Archive for the ‘market research’ tag
Link Dump: March 2 – 15 2013
Even The Pope Tweets! Image courtesy of USA TODAY
Welcome to uSamp’s bi-weekly link dump: A compilation of all things trending in Market Research, Mobile, Social Media, Gamification and more. We hope you’ll find this aggregation as informative and entertaining as we do. Let us know if there are items that you’d like to see included in the next link dump!
Market Research
Adapt to survive, warns latest Grit survey
US — Traditional researchers will have to move away from data collection if they are to survive in a world of social media monitoring, according to the latest survey on market research trends.
Shock of the New – an interview with Jane Frost
The MRS Annual Conference kicks off next week with sportsmen, artists, broadcasters and scientists on the agenda. But what does it all mean for research? Avery Dennison’s Edward Appleton asked MRS chief executive Jane Frost to explain all.
Social Media
The top 10 most irritating social media updates
A new survey has revealed the 10 most annoying types of social media update. How many are you guilty of?
Geofencing Part I: Don’t Mess With The Fence
What will be the next smartphone feature that will be differentiating and cool? Seeking Alpha Blog
At the intersection of the physical and virtual world lies a mobile capability called geofencing. A context aware app that reminds you to pick up your laundry as soon as you approach the drycleaners on the way home from work? Brilliant? Scary? We asked Director of Product for uSamp Mobile, Allen Vartazarian to explain the basics of the phenomenon, address privacy concerns, the trouble with battery drain, key applications and why geofencing has finally arrived in 2013.
Q: Can you explain geofencing to the layman?
A: Geofencing is a technology that provides the ability to create a virtual fence around a geographic location in the real world. Smartphones that are location-enabled can detect when someone enters or exits these fences, which can be as large as a city block or as small as a retail store.
Q: How exactly does geofencing work?
A: In order to create a geofence, we first determine the latitude and longitude of a particular location, or set of locations. We then assign the radius of the geofences depending on the type of location. If we were to geofence a supermarket chain, for example, we might set a radius of 200 meters, but for coffee shops we would only set a radius of about 30 meters.
Once set, the location and radii of these geofences is communicated to the smartphone of those who have our mobile app installed. When and if the person then crosses into one of the fences, we record the date, time, and latitude/longitude of the event. In addition to logging this information, we can also choose to trigger a notification to the person, linking them to a survey within our app.
Q: How accurate is geofencing?
A: Geofencing is relatively (but not 100%) accurate. Though we can be very specific about defining the criteria for each geofence, there are certain technical limitations in the way that a smartphone determines your location, especially when the device is not actively being used (like when its in your purse or your pocket). Nonetheless, we are able to get a general understanding of someone’s location and can set an acceptable location accuracy threshold when attempting to understand when someone is within a geofence or not.
In a recent project, we setup geofences around a national fast food restaurant chain which triggered an alert asking if the person was dining there: over 80% of respondents said that they were at the location, with the remainder likely being at a store next door.
Stay tuned for Part II where Allen will address the applications of geofencing.
Business Panel In Action: Is Cold Calling Dead?
by Kevin Gaither, Vice President, Inside Sales
One of the perils of being in business in 2013 is finding the best way to reach new customers. Whether you are in sales, marketing, or in the survey business, you are constantly looking at ways to keep your core assets awake and alive in an age of overwhelming modes of communication.
As a Sales exec, I’ve come across many articles that declare cold calling dead and instead, promote a new software, technique, training program or social selling method that has replaced the human connection. As somebody who’s been practicing for almost 20 years, I wanted to dig deeper into the argument, and test the hypothesis of whether a “cold call” has indeed become irrelevant.
I’m fortunate to work for a consumer and business insights company that has access to over 12 million qualified panelists worldwide. So I thought that this would be a great question to pose to uSamp’s B2B Panel.
The goal was to survey 100 respondents to find out about their perceptions of cold calling. Instead of asking the Yes/No question right out of the gate, I asked respondents to self-identify as either a sales or business development professional, provide their own definition of a cold call and if they felt that their definition of a cold call was dead, and whether or not they agreed with my definition:
If a Cold Call is defined as a phone call where the person didn’t fill out a lead form, didn’t download your content, doesn’t know you, is not a referral and is not expecting your call, IS COLD CALLING DEAD?
In light of all the rhetoric out there, the results might be surprising:
87% of respondents felt that their definition of a cold call was “not dead”:
and 82% of respondents felt that my definition of a cold call was “not dead”:
I also posed this question on several LinkedIn Groups and Twitter to add a qualitative flavor to my research. Paul Castain of The Sales Playbook wrote:
“I don’t think it’s dead . . . I think it’s lonely and in need of other kinds of ‘touches’ to keep it company.”
And Trish Bertuzzi of The Bridge Group wrote:
“Apparently cold calling is alive and well and AMEN to that! BUT it is the cold that is dead not the calling.”
So what we’re left with is that, while cold calling is “alive and well,” there’s more to it than that for a cold call to be effective with today’s savvy buyers. Armed with FACTS and not self-serving opinions, I was able to crystalize the focus of my team and change strategies based on the level of the decision maker.
Bottom line: This is just one example of how a business panel can be useful for professionals. This is bigger than the simple question of whether cold calling is dead. This is about gaining better business insights, improving productivity, and testing and justifying methodology with FACTS. Why businesses should start employing research to examine daily practices –and improve upon them, making for a better work environment all around. Market Research is not just for industry professionals but spans to any individual role within a growing company – helping each team function more intelligently and ultimately, improving and refining their skill set to make them more successful.
What do you think? What business questions do you want answered?
Kevin is a passionate and recognized Inside Sales Expert & Leader with an 18+ year track record of growing early-stage and multi-million dollar businesses. Find him on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter.
Pioneers Of DIY Online Sampling
by Matt Dusig, Co-founder & CEO
I believe that competition is at the core of any successful tech company; pioneers lay the groundwork, new entrants build on top of that groundwork, and all parties become more fiercely committed to solving problems. Take search engines for example. Yahoo! pioneered a hugely popular early search engine for the web. Its limitation was in how quickly its database of human-powered results could keep up with the rapidly expanding web. Google saw a problem and created a better solution.
I was recently asked by Bob Lederer of the Research Business Daily Report about my thoughts on how Google Consumer Surveys (GCS) has impacted the Market Research industry. I’ll reiterate what I wrote in the first product review of GCS: “GCS’ move into the Market Research industry brings good visibility to on-demand SaaS insights.” I truly believe that competition propels innovation and everyone wins.
Mobile Mindshare and The Future of Consumer Insights
by Jacob Tucker, Research Analyst, uSamp
Over the past few decades, bulky desktops have been swapped out for sleek tablets, Walkmans (remember those?) discarded for iPods, and news consolidated into microblogs. In this age of continuous innovation, new technology loses its shelf life quickly. In the Market Research space alone, the methods for gathering insights have gone from a clipboard to a smartphone.
Research professionals, in the advent of big data, have found the need to dig deeper into the psyche of respondents, to see things through their vantage point, and to capture their behavioral experiences (in real-time). While this may sound like a tall order, the availability of the mobile platform puts these previously unattainable insights within reach. Read the rest of this entry »
Email Sampling Is Dead: Long Live The Web (and mobile)!
by Matt Dusig, Co-founder & CEO
Every once in a while, I like to rock the boat. With this blog title, it seems I’ve just predicted the demise of one of the core functions of sample delivery and it’s not only a challenge to the MR industry, but to uSamp as well. This doesn’t mean we’ll stop recruiting panelists into surveys using our email sampling systems — that would mean cutting off the lifeline of the millions of panelists that come through our systems every month. But, having experienced many technological changes in my life, I have become more adept at recognizing the decline of traditional methodologies. And in this case, the next casualty of panelist recruitment and engagement will be email delivery.
Technology eclipsing itself is nothing new. Look at the terrestrial radio industry and the constant decline of listeners and advertising revenue to online and satellite streams. Over-the-air broadcast radio still works and millions still use it, but it’s on the decline and the industry is undoubtedly changing forever.
Market researchers may not being dealing with the loss of radio listeners, but they can certainly learn a lesson from their peers in the music business. The writing is on the wall: Over time, email-based sampling and recruitment will diminish in value.
When I started in sampling in 2000, email response rates were high and email marketing was a valuable way to drive web traffic for lead generation and monetization. But today, just like radio, response rates for email continue to decline.
So what’s next?
Man vs. MR’s Goldmine, Mobile: The Medium is the Message
by Ben Leet, Sales Director, uSamp
I recently attended the Esomar 3D conference in Amsterdam and, unsurprisingly, much of the content focused on emerging technologies and techniques such as social media monitoring and of course, mobile devices. The content was wide-ranging, diverse, and thought provoking. I came away with one very clear message – the MR industry was about to experience imminent upheaval.
My philosophy behind this is very simple – there will come a point in the near future where our mobile devices (note: they are not just phones any more!) know more about our habits than we do, as they morph into our brain’s external hard drive. Since market research is all about delving into people’s brains, it seems only fitting to delve into mobile devices in order to more accurate access this data that we crave as an industry.
My phone already knows a lot about me; it knows which flights I have taken in the last year; it knows which shops I have recently visited; it knows where I ate dinner last night. And most of all, it knows my Facebook profile and my Twitter handle; hundreds of valuable nuggets of information, a goldmine of data waiting to tell a story about me, my friends, family, likes, dislikes, media consumption, the list goes on. And this is the tip of the iceberg when I think about how much more intelligent and familiar it will become in just a few short years.
Top Innovators: AOL, Frito Lay and Graco EXPLOR Award Finalists
by Chuck Miller, Digital Marketing & Measurement (DM2)
Next week is one of my favorite times of the year: the annual presentation of the EXPLOR Award, honoring innovation in marketing research. Delivered by uSamp and DM2, the awards bring together clients and providers to showcase great case studies using methods that push the boundaries of market research. Finalists and winners are those judged to stand-out from their peers in delivering a creative new way of gaining insights into our world. The winning case study is always enlightening, and it is presented and shared with the industry at IIR’s The Market Research Event.
The EXPLOR Awards began in 1999 as a means of showcasing the best applications using the then fledgling capabilities of online research. The EXPLOR acronym represented “Exemplary Performance and Leadership in Online Research.” The idea originated in a meeting I had with Peter Dickson, at that time the director of the University of Wisconsin’s A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research. Back in those days, there were lots of arrows shot at online research, but we knew it was being used meaningfully – so we sought to highlight the best cases and best practices. Over the years, as online research became more accepted (and in many case the norm), we expanded the award to include ALL research innovation. The best cases annually bring together new methods with new technologies to deliver insights in truly groundbreaking ways.
This year we have three amazing finalists with unique approaches to delivering insights. They are:
Will Market Research Still Exist In 20 Years?
As published in GreenBook Blog
by Ben Leet, Sales Director, uSamp
Make no mistake, we are still at the beginning of a digital revolution. Much like the industrial revolution back in the 1700s and early 1800s when we believed steam power was the pinnacle of technological achievement, so today we are in that phase where we believe the Internet and mobile technology are the limits of human capability. Do I know what’s coming next? If I did, I would be a wealthy man, but I would nonetheless bet money that the digital revolution is still in its infancy, with many changes and challenges still ahead of us.
With new technology comes new applications, ideas, concepts. We in MR talk regularly about “mobile research”, “social media monitoring”, “big data”, and many others, as we seek to use these new tools for a commercial advantage, to offer something new, to convince a client that working with our company is good because we are innovative and forward thinking. However at this point it is worth mentioning that online research is no longer seen as innovative, it’s the norm for an ever increasing amount of our industry spend, which is why “online” is no longer an industry buzzword.
Retailers, Meet Man’s New Best Friend, Mobile [INFOGRAPHIC]
Men Are Bigger Mobile Shoppers Than Women
As the iPhone 5 enters the marketplace, uSamp decided to look at the mobile shopping habits of 1,100 men and woman, ages 18 – 75. The survey was conducted using uSamp Mobile, a platform that blends uSamp’s mobile survey technology with their targeted audience to gain consumer and business insights.
It turns out that men and woman practice much of their mobile shopping while they are out and about. According to the results, 12% of woman find themselves shopping on their mobile devices while in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. On the other hand, 25% of men most frequently shop on mobile while at the office.
The survey found that men are more likely than woman to purchase items over their mobile devices. What items are they buying?
- 27% of males purchase consumer electronics on mobile vs. 8% of females
- 23% of males purchase movie and event tickets on mobile vs. 11% of females
- 30% of males purchase digital content on mobile vs. 20% of females
- 13% of males purchase food and drinks on mobile vs. 8% of females
- 8% of males purchase office supplies on mobile vs. 4% of females
