••• survey research
Survox updates platform
Improves international study support, Web themes
San Francisco-based survey technology company Survox has released a new version of its Survox Platform with over 100 enhancements and bug fixes. New features include advancements to cross-study quota controls, improved international study support, more flexible Web themes, improvements throughout the jQuery and JavaScript libraries, improved respondent voice file management and new sample workflow options. There are three major aspects to Survox Platform: Insights Research, Insights Hosted Managed Service and Insights Agents. The Insights Research platform allows users to field phone, Web and IVR studies in a multimode design with sample management. It is supported by private cloud hosting, dialer capabilities and professional services options. Insights Hosted Managed Service provides a managed private cloud implementation. System, software and project-specific services provide users a solution with the goal of being an integrated extension of any team. Insights Agents integrates the scripting and survey capabilities into the Enghouse call-center solution. This enables simple to complex agent scripting workflows with performance- and quality-tracking metrics. This integration also enables users to implement post-interaction surveys.
••• eye-tracking
Eye-tracking in 3-D
Tobii Pro VR Analytics
Sweden-based eye-tracking company Tobii Pro has launched Tobii Pro VR Analytics, a tool that allows eye-tracking studies to be conducted within 3-D virtual reality environments. It integrates into Unity environments and comes with automated features for visualizing and measuring what a user sees, their interactions and navigations within a simulated world. This is designed to help brands, retailers and designers analyze key influencers of behavior and decision-making throughout the consumer journey and allow for more efficient, engaging and safer training, particularly for those in high-risk occupations like industrial, medical and emergency response.
••• research education
Learn MR fast with Principles Express
More courses to be rolled out
Market Research Institute International, in partnership with the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education and Hotel, are now offering Principles Express, a new suite of on-demand courses designed for market researchers who need to get up to speed quickly on a key research subject. Communicating Research Results and Quantitative Data Collection Methods are the first two online course releases and each can be completed in a matter of days. Over a half-dozen Principles Express courses will be rolled out throughout 2018 on the Georgia Center’s learning portal. Quantitative Data Collection Methods teaches students how to choose the most appropriate data collection method given the audience, the topic area of research and the planned methodology; 13 data collection methods are covered in the self-paced, self-study course. Communicating Research Results teaches students how to turn research findings into actionable recommendations. Students will learn how to connect findings, insights, conclusions and recommendations in a logical and seamless way so that their work has maximum impact.
www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/courses/market-research
••• brand research
Kantar, Alibaba partner on platform
MR plus consumer behavior insights
Research company Kantar and e-commerce company Alibaba Group have formed a partnership and are co-creating an integrated “insight to activation” platform. Kantar mapped and validated Alibaba’s marketing KPI Consumer Asset framework to Kantar’s portfolio of marketing KPIs. With the validation of the framework, the companies are integrating Kantar’s research intellectual property and marketing insights solutions with Alibaba’s consumer behavior and brand insights derived from active mobile consumers across China. The first outcome from the partnership is a set of Kantar-branded solutions: Brand Measurement & Diagnosis; Brand Activation Guidance & Planning; and Performance Measurement & Optimization. The availability of the solutions through Kantar China is currently slated for Q3 2018.
www.kantar.com
www.alibabagroup.com
••• CX research
Crimson Hexagon adds AI to process customer input
Draws from social media, chat logs
Boston-based consumer insights firm Crimson Hexagon has released BrightView for Customer Care, a solution that uses artificial intelligence to detect and classify customer inquiries from public online and direct communication channels. An extension of the foundational algorithm of the Crimson Hexagon Platform, BrightView for Customer Care identifies and processes customer communications from any source – social media, e-mails, chat logs, call transcripts – so they can be routed to the proper system, reducing time to issue discovery and resolution. Added capabilities include a personalized insights feed that surfaces insights and anomalies of a conversation that are relevant to the user’s specific areas of interest and that would otherwise be hard to discover and predictive alerts that proactively send notifications early in the trend cycle to alert users of shifts or emerging crises.
••• Briefly
U.K.-based software firm Digital Taxonomy has launched Codeit Professional, a software tool designed to increase the quality and speed of coding unstructured text and other data, including market research survey verbatims, customer reviews, social media comments and text from voice of the customer programs. Building on the original Codeit tool, Codeit Professional uses a blend of artificial intelligence, machine learning and text analytics technologies to help users uncover insights from unstructured material.
London-based E-Tabs has launched a new infographic plugin, E-Tabs Vizualz, which is designed to speed and simplify the creation of data-driven infographics in PowerPoint.
Infotools has released a new publication called The Insider’s Guide: Five Ways to Keep Consumer Insights at the Heart of Your Organization, which includes a compilation of viewpoints from Infotools’ leadership, sharing best practices on topics such as data democratization and proving the ROI of market research. It can be downloaded at goo.gl/CBo69n.
MarketResearch.com has released a new white paper titled The Importance of Market Research for Validation and Decision Making, which draws on in-depth phone interviews with a variety of Fortune 500 companies. It can be downloaded at bit.ly/2kHxunw (registration required).
Chantilly, Va., company BIA Advisory Services has integrated Reston, Va., firm comScore’s local television audience measurement and ratings information into BIA ADVantage, its proprietary platform that delivers local market advertising intelligence. Leveraging comScore’s local television information will provide audience details for every station in 210 local television markets.
InsightsNow, a Chicago-based behavioral research firm, has released a second wave of research on the free-from movement – a consumer-driven demand for eliminating allergens and other ingredients from food and non-food products. The Clean Label Research Community Behavior Report compiles data collected from the company’s proprietary research community of Clean Label Enthusiasts (CLE) and uses a new CLE scoring system. The subscription-based report is released quarterly, with the inaugural report released earlier this year.
Palo Alto, Calif., digital marketing analytics company conDati has introduced the first commercial release of conDati Marketing Analytics, a cloud-based service that blends siloed data from multiple martech systems to deliver a single data asset that is processed, analyzed, modeled and projected to produce visibility into digital campaign performance.
Consumer insights firm Toluna, Wilton, Conn., has completed a corporate rebrand and has launched TolunaInsights, an automated consumer insights platform with solutions that include: Audiences, providing access to members of Toluna’s community of influencers; Surveys, allowing users to create surveys through an engine or the PowerSuite of automated methodologies; Communities, allowing users to recruit, build and manage communities in real-time; and Analytics, a Web-based data visualization and analytics tool. Toluna offers three service levels to complement the platform, which differ by how much the company’s experts are involved and the process and complexity of the surveys and services.
Online qual research platform Aha! has released Dynamic Canvas as part of its suite of market research tools. Dynamic Canvas is a multifaceted projective tool that allows insight strategists and researchers to create customized visual exercises for consumer and B2B research studies. These exercises include perceptual and brand mapping, concept testing, buyer journey decision/path-to-purchase, as well as free-form strategic image and text-related exercises.
MFour Mobile Research, Irvine, Calif., is offering free access to its Path-2-Purchase platform through a limited trial on the company’s newly redesigned Web site (registration required). Consumer insights professionals can access validated first-party data that shows U.S. consumers’ journeys across the company’s database of 12.5 million U.S. locations, including the top 1,000 retailers.
GfK MRI, New York, and marketing company Acxiom have joined forces to develop MRI Predictive Audiences Powered by Acxiom, a solution for omnichannel marketing planning and execution. As part of the partnership, the two companies will build custom and syndicated segments, resulting in audiences available through Acxiom’s Audience Cloud and the LiveRamp Data Store.
Germany-based agricultural research company Kleffmann Group will release an updated version of amis AgriGlobe, its software tool from its Ag market insight division. The update offers software improvements, including a strengthened security system in line with GDPR. Clients can select new country additions for some Asian, Latin American and European countries and the new version also includes more transparency within the fruit and vegetable sector.
Encino, Calif., sampling company InnovateMR has released the Pegasus Self-Service Sampling Platform, a multi-user solution that allows research professionals to manage sampling projects and control multiple survey respondent supply sources directly within the Pegasus Job Management tools. The company has released a sample feasibility tool embedded directly into the Google Chrome browser available in the Chrome Webstore. This version gives Pegasus users survey respondent pricing, feasibility size and an estimated range of days required in-field.
Sydney-based research company BuddeComm has launched its Telecoms Maturity Index, which measures and ranks the maturity of a country’s telecoms industry on a scale of 1 to 100. All countries are placed into one of three categories, Market Leaders, Market Challengers or Developing Nations, according to their market index score. The index is used to fuel regional analysis and provides a country versus region comparison. It is now available in all Asian, African and Middle Eastern reports and will soon be available in European and Latin American reports.
Alpharetta, Ga., sample provider P2Sample has launched its new do-it-yourself tool P2Solo. The solution gives users full access to P2Sample’s technology platform and allows users to enter their project specifications, manage budgets by setting their desired CPIs and find feasibility or run complete projects on their own.
San Francisco-based research automation platform AYTM (Ask Your Target Market) has launched Survey Editor 3.0. The new version includes an upgraded platform with new collaboration features, drag-and-drop functionality for image/video upload and question duplication as well as a new version of AYTM Logic.
Mobile research software firm OnePoint Global, London, has announced plans to enable augmented reality (AR) question types within its survey app. The development will allow researchers to use the AR capabilities of Apple’s iOS 11 and 12 mobile operating systems available later this year.
Emotion measurement AI company Canvs, New York, has launched Canvs Surveys, an emotion measurement AI that analyzes open-ended responses at media companies, brands and across industries.
New York-based research firm the Luxury Institute has launched Emotional Intelligence Xpert (EIX), which allows enterprises and employees to develop expertise in their chosen profession and gain emotional intelligence skills to build client and peer relationships. EIX recently launched the Emotionally Intelligent Brand Index, developed using 10 years of quantitative and qualitative research with affluent consumers, frontline associates, managers and executives at top-tier brands. The data from the index can be used for discovering and discerning what constitutes an optimal customer experience across any channel of engagement.
Horsham, Pa., research solutions firm Marketing Systems Group has released Elevate, a new telephone number-screening process designed to improve the efficiency of landline phone files, whether client-provided lists or randomly generated samples.
Chicago-based researcher IRI has added new audience solutions for IRI Verified Audiences to improve how CPG manufacturers and retailers reach consumers. The six IRI Verified Audiences solutions include: Purchase-Cycle; Share-of-Wallet; Price-Sensitivity; In-Flight Conversion; Lifestyle; and Random-Weight. Five of the six solutions are now available to clients, with Random-Weight Verified Audiences becoming available this summer.
New York research and data science company Renaissance Research & Consulting has developed a new segmentation system, DiffSeg, which can segment the sample of a max-diff study into groups with distinct patterns of preference for a set of items.
Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., company WAC Research now offers intercept and targeted interviewing for large, small and remote markets across the U.S. as well as alternative videostreaming services.
Santa Clara, Calif., social analytics firm NetBase has introduced Standard Audiences, a tool that provides real-time insights for 18 demographic or affinity groups to help brands better understand their target customers.
Omnichannel identity resolution firm LiveRamp has announced a data scoring initiative, with New Orleans-based data technology company Lucid as the first partner in the program. The initiative aims to advance ethical data use and increase the accessibility of audience validation for data buyers in the IdentityLink Data Store. The partnership allows LiveRamp customers to compare data from Lucid’s marketplace, which offers access to survey respondents, providing more information on the quality of data segments in LiveRamp’s IdentityLink Data Store.
Nielsen Catalina Solutions, New York, has released a cross-screen solution for the CPG industry that measures in-store sales driven by TV and video advertising. The service provides a holistic and device-agnostic view of how TV and/or video advertising is performing.