••• concept research
Innovation space on the Web
Affinnova debuts virtual Concept Studio for collaborative ideation
Waltham, Mass., research company Affinnova has introduced Affinnova Concept Studio, a Web-based application intended to accelerate concept collaboration and development for new products, designs and ad campaigns. Concept Studio is designed to help marketing teams create concepts by capturing and managing ideas in a shared visual workspace and by allowing users to create an “innovation space” for potential marketing concepts, including branding, positioning, imagery, benefits, messaging and packaging.
Concept Studio supports divergent collaboration, encouraging users to submit a variety of alternative ideas. Users can share concepts in real time to cast a wide net for ideas, even inviting outside vendors, such as advertising agencies or consultants, to participate.
www.affinnova.com
••• mobile research
MiVue for multiple mobile systems
Expanded passive platform for capturing consumer behavior
Columbus, Ohio, research company iPinion has launched its miVue platform across three mobile operating systems: iOS, Android and BlackBerry. MiVue is designed to capture and track up to 24 different data points from user devices to provide a deeper understanding of consumer behavior. For instance, miVue reports Web site visits; bookmarks; music played; camera use; text and call volumes; apps used; and app downloads. Additionally, miVue provides time and location stamps to determine when and where these behaviors are performed.
MiVue is intended to allow researchers to target respondents using real-time behavioral data and send relevant surveys at the appropriate time and in appropriate locations.
www.ipinionsurveys.com
••• online qualitative
Make sense of the chatter
New tool aims to minimize language barrier; simplify BBFG data
Civicom Marketing Research Services, Greenwich, Conn., has launched Civicom Chatterbox, a solution designed to conduct online bulletin board focus groups and forums in 48 different languages, in addition to English. Civicom Chatterbox is a multifunctional, multimedia online bulletin board intended for online focus groups, online forums and private online communities and includes highlighting, tagging, word clouds and multiple archiving features.
Civicom Chatterbox features a smart-tagging and word-cloud interface. The Civicom Chatterbox word cloud is designed to provide functional links that lead to a query of all the posts and respondent entries on the online bulletin board associated with a tag. By clicking on each entry, all the marked phrases and sentences that were tagged will become visible.
Civicom also offers translation services for most of the 48 languages into English and vice-versa.
www.civi.com
••• ad research
Verifying the digital impact
ComScore offering examines ad impressions and audiences reached
Reston, Va., research company comScore Inc. has launched Validated Campaign Essentials (vCE), a measurement product designed to validate digital ad delivery and offer a holistic view of campaign delivery and a verified assessment of ad-exposed audiences via a third-party source. VCE aims to provide unduplicated accounting of impressions delivered across various dimensions, such as ads delivered in-view, in the right geography, in a brand-safe environment and absent of fraudulent delivery.
Along with vCE are validated gross rating points, a metric for reflecting measurement of ads that were delivered and that had an opportunity to have an impact on consumers. Validated impressions are also the basis for vCE’s campaign audience reports, which include reach and frequency, comprehensive demographics and behavioral segments only for people with a valid exposure.
www.comscore.com
••• eye tracking
Easy eye tracking on the fly
Tobii endeavors to make biometric research in the field a 'snap'
Stockholm, Sweden, research company Tobii Technology has introduced the Tobii X1 Light Eye Tracker, a compact and highly-portable eye-tracking system for cost-efficient data collection in the field. The Tobii X1 Light Eye Tracker is designed to snap onto many screens and devices to allow for portable or real-world eye-tracking studies, such as creating a portable lab for studying ads and Web sites on a laptop or to research the usability of ticket machines and information kiosks in real environments. The technology is intended for usability and market research studies analyzing visual attention and gaze patterns.
The Tobii X1 Light Eye Tracker is offered as a comprehensive solution consisting of different mounting fixtures to facilitate a variety of test setups, software options and bundles, as well as access to training and support.
www.tobii.com
••• online research
Understanding Web site ‘FootFall’
Cloud-based visitor-lytics solution to help retailers optimize online presence
Solihull, U.K., research company Experian FootFall has launched its software solution for visitor analytics. Dubbed Site Analytics and built by London IT consulting firm Hitachi Consulting UK, the cloud-based offering is intended to help retailers deliver site and store-network performance measurement.
Site Analytics aims to provide Experian FootFall’s clients with a 360-degree view of retail site performance to help pinpoint priorities of action, enabling them to focus on the areas that need improvement and forecast performance in their stores.
www.footfall.com
••• diy research
Tried-and-true question archive
SurveyMonkey adds Question Bank
Palo Alto, Calif., research software company SurveyMonkey has debuted Question Bank, a feature that provides a growing library of thousands of questions to help survey creators find and add commonly-asked questions by category. Every question and response set has been written in a methodologically-sound way to reduce bias and give the most accurate answers. Users will be asked what type of survey they are creating and then be able to review question and response sets via the Question Bank, which appears on the left-hand side of the survey editor.
www.surveymonkey.com
••• competitive analysis
Using consumers to configure market position
New method explores consumer perceptions of the marketplace
Radius Global Market Research, New York, has released Configure, a process that aims to identify marketing opportunities by tapping into consumers’ perceptions of how a market is structured, including how consumers think about the makeup of a given category; the size of each area of opportunity; and how one area is differentiated from the next. Configure is designed to show marketers which, if any, existing products have a stronghold on characteristics highly associated with an opportunity area and highlight potential weaknesses.
www.radius-global.com
••• customer experience
APECS goes granular
Updates to measurement tool to track customer service efforts
The MSR Group, an Omaha, Neb., research company, has released version 3.2 of its customer advocacy measurement tool, the APECS Performance Monitor. It is intended to measure customer satisfaction and advocacy and to enable clients to improve service delivery. The newest version features several updates, including: an Action Plan component where branch managers can identify problem service areas, set goals, outline action steps and have their progress tracked automatically; the Idea Bank best-practice sharing module to communicate successful action plans for improving scores throughout the organization; longevity reporting so upper-level management can identify how long each branch has been below average on key driver indicators; and additional stack ranking charts, allowing branch managers to identify how their branch compares to competitors and the average.
www.themsrgroup.com
••• ad research
Facial recognition gets an app
ReconAge to aid in ad targeting
AppTech Corp, a Boca Raton, Fla., software company, has launched ReconAge, a mobile age-recognition app for Android phones. The application, available for free download in the Android Market, is designed to recognize the approximate age of a person by making use of real-time facial recognition biometric systems online, allowing advertisers to ascertain the age, gender and ethnicity of their audience and evaluate whether they are advertising the right products to the right demographics.
http://apptechcorp.com
••• media research
Classifying online activity
Cross-platform panel to connect tech behavior with demographics
Dublin, Ireland, research company Experian Simmons has developed Simmons Connect, a cross-platform media planning service designed to feature a digital- and mobile-media panel that collects online and mobile activities of opt-in panelists through digital meters installed on their smartphones, tablets and home computers.
Simmons Connect is intended to link reach, time spent and activity measures for traditional, digital and mobile media platforms to over 60,000 consumer elements measured in the core Simmons National Consumer Study and National Hispanic Consumer Study. These measures include 8,000+ brands, 600+ attitudes, detailed media preferences, consumer lifestyles and demographic measures and Experian’s measures of Hispanic consumers.
www.experian.com/simmonsconnect
••• customer experience
Making users CXPros
Out-of-the-box software looks to simplify CEM
Salt Lake City research company Allegiance has released CXPro, a package of software and services designed for customer experience (CX) professionals. The CXPro package aims to simplify CX management by combining survey templates and reports, including analytics and dashboards, with CX-specific consulting and best practices. By providing an out-of-the-box solution, Allegiance CXPro hopes to accelerate insight discovery and sharing in voice-of-the-customer and operational data.
CXPro elements include survey templates; CX key driver analysis; social media capabilities; reporting, dashboards and executive scorecards; and best practices, consulting and training.
www.allegiance.com
••• health care research
Health care network turns panel
Two companies form panel to improve patient care
New York research company WorldOne and Marlborough, Mass., health care company Physicians Interactive have partnered to offer Physicians Interactive’s network of online and mobile health care professional relationships in the U.S. an opportunity to participate in online and mobile market research to guide and improve the quality of patient care via a WorldOne-created panel environment. Physician Interactive’s network reaches 875,000+ physicians, nurses and health professionals in all major specialties, including a verified panel of 200,000+ U.S. physicians.
www.worldone.com
••• Briefly
San Francisco events technology company CrowdOptic has released a mobile app designed to track where fans at sporting events aim their mobile phone cameras, to monitor shifts in their focus of attention. CrowdOptic intends to use the data to roll out focus-based services for ad targeting.
www.crowdoptic.com
Cvent, a McLean, Va., events technology company, has released several advancements to its Web survey solution. The updates are designed to allow users to increase survey response rates by customizing each survey to be mobile-friendly; localize each participant’s experience by creating a single survey that can be taken in English, French, Spanish, German or Italian; and automate the analysis of open-ended comments through text analysis.
www.cvent.com
Dallas research company Toluna has developed iPad and iPhone apps for Toluna QuickSurveys. The apps are available as a free download from the App Store and are designed to allow members to create polls and gather responses from Toluna’s global panel community straight to their iPhone or iPad. Users can also upload pictures directly to their polls and publish surveys and opinions on social networks.
www.toluna.com
Wilton, Conn., research company Marketing Management Analytics has announced its pricing strategy practice to help sales, marketing and finance professionals define, implement and track the in-market performance of pricing strategies. The practice includes a data management and Web-based price-planning platform.
www.mma.com
Portland, Ore., research company Revelation Inc. has released Revelation Express, an offering for users of Revelation’s Immersive Research approach, providing research results in less than one week for under $6,000.
www.revelationglobal.com
Researcher Annie Pettit has published a book, called The Listen Lady, which focuses on social media listening research. The Listen Lady is available on Amazon.com as either a paperback or e-book.
http://lovestats.wordpress.com/book
Kinesis Survey Technologies LLC, Austin, Texas, has published a white paper, titled Future-Proofing Online Panels: A Multimode, Multisource Approach, which focuses on the changes within the market research industry regarding panel management strategy and implementation. The white paper is available as a free download.
www.kinesissurvey.com/resources/whitepapers
Cleveland researcher Hedges & Company has launched its online Market Research Store to provide businesses in the automotive aftermarket with part-specific research reports on consumer buying behavior and brand awareness. The reports cover two areas: BuyerZoom for consumer buying behavior and BrandZoom for brand names.
http://hedgescompany.com
Stockholm, Sweden, research company Cint has re-branded its product names and released a new logo. The company’s Cint Sample Access and Cint Automated Tracker have been renamed Cint Access while its Cint Panel Manager and Cint Direct Revenue have been renamed Cint Engage. Both offerings feed into OpinionHUB, formerly Cint Panel Exchange.
www.cint.com
Princeton Research, Las Vegas, has updated its Web site to include a new layout and social media integration.
www.princetonresearch.com
Research companies Epocrates Inc., San Mateo, Calif., and M3 Inc., Tokyo, have partnered to form a verified physician and health care provider panel covering 70 countries with more than 1.7 million physicians.
www.epocrates.com
Livonia, Mich., research company Market Strategies International has achieved ISO 20252 certification after attaining the global quality standards for organizations conducting market, opinion and social research.
www.marketstrategies.com
London research company Illuminas has achieved ISO 27001 accreditation for its research management systems.
www.illuminas-global.com
20|20 Research, Nashville, Tenn., has developed QualBoard Mobile, an app for online bulletin boards designed to allow participants and researchers to access any QualBoard discussion using a mobile phone. The app also features LifeNotes for uploading pictures and video with comments in a separate ethnographic data stream. LifeNotes entries may be made via text message or via a phone’s automated voice-to-text capability.
www.2020research.com/qbmobile