokia and BlackBerry devices.

“[Marketers and merchants should] start making it easier for their customers to tell you what they think, where and when it’s important to them, and do it now,” said Sean Conry, vice president at Techneos, Vancouver, BC. “Mobile is the perfect channel for learning from your marketplace because it helps you to get anytime-everywhere feedback.

See the original post:
Merchants should use mobile to find out about target consumers: study

Final take
Dan Butcher, Mobile Commerce Daily


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Ipsos and Techneos Collaborate on Groundbreaking Mobile App-Based Study

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 by Samantha Singh
While researchers normally prescribe when feedback is wanted from people, a "push" approach, reaching out to people asking to hear from them, a recent mobile research project has turned the tables on this traditional method.  Ipsos and Techneos collaborated on a study called, "The Great British Weekend".  It was conducted during the May 2010 Bank Holiday Weekend. 

The study enabled people to provide insights and share their opinions, when and where it was important to them.  The mobile surveys went beyond simple questions and answers incorporating GPS location and photo capture, and were deployed via apps across multiple mobile phone types, such as Nokia and BlackBerry.

Marketers and researchers can leverage the concept and findings of this mobile apps-based study to engage just about any consumer segment, hear their opinions and gain their feedback at the point of experience. 

See the original press release:
Ipsos and Techneos Collaborate on Groundbreaking Mobile App-Based Study

 
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Techneos upgrades SODA mobile survey service

Friday, June 25, 2010 by Samantha Singh

The new 1.3 version gives researchers access to information such as addresses, database lists or results from other surveys to be pre-populated and assigned to individual participants or interviewers for completion.

Researchers can also keep in contact with respondents through an email-style messaging system, and a data-cleaning option corrects any fieldwork errors at the source, rather than at the end of the project.

See the original post:
Techneos upgrades SODA mobile survey service

Click here, to see the Techneos press release: "Techneos Announces Version 1.3 of SODA®"

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Quant Scale Qual

Monday, April 26, 2010 by Sean Conry

Quant Scale Qual... I thought that sounded more elegant than "Qualnt - the new Quali-Quant". 

With the ability to engage with people via an App on their mobile phone, researchers can do much more than just an 8-question mobile survey or a "traditional" digital ethnography. We can ask people to take pictures, record audio, tag a GPS coordinate, and generally produce mountains of rich, but unwieldy data. 

So we may be trudging towards a new research opportunity and problem: Quant-scale Qual. Maybe a lot of you are already dealing with this. I've seen a lot of quali-quant, but it's usually 200-300 intercepts with some photos and recorded verbatims.

What happens when your diary studies routinely generate 2000 completes? Or maybe they're not "completes", but life blurbs, media micro blogs, or any other new research thing you can invent a name for. Our clients are starting to work through these issues, and companies like Language Logic provide a great starting point with tools that broach predictive/automatic coding and easily handle multimedia data formats.

But multimedia data is a complex beast. It may take Google or Apple to bring us the tools we need to get over the automation hump. For example, check out Google’s face detection technology and iPhoto’s Faces technology.

How this could be licensed, bent, twisted or re-purposed for research is yet to be seen… but the possibilities are exciting and I can't wait to see who solves it first.

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Choosing the Right Hardware for Survey Research

Monday, March 29, 2010 by Sean Conry

A client of ours is giving a presentation to a group of colleagues on why they chose the hardware they did for a self-completed study. We help clients through this all the time, but it got me thinking... What are rules when it comes to picking the right hardware for MCAPI, diary studies or other mobile data collection.

  1. Consider hardware and software in Tandem.

    In many cases, the software provides the capability you are looking for, and the hardware is secondary.
     
  2.  (well, maybe this one's really 1.b.) Don't be swayed by what's sexy, what's inside counts too

    You'd be surprised how often we hear from someone who has bought a fleet of iPhones, or sourced a no-name device from "a guy who could get them a really good deal". They soon learn that it's not a good deal if it wasn't the right hardware for the job.  
  3. Don’t buy too far into the future.

    Technology is going to change, so it’s likely not even possible to try and pick something you think will still work for you 6 years from now.
     
  4. Ask your technology partners. They will often have
    1. Blogs: http://blog.techneos.com 
    2. Whitepapers : http://www.techneos.com/resources/white_papers
    3. Staff who are up to speed on the latest offerings
       
  5. Ask your colleagues. They will undoubtedly have valuable experiences to share.

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Smartphones to Overtake Feature Phones in U.S. by 2011

Friday, March 26, 2010 by Samantha Singh

The iPhone, Blackberry, Droid and smartphones in general dominate the buzz in the mobile market, but only 21% of American wireless subscribers are using a smartphone as of the fourth quarter 2009 compared to 19% in Q3 2009 and 14% at the end of 2008. We are just at the beginning of a new wireless era where smartphones will become the standard device consumers will use to connect to  friends, the internet and the world at large. The share of smartphones as a proportion of overall device sales has increased to 29% for phone purchasers in the last six months and 45% of respondents to a Nielsen survey indicated that their next device will be a smartphone. If we combine these intentional data points with falling prices and increasing capabilities of these devices along with a explosion of applications for devices, we are seeing the beginning of a groundswell. This increase will be so rapid, that by the end of 2011, Nielsen expects more smartphones in the U.S. market than feature phones.
The Nielsen Company - U.S. Smartphone Penetration and Projections
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Smartphones to Overtake Feature Phones in U.S. by 2011

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The mobile web: still a work in progress

Thursday, March 25, 2010 by Mark Cameron
I came across a very interesting whitepaper called "Why the Mobile Web is Disappointing End-users", which cites a survey of 1001 mobile web users conducted by Equation Research.

The whitepaper highlights the gap between people's high expectations and actual experiences using mobile web browsers. Slow connection times are identified as the biggest problem facing mobile websites today.

I frequently surf the web on my iPhone, and find that sites which are optimized for mobile browsing are quite responsive and usable. But most sites are not yet optimized for phones, making mobile browsing an unpleasant (or downright miserable) experience in many cases.  There is still so much fragmentation in browser capabilities across mobile platforms that there is no single format that will reach a broad range of phones -- though Opera is doing its best to overcome that challenge. Of sites which are optimized, many are fine-tuned specifically for iPhone users, since Apple has set the new standard for mobile browsing (and because Apple dominates mobile web traffic, as illustrated in the latest web traffic statistics published by AdMob).

I recently attended an Ericsson event hosted by Wavefront, which is a world-class organization here in Vancouver that focuses on accelerating commercialization of new wireless products and services.  An Ericsson representative provided stats indicating that the two factors which most impact mobile web browsing -- increased wireless bandwidth and reduced "latency" (essentially how long it takes to establish a connection) -- are converging to provide speeds in mobile web browsing that will meet or exceed what we currently experience on a desktop. The question is whether increases in browsing speed can outstrip the massive increase in web traffic that is expected from smartphone and netbook use, as I discussed in my blog post titled "Are we in for a mobile traffic jam?" 

In addition to browsing speed, there are many differences in user experience across mobile browsers. Various input methods -- ranging from non-touchscreen devices with thumbpads to stylus-based touchscreens to capacitive "finger-touch" screens, not to mention whether a device has a physical or on-screen keyboard -- make it very difficult to create a consistent user interface that spans many different hardware platforms.  And fierce competition to establish web-based standards -- such as Adobe Flash vs. Microsoft Silverlight -- makes it difficult for developers to choose which of the latest and greatest controls to use within their web solutions.

This all points to how young the mobile web really is. I am a big believer that the mobile web will eventually be as ubiquitous as the desktop web is today, but for now the challenge of fragmentation is every bit as real for mobile websites as it is for downloadable mobile applications. For anyone looking to the mobile web as a "magic bullet" for engaging the masses, we're not quite there yet...
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Mobile Research Concepts in Practice

Monday, March 15, 2010 by Sean Conry
The basics might seem obvious... The inherent benefits of mobile diaries & digital ethnographies, as well as other mobile research techniques delivered via mobile applications include:


1. Augment traditional survey questionnaires with photos and locations to enrich data and drive new insights
2. Greater mobility means a higher likelihood that respondents will have the ability to take a survey anytime, anywhere
3. Time & location stamps give higher confidence that data was entered where and when it was supposed to/reported to be
4. Real-time data allows for compliance monitoring
5. Eliminate the problem of recall


But a lot of research practices, even those departments which are "ad-hoc" by definition, are built around creating an operational expertise which is replicated over and over again to collect market research data for various clients and scenarios. So sometimes we like to share specific examples to help people understand where a new technique might be useful...

Scenarios which can benefit significantly from a mobile survey system include:

·         Detailed Category Interaction (diary studies)– EG. Snacking/Eating:

o   Where and when did you eat? Why did you choose what you did? What options were available? How did you feel? Show us what you bought/made?

·         Consumption/Usage that happens anywhere, or where location affects choice:

o   FMCG, or disposable consumer goods

o   Tobacco & Alcohol (typically done in academic or social research settings)

o   Diapers

·         Understanding a day/week/month in the life of a respondent segment:

o   GPS capture for significant insight in to patterns

·         Shopping/Retail:

o   Exercises to create outfits, or understand how segments choose where to buy different articles of clothes

o   Pseudo-mystery shopping (audit retail vendor knowledge or Sales Rep attention to customer)

·         Medical:

o   Physician Drug rep encounters

o   Prescription/consumption and results of regulated products

·         Exploratory & Innovation. Perhaps most valuable for dynamic, important or changing segments:

o   New parents, Brand Mavens, Primary Grocery Shoppers, Baby Boomers

·         Advertising and Media Exposure:

o   Where & when did you see advertising? Show us the ad. How did it affect you?

·         Mobile populations, or users of a product or service that by definition is mobile:

o   Frequent fliers / Airline V.I.P.’s

o   Commuters /Heavy Transit Users

o   Sales/Service Reps


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Making sense of the mobile platform jungle

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Mark Cameron
I've been getting very close to most of the mobile platforms on the market today, and wanting to summarize my thoughts about their potential impact on mobile research. Seeing Samantha's February 25th post about smartphone market share, a brain-dump on the subject should dovetail nicely...

Looking back on key announcements over the past year, Google, Apple and more recently Microsoft have made the most significant splashes in terms of mobile innovation. However, when the dust settles we still see Nokia and Research in Motion (RIM) leading the charge with 47% and 20%, respectively, of the mobile OS market in 2009. Why is this the case, and what can we expect to see moving forward?

I believe the current mobile market is a race between 5 horses, but I will not count others out over the long term due to the still-early nature of this arena. The key players today are:
  • Apple: since its release, the iPhone has set the bar for smartphone usability; its slightly thinner sibling, the iPod touch, is the definition of a sleek, modern Personal Digital Assistant (PDA); and the forthcoming iPad is one of the most anticipated products of all time. Simply put, Apple has a lot of swagger and momentum in the mobile space. But Apple runs a very closed environment that people either love or hate, and this creates opportunities for other more open platforms to shine. Also, while Apple has done very well in the consumer space, it has made fewer inroads into the enterprise, where RIM and Microsoft thrive.
  • Research in Motion (RIM): the BlackBerry is one of the most impressive brands of our time. While RIM is often considered less marketing savvy than Apple, I would suggest that their marketing tactics have been every bit as effective as Apple's -- just different. Despite a barrage of criticism about the sexiness and usability of their products, RIM continues to grow and profit at an astounding rate. I personally questioned the usability of BlackBerry products compared to more elegant competitors like iPhone and Android, but I have come to appreciate them as solid, enterprise-worthy devices, and to see the company as a very savvy player in the mobile space. RIM has developed very deep roots with both wireless carriers and enterprise IT departments, as well as a powerful brand that is almost synonymous with thumb-typing on a mobile phone.
  • Nokia: the Nokia/Symbian world is complicated. Having personally handled dozens of Nokia phones, I would summarize that their strength is in their diversity of offerings to multiple levels of the marketplace. This is also their weakness. With countless products, three current operating systems, and a solid-but-aging feel on much of their hardware, it is hard to believe that Nokia still outsells its nearest smartphone competitor at more than a 2-to-1 ratio. But while they are not as strong in North America, Nokia is a major player in Europe and downright dominant in many other regions of the world. It is hard to discount a company that produces over 1 million phones per day (yes, you read that correctly). With the incredible depth of carrier relationships and distribution channels which they have developed, Nokia's challenge now is to fill those channels with products that compete with their ever-growing range of competitors.
  • Google: Google has garnered a lot of attention since announcing the open-source (and freely available) Android platform in 2007. By providing a smartphone operating system that is free and extensible, Android has garnered support from dozens of handset manufacturers including major players like Motorola and HTC. In contrast to Apple, Google's greatest strength (and weakness) is its openness. I am personally very impressed with most of the Android devices I have used, and as a consumer I have great optimism that Android will be a force to be reckoned with in mobile technology. But I also recognize that openness can lead to fragmentation, and I've heard a lot of grumbling from developers about the lack of standards on Android devices. As Microsoft learned when it allowed device manufacturers and wireless carriers to customize experiences based on its Windows Mobile platforms, I believe that the many emerging flavours of Android devices will make it difficult for developers to target. That said, I believe that Google's ability to integrate the mobile experience with all of their other web-based services will make it a formidable player in the mobile space, and I believe the fragmentation issue can be overcome as Google and other Android licensees learn to coexist.
  • Windows Mobile: I recently spoke about the forthcoming Windows 7 Phone Series, so I won't repeat myself on the details. Suffice to say that I think Microsoft has re-entered the mobile race, and demonstrated that they are not planning to turn away from this increasingly important battlefield. Microsoft has learned a lot of lessons over more than a decade in mobile computing, and I believe their enterprise roots will serve them well as they re-assert themselves with a brand new mobile platform. What remains to be seen is whether Microsoft can garner enough consumer interest to unseat competitors in the mass market, or whether it will continue to play a more niche role as an enterprise solution.
I have not even mentioned the likes of Palm (webOS), Samsung (bada), Linux Mobile (LiMo), or expanded on the now open-source Symbian OS (the Nokia-bred OS that was recently spun off as a freely available platform). And there are others... but the rabbit hole is simply too deep to cover here, so I will get back to the purpose of my post: to discuss the impact of mobile platform trends on market research.

There are fundamentally two ways to engage people on their mobile devices in a data-intensive way: (1) via their web browser; and (2) using a downloadable application. 
  • Mobile web browsers are improving in capability and usability, and are finally emerging as a lowest-common-denominator approach to mobile engagement. If you need to reach a lot of people in a relatively shallow way, e.g. to conduct a brief mobile survey about a product or experience, then a mobile browser may well be the way to go. Although mobile browsers are still fragmented, the emergence of mobile web technologies such as HTML 5, JavaScript, CSS and Adobe Flash are making it more viable to reach a wide mobile audience.
  • Downloadable applications provide a richer user experience for applications such as diary studies and mobile panels, but they are typically harder to deploy to a broad range of users. Also dovetailing with Sean's recent post about quality over quantity, I would argue that in many cases a more select audience that is highly engaged is more valuable than a broad audience that is minimally engaged. It is these cases -- for example digital ethnography with alarms to trigger highly contextual questions at random times -- where mobile apps really shine.
Bear with me as I attempt to tie all of this information together...

The mobile jungle is in some ways becoming more wild every day, but I am also seeing signs that a handful of gorillas may be starting to establish some turf. While I don't believe that all five gorillas outlined here will win over the long term, each one represents sufficient market share and resources to be considered as key players for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, I think we will begin to see some stabilization of mobile platforms, resulting in more reliable ways to reach the masses via both web browsers and downloadable applications.

For the next while solutions focused on mobile research will have to choose between "wide and shallow" or "narrow and deep" -- i.e. either focus on reaching a broad range of people with a more basic level of engagement, or on providing a high level of engagement within a more narrow scope of users.  I don't feel that one is inherently better than the other, and both represent significant opportunities within the burgeoning mobile research space.

Over the long term the two paths that I have identified will converge. In the meantime, having invested a lot of time and energy developing methods to engage people in a deep and meaningful way, I am a big believer in the power of rich mobile applications. With over 3 Billion application downloads in less than 18 months, Apple has more than proven the viability of downloadable apps, and all other major platforms have since poured significant resources into their own mobile app stores.

Over the next while it is prudent to focus on the five key players I have identified here: Apple, RIM, Nokia, Google and Microsoft. But peripheral vision is often what sets the great apart from the good, so I allow my eyes to wander a bit in search of innovative smaller players that might just have a thing or two to teach the gorillas. 
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