••• segmentation
Diving deeper
New methodology to help profile consumers and target products
Quester, a Windsor Heights, Iowa, research company, has debuted Quester Segmentation, a segmentation and customer-profiling methodology designed to dive deeper into consumer segments. The methodology uses Quester’s multilingual, software-based interviewing and text analytics platform to capture feedback from thousands of consumers within specific or all consumer segments.
Quester Segmentation aims to enable users to develop products/innovations to satisfy current/future needs of specific consumer segments; increase the depth and understanding of customer segments for defined and targeted marketing; and expand the reach into their consumer base and amplify their stories, ideas, emotions and more.
www.quester.com
••• mobile research
‘App’lause-o-meter
Analytics tool to help review, compare and improve apps
UTest Labs, the research arm of Boston app-testing service provider uTest, has debuted Applause, a mobile app analytics product designed to analyze more than 50 million app reviews across 1 million iOS and Android apps. Applause then synthesizes this data into a 0-to-100 Applause Score for each app and grades it across 10 Applause Attributes (content, elegance, interoperability, performance, pricing, privacy, satisfaction, security, stability and usability). This data aims to enable brands to improve mobile app quality, increase user satisfaction and measure how their app stacks up from version to version and against the competition.
Applause is available free of charge and will be marketed as an independent uTest brand.
www.applause.com
••• social media research
Most ‘pin’fluential
Image recognition engine identifies top performers on Pinterest
San Mateo, Calif., Pinterest analytics solution company Pinfluencer has launched an image recognition engine that aims to help brands see which image on a particular page drives the most traffic from Pinterest. The technology also breaks down data based on URL patterns and SEO tags, helping marketers identify images and products from the Web site that are generating engagement for their brand on Pinterest and driving traffic back to their Web site.
Pinfluencer’s image recognition technology is designed to work in combination with URL and SEO parsing to allow marketers to perform analytics at an image, product and Web site level. Pinfluencer can tell marketers how well a Web site or brand is doing, measured by metrics such as overall followers, pins per day, repins per pin and clicks per pin; which products are most popular; and more.
www.pinfluencer.com
••• eye tracking
The next dimension
Virtual reality packages bring added depth to eye-tracking glasses
Berlin research company SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) has introduced virtual reality packages for its SMI Eye Tracking Glasses. The SMI 3D Eye Tracking package combines SMI Eye Tracking Glasses with a 3-D user experience for looking at product designs and virtual shelf layouts and detects the eye-to-eye distance of the user and the gaze point in the simulation, allowing users to optimize the depth perception for individual physiognomies.
The SMI 6D Head Tracking Package aims to enhance SMI’s mobile eye-tracking technology with real-time streaming of 6-D gaze vectors in world coordinates. This enables applications in CAVE environments, such as real-time gaze interaction with virtual avatars and 3-D games.
For full immersion into the virtual environment, active 3-D shutter glasses based on Volfoni’s ActiveEye technology are integrated with SMI Eye Tracking Glasses as a snap-on module.
www.eyetracking-glasses.com
••• brand research
BERA for a broader view
Brand equity platform links marketing efforts and financial performance
Vancouver, B.C., research company Vision Critical, MircroStrategy Incorporated, a Tysons Corner, Va., software company, and Applied Predictive Technologies, a Washington, D.C., analytics company, have partnered to release the Brand Equity Relationship Assessment (BERA), a platform designed to offer a real-time assessment of over 4,000 brands across 200 categories.
BERA is built on Vision Critical’s Insight Community technologies and incorporates MicroStrategy’s Wisdom to help capture Facebook affinity and popularity measurements across demography and geography, providing a social media reputation analysis.
BERA aims to allow businesses to understand the impact of decisions on a brand both today and in the future by combining voice-of-the-consumer, voice-of-the-market, valuation and investment analytics and market testing into one offering. By linking consumer perception of a brand to drivers such as changes in product, pricing, communications distribution and service, BERA is intended to capture insights that influence financial performance and valuations across a range of brand categories.
www.visioncritical.com/bera
••• eye tracking
Affordable and portable
Tobii debuts low-cost and lightweight eye-tracking hardware
Stockholm, Sweden, research company Tobii Technology has released a line of low-cost, lightweight, full-feature eye-tracking hardware, dubbed the Tobii X2 Eye Trackers. The trackers are available in 30 Hz or 60 Hz frame-rate models, with modular design and different hardware options.
The Tobii X2-30 Eye Tracker can be snapped on to a laptop, PC monitor or tablet via one USB cable for a portable eye-tracking solution. The device is available in Compact and Wide editions. The Tobii X2-30 Eye Tracker is designed for studies primarily aimed at determining precisely where the participants are looking – the gaze point – rather than studying timing, duration of fixations or eye movements. The Tobii X2-30 is best suited for Web site and software usability studies; copy testing, digital campaigns and TV commercials; package design studies; and real-world interface studies that require a small eye tracker, such as studies of an ATM, ticket machine or control panel.
The Tobii X2-60 Eye Tracker has many of the same features as the 30 Hz version but is ideal for studies intended to determine precisely where the participants are looking and for studying and measuring eye fixations and other eye-tracking metrics.
www.tobii.com
••• data analysis
Trio of updates
New versions of WinCross, WinQuery and QueryWeb software
The Analytical Group Inc., a Scottsdale, Ariz., research company, has released version 13 of its WinCross tabulation software. Highlights of WinCross 13 include express table setup for SPSS data; a new VAR+ feature for use with variable data; small sample-size suppression; enhanced banner creation; enhanced charting options; constant percentages capability; new row statistics; the ability to move job and data files using drag-and-drop; rank on a previous table; compatibility with SPSS version 21; and more.
The company has also updated WinQuery and QueryWeb Designer, its data collection and project management solution. Highlights of WinQuery 13 and QueryWeb Designer 13 include a new study dashboard; express data export feature to SPSS, Excel and other delimited file types; the ability to review open-end data feature; a search-and-replace answer text feature; revamped QueryWeb interviewing; and a new text highlight QueryWeb question type.
www.analyticalgroup.com
••• panel software
More control for everyone
Kinesis Panel 4.0 offers upgrades for researchers and panelists alike
Kinesis Survey Technologies LLC, Austin, Texas, has released the latest version of its panel management solution, Kinesis Panel. Kinesis Panel 4.0 offers Visual Query Builder for building visually-aided query trees without the need to understand background logic. It also offers “smart” folders to automatically organize projects for companies launching numerous projects. In addition, one-click chart previews depict query results to determine available sample and the sample’s demographic makeup.
Additional new features include automated e-mail templates that can be customized for specific community audiences, along with self-configurable e-mail and SMS contact settings to give panelists control over how and how often they may be contacted. Facebook login for panelists, automated incentive redemption options and further social media enhancements provide panelists with additional control.
www.kinesissurvey.com/kinesis-panel
••• automotive research
Ignite your insight
InsightExpress and Polk partner to offer auto ad research solution
Stamford, Conn., research company InsightExpress has partnered with Polk, a Southfield, Mich., automotive information company, to use Polk’s data to power the Ignite Auto research solution. IgniteAuto uses InsightExpress’s digital advertising measurement capabilities with Polk’s census of vehicle registration data to provide insight into the ROI of advertising campaigns and how ad exposure drives buying behaviors.
Ignite Auto is designed to work by flagging specific opt-in panel members who have been exposed to an automotive campaign and then matching them against Polk’s census of vehicle registrations. The combined respondent profile reveals an online campaign’s impact, from ad exposure and brand attitudes to actual purchase behavior. Since purchaser data comes from a registration census, all sales information is based on actual behavior. However, surveys can query respondents on a custom selection of KPIs, including in-market status, dealer visit (by make and model), test-drive (by make and model) and type of purchase (new, used or leased).
www.insightexpress.com
••• mobile research
Next for mobile qual
Revelation platform uses mobile communities to gather insight
Portland, Ore., research company Revelation Inc. has launched Revelation|Next, a qualitative consumer research platform designed to use mobile devices and the Web to capture in-the-moment consumer behaviors and insights.
Revelation|Next aims to bring a social community feel to mobile and online qualitative research with social features like feeds, visual sharing, commenting, liking and push notifications. The platform can also be white-labeled, allowing customers to have their own branded iOS and Android apps for which Revelation will provide provisioning and ongoing support.
www.revelationglobal.com
••• ad research
Digital evolution
Ipsos updates Brand Graph Digital and Live|Test for digital ad research
New York research company Ipsos ASI|digital has relaunched its Brand Graph Digital offering and updated its Live|Test solution.
Originally launched for the U.S. ad market in 2010, Brand Graph Digital offers in-market testing capabilities for marketers, advertisers and brand managers. The updated version is designed to be more nimble, more modular and available to more clients in more countries.
Launched in 2012, Live|Test uses the online medium to ensure consumers are exposed to a brand’s content during natural navigation and within a real context. Live|Test has been slightly updated with version 1.2, allowing Live|Test to support pre-roll video replacement on YouTube, replacement on Facebook and social comment support.
www.ipsos-na.com
••• diy research
Pick your price
Online qual platform starts at $0; ranges from DIY to full-service
Accelerant Research, Charlotte, N.C., has released a new pricing model for DIY use of its BlogNog online qualitative research platform.
With the DIY Free service tier, users can conduct in-depth qualitative research studies at no charge. This service tier does have restrictions on the number of research participants and access to some of BlogNog’s advanced tools but is suited for qualitative data collection among a small group of participants. The DIY Free plan, along with all BlogNog service tiers, places no limits on the duration of a user’s research project.
If a larger number of research participants or increased functionality, such as participant filtering and virtual backroom conversations, are needed, the DIY Premium service tier is available for $49 per project.
The DIY Ultimate service tier ($249 per project) allows users to customize branding of their projects and offers access to BlogNog’s expanded suite of participant exercises, including mobile capabilities, white-space projective exercises, image/text tracking heat maps and video analysis tools.
As always, when used for academic purposes, students can access all the functionality of a DIY Ultimate BlogNog project at no charge.
For $999 per year, the DIY Unlimited tier allows users to conduct an unlimited number of research projects over the course of one year.
For those not interested in DIY options, BlogNog developers and researchers are available to manage any or all aspects of a research project.
www.blognog.com
••• marketing-mix
Are you Doing Digital Right?
New offering to help manage digital and traditional ad campaigns
Management Science Associates Inc. (MSA), a Pittsburgh research company, has released Doing Digital Right! (DDR), a suite of digital and social analysis products and services. DDR aims to help marketers optimize their spending efficiency by achieving the right balance between new and traditional media.
DDR is powered by marketing-mix modeling built on the MSA data management and modeling expertise. Combined with a what-if simulation and optimization tool, DDR allows users to optimize marketing activities to achieve their strategic objective.
In addition to the marketing-mix model and simulation tool, MSA has developed additional value-add solutions, including KPI reporting that leverages learning from the models; Twitter-based segmentation to target and market to digitally-diverse consumer segments; and specialized services, such as digital testing and new product performance evaluation.
www.digitalmediamsa.com
••• Briefly
Global Market Insite Inc. (GMI), a Bellevue, Wash., research company, has launched GMI Fast Track, a service designed to allow clients to field qualifying surveys within 24 hours after submitting their final questionnaires. GMI Fast Track was designed specifically for full-service, single-language online survey projects that have no more than 45 questions or take less than 20 minutes to complete.
www.gmi-mr.com
The Marketing Research Institute International, St. Louis, and the University of Georgia, Athens, Ga., are developing an online marketing research course for mobile marketing research. The course will be written by Ray Poynter and Navin Williams and edited by Reg Baker.
The course will provide an introduction and overview of mobile marketing research and cover topics such as the technologies that underpin and enable mobile marketing research, the role of mobile marketing research in quantitative and qualitative research and best practices in designing mobile surveys.
www.mrii.org
Provo, Utah, research software company Qualtrics is offering Forrester Research’s white paper, titled What Needs to Happen in Market Research in 2013, for free to marketing researchers. The report addresses how to be seen as a business driver, where to invest resources to make the biggest impact and how to best leverage technology vendors.
Separately, Qualtrics announced that organizations using the Qualtrics Research Suite sent more than one billion surveys in 2012.
www.qualtrics.com
Researchers Leslie M. Harris, Paul Johnson, Gerald Linda and Jim Neuwirth have collaborated to conduct an omnibus study of Boomers and grandparents. The sample will consist of approximately 1,000 U.S. adults ages 45-to-70 and report on the impact of new technologies, the travel and leisure industries, banking and mutual fund companies, personal health, housing, fashion/retailing and retirement communities.
www.maturemarketing.com
Reston, Va., research company comScore Inc. has expanded its mobile measurement assets to include data on more than 1 million smartphone users, 400,000 tablet owners and 150,000 households with connected home devices, such as game consoles and smart TVs.
www.comscore.com
Fresno, Calif., research company Decipher Inc. has released Participation of Mobile Users in Traditional Online Studies, Q4 2012, a follow-up to the company’s 2012 white paper exploring respondent behavior when completing online studies from a mobile device. The follow-up study showed that the amount of survey takers migrating to mobile devices is slowing, although mobile users still represent a sizeable portion of all survey starts.
www.decipherinc.com/n/news
Catalyst Healthcare Research, Nashville, Tenn., has released an e-book, titled Choosing the Best Solution for Testing Concepts & Creative Campaigns: Online Survey vs. Online Focus Groups – Which Should Your Healthcare Organization Choose? The e-book is available as a free download at www.catalysthealthcareresearch.com/choosing-best-solution-ebook.