New Web recruitment tool from InsightExpress
InsightExpress, a Stamford, Conn., online market research company, is now offering AdInvite, a way to invite Web users to share their opinions in online surveys. Developed for AdInsights, InsightExpress’ online ad effectiveness measurement solution, AdInvite supplants traditional pop-up and pop-under invitations.
AdInvite does not require a download or plug-in, is not trapped by firewalls or computer-resident software, is supported by virtually all browsers, and operates with any Web publisher permitting rich media units.
AdInsights can operate using traditional invitation methods, AdInvite, or combinations of other approaches. AdInvite does not consume ad inventory, enabling publishers to measure the impact of an advertisement without foregoing revenue opportunities. For more information visit www.insightexpress.com .
New neighborhood classification system
ESRI Business Information Solutions, Redlands, Calif., is now offering Community Tapestry, which classifies U.S. neighborhoods into 65 segments based on socioeconomic and demographic composition. The segments are organized into 12 LifeMode summary groups with similar demographics and consumer patterns and 11 Urbanization summary groups with similar levels of density.
The Tapestry segmentation system reveals distinct new markets and provides a demographic and lifestyle picture of neighborhoods to help with site location analysis, marketing and sales planning, new product development, and more. Tapestry combines traditional statistical segment analysis methodology introduced over 30 years ago by the ACORN segmentation system with the latest ESRI BIS data mining techniques to produce a segmentation of U.S. neighborhoods.
For example, today’s affluent markets include nonfamily households. The Laptops and Lattes segment is an example of nonfamily households and can be found mostly in major metropolitan areas. This segment is made up of singles with a median age of 38 who earn a median annual household income of more than $83,000 and still rent.
Tapestry also reveals contrasting income diversity between the top and bottom of the economic ladder. Top Rung, Tapestry’s wealthiest market, has a median household income of $168,400, more than 3.5 times that of the U.S. median of $46,600. By comparison, City Commons, with a median household income of $14,700, is only one-third that of the U.S. median.
The nine senior segments in Tapestry illustrate the increasing age of the U.S. population; in one of these segments - The Elders - 79 percent of the householders are over 65 years. For more information visit www.esribis.com/tapestry .
Perseus issues mobile data collection app; updates SurveySolutions
Braintree, Mass.-based Perseus Development Corporation has released Perseus MobileSurvey, a new survey collection application to facilitate field-force automation. Perseus MobileSurvey is a PDA-based survey collection application, available for Pocket PC and Palm OS-powered devices. MobileSurvey provides the capabilities of Perseus SurveySolutions Web surveys on a handheld device, supporting all SurveySolutions question types and validations, as well as branching, piped answers and display of conditional choices. Survey authors can now deploy the same questionnaire as both a Web survey and as a PDA survey.
SurveySolutions with MobileSurvey enables survey administrators to monitor research results in real-time, with responses being collected from Web and handheld interviews simultaneously. Handheld survey results can be sent via HTTP to the Perseus Survey Processor running on a Web server.
The Survey Processor can store results directly to an SQL database, to a TSV file, or send the results by e-mail for collection by the Perseus SurveySolutions desktop. Results can be sent over TCP/IP to a Web server using the following technologies: via ActiveSync pass-through Internet connection (Pocket PC only); modem card; wireless network card; or wireless cell service with Internet connection.
To work around the small screen size of PDAs, MobileSurvey offers glossary support and an image library, enabling data collectors to view definitions and images associated with each question on separate screens.
Perseus has also released Survey-Solutions 6, the latest edition of its Web-based survey software. In addition to its original three modules for questionnaire writing, results management and charting, SurveySolutions 6 now offers a new module dedicated to survey deployment, invitations and, in SurveySolutions Enterprise, master-panel management.
The new panel management system in SurveySolutions 6 Enterprise lets users create a survey panel (a subset of the master panel) based on criteria including the time since the panel member was last interviewed; the time the panel member was last invited to complete a survey; or other criteria known about the panel member (gender, age, title, etc.). Survey administrators are then able to actively track respondent participation throughout the survey process. For more information visit www.perseusdevelopment.com .
Socratic expands business focus
San Francisco-based Socratic Technologies has expanded its existing high technology and business-to-business focus to include product development and branding work in the consumer products market. The systems designed to support this work include: new consumer-oriented tools and technologies for creating more engaging online survey environments; new consumer panel and double-opt-in sample sources, including an expanded relationship with Wilton, Conn.-based research firm Greenfield Online; and new management and project specialists devoted to developing new programs specifically for the consumer products market. For more information visit www.sotech.com .
ACNielsen has dollar-store data
ACNielsen U.S. is now offering account-specific sales tracking and analysis for Fred’s, Inc., a dollar-store chain that operates over 500 stores, mostly in the southeastern United States. This is the first time that account-specific sales information from a dollar store chain has been available. ACNielsen’s analysis for Fred’s is based on UPC-level point-of-sale data. Manufacturers who work with Fred’s can see their products’ performance in Fred’s stores and in comparison to sales of competing products in the custom-defined market where Fred’s competes. For more information visit www.acnielsen.com .
Hispanic market report from Synovate Diversity
Miami-based research firm Synovate Diversity is now offering the 11th edition of the U.S. Hispanic Market Report. The new report, with over 340 pages of new primary research information on the Hispanic Consumer market of the U.S., includes expanded segmentation of Hispanic acculturation levels, updated buying power, language use, media and advertising info, demographic data, product/service use, in-depth Hispanic market profiles and for the first time, the top 80 multicultural markets around the country. For more information call Veronica Jijon at 305-649-5400 or visit www.synovate.com .
Harris Interactive debuts auto industry offerings
Harris Interactive, Rochester, N.Y., has introduced its enhanced, Internet-based market research capabilities for vehicle manufacturers and Tier 1-2-3 suppliers. Harris Interactive has developed the Automotive Insights Panel, a body of respondents identified from among its online panel of survey respondents. Harris Interactive’s Automotive & Transportation Research capabilities include: migration of paper and phone-based research to online methodologies; customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty testing; virtual, online consumer clinics; interior and exterior product appearance testing; product feature/price testing; prototype/concept testing; and copy and advertising testing. For more information visit www.harrisinteractive.com .
Text-data analysis tool from SPSS
Chicago-based SPSS Inc. is now offering Predictive Text Analytics, a new solution focused on unlocking the insights trapped in widely collected, but rarely used, unstructured text data. Predictive Text Analytics is a text mining solution designed for analytical customer relationship management applications. Predictive Text Analytics integrates text mining technologies with predictive analytic approaches to enable organizations to unify and analyze both unstructured text data and structured data across all interaction channels, including call centers, branch locations and Web sites.
Today, in efforts to predict likely customer behaviors such as cross-sell potential and propensity to churn, many organizations apply predictive analytic techniques to their structured customer data assets, including demographic and behavioral information. However, this analysis does not involve unstructured customer feedback, such as call center notes, e-mail requests and open-ended survey responses, as this feedback data cannot be accurately summarized and integrated with traditional structured data.
Through incorporating specialized, automated text mining technologies, Predictive Text Analytics analyzes customer feedback to uncover and summarize key concepts such as overall satisfaction level, service frustration, price sensitivity, switching considerations and more. Once identified and extracted, these concepts are then integrated with the existing structured customer data. Then the entire data set can be evaluated using data mining to cluster, classify, segment, profile and predict the probability of this customer’s next action. For more information visit www.spss.com .
Briefly…
Anaheim, Calif.-based Alvairi-Derfler Associates has released its research report exploring ways to gauge and measure advertising impressions in the face of TiVo and other DVRs, DVD players, VOD and other forms of nonlinear on-demand TV that challenge and threaten the existence of the 30-second spot TV advertising model. For more information visit www.ad-assoc.com/adv_metrics.htm .
Redlands, Calif.-based ESRI Business Information Solutions has announced Business Analyst Online, an updated and renamed version of its Web site. It combines geographic information system technology with business, demographic, and consumer household data to deliver Web capabilities previously available only through ESRI’s Business Analyst desktop software. For more information visit www.esribis.com/businessanalystonline .
Information Resources Inc., Chicago, has launched a new analytic service called Mix Drivers/Portfolio. Designed for CPG manufacturers who market multiple competing brands within the same product category, the service is designed to reveal opportunities to increase profits by reallocating marketing spending across entire brand portfolios. For more information visit www.infores.com .
G & S Research, Inc., Carmel, Ind., is now offering RepReview, a Internet-based study using the ePocrates panel of more than 4,500 health care sales representatives from pharmaceutical manufacturers to obtain their opinions on physicians, their employers and the competition. The study ascertains views of the industry’s trends, practices and the overall selling environment. A free synopsis of the study is available at www.gs-research.com .