Editor’s note: Allen Vartazarian is vice president of product at uSamp, a Los Angeles-based global market research firm.
For the past few years, geofencing has allowed researchers to use location-based information as vital data for all types of studies and campaigns. As smartphone technology has evolved, so too have geofencing techniques and applications. Now researchers can collect richer information and target studies with greater precision than ever before, gaining a deeper understanding of consumer behavior.
In basic terms, geofencing is a virtual fence around a geographic location in the real world. Location-enabled smartphones can detect when someone exits or enters these virtual fences. A geofence is set around a particular latitude and longitude and the radius of the “fenced in” area can be as small as a coffee shop or as wide as a city block. When someone walks through the fence, we have the ability to record the date and time and trigger a notification to that person, linking to exclusive deals from a retail venue, for instance.
For the market research industry, geofencing offers a range of ways to gather information about customers, purchases and real-time surveys. Instead of waiting until a consumer returns home to fill out a long online survey, researchers can alert the user immediately after they leave a store or a movie and send a few short questions to answer.
Retail marketers have also leveraged geofencing to great success. Stores can offer personalized service, for example. Neiman Marcus tested out a geofencing program that notified sales clerks when VIP customers were in the vicinity, and assisted them based on past purchases. Another benefit of geofencing is the ability to deliver specialized coupons. When a consumer approaches a flower shop, hyper-local deals can be delivered immediately, or if a client enters the shop, offers to a nearby jewelry store – to complement a flower purchase – can be sent. Around certain holidays, targeted specials can inform consumers walking by a Halloween costume shop that a 20 percent sale is occurring.
The data geofencing offers is rich and real-time but there is always room to refine. How do you ensure that the right consumers are being notified when they cross a geofence? We’ve implemented two techniques to help us answer this question.
The first is velocity. Velocity allows for setting a minimum and/or maximum speed that someone can be traveling when they cross the geofence in order to qualify for a survey opportunity. For example, if a geofence is set around a grocery store with a maximum velocity of five mph, people who happen to be driving by the location will not be alerted; only those who are walking will be invited to take a survey. On the other hand, if a company targeting motorists wants to measure ad exposure for a billboard alongside a highway, the minimum velocity could be set to 30 mph, thereby ensuring that only those driving by the ad had an opportunity for organic exposure. It almost goes without saying that velocity settings dramatically improve targeting capabilities and data quality.
The second new geofencing advancement is loiter time, which refers to the minimum amount of time that someone must stay within the geofence before they qualify for a survey opportunity. This setting ensures that surveys are only sent to people who are actually at a particular location for an extended period of time, and not just those who may be walking by. For example, loiter time could be set for 90 minutes to survey people who just watched a particular movie at a theater. In this example, panelists who have crossed the geofence would not receive an invitation until they had remained in the geofence for the full 90 minutes. This helps ensure that the right people are taking the survey.
For further improved accuracy, velocity and loiter time requirements can be combined, enabling the ability to set a minimum/maximum speed and required loiter time so that both must be satisfied before the panelist gets invited.
Geofencing has provided researchers intimate access to consumers by providing the ability to capture rich, in-the-moment insights, ensuring the highest possible accuracy in the way insights are collected. With a whole host of creative possibilities to gather data, geofencing may be a market researcher’s best tool for in-context insights.