MarketTools adds mobile phone research capability; debuts Hispanic health care study
San Francisco research firm MarketTools is now offering MarketTools Mobile, which lets marketers use the mobile phone as a data collection tool. The product covers all aspects of gathering feedback - from recruiting mobile survey panelists, to designing and deploying the survey, to seeing the data in real-time through a Web-based portal.
According to the GSM Association, there are nearly 2.5 billion wireless subscribers worldwide, meaning companies now have a viable option for providing surveys to consumer audiences via mobile devices. In a survey conducted with more than 400 consumers, MarketTools found that more than 80 percent of respondents want to give their opinions from mobile devices on topics such as shopping, trial product usage or mobile phones themselves. Additional high interest areas include movie evaluations and television programming. The primary benefit of taking surveys on mobile phones cited by consumers was “being able to take surveys anytime, anywhere” plus “ease and convenience.”
The service uses text messaging and mobile Internet technologies to connect respondents to an interactive survey on their mobile devices. There are two kinds of survey options. MarketTools Mobile Outbound allows companies to reach select panelists from MarketTools’ ZoomPanel Mobile (a nationally representative sample of mobile users who have agreed to take surveys from their mobile devices) by sending a text message directly to the panelists, which links to a survey on their mobile devices. MarketTools Mobile Inbound prompts consumers in stores to take a survey at the point of sale by sending a text message to a pre-defined short code. The text message received by MarketTools Mobile Inbound responds with another text message that links consumers directly to the survey on their mobile devices.
Separately, the firm has debuted its Hispanic Reach Health and Wellness Study, a syndicated research report examining the perceptions, expectations and behaviors of the U.S. Hispanic community in the areas of nutrition, lifestyle and health care.
Targeted towards advertisers, marketers and market researchers, this report is designed to enable companies to better understand U.S. Hispanics’ attitudes toward health care and healthy living in order to more effectively market to those audiences. For more information visit www.markettools.com.
How far does in-store reach?
A consortium of manufacturers and retailers spearheaded by the In-Store Marketing Institute has created a tool for measuring in-store consumer reach at the category level. The model was verified by research conducted at four retailers in spring 2006.
The measurement model predicts consumer reach by category or area of the store, by retail format and by day of the week.
While in-store marketing has long been an element of the consumer marketing mix, its potential value as a brand-building vehicle has never been objectively assessed, largely because there hasn’t been a way to accurately measure the total reach of a campaign conducted at retail. By establishing a common metric that can be understood by both brand marketers and retailers, this model aims to eliminate that obstacle.
Named the Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric (P.R.I.S.M.), the measurement model is the brainchild of the In-Store Metrics Consortium, an ad hoc coalition formed last fall under the institute’s guidance involving retailers Albertsons, Kroger, Walgreens, and Wal-Mart and manufacturers 3M, Walt Disney, Coca-Cola, Kellogg, Miller Brewing and Procter & Gamble.
The consortium’s research team began working last spring on the theory that, by predicting in-store traffic, then determining what marketing communications are in the store - i.e., measuring compliance - a calculation could be made on the “opportunities to see” a specific communication. This calculation would be similar in scope to the gross ratings points used to estimate the potential audience for TV advertising.
The equation is: traffic x compliance = opportunity to see.
By using existing statistical models that factor out duplicate impressions (accounting for multiple “visits” to the area by the same people) a measurement for consumer reach could be calculated for specific locations in the store: traffic x compliance x unduplicated impressions = in-store reach.
The initial hypothesis was that reliable traffic estimates could be achieved by using data already collected through POS systems and other easily obtainable information, such as store format, product category, units sold and number of category baskets. (The exact formula would be derived on an ongoing basis by directly measuring traffic in a specified set of stores.)
This hypothesis was validated through a pilot study that counted traffic in 63 product categories in 10 stores using infrared sensors positioned in aisles, perimeter locations and store entrance and exit zones.
Adoption of the P.R.I.S.M. model by the industry would deliver a common language for retailers, manufacturers and media buyers to assess the value of retail as a marketing channel and compare its effectiveness to other media such as TV, radio and print. It also would give marketers a metric through which to evaluate the store as a vehicle for generating brand awareness and trial, putting the store on a level playing field with other forms of mass media. For more information visit www.instoremarketer.org.
NPD service will track luggage and accessory purchases
The NPD Group, Port Washington, N.Y., is developing tracking services for the U.S. accessories business, to be launched in the first half of 2007. The consumer tracking service will monitor consumer purchasing for a range of accessory categories, including bags and luggage, watches, jewelry, sunglasses and small leathergoods. The retail point-of-sale tracking service will initially report style-level sales of women’s and men’s bags in department stores and national chain stores, and will expand to other categories thereafter. Bags in both services will include fashion handbags, sport bags, business bags and travel bags/luggage. For more information visit www.npd.com.
New metric measures mall shopper audience
New York-based Scarborough Research and Arbitron Inc. have announced a new audience metric designed to provide more precise measurements of the American mall shopper. The new metric, the Scarborough Mall Shopper Audience data, and its incorporation into an advertising reach and frequency model, enables advertisers, ad agencies, media buyers and other marketers to understand the media value of their ads and promotions in malls and shopping centers. Shopping venues also can now be evaluated as part of the communications mix in a traditional multimedia advertising campaign.
Scarborough Research began its development process for this new shopper metric by first conducting personal interviews with decision makers at advertising agencies to establish the need for mall audience measurements. Scarborough then tested and refined a shopping center-centric reach-and-frequency application. The result is that the company expanded its multimedia local market syndicated study to collect information on “past seven-day” shopping for individual malls and shopping centers.
The seven-day mall shopping measurement supplements the “past 30-day” and “past 90-day” metrics already offered in the study. Scarborough’s new mall-centric reach-and-frequency application will let media planners and buyers the ability to assess unique shopping center visitors and the frequency of their mall visits. Mall shoppers can also be analyzed with any of Scarborough’s other measurements on the shopping patterns, lifestyles and demographics of American consumers to help establish the value of a given mall audience.
The new mall shopper insights, combined with Scarborough’s other consumer measurements, are an additional source of information enabling mall developers, retailers and others to create more relevant shopping experiences for their customers. Shopping center developers can use Scarborough to examine the mix of retailers, restaurants, events and amenities offered at a given shopping venue.
This latest study provides a comprehensive measurement of mall shopping behavior and preferences with data on approximately 1,500 different mall properties and in-depth profiles of their shoppers. Scarborough surveys over 210,000 adults annually across 80 local markets, measuring the shopping, media, lifestyle and demographics of American consumers.
The Mall Shopper Audience information is available to Scarborough clients via the company’s syndicated research studies as of Release 2 2006. This release of data began issuing on a local market level on October 5, 2006. For more information visit www.scarborough.com.
WebSurveyor and salesforce.com team up for CRM product
Herndon, Va., research firm WebSurveyor and salesforce.com have announced the availability of CRMSurveyor for salesforce.com’s AppExchange, an on-demand directory and sharing service. CRMSurveyor enables companies to gather real-time customer feedback to improve processes in sales, marketing and service.
Through CRMSurveyor’s integration with Salesforce, a customer is automatically asked a standard set of questions when a deal is won or lost, or a service ticket is closed. Results are fed automatically to Salesforce dashboards and delivered via e-mail in weekly, monthly and quarterly reports. E-mail alerts can be triggered when poor scores are received, enabling management to take immediate action. For more information visit www.crmsurveyor.com.
Alliance tracks media habits of health care consumers
Under a strategic alliance between Scarborough Research, New York, and Evanston, Ill.-based information firm Solucient, Scarborough is embedding Solucient’s HouseholdView proprietary life-stage segmentation system and HealthView Plus, Solucient’s proprietary national research on consumer attitudes and behaviors around health care services, into Scarborough’s databases on consumer shopping habits, media patterns, demographics and lifestyles. This will allow health care marketers to examine local consumer media utilization to create more efficient media plans targeting specific segments, based on health care needs. Marketers can also use segmentation information when planning other marketing programs, such as co-marketing initiatives.
Developed specifically for the health care market, the HouseholdView segmentation system identifies 56 different types of health care households. Combined with HealthView Plus research on 20,000 households annually, and the Scarborough local research of 210,000 consumers specific to each market, the Scarborough-Solucient partnership enables marketers to understand attitudes, behaviors and decision-making patterns of health care consumers. For more information visit www.scarborough.com.
New Europe bureau for Harris
Harris Interactive, Rochester, N.Y., has launched HISB Europe. In addition to telephone, face-to-face and online data collection, HISB Europe will offer Harris Interactive’s SynTrack Online, a consultative approach for transitioning studies online (from telephone, mail or face-to-face methodologies) while preserving trend data. HISB Europe will also make available Integrated Cati-Wapi (ICW), a technology for clients interested in conducting multi-mode, multi-language studies. For more information visit www.hisbonline.com.
ARF launches online info center
The New York-based Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) and partner Roy Morgan International, a Australia-based research firm, have introduced the new, online Roy Morgan Info Center at the ARF, which offers access to research articles and papers on major industry topics.
For each topic, research articles, studies and presentations are offered. Once users find a topic of interest they can select an article or paper to download. Submissions from other companies are welcome. For more information visit http://arf.asteroid.com.au/.
Suite update from Decisions Made Easy
Chicago software firm Decisions Made Easy has released version 6.2 of its Cipher Web, Cipher and Crunch product suite. It is free for all customers with an active maintenance agreement.
Version 6.2 of Cipher Web and Cipher include new features such as the ability to create an executive dashboard to see critical information at-a-glance with custom home-page functionality; immediately get information to keep abreast of changes and key facts with alerts; and save report changes or new reports in a personal report group.
Customers can create and export Cipher results to Excel and create Monday morning and third-party reports to be distributed as Excel spreadsheets. Users can cross-code and work with attributes from a single screen for improved ease of use with the redesigned Element Editor and see attributes for each element displayed in a separate column within the grid. Crunch for Oracle offers the ability to use Oracle as the demand data repository for efficient data management and to leverage the organization’s existing technology investment. For more information visit www.decisions-made-easy.com.
SPSS enhances Dimensions
SPSS Inc., Chicago, has released an upgraded version of its survey research product suite, Dimensions 4.0, that enables professional agencies deploy surveys across a choice of customer channels such as phone, online, paper or any combination of modes. Users can conduct surveys in multiple languages and rely on administrative management capabilities to monitor surveys from a central location or across multiple dispersed sites. Dimensions’ integrated platform allows users to add value to research studies and deliver customer feedback so that issues can be discovered and addressed in a timely manner.
Key enhancements in Dimensions 4.0: dialer integration - mrInterview now supports both the QTC and mrDialer offerings from SPSS; audio monitoring - with the dialer integration, one can not only watch interviews as they are being conducted but can also listen to the interviewer; a desktop reporting product; improved reporting options; new chart types; template table documents; improved data management; and SPSS 15.0 support. For more information visit www.spss.com.
New division will aid N.Y. research recruiting
New York market research audience recruiting firm Matrix Alliance Market Research LLC has launched a new division, nyaudiences.com, which provides information and news about current events and activities occurring in and around the New York area, with the goal of attracting New York area residents, business people and tourists to visit the site and to join the database. This database panel will be managed and maintained by Matrix Alliance and will be utilized as a supplementary part of its audience recruiting and event promotion service packages. For more information visit www.nyaudiences.com.
BASES service looks at new-product adoption process
Covington, Ky.-based ACNielsen BASES is now offering BASES introSCAPE, an analytical framework designed to help marketers build stronger new product propositions with consumers. The foundation of BASES introSCAPE is a proprietary model that describes the process by which consumers adopt new products. The “SCAPE” in introSCAPE is an acronym for salience, communication, attraction, point of purchase and endurance - the five marketing issues at the heart of the introSCAPE framework. The framework covers all aspects of the initiative mix and is designed to lead to actionable advice for marketing managers. For more information visit www.bases.com.
Nielsen Media Research adds away-from-home viewing measure for college students
Beginning January 29, 2007, the viewing of household members living away from home while attending college will be included in all National People Meter (NPM) audience estimates from Nielsen Media Research. The introduction of Extended Home viewing marks the first time that Nielsen Media Research will include in the ratings viewing by members of sample households living outside the home. Higher-education students are considered members of Nielsen’s NPM sample, yet many live away from home for the majority of the time their families are part of the sample. Viewing will be included for students attending traditional colleges and universities as well as trade schools, culinary institutes and other higher-educational facilities.
Viewing by sample students in their dorm rooms or off-campus apartments will be treated as if it were coming from an additional set within their families’ sample homes. Their viewing while away at school will contribute to the ratings and viewing levels in the same way that it does when they are in their living rooms and bedrooms in their families’ homes. For more information visit www.nielsenmedia.com.
Briefly
New York research firm Ipsos Insight has introduced Line Evolution, a line optimization solution that takes into account consumer need states, retail space limitations and the reality of stock outages. For more information visit www.ipsos-na.com.
Random Sample: The Improbable .38 is the first in a series of mystery novels authored by Andrew Greenwood, owner of Greenwood Marketing, a Houston research company. The plot involves a marketing researcher who discovers information that contradicts police reports regarding a murder. For more information visit http://andrewgreenwoodmystery.com.
The Australian Market Research Forum, at www.the-acid-test.com/forum, is a place where Australian research buyers and practitioners can: discuss issues in an open environment; exchange tips; obtain guidance on market research questions; keep abreast of developments in techniques; and browse job opportunities.
Menlo Park, Calif., research firm Knowledge Networks has changed the name of its nationwide online panel to KnowledgePanel.
Focus group video transmission firm FocusVision Worldwide has created a European viewing facilities directory. The directory profiles viewing facilities in five European markets: U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain. There are 289 facilities profiled in the directory; 71 are members of FocusVision’s global facility network. To receive a complimentary copy, e-mail your contact information to directory@focusvision.com.
Survey Sampling International, Fairfield, Conn., has joined with China research firm CITIC Guoan to establish an online research panel. For more information visit www.surveysampling.com.