Mobile Research

Smartphones are rapidly gaining popularity in Brazil as recent price reductions have made these devices more accessible to people of all economic levels according to new research from The Nielsen Company.  Sales of smartphones were up 128% in the first half of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009, and up 17% versus the first half of 2008, the period prior to the global recession.   The volume of handsets sold also jumped 31%.  Overall, smartphones make up about 10% of mobile phones owned in Brazil.

The average price of smartphones dropped 2% in the first six months of the year compared to the same period in 2009 and by 5% versus 2008.

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?

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

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®"

Drawing from research data from one of its syndicated studies, ZINC Research points to a strong correlation between these two phenomena [Web 2.0 and its  social media platforms, tools and applications].  The report’s highlights:

Mobile phone usage

71% of Canadians (70% of males and 73% of females) now use a mobile telephone;
The majority of these users are young adults (18-34 years old, 76%) and adults (35-54 years old, 73%), most of whom have a higher level of education (college, 74%, university, 73%).

Mobile Internet access

44% [of Canadian] mobile phone users can and do use their mobile phones to connect to the Internet;

The majority of mobile Internet users once again skew towards the two core adult segments (18-34, 58%, 35-54, 42%) and towards higher education levels (college, 46%, university, 44%); mobile Internet surfers tend to skew more male (46% compared to 41% of female users).

If you haven’t heard yet, AT&T is dropping unlimited data! By the time I post this, it probably will be unavailable altogether. I'm sure it had nothing whatsoever to do with the timing of the Apple WWDC development conference where the new iPhone is expected to be announced - you know, the one that will probably make it even easier to consume hoards of wireless data. AT&T is letting existing customers keep their plans, but isn’t signing up new customers.

Now there will be two basic plans, one for ‘regular’ users and one for heavy users. If you believe AT&T, then this move will actually save most consumers money. But the problem is that people have no idea how much data they are using. Sure you can get apps to monitor your data use, and in reality, it’s only heavy video conference and mobile TV users who will surpass the new limits and who are causing problems, but it’s an easy decision for them – it ‘s the rest of us I worry about.

Is this a sign of things to come? Sprint still offers unlimited data, as I’m sure do many others. As the iPhone is released on more networks (if those rumours come true), then we will likely see the other carriers experience the same bandwidth problems that AT&T is experiencing.

p.s. for a good read, check out the previous post on this blog post “Are we in for a wireless traffic jam?”.

Furthermore, there’s some talk that 4G will deliver the ability for metered billing.

So what does this mean for research? Well, in one sense it bodes well for the use of Apps over the Mobile Web because Apps can be so much more efficient than the web. Furthermore, survey data is measured in kilobytes, let alone megabytes (until you start incorporating heavy multimedia transfer for display or capture). These plans allow for gigabytes – so we’re probably safe on that front… Apps also don't suffer from Latency like mobile websites do, so the experience is better (a little more on that here).

So will it truly matter to research? Users could become more hesitant to use their precious data allotment on surveys, no matter how compact our data is. Our primary challenge could become one of education in our screening and recruitment activities when we go to launch a customer satisfaction questionnaire, or any other mobile research program. Of course, we must also incent adequately to cover those costs AND the respondent's time.

Personally, I think the mobile Internet will eventually reach the state of the “regular” Internet, where most broadband companies stratify their offerings based on bandwidth (How fast can I get what I’m downloading), not total use (How much will it cost me if I download this)?

We have had good success getting people who are on a wide variety of networks to participate in a cellular survey, so frankly I’m not that worried. But, we continue to keep an eye on the evolution of the wireless marketplace, optimize our products, and work with our partners and clients to educate participants.

Meanwhile, the rest of the mobile world continues to trudge along the App path – Google now includes Apps in search results.

It’s all part of the fascinating evolution of mobility and research!

We're presenting this week at the CASRO conference with Ipsos. We worked together to field a mobile, self-initiated digital ethnography with users who have Blackberry and Nokia phones. We think it's the first study of its kind, and I wanted to put down my thoughts on why we did it.

With all of the press that Apple creates, I think most people can intuitively guess about the 'how' of mobile research. All modes have their use. It ranges from quick polls via SMS, to mobile web through to Apps.

Research and advisory company Gartner has released its analysis of worldwide mobile phone sales for the first quarter of 2010, and when it comes to smartphones, the numbers look really good for Apple and Google. Microsoft, on the other hand, might want to reevaluate its strategy for the Windows Phone 7, the success of which might determine the company’s fate in the smartphone market.

According to Gartner, which measures smartphone sales, Google’s Android has surged to fourth place overall [see table], growing from 1.6% to 9.6% market share in a year.

See the original post:
Android and iPhone OS Pave The Way For Huge Smartphone Growth [STATS]
 

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

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.

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.

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

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

• 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.

• 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.

Legacy’s Schroeder Institute has selected Techneos’ SODA™ Mobile Access Platform to power an innovative study examining the effectiveness of mobile phone support for the D.C. Tobacco Quitline. See the full press release, here.

Traditionally researchers conduct panels and surveys asking participants about their thoughts, opinions, and sentiments, but what about participants’ level of engagement?  I came across an article presented at ESOMAR’s Asia Pacific Conference last year, nominated for the Excellence Best Paper, and titled, “What does Research 2.0 mean to consumers in Asia Pacific?”  In their presentation, Poynter et al. asked the question; to what extent are consumers in Asia Pacific responding to co-creation and collaboration initiatives?  Are they responding differently than other consumers around the globe?

Technology is clearly altering the way research is undertaken on a global scale, yet it remains to be seen which particular settings, cultural contexts and end user experiences are most conducive to strong consumer and study participant engagement. 

Legacy’s research addresses this technology question and examines how mobile phone support can help participants become more engaged in the Quitline program, request assistance and input from one-another, and ultimately, quit.