••• shopper insights
Product gets granular with e-commerce data
Initial focus on Amazon
U.K.-based cross-media measurement firm RealityMine has added RealLife Shopper to its product offerings. RealLife Shopper provides granular e-commerce data, giving clients insight into the product browsing and purchasing behavior of consumers within retailers’ Web sites and apps. The initial release will focus on Amazon’s Web sites and applications. Following this, more retailers will be delivered into the reporting with a focus on large global players. Reporting will deliver data on internal search, product page views, add-to-basket events, purchase confirmation and basket contents, where available.
••• automotive research
J.D. Power debuts AI Cloud
Merges data for forecasting models
Costa Mesa, Calif., research company J.D. Power has launched AI Cloud, which uses cognitive computing and algorithmic modeling capabilities to merge data from the company’s proprietary voice of the customer studies, macroeconomic trends, pricing data and more into new forecasting models. The first commercial rollout of the technology will be the J.D. Power Auto Analytics Platform, a Web-based resource for calculating automobile residual values. The platform will draw on a range of J.D. Power insights, macroeconomic data and vehicle-generated data, including the following: transaction data gathered by the J.D. Power Power Information Network (PIN), which represents more than 40 percent of franchised dealer retail sales transactions in America; the J.D. Power/National Auto Auction Association AuctionNet service, which accounts for more than 80 percent of automotive auction transactions; proprietary J.D. Power studies, such as the Initial Quality Study (IQS), Vehicle Dependability Study (VDS), Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) Study and Auto Avoider Study; and data that can help identify what vehicle owners want from their increasingly automated vehicles by integrating customer insights with connected car data to provide manufacturers with more accurate feedback from owners.
••• brand research
Harris index measures corporate reputation
Link social good with business outcomes
Harris Poll, in partnership with public relations agency Finn Partners, has introduced the Societal Return on Investment (SROI) Index, a newly formalized index that measures a company’s corporate reputation for social good. The index scores and ranks 100 of the most visible companies according to the public’s perception of their impact on society.  The Societal ROI Index brings together elements of leadership, citizenship and real-world engagement to create a holistic assessment, with insights into perception across many demographics by age, gender, region, income and party affiliation. The model, which can be applied to any company, was developed to show the causal relationship between how a company performs in these areas and how they may influence business outcomes.
theharrispoll.com
••• brand research
Simmons offers insights generator
Results fused with national study
Simmons Research, New York, has launched Instant Edge, a proprietary insights generator. Instant Edge is built on the Simmons Insights platform and powered by a do-it-yourself survey to probe emerging trends and current consumer sentiments. The results are fused with Simmons’ National Consumer Study, creating nationally representative target audiences. Marketers can use the insights to create in-depth consumer profiles that drive brand differentiation and strategy realignment; respond to a brand crisis by measuring the direct and indirect impact of an event on the brand itself, its competitors and the category, identifying opportunities to conquest and to defend; generate insights to help sales teams win pitches; influence conversations by tracking effectiveness of messaging, packaging and promotions and their impact on brand consideration and purchases; measure consumer reactions to new show lineups, apps, games, esports and their associated marketing; get the voice of the consumer by profiling viewers of new shows, games and seasons, pre- and post-airing.
••• c-store research
Optimization tool offers holistic c-store view
Aims to help brands, retailers collaborate
State College, Pa., in-store behavior analytics company VideoMining Corporation has introduced its C-Store Space Productivity Optimization Tool (SPOT), which provides insight into the impact of store layout on the performance of the various categories in c-stores, allowing CPG brands to collaborate with retail partners to develop strategies and tactics for assigning space to brands and categories. The goal of this data-driven tool is to provide an understanding of the impact of store layout on the performance of the various categories in c-stores, enabling CPG brands to collaborate with retail partners to develop fact-based strategies and tactics for assigning space to brands and categories. SPOT uses various metrics to develop a holistic view of effective space allocation within the store, including category profitability per foot of space, category exposure and traffic response rate. In addition, the tool includes analysis on year-over-year sales trends and adjacencies to understand how macro factors affect space productivity. The combination of these metrics quantifies the performance of categories within the space and also the inherent value of certain spaces in the store.
••• Briefly
Columbia, Md., marketing agency Merkle has launched its Voice Active Listening product, a voice-search discovery tool that uses machine learning to help brands scale and prioritize content opportunities for voice discovery.
Chicago-based researcher IRI has launched IRI Complete Audiences, which combines its audience targeting solutions (IRI Verified Audiences and IRI ProScores) to help advertisers select an audience composition that best fits their campaign objectives.
Consumer insights automation platform Zappi and consumer research company Survata have launched Ad Pulse, an attitudinal advertising metric that provides brands with brand impact measurement for advertising campaigns. Ad Pulse is built on Zappi’s insights platform and directly powered by Survata and applies a uniform methodology to measure the brand impact of brand metrics like familiarity, awareness, consideration and usage.
Mobile marketing and analytics technology company Cinarra Systems now offers VitalSight, a platform that uses mobile carrier data to analyze the link between mobile Web site views and real-world venue visits. Earlier this month, the company launched RealSight, which analyzes mobile ad views, audiences and associated consumer retail venue visits.
Alpharetta, Ga., sample provider P2Sample has rolled out its feasibility API. With the launch, the company now offers a programmatic panel and sample management platform that is automated from end-to-end.
London-based researcher Kantar Worldpanel has launched a new consumer panel to measure purchasing and usage trends on the smart speaker market. The panel will allow hardware manufacturers and service providers to better adopt the technology and improve user experience. The survey will provide insight on five areas of interest: ownership, usage, services, reasons for using and intention to buy. The panel will provide insight on smart speakers initially in the U.S. and then across Europe in 2019.
Cincinnati-based text analytics solutions firm Ascribe has released CX Inspector, the latest version of its text analytics software within the Ascribe Intelligence Suite. The software, powered by the company’s natural language processing technology, provides topic and sentiment analysis based on customers’ verbatim comments.
London-based emotional measurement agency System1 has launched its new Ad Ratings analytics service for brands and advertisers. Ad Ratings measures the emotions an ad generates in consumers and the intensity of that emotional resonance. This produces a star rating from one to five stars that predicts long-term brand growth potential. The service is launching with two years of data covering over 27,000 TV ads from the U.S. and the U.K. TV ads are typically available on the platform the day after it has aired.
London-based market intelligence company Infiniti Research has launched its new service portfolio on market research services. The service portfolio includes: market sizing and forecasting; market trackers, newsletters and sales battle cards; and industry best practices assessment.
Canada-based company Intouch Insight Ltd. has added Internet of Things capabilities to its suite of customer experience management products and services. The company will use sensors and other devices to help location-based businesses collect contextual data like temperature, sound and traffic and identify how they impact purchase behavior, customer satisfaction and overall customer experience.
Information services company Experian has launched Experian Ascend Analytics on Demand, a big data and analytics platform, across its Europe, Middle East and Africa region. The platform allows customers to build predictive models and make decisions by applying machine learning and AI techniques to Experian’s anonymized credit, client and alternative data to create a whole-of-market view.
Los Angeles-based research platform Fuel Cycle has launched FC Live, a qualitative research solution for conducting in-depth interviews via video calls. The solution is integrated into Fuel Cycle Communities and allows researchers to create and schedule interviews to connect with respondents on mobile and desktop devices. FC Live’s analytics are supported by an integration with Fuel Cycle’s partner Voxpopme. Recorded FC Live videos leverage the Voxpopme platform for video analysis, including transcription, sentiment analysis and video editing.
Auckland, New Zealand, research solutions firm Infotools has integrated with data collection platforms Voxco and FocusVision Decipher. Both platforms now have direct connections with the Infotools Harmoni solution for data processing and visualization.
The Global Research Business Network (GRBN) has published the GRBN 2018 Global Top 25 Report, which provides an analysis on the trends in the research and data analytics industry as well as a list of the Top 25 companies in the industry and their profiles. This year, GRBN has formed a new partnership with Diane Bowers, the report author.
Arlington, Va., company Hanover Research has launched Brand Tracker, a quarterly measurement tool of brand health and benchmarking. The tool is designed to measure brand health by quantitatively benchmarking customer feedback on a company’s brand as well as their competitor’s brand. It includes survey design and audience identification, survey administration, analysis and reporting.
Oslo, Norway, research solutions firm Confirmit has released its State of Customer Experience 2018 report, conducted in partnership with Engage Business Media. The report analyzes factors that define leaders in customer experience across different industries and across B2B and B2C markets.
Research company Smarty Pants has released its 2018 Play & Play-things Report, an annual study of the state of play among U.S. children ages six to 12. The report includes new data and insights into evolving play patterns, contemporary play trends and the toys, games and IPs that are popular with kids.
Canada-based research firm Leger has acquired the Relative Happiness Index and the Relative Happiness Index at Work. The company is unveiling three new indexes: The Leger Happiness Index, which evaluates the general frame-of-mind of populations; the Daily Mood Index, which measures trends in the population’s mood over time; and the Leger Happiness Index at Work.
Consumer insights firm MetrixLab has launched Avaya, a new tool that allows clients to understand consumers’ emotional reactions to brands and brand communications. Avaya covers eight emotional domains considered most relevant to marketing activities, including joy/excitement, surprise/amazement, trust/admiration and love/passion as well as fear/terror, anger/rage, sadness/grief and disgust/loathing. These emotions are converted into stimulus that allows respondents to express how they feel without using words. Avaya then produces one Emotional Intensity Score, which can be benchmarked against MetrixLab’s database and key competitors.
Chicago-based researcher IRI has announced an expanded relationship with consumer data and segmentation company Geoscape to launch IRI and Geoscape Acculturation Audiences. The solution allows marketers to target U.S. Hispanic and Asian households based on their level of acculturation and past purchase behavior.