••• shopper insights
MFour product captures in-store feedback
Focuses on unprompted shopping trips
Irvine, Calif., company MFour Mobile Research has introduced ProductCheck, a new offering that captures consumers’ opinions and feelings about products and displays at the moment they are standing in store aisles looking at them, allowing brands and researchers get immediate data on product placement and visibility, whether packaging stands out and attracts and whether the product’s in-the-moment shelf appeal is enough to influence intent to purchase. Clients can also gain intelligence on how shoppers perceive competing products and brands. ProductCheck focuses on natural shoppers, not recruits, using validated, first-party consumers who’ve gone to the store naturally, without prompting. In-store surveys fielded through MFour’s Surveys On The Go mobile research app screen for natural category intenders, who are then prompted to go to that category’s aisle and continue answering the in-store survey.
••• shopper insights
Nielsen, JD.com debut online pricing solution
Aims to enhance promotional efficiency
Nielsen, New York, has signed a strategic cooperation and data sharing agreement with e-commerce company JD.com and the companies have launched Online Pricing Optimizer (OPO), a pricing and promotion solution that helps brands better understand online consumers, such as what product they compare with before making a shopping decision; the proportion of different promotions in the overall discount; and the impact of each discount on consumer shopping decisions. Based on the analysis of pricing and discounts, OPO provides suggestions for long- and short-term pricing promotions. OPO can analyze the factors influencing consumer decision-making at different level of the pricing and promotion strategies. It can restore consumers’ shopping decisions, find the factors that drive sales through pricing and promotion and give professional suggestions to enhance the brands’ promotional efficiency on the JD.com platform.
••• the business of research
Pilot program aims to show MR how blockchain works
Includes consumers as well
Measure Protocol, a blockchain-powered marketplace, has partnered with market research companies and brands to launch a pilot program that will show how blockchain works from the research industry and respondent perspective. As part of the pilot, consumers will be able to download an early version of the Measure app where they can register an account, provide profile and data sharing options, receive offers to participate in surveys, enable passive data sharing and redeem rewards. Over the pilot period, consumers will be incentivized to participate in various data jobs and provide feedback on the marketplace dynamics. Goals include: demystifying how to operate survey outreach with a blockchain protocol and a step-by-step unveiling of what this workflow involves; providing information on how users and respondents behave in a blockchain-powered survey ecosystem; enabling program participants to ascertain the potential of working with blockchain in the future; and offering insights into consumer attitudes and opinions toward the importance of privacy, data sovereignty and transparency.
••• pricing research
Harris Interactive adds pricing capability to new product development suite
Van Westendorp, Gabor Granger
In London, research agency Harris Interactive has added Price Express to its New Product Development Express suite. Price Express allows companies to establish ideal price points and price elasticity and apply consumer insights to determine costing strategies for products and services. It covers two established pricing methodologies that can be easily accessed via a standalone pricing survey, combined with concept/proposition testing or included alongside fully bespoke content. Researchers are given a view of the outputs on a dashboard. The pricing methodologies include Van Westendorp (Price Sensitivity Meter) and Gabor Granger. Van Westendorp enables companies to determine an acceptable range of prices for a product or service to generate an optimal price point, while Gabor Granger determines the price elasticity of products and services. The expansion also includes Price Scout, a segmentation of consumers based on product and price motivations within a category. Price Scout helps to establish marketing, communication and pricing strategies in line with consumer psychology.
••• Briefly
San Francisco-based workforce feedback and analytics platform Survale has launched SurvaleRewards, a new feature that allows clients to thank candidates, increase response rates, boost employer brand and generate revenue from feedback efforts. SurvaleRewards pulls promotional codes from the employer’s e-commerce platform and delivers them to job seekers after they finish providing feedback on job applications, interviews, offer letters, onboarding, employee experience and more.
Toronto-based consumer intelligence firm Maru/Matchbox has launched its Implicit Association Test solution, which captures consumers’ immediate gut instinct or subconscious responses to brands, campaigns, new product concepts, packaging designs and other related outputs.
The University of Tübingen in Germany has announced a master’s program in machine learning.
uni-tuebingen.de/en/university.html
Nuremberg, Germany, researcher GfK and consumer electronics commerce company MediaMarktSaturn have signed an agreement where GfK point-of-sales information at account level for MediaMarkt and Saturn will now be available to technical goods manufacturers. The service will allow manufacturers and suppliers to generate joint development and category planning programs and will provide more clarity about growth opportunities.
Burbank, Calif., cultural insights agency ThinkNow, in partnership with Abasto, a platform for Hispanic entrepreneurs in the food industry, have released a new Latino Brand Authenticity Report 2019 on U.S. Hispanics’ buying habits of Latin American food and beverage brands.
Cinema advertising association SAWA, working in conjunction with London-based research firm MESH Experience, have released results from their global study comparing cinema with all other touchpoints, paid, owned and earned. The study captured and analyzed over 4,500 brand experiences from more than 1,200 people across three countries using MESH’s proprietary Real-time Experience Tracking approach. The categories covered in the study include automotive, finance, services, FMCG and electronics.
Research company xsperient|Segmedica has launched enhanced consumer segmentation scales PersonaSmart and PersonaSmart Health. Based on personality analysis, the scales are applied to consumer or patient research including market segmentation, positioning, message development and testing, customer experience or any other marketing research project. PersonaSmart Health is specifically aligned to health care issues including market segmentation, health care engagement and treatment compliance.
San Francisco-based insight platform UserTesting has launched Product Insight, an application designed to help product teams build better products by bringing customer feedback into every phase of the development process. The application allows product managers and other non-researchers to make decisions based on customer insight and receive feedback without delaying the timeline of a project.
Auckland, New Zealand, research solutions firm Infotools has released a new e-book, A Buyer’s Guide to Market Research Analysis Software. The free publication outlines considerations and questions to ask when deciding on technology investments.
Los Angeles-based online research company SoapBoxSample has launched the CANNApinion Poll, a research solution that provides a platform for the cannabis industry to ask target audiences relevant questions, allowing them to discover emerging trends and areas of opportunity. A new wave of the CANNApinion Poll will run every two weeks and consist of eight to 10 questions. Clients can submit multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions and display product images or videos.
The Path to Purchase Institute (P2PI), a member-based community for consumer goods professionals and a division of business intelligence platform EnsembleIQ, launched Rise, a new industry magazine, in May. Rise, an acronym for “Retail Intelligence for the Strategic Enterprise,” will combine P2PI’s publication Shopper Marketing and Consumer Goods Technology. It will focus on best practices in consumer engagement, retailer relations, insights and analytics, enterprise excellence, emerging technologies and corporate strategy.
Voxco Survey Software has launched its new cloud-based dialer, with a hosting option now available for clients who don’t need to host their dialer on-premise.
New York-based research and analytics firm M Science has launched its consumer electronics sector coverage. The offering provides product-level pricing, unit counts and dollar volume visibility across multiple end markets, including video game hardware, streaming devices, smart speakers, wearables and action cameras. Insights cover both retail and online channels, including Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Target and direct sales across multiple additional merchants.
Consumer intelligence firm Maru/Matchbox has launched its digital media measurement solution. Its digital campaign evaluation approach provides a better understanding of how content, channels and brands interact to deliver effective communication.
Research company Ipsos has launched Simstore, an online automated platform that provides a suite of virtual shopper and packaging solutions. The platform offers realistic scenario testing, including 2-D and 3-D shelf views, 360-degree store views and e-commerce views.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released its 2018 Risks that Matter Survey, implemented by Germany-based digital data collection company respondi. The survey, which polled a representative sample of 22,000 adults in 21 OECD countries, provides insight on people’s social and economic concerns, how well they think government responds to their needs and expectations and what policies they would like to see in future.
Port Washington, N.Y., researcher The NPD Group has launched its Price Permission tool to help retailers understand where they have permission to price differently from the rest of the market and gain dollar share. The tool analyzes item pricing and buying behavior online and in-store based on NPD’s weekly store-level-enabled point-of-sale data.
San Mateo, Calif., company SurveyMonkey has expanded the survey text analysis capabilities of its product platform with new AI-based features that use machine learning and natural language processing technology. The newest feature on the platform includes Sentiment Analysis, which provides insights by automatically classifying text responses and displaying an aggregate view of respondent sentiment. Word Cloud, an existing feature, has been upgraded to help customers draw insights behind text responses by visualizing the most common words and phrases without manual coding or tagging data.
MFour Mobile Research, Irvine, Calif., has launched ExperienceCheck, a market research product built to help retail and restaurant brands identify and eliminate shoppers’ in-store pain points. The product uses GPS-enabled location-triggered surveys to gain feedback from consumers just after they leave a store or restaurant and capture their in-store shopping experience, providing brand executives and marketers with a read on what needs to be improved or optimized.
Toronto-based research technology platform Methodify will utilize AI-powered chat bots to help understand customer opinions and motivations through a partnership with research company Elsient and its Conversational Research Insight System, which uses AI and machine learning to conduct one-to-one text-based interviews at scale and report results.
Madison, Wis., qualitative research firm Digsite has launched Live Video Sprints, a tool that automatically recruits and schedules real-time interactive video interviews within 24 to 48 hours. Digsite’s live interview capabilities include an integration with Voxpopme, enabling automated video transcriptions, text analysis and clip reel creation.
San Francisco-based tech firm Insights Curry has launched Xtab Builder, a cloud-based reporting platform that helps researchers independently manage reporting work for their projects. The platform helps with data processing as well as generating PowerPoint and Word reports.
The Market Research Institute International, in cooperation with the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education, has introduced a new online course, “Market Research Design and Data Identification.” The course will be taught by Susan Frede, owner of Frede Research LLC, research director at Aimpoint Research and an adjunct professor at Northern Kentucky University.
San Francisco-based survey research and data analytics company College Pulse has developed a real-time data analytics platform to track and predict U.S. college students’ opinions, interests and buying behavior.
Survey research company HarrisX has launched its 5G Intelligence Platform, which will trace the impact and adoption of 5G among wireless and wireline consumers, households and business decision makers.
Roswell, Ga., research firm Moore & Symons has introduced pop-up focus groups, a service that allows the company to set up and conduct focus groups anywhere using a table and Wi-Fi.
Reston, Va., firm Comscore has expanded its box office measurement service into West and Southern Africa. The expansion will provide data for nine African countries, including Nigeria and South Africa. The service will capture more than 95 percent of all revenue and admissions in each of the nine new countries.
Burbank, Calif., cultural insights agency ThinkNow has released The Future of Vehicle Ownership: 2019 Purchase Trends Report. The national online survey of adult consumers covered topics including vehicle purchase intent, purchase dynamics and awareness, usage and future usage of technology-driven products in the auto/transportation category.
Alpharetta, Ga., sample solutions firm P2Sample has published a new e-book, The New Reality of Online Sample: What You Need to Know, available for free on the firm’s Web site.