The two days of the ‘Market Research in the Mobile World‘ (MRMW) congress – that took place on 18 and 19 April – were filled to the brim with several international experts in the field of (mobile) research sharing their knowledge and insights. Literally from America to Australia and India, researchers have come to show us what the current state-of-play in the field of mobile research field is. One term has been mentioned at least three times during the first day of the conference: the ‘customer journey’. It all comes down to one question: “How does somebody come to buy something?”.

The Customer Journey

The way someone eventually becomes a consumer, meaning they actually buy a product, is the holy grail of the advertising business. Despite the criticism towards online, many advertisers still struggle with similar questions offline: who looks at an ad and what are the effects of that? Others struggle with this problem as well; when does whom experience what? Although steps are being taken in the right direction, questions such as “Why is nobody buying my product while they must have seen my ad?” are still omnipresent.

At present the technology to follow people every day is finally available, there are several apps, employed by different bureaus, to accomplish this. An other development in ‘the industry’ is that ‘tarratives’ are going to play a bigger part in marketing and research. Read the complete article at Greenbookblog »

CC Picture: ‘ALT1040‘

“Taking over the world” might sound overly dramatic, but actually it’s not that far-fetched when you really think about it. Considering the enormous development that ‘social’ has been going through doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to think that technology will really move into this direction. Combine that with the fact that some countries are skipping ‘landlines’ altogether and are moving directly to mobile instead, and you have a very safe bet indeed. The main challenge will be to see how ‘Local’ will take shape. For marketers and market researchers alike the main focus should be both ‘contact’ and ‘conversion’. Both will probably want to take a look at what is required to actually measure these two items as well.

Thus, the developments in the fields of Social, Local and Mobile (SoLoMo) will present us with two main challenges:

1. Contact: Where are the people I want to get in touch with, and how can I get them to talk to
2. Conversion: How do I make sure I don’t bother people endlessly, but start a conversation at exactly the right moment?

This results in the now classic ‘big data’ discussion, being the discussion about analysis: “In what way do I make connections to use in research and in what way should I do research on all the data that I get from measuring the ‘two C’s’?”

At the ‘Market Research in the Mobile World’ event that is supported by a broad variety of international companies next month in Amsterdam, the complications and solutions to questions like these will be discussed. But what is it that we’re really talking about here? Read the complete article at Greenbookblog »

On Research-Live Annelies Verhaeghe of InSites Consulting is explaining some of the difficulties that come with doing ‘social media research’. First and foremost notion is that when you’re entering such a new territory is to ask yourself certain questions, the first one being ‘what is really new about this?’. It is important to note that there are actually a lot of similarities to traditional research in this case.

As Verhaeghe points out, one of the key differences is the new unit of analysis. When you’re doing this type of research, I’ve often pointed to the idea that similarities with qualitative research will turn up in what is traditionally seen as a quantitative type of research. When doing social media research, ‘netnography’, will change the units of your analysis to conversations. This exactly the point I’ve made before: doing research on the web will focus on the conversations that people have. You can have a quick look about what I’ve said by having a glance at the slideshow here.

Another important notion is that one of the things that will remain the same is the fact that you have to make decisions about which units you’re analyzing. In everyday research we could call this sampling, and in social media research we can see the same need for sampling. Working at a sampling company I’ve stressed this point before; the fact that the population is online now doesn’t change the need to get a decent sample. Yes, one can just grab from the population in order to illustrate other research and enrich it with examples, but real research will require some sort of sampling just the same.

I would like to add another point to all this, which I’ve already mention in the post I linked here previously:

We have to set up Research and show it is not only possible, but that it works. Do not wait for demand, be the unique company that can supply this extra knowledge.

I truly believe this is necessary; otherwise you could end up with a decent idea that just doesn’t get used. As commenter Michael points out here, with already tight budgets, even a forward thinking manager would want to know what he’s going to spend his budget on.

It seems like the holy grail of online Market Research, something that must be really great, but no one can fully grasp, yet. One we really get it, it might not be there any more though and of course I’m talking about ‘Mobile Research’. This doesn’t mean one shouldn’t pursue this way of doing research though, because implementing this way of doing research can partly change the way we’re doing online research as a whole. There are a few challenges when trying to set up something like this of course, but there is much to gain as well. In a time where we find it ever more difficult to find new respondents on the one hand and keep them on the other hand a serious involvement in mobile research might help quite a bit. Not in the last place because developing a mobile survey platform would finally solve some other issues we’re having as well.

Respondents and engagement, two ‘issues’ being constantly debated in the research community in the last few years. One of the topics at hand is if debating ‘respondents’ in the first place isn’t discouraging people to participate in surveys because it makes them feel alienated from the whole process. I would say this may actually be one of the least of our worries: engaging, good surveys, are far more important for those who offer us a little of their time to help us doing our research. Good and bad respondents might be another topic at hand, and though I agree with the statement that everyone who sincerely tries to fill in a survey is a ‘good’ respondent, one can think about how we ended up with ‘bad’ ones in the first place. Shipping in respondents by the tens of thousands through prize offers, bizarre partners and landing pages has never sounded like the best way to get honest survey-takers in. But we might do it anyway because we need more, more, more, for all the reasons you might be able to think of.

The need for mobile research

This is where the fun of mobile Research Comes in. Because when we look at what we actually offer respondents in surveys isn’t it quite often maybe a little long, maybe a little boring and yes: a ‘little’ confusing? Now, mobile phones are not really viewed as being ideal for long texts, to say the least so any application for them tends to naturally evolve in an application that offers information in a short efficient (often graphic) way. This would immediately solve our struggle with long surveys, if we don’t fall in the trap of clients that might want to offer just that little bit more for a survey we might see as ‘too long’.

Second of all, and yes this effect will probably fade, is the inflow of new (?) people willing to take a survey. (Or participate in any other type of research) Indeed, new initiatives seem promising on this part. You may have heard of Thumbspeak, a very interesting new company that has taken the step to focus on mobile research.

We asked: “How often do you check the Thumbspeak app to look for questions?” They answered:
· Hourly – 221
· Every couple of hours – 573
· Daily – 1,350
· Weekly – 268

- ResearchWorld -

Of course we would have to see if this will stay like this, not in the last place because also 24% said that they have never (!) read a newspaper, which I personally find hard to believe. Nevertheless it seems that Thumbspeak is one of those new (with former Greenfield CEO Wiltse) companies that dares taking the step to mobile research.

A challenge will be to find clients. After all, the research industry is for, some logical and some more unclear, reasons quite traditional. And even with a wellknown CEO it is always hard to start something new. That’s probably why Thumbspeak only offers a limited set of surveys to start with now, while I suspect they would be willing to have a lot more. The fact that they’re not really filtering and directing their respondents yet to matching surveys as they hopefully will in the future can now be excused by the former fact, but has to change in the future. Nevertheless, this could perhaps one be of the most promising new concepts in the Research industry, just because they’re there and actually doing it, while others have just mentioned the possibility of mobile surveys. (Note that I’m not talking about ‘game changers’ here, everything nowadays seems to be a game changer, while hardly anything actually is.)

It will end, but why care?

In the end, the mobile web will fade, as we will not distinguish such a thing anymore by, say, 2020. The developments that will lead to the coming rise of the mobile web though, will shape the future of the entire web. If you’re asking me about what I think can really kickstart mobile research and make it valuable beyond mere ‘fun surveys’ and active respondents, check back here in a couple of days for a new article.

Market research bureau Multiscope will end Visiscan, its service that measures the reach of Dutch websites. Visiscan has been running for ten years and offered Multiscope’s clients a benchmark in reach, branding and evaluation of the top 1000 websites in the Netherlands. The service was most well known for it’s yearly ranking of the top sites.

The ranking has been under attack of various Dutch marketers in the past (website in Dutch) and indeed it seems that making a ranking that everyone agrees upon is near to impossible. Even with explanations from the side of Multiscope there remained questions about certain sites being perceived as ranking either way too high or too low (in Dutch), which disappeared from those spots later on. In any case the list was much valued and debated every year, but increasingly seen as superfluous, ranking just an increasingly steady top list every year on the one hand while not listing small sites by definition, which could mean the neglect of interesting niches.

In a press release Multiscope indicates (Dutch) that the market for web-reach research has stabilised while they, have seen other activities grow. Aiming for growth, they mean to focus more on their panel and software activities and new international opportunities. Services for existing Visiscan clients will continue up to the end of this year and 2010 will also see the last of the now traditional ranking list.

‘Traditional methods like interviewing and surveys seem to prevail and have of course proven their value along the way.’, is what I stated in December last year when discussing research on Social Media. And of course these will remain a, if not the biggest, factor in (market) research, but research in different ways seems to be more and more present.

I also used Harris Interactive as an example of a company that was already starting to use Social Media research as a means of adding to traditional research. Traditional because online surveys and private communities might be ‘new’ but they’re still quite traditional in their essence. The blog ‘Research Rants’ pointed me to a new initiative by Harris Interactive where they’re asking you to connect your ‘social’ profiles to an engine that will analyze your actions in Facebook and/or Twitter.

It seems like they’re using their normal polling panel to build a new panel that uses social media activities instead of surveys to make data-points and build a profile of your opinions and behaviors. We can only guess (thus far) about what and how they will analyze you, but it’s certainly an interesting development.

What do you think, is this ‘paneled’ approach a good thing, or is there a future where researchers will analyze everyone’s tweets, which are usually public anyway? (ie: ‘The web is the panel’) How is the panel used, is it used to make a sample and then include the (pre?) analyzed communications, or is it the other way around? Both ways seem to have advantages.

As I commented on Research Rants; ‘[a] survey might be online now, but it’s still a survey (quite often with little extra options/tricks over a ‘paper’ one), maybe even an online version of one that was (is?) conducted offline as well.’. This Social Analysis could add a complete new dimension to research, but it could also turn out that in fact all these communications tell us about the same as traditional research…

Whenever people asked what it was that I meant by “doing Social Research”, I could talk passionately for an hour. But sometimes it became apparent that a more structured approach was needed. After all, speaking in a passionate way about something you have in your mind might not always get the message across in a clear way. Thus I developed a way of structuring my talks.

I think my main argument for both how Social Research is possible and why it could be useful can be summarized in three main points. I’ve used these three points from then onwards to structure my approach when talking about this issue, which seems to work fine for me now. I’ve made a slide show based on these three main points, which may be nice to share with you here.

First of all of course my three points; these are:

• Explain survey based research; why are we used to it and why are we using it. Is this type of research flawless, does it have any shortcomings?
• The future of research is not about presenting you with the crowd, it’s about presenting you with their opinions. Social research makes it possible to tap right into opinions instead of people.
• We have to set up Research and show it is not only possible, but that it works. Do not wait for demand, be the unique company that can supply this extra knowledge and, in a way, create the demand.

Of course presenting you with this slideshow without me talking might seem a bit useless, but I think you can gather some information from it anyway. And besides; I’m always willing to give ‘a talk’ about this, of course.

CC Photo at the start of this article: Matthew Bowden
The nice picture of me on the fields of HAR2009 at the end of the slideshow, was made by Anne Helmond.

Following the recent acquisitions in the research industry, think about Toluna buying Greenfield Online/Ciao Surveys, one would expect a response from other players in the market. And to be a bit more specific; what would smaller players in the market do with their panels? There are several obvious solutions to the troubles of maintaining smaller panel(s), one could thing about an advanced sharing system or outsourcing panels.

As all of these seem to be happening there is the other obvious solution to which I’ve been pointing several times in the past; several companies ‘chipping in’ together and combine their panel efforts.

And indeed; now several European research agencies have committed themselves to pooling their panels together and create a new fieldwork business called Panelteam. Founding members are Multiscope, Mo’web Research, M3 Research, Panelbase, Directpanel Research and SWG according to Research-Live. Peter-Paul Laumans, now working at Multiscope, will be heading this new company, no doubt having to navigate it to the hard times of crafting a single structure out of the separate panel entities. It will be interesting to see how fast they can set up a smooth working new organization out of these separate resources.

Even more, it will be interesting to see what kind of influence this pooling has on the market. No doubt Panelteam would like to establish itself as an important player in the field, but they will feel the competition of both existing larger multi-country players as well as others pooling together their resources in a similar way. My guess would be that a next step might well be consultancy firms combining some of their research efforts in a similar vein.