SymphonyIRI adds neuromeasurement to its in-market testing
Chicago research company SymphonyIRI Group has integrated its in-market testing service BehaviorScan with the neuromeasurement headsets from San Francisco research company EmSense, with the goal of quantifying shoppers’ emotional and cognitive responses to new products and advertising campaigns.
The EmSense neuromeasurement headset will be used in the BehaviorScan test markets (Eau Claire, Wis.; Grand Junction, Colo.; Pittsfield, Mass.; and Cedar Rapids, Iowa) and is intended to provide consumer packaged goods marketers with another layer of consumer and shopper insights.
The headset, shaped like a thin, plastic headband, reads brain waves and monitors the breathing, heart rate, blinking, head movement and skin temperature of consumers to measure their emotional and cognitive responses to ads, new products and in-store conditions. For more information visit www.symphonyIRI.com.
Ipsos OTX MediaCT debuts two new services
The Worldwide Motion Picture Group at Ipsos OTX MediaCT, a Los Angeles research company, has launched its script evaluation division, designed to assess the potential viability of films at the script stage. The division will evaluate a script’s potential for success by implementing a multistage review and analysis, including evaluation, playability, marketability and quantitative validation. For more information visit www.ipsos-na.com/media.
Additionally, Ipsos OTX MediaCT has formed an alliance with Future US, a South San Francisco media company, to form a new research destination, GamePlan Stats, on GamesRadar.com. The site (www.gamesradar.com/gameplanstats) aims to offer marketers and consumers insight into the purchasing behavior of gamers and their game-play habits across the U.S., with additional commentary from Ipsos OTX analysts and GamesRadar.com editors. Each month, video game industry professionals and consumers can visit the GamePlan Stats Web site to obtain free data, including the top 25 upcoming and recently-released titles. GamePlan Stats data will also provide regular updates of select GamePlan Core data. The data will come from Ipsos OTX MediaCT’s GamePlan Insights weekly syndicated consumer tracking study. For more information visit www.gameplaninsights.com.
Joint venture created to help harness social media
New York researcher The Nielsen Company and New York business consulting firm McKinsey & Company have launched NM Incite, a joint venture created to help companies use social media intelligence to improve business performance. NM Incite builds upon the social media and online brand metrics, consumer insights and market intelligence of Nielsen BuzzMetrics. With the joint venture, BuzzMetrics will become wholly part of NM Incite. The initial areas of focus are measuring and improving marketing effectiveness, product launch optimization and customer service experience. For more information visit www.nmincite.com.
New tool available for conducting research via BlackBerry
Cloud Mobile Forms, a U.S. technology company, has made eSurvey, an online and mobile survey tool for researchers, available for BlackBerry smartphones at BlackBerry’s App World. The eSurvey app aims to allow a BlackBerry smartphone to act as a forms manager and a multimedia data collection device for gathering statistical data, issuing incident reports, performing market research or other on-site activities that require a mobile form. Cloud Mobile Forms has released a fully-functional, non-trial free version that will permit up to five questions and allow a company’s mobile workforce to gather information; take pictures; record voice notes; grab the actual time, date and location of an activity; scan a barcode; and analyze the results. For more information visit www.cloudmobileforms.com.
Research Now to offer panel-based online ad tracking service
Research Now, London, has launched Online Ad Tracking, a service designed to work in tandem with the company’s online panels to monitor the success of online ad campaigns; assess brand awareness; and measure ad effectiveness. The tool is intended to identify panel members who were exposed to an online ad campaign, as well as capture information about the campaign, the Web sites where the ad appeared and the time and date that it appeared. Panelists who have been exposed to the online ad will receive targeted invites to follow-up surveys.
Additionally, Online Ad Tracking clients will have access to the profiled sociodemographic information that Research Now provides from its panelists. Clients can also compare the results among panelists who were exposed to the ad along with panelists who were not exposed. For more information visit www.researchnow.co.uk.
AdEffx Smart Control methodology sets out to measure digital ad effectiveness
Reston, Va., research company comScore Inc. has introduced AdEffx Smart Control, a methodological approach for measuring digital advertising effectiveness. The Smart Control methodology, based on marketing mix modeling techniques, aims to improve measurement of emerging segments of the digital advertising landscape, including home page takeovers, integrated placements and specific audience buys.
Smart Control works by looking at the change in consumer response (either attitudinal or behavioral) by varying frequency of advertising exposure using a Bayesian regression model, from which the control response (i.e., frequency = 0) is derived. For more information visit www.comscore.com.
Ad cataloguing could help understand print ad success drivers
Starch Advertising Research, New York, has begun cataloguing the tens of thousands of print advertisements in its database according to the different elements appearing in the ad (i.e., coupons, recipes, Web addresses, etc.) to help marketers better determine which components of an ad’s creative generate ad readership and response. Among the 45+ print ad variables being identified are the use of celebrities; sample/trial offers; scent strips; sweepstakes; telephone numbers; interactive bar codes with which readers can attain more information about the product/service being advertised; recipes; and coupons. In addition, ads with specific words and phrases in their copy, such as “Made in USA,” “Limited Offer,” “New,” “Save” and “Free” are being identified. In 2010, Starch is set to measure consumer ad readership of approximately 144,000 print ads in some 3,150 issues of 186 consumer magazine titles. For more information visit www.starchresearch.com.
3-D tool set to bring another dimension to virtual in-store research
Berkeley, Calif., research company NeuroFocus has launched its N-Matrix 3D System, a virtual-store technology designed to apply knowledge of how the brain perceives and analyzes products, package designs and store settings to create 3-D virtual renderings. Based on neuroscientific research, N-Matrix 3D aims to reproduce entire environments and the individual elements contained within them in detail, incorporating the other visual cues of realistic lighting and perspective. The system also features customizable 3-D environments and touch-sensitive gloves that enable subjects to reach out and pick up products and view them as they would in an actual store or other real-world setting. For more information visit www.neurofocus.com.
Omniture releases tool to unify social media analytics and ad targeting
London business software company Omniture has made available SearchCenter Plus, its social media display advertising solution designed for marketers to measure and manage targeted display advertising buys on Facebook. Features include management templates based on conversion metrics to create automated bid strategies; integration of impression, click and cost data from Facebook with site conversion data; campaign overviews from one interface to manage and report performance results; the ability to organize campaigns, ads or placements within custom groups to report and manage based on business criteria; and the ability to create and manage targeted ad buys in the same application. For more information visit www.omniture.com.
Engager tool hopes to discover link between brand engagement and profit
New York research company Hall & Partners has introduced Engager, a platform intended to link a brand’s level of engagement with its profit margins. The Engager framework looks at the dimensions that drive engagement with brands (sensing, knowledge, understanding, integrity, connection, commitment, conviction, participation and advocacy) and aims to identify the link between brand engagement and brand value by conducting research among the general public and business-to-business audiences. Engager then connects these findings to company profits and stock market expectations. The pilot was conducted across 15 categories in the U.K., U.S., Australia and China, with plans to roll out globally. Future plans also include conducting category-specific Engager studies. For more information visit www.hall-and-partners.com.
Arbitron debuts next generation of electronic audience measurement
Columbia, Md., research company Arbitron Inc. has debuted PPM 36 technology, its new generation of audience measurement, designed to serve as a solution to measuring media by extending the Portable People Meter (PPM) technology onto a wireless platform
By migrating to a wireless platform, Arbitron aims to be better equipped to follow the media habits of on-the-go consumers. The updated device design resembles a simple cell phone and is sleeker and smaller than the current meter. The inclusion of cellular wireless technology in the meter eliminates the need for an in-home docking station and a communications hub. The meter is ready out-of-the-box and can be charged with a USB cord. Arbitron can communicate with panelists through a text screen on the meter. It also retains a motion detector to monitor compliance, similar to previous versions of the PPM meter. For more information visit www.arbitron.com.
Harris Interactive introduces Research Lifestreaming
Rochester, N.Y., research company Harris Interactive has launched Research Lifestreaming, a platform intended to present a 360-degree view of individuals by connecting information they post online, survey responses and behavioral data.
Clients are also able to interact with Research Lifestreaming participants, observe their actions, ask questions and listen to conversations. The tool is also designed to serve as a single source, including attitudinal, behavioral, demographic and psychographic information for each respondent.
Specific capabilities include listening to conversations on membership social media networks (with respondents’ full consent) and linking panelists’ demographic profiles to their social networking posts; observing behavioral patterns of individuals using Harris Interactive’s Clickstream and mobile GPS technology; interacting with participants using two-way interaction via group discussions on the Web and asking them one-on-one, in-depth questions about their experiences; and surveying panelists with traditional surveys to gain marketplace and macro-level data. For more information visit www.harrisinteractive.com.
QualLink aims to bring qual follow-up to quant studies
20|20 Technology, a division of 20|20 Research Inc., Nashville, Tenn., has debuted QualLink, a tool designed to allow researchers to conduct in-depth qualitative research on selected quantitative survey participants by linking the researcher’s online survey software and 20|20’s QualBoard (bulletin board) platform. At the conclusion of a researcher’s quantitative survey, participants are asked to opt in to a QualBoard session based on their survey responses. Once an invitation is accepted, QualLink will load the participants and their survey data into QualBoard. Access to QualBoard is immediate. For more information visit www.2020research.com.
Briefly
Survey Sampling International, Shelton, Conn., has launched an online consumer panel in New Zealand as part of its OpinionWorld project. For more information visit www.surveysampling.com.
ESOMAR, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has released its Global Prices Study 2010, a benchmarking study aimed to indicate the relative pricing of research by project type, country and region. The 2010 edition covers seven ad hoc surveys and was based on quotes received from 604 research agencies across 100 countries. All ESOMAR members and opt-ins to ESOMAR updates will receive an e-mail link directing them to the study. The study is available in print and via ESOMAR’s online reporting tool. For more information visit www.esomar.org/index.php/global-prices-study-2010-online.html.
Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge, Mass., has released Latin American Technographics, its report on consumer technology adoption and attitudes in Brazil and Mexico. For more information visit www.forrester.com/latamtechno.
Kinesis Survey Technologies LLC, and Austin, Texas, research company, has released a mobile application designed to enable market researchers to monitor survey projects by using touchscreen mobile phones and provide Kinesis Survey users with real-time status of all survey projects and quotas. Users are also able to activate/deactivate surveys, adjust quotas and program e-mail alerts. The application is compatible with Apple iPhone and iPad and any Google Android-based devices. For more information visit www.kinesissurvey.com.
Nimbus, a U.S. technology company, has added brainwave measurement to its integrated virtual shopping and eye-tracking tool, designed to capture each step of the purchase decision and its significance for the final decision. For more information visit www.mynimbusonline.com.
Radius Global Market Research, New York, has introduced Radius OptionDeveloper, a tool intended to allow marketers to anticipate and optimize consumer response to new product and service introductions and existing reconfigurations. OptionDeveloper works by creating alternative product configurations to identify the optimal offer against current and potential competitive scenarios. For more information visit www.radius-global.com.
Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research, Boston, has released a digitally-enhanced approach to market segmentation designed to help marketers understand the digital behaviors of buyers in their category or industry. For more information visit www.copernicusmarketing.com.
IMS Research, Austin, Texas, has released a report covering results and forecasts for the eBook and iPad markets. For more information visit www.fpdmarketresearch.com.
EDigitalResearch, Hampshire, U.K., has launched HUB, a Web 2.0 interface for insight and analysis and intended for researchers and non-researchers alike. For more information visit www.edigitalresearch.com.
Golden, Colo., research company QualVu has added Russian language translation capabilities as the 12th language in which it conducts online research. For more information visit www.qualvu.com.
Brussels-based IAB Europe, in partnership with Google, Mountain View, Calif., has launched the Consumer Commerce Barometer (CCB), a free online research tool that uses data from Horsham, Pa., research company TNS to provide agencies and advertisers with consumer insights across 27 countries and 36 product categories. The CCB allows marketers to select a country or multiple countries and choose different verticals to evaluate how likely consumers are to research and purchase online. Data will be updated yearly. For more information visit www.consumerbarometer.eu.
Skuuber, a San Diego research company, has created a consumer search engine to accelerate the process of determining a product’s market potential at the SKU level. Skuuber is designed to allow clients to assess sales potential from a PC in under 15 minutes. Clients can design, control and launch market analysis on a secure Web site. There is no cost to create an online Skuuber account and clients can begin work immediately. For more information visit www.skuuber.com.
Vancouver, B.C., research company Vision Critical, along with its public affairs division Angus Reid Public Opinion, has released the results of its inaugural ReputationPlus benchmarking study on corporate reputation. The study measures the presence or absence of positive attitudes toward corporations and also probes the negative issues surrounding executive compensation, management’s short-term thinking, secrecy, greed and arrogance. For more information visit www.visioncritical.com.
ForeSee Results, an Ann Arbor, Mich., research company, has added a Social Media Value Calculation to its core product offering. The Social Media Value Calculation is designed to use voice of customer methodology to allow companies to explore what influenced a customer’s visit to their store, branch, Web site or call center and link it to behavioral data tracking (i.e., how much that customer did or didn’t spend). For more information visit www.foreseeresults.com.