New segmentation system to explore the mobile consumer
New York research company Experian Simmons has released a mobile consumer segmentation system and three mobile psychographic scales designed to examine the behaviors and attitudes of mobile consumers. The five mobile consumer segments available are Mobiriati (19 percent of mobile phone owners), who represent the first generation to have grown up with mobile phones and for whom mobile phones are a central part of their daily life and they cannot imagine life without them; Social Connectors (22 percent), who use mobile phones to keep up-to-date with friends and social events; Pragmatic Adopters (22 percent), a group in the early stages of realizing that there’s more that they can do with their phone besides phone calls; Mobile Professionals (17 percent), who are busy and use mobile phones - often smartphones - to keep up with work and family life; and Basic Planners (20 percent), for whom technology, including mobile phones, is not of much interest and for whom basic mobile packages serve all their needs.
The three mobile consumer psychographic scales are as follows:
Switching Propensity: This factor measures mobile consumers’ willingness to switch service providers for a variety of reasons, including improved quality, plan selection and technology.
Feature Focus: This factor measures the propensity of mobile consumers to place value on new mobile features and technology versus traditional calling functions.
Traditional Use: Mobile consumers who score above average on this scale would prefer to use a landline phone over their mobile and also lean toward having only a basic calling plan.
The offerings are available to all clients in the latest release of the Simmons National Consumer Study/National Hispanic Consumer Study. For more information visit www.experiansimmons.com.
Mob4Hire updates mobile crowd-sourcing platform
Mob4Hire, a Calgary, Canada, research company, has released version 4.0 of its platform, which aims to use Mob4Hire’s crowd of 40,000+ mobile users in 150 countries to offer mobile functional and usability testing, as well as product and market research. Mob4Hire Version 4.0 includes four crowd-sourced products: MobTest, functional and usability testing for mobile apps; MobSurvey, surveying mobile enthusiasts; MobExperience, customer loyalty research and usability testing before developers release mobile apps; and MobAccelerator, customer loyalty research coupled with in-store user experience, discoverability and marketing research.
Mob4Hire has also introduced basic, premium and managed service pricing tiers. For more information visit www.mob4hire.com.
Infogroup solutions go social
Omaha, Neb., research company Infogroup has expanded its marketing solutions to include social media and interactive products and services for small, medium and enterprise businesses. The addition aims to create an unparalleled ability for direct marketers to find, attract, engage and retain customers through online and offline marketing channels. Infogroup’s suite of social media products includes social media listening and monitoring; social media data append; social media strategic consulting; social media setup on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or YouTube; and other interactive marketing activities solutions, such as Twitter campaign management, online social communities and iPhone and widget application development.
Additionally, Infogroup will offer single- and multi-page customized site development via microsites and landing pages, including a product called SMASH. SMASH is designed to allow people to experience an event or be engaged in a topic remotely. For more information visit www.infogroup.com.
GfK Panel Services expands to measure TV ad reach
GfK Panel Services Germany, a Nuremberg, Germany, research company, has expanded its Web Efficiency Panel to include electronic monitoring of TV advertising campaign reach. To measure TV campaign reach, GfK Panel Services has supplied its panel members with modified mobile phones, which record exposure to TV advertising through sound recognition. Individuals activate the GfK-modified mobile phone when they are watching television, and the phone is designed to be able to recognize from the sound which advertisement is being viewed. The recorded data is then transmitted via the phone’s network. Using statistical transmission information from Thomson Media Control, GfK is able to determine the television program during which the panel member was exposed to a specific advertisement. For more information visit www.gfk.com.
TNS explores consumer tracking with three-S model
Horsham, Pa., research company TNS has proposed a consumer tracking model based on three S’s: See, Seek and Say. The See component is based on brand-generated media, while Seek is focused on the interactions between the brands and target audience. The Say component has shifted power to buyers through consumer-generated media, which can take the form of traditional word of mouth, blogs, Internet postings, etc., and allows buyers to share their unfiltered product experience in real time to influence a community of potential buyers. For more information visit www.tns.com.
Clarabridge Self Service puts text analytics in the hands of researchers
Reston, Va., research software company Clarabridge Inc., has released Clarabridge Self Service for general availability after a beta period. The software offering is designed to allow automatic linguistic reading of text and ad hoc searching and filtration; categorization of the text at detailed sub-document, sentence and clause levels; identification of varying levels of positive and negative sentiments and what they relate to; analysis of root cause, emerging issues and trends; and drilling down to the original text to understand areas of interest. Pricing starts at 15 cents per verbatim and changes based on the number of seats. For more information visit www.clarabridge.com/selfservice.
Cint Direct Sample tool plugs in to simplified interviewing
Stockholm, Sweden, research company Cint has released Cint Direct Sample to provide direct online access to worldwide panels of consumers. Cint Direct Sample is designed to eliminate the need to pay research agencies or go through a manual process to get a sample to interview.
Cint Direct Sample is a plug-in that can be installed on any third-party software, such as Survey Pirate and Relationwise, and can be accessed online at any time from anywhere and offers access to panels of over 2.5 million people in 26 global markets.
The desired demographic market can be selected by age, gender, region, occupation and education. To purchase sample, online researchers using a survey tool can specify the country or target group they want to research, receive a quote instantly and then select “buy” to place the order. The sample is drawn automatically from available panels. After Cint checks the survey specifications and questionnaire for language and logic, it is sent out. Responses are received in a matter of days. There are no minimum fees or project management fees; the user only pays for completed interviews.
The interface language for version 1.0 is English, but Spanish, French, German and Scandinavian language versions are planned. Future versions of Cint Direct Sample will have fixed target groups to select by additional variables including car ownership, mothers of babies and business decision makers. For more information visit www.cint.com/cds.
Kantar Health rolls out Positioning Wheel
Kantar Health, New York, has debuted its refined global positioning framework - an approach intended to help clients build optimal positionings that serve as the foundation for their products’ marketing strategy. At the center of this framework is the Kantar Health Positioning Wheel, which considers the essential components of strong positioning: customer target; competitive context/frame of reference; brand promise; brand character/personality; and aspirational strategy.
Organizational and team strategy alignment workshops and the use of qualitative and quantitative methodologies aim to help uncover the market’s white space and the customers’ functional and emotional needs that direct positioning opportunities. For more information visit www.kantarhealth.com.
Triple-S delivers compliance software tool
The Triple-S Group has launched an online validation suite designed to test that all research exports fully comply with the standard. The validation suite will be available for use on the Triple-S Web site, and users will be able to submit an export document and either receive confirmation that the export conforms to the standard or a list of messages indicating where any document faults lie.
The program has been funded through sponsorship from five research companies: The GfK Group, Ipsos MORI, Kantar, Synovate and TNS. For more information visit www.triple-s.org.
Remark launches version 5.1 of Web Survey platform
Malvern, Pa., research software company Gravic Inc. has released version 5.1 of its Remark Web Survey product. Updates include improved query parameters designed to allow users to send respondents one e-mail with multiple links to a survey, based on each respondent’s information; an advanced hyperlink builder designed to build URLs with answer piping and query parameters; the ability to pipe extra fields from a login page; and several smaller features including a Web browser preview, filling in appended “other” text boxes by default, saving the subject line along with e-mail templates, hiding questions in question tables, automatically giving restricted users rights to the forms they publish, using answer piping for text box default fills and Windows 7 support. For more information visit www.gravic.com/remark/websurvey.
Crowd Science unveils Campaign Profiler
Crowd Science, a Mountain View, Calif., research company, has launched Campaign Profiler, a tool intended to allow publishers, advertisers, agencies and ad networks to perform unlimited numbers of campaign research studies for a flat fee of $5,000 per month. The offering is available in three levels of functionality: touch, a self-service app designed to determine if a campaign has reached its intended audience; recall, a self-service app with the added capability of test-control methodology to assess basic brand metrics of recall, usage and loyalty; and impact, a full-service offering that adds advanced measurement tools, including creative and message recall, brand testing and attribute testing.
The Campaign Profiler also includes integration of test/control survey methodology endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Advertising Research Foundation; SmartSample; SmartInvite; SmartControl; survey coverage in Flash environments; a standardized core questionnaire; custom question collection; real-time reporting via an online dashboard; and detailed reporting by date, day-part and all audience profile parameters (demographics, online behaviors, etc.). For more information visit www.crowdscience.com.
Neuromarketing measurement tool debuts
San Francisco research company EmSense has launched EmBand 24, a neuromarketing measurement headset designed for using electroencephalography in market research. The headset uses 24 EEG sensors, each measuring at 20,000 times per second and collecting 480,000 measurements per second. In addition, the EmBand 24 provides a signal-to-noise ratio in real-world, in-context conditions.
The EmBand 24 aims to deliver increased measurement in the key decision center area of the frontal lobes, as well as added measurements, such as visual attention from sensing additional areas of the brain. For more information visit www.emsense.com.
Briefly
Dallas research company Toluna has expanded its community portal feature on Toluna.com for panelists in 15 additional countries: Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, China, Denmark, Finland, Czech Republic, Japan, Sweden, Singapore, Portugal, Norway, Greece and Brazil. The community portal feature is designed to encourage panelist interaction and respondent engagement. For more information visit www.toluna-group.com.
Quester, an Ankeny, Iowa, research company, has introduced its application programming interface (API) for Socrates, the company’s automated online interviewing software. The API is intended to allow companies to design their own interface to conduct conversations using Socrates technology. For more information visit www.quester.com.
Colorado Springs, Colo., research company IntelliClear has created nine technology research panels. Powered by Luth Research, San Diego, the panels include IT decision makers and consumers, totaling hundreds of thousands of potential respondents in North America, with international expansion planned. For more information visit www.intelliclear.com.
Research Now, London, has launched its B2B and affluent consumer online research panel in Spain. The panel announcement follows the opening of the Research Now office in Madrid, Spain. For more information visit www.researchnow.co.uk.
Tokyo research company AIP Corporation has launched its proprietary, research-only online panels in India and Vietnam. The panels are designed to explore the affluent middle-class in emerging Asian markets. For more information visit www.asia-info.com/global.
Research Panel Korea Inc., a Seoul, South Korea, division of Research Panel Asia Inc., Tokyo, has launched its service site Panel Now (www.panelnow.co.kr) to build a new online research panel in South Korea. Respondents will be rewarded 100-3,000 Panel Now Points, which are convertible into cash. Collaborating with Interpark, an online Korean shopping mall, the points are also exchangeable to I-Points (Interpark’s original point system). For more information visit www.researchpanelasia.com.
Webtrends, a Portland, Ore., research company, has added full segmentation capabilities to its Webtrends Visitor Data Mart product. Webtrends Segments is an add-on intended to profile individual customers and improve conversion rates and marketing campaign effectiveness. For more information visit www.webtrends.com.
MarketResearch.com, Rockville, Md., has added The 2010 Healthcare Business Market Research Handbook - 14th Edition to its collection of reports.
London research company Conquest has launched InfeXious, a tool designed to measure the viral potential of ads by tracing and examining the mechanics of mob-inspired “contagion” and spotting and explaining new ads capable of spreading viral “brand contagion.” Virality is broken down in to its component parts: buzz, belonging, attraction, dynamism and numinosity/awe. For more information visit www.conquestuk.com.
Reston, Va., research company comScore Inc. has launched its comScore Video Metrix measurement platform in the Asia-Pacific marketplace, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. For more information visit www.comscore.com.
New York research company Envirosell has launched Behind the Counter, a service focused on transactional and non-transactional behavior and activity within commercial environments. The goal of the service is to determine retail areas that can be streamlined, including staff time management, staff modeling, multitasking assessment, physical environment issues and customer visual perspective operations. For more information visit www.envirosell.com.
Usability Sciences Corporation, an Irving, Texas, research company, has launched WebIQ Pharma, a survey solution intended to provide pharmaceutical sites with metrics to answer questions about site and content effectiveness. For more information visit www.usabilitysciences.com.