Software organizes audio from qualitative sessions
DocuMat, LLC, New York. has released InterClipper, software that allows interviewers to record, scan, sortand present significant audio quotations by participants in qualitative research studies. When recording a session, the interviewer presses a button to mark key statements. The button can be unobtrusively located on a cordless remote in face-to-face situations like focus groups. After the session, the interviewer can scan through these audio clips to review the highlights. Both the clips and topic sections marked during the session can be easily sorted on screen to locate the most interesting or relevant clips to include in the final report. Excerpts can be presented as sound clips or translated into text for final reporting. Clips can also be transferred to audiotape to support presentations, or can be embedded in multimedia reports or e-mails. The program is now available on a demo CD featuring the 1999 InterClipper Qualitative CD Survey, including interviews with 24 market researchers indexed using the software.
Conjoint-based research tool for concept screening
Moskowitz Jacobs Inc., a White Plains, N.Y., research firm, has introduced IdeaMap Wizard, a conjoint research-based, multimedia, computerized research tool for idea/concept screening and development. The product can be used to test stand-alone concepts or evaluate systematically designed combinations of ideas. It comes complete with everything a user needs to design a study, collect interview data, process models and run customized reports. It is designed to take product descriptors, selling points, competitive challenges and next-generation ideas and sort them with the help of consumers.
New syndicated study of lifestyles
Harris Black International, Rochester, N.Y., has launched a new syndicated media-marketing research offering, Intermedia Pulse. This syndicated Internet-based market research service helps marketing and advertising decision makers measure and assay consumer lifestyles including media usage, entertainment and work-related activities, among others. Drawing from Harris Interactive's cooperative database of more than 2.5 million on-line consumers, Intermedia Pulse enables marketers to obtain insights linking category-product purchasing behaviors, advertising effectiveness and media usage patterns. The product lets marketers and advertisers isolate and track media usage and effectiveness measures and helps pinpoint when the consumer is available to receive an advertising message (i.e., by medium, time of day and day of the week). Each monthly survey "takes the pulse" of more than 9,000 participants. Harris Interactive's established cooperative panel of online consumers represents all major demographic groups and geographic regions.
The on-line survey makes data available for adults, 18 and over, for the entire U.S. population including individuals who use the Internet at home and/or at work and is based on an individual's recent (yesterday) recall of time-of-day related activities. The methodology permits a comparative analysis of individual consumers' lifestyle patterns - encompassing all major media, Internet usage, entertainment, and work-related activities. In addition, the interactive and cooperative nature of the online surveys allows for tracking trends and changes among individual groups, at the respondent level.
The monthly surveys are currently conducted over three consecutive days and have daily completion increments of 3,000 unique participants. The interviewing periods are rotated to reflect different days of the week each month, to ensure the ability to track day of the week, as well as monthly trends. In addition, HBI periodically conducts parallel survey administration through traditional telephone-based methods to calibrate the on-line sample to reflect the U.S. population. A total of 25,000+ adults age 18+ have already completed the Intermedia Pulse questionnaire during a two-phase pilot study conducted between December 1998 and February 1999.
StatSoft introduces STATISTICA Neural Networks, version 4
StatSoft, Inc., Tu]sa, Ok]a., has released STATISTICA Neural Networks, version 4, featuring the Intelligent Problem Solver (IPS) network wizard and severa] new statistics, charting options, and training algorithms. The main new feature, the new IPS wizard. automates feature selection and network architecture selection in neural network analysis.
STATISTICA Neural Networks features new statistics such as sensitivity analysis. new charts such as ROC curves and response graphs for what-if analyses, and new training algorithms like Quasi-Newton and Learned Vector Quantization.
The IPS wizard operates in two modes, basic or advanced, depending upon the level of control desired. It also allows the user to specify the breadth of the search in terms of the range of networks tried or explicitly in the duration of time. The IPS wizard also saves a number of networks discovered during its search. The user can build a candidate set of network solutions with options for a range of network types and sizes, from which an appropriate selection is made.
The IPS wizard displays results of the search and then assists in the interpretation of those results. For every search. the wizard provides suggestions, a summary of goodness of the solution, and automatically displays a set of appropriate statistics and graphs to help gauge network performance. The IPS wizard offers a plain language search summary that includes recommendations about the interpretation of results and warnings about potentia] pitfalls (e.g., overfitting).
The product offers a selection of network architectures (Multilayer Perceptrons, Radial Basis Function,
Probabalistic, Kohonen, Regression), an arsenal of training algorithms (Back propagation, Quasi-Newton, Levenberg-Marquardt. Kohonen, Learned Vector Quantization, Principal Components, and more), effective statistics and charts to gauge network performance and make predictions (response surfaces, what-if analyses, regression statistics, sensitivity analysis, ROC curves), and complete API (Application Programming Interface) support within external applications (custom C++ or VB programs, MS Excel, etc.).
Survey gathers Czech attitudes toward advertising
Prague-based MARKTEST is now conducting a regular, representative survey of the Czech public's attitudes toward advertising. The survey is focused on the following issues: I) opinions of intensity of advertising run in the particular media (TV, radio, periodicals. billboards, point-of-sale, direct mail); 2) general requirements on the attributes of advertising; 3) influence of advertising on the shopping behavior of the population: 4) attitudes toward using sexual and/or erotic elements, or the motive of a naked body for the purpose of advertising; 5) attitudes toward advertising on tobacco products; 6) attitudes to ads for medicines; 7) liked and disliked TV commercials.
New Net-based customer feedback product
Decisive Technology, Mountain View. Calif., is now offering MarketView. an Internet-based decision support solution for real-time widescale market and customer attitudinal feedback and analysis. MarketView leverages Internet technologies to help companies communicate with large numbers of their customers worldwide. The customer feedback that is generated is continuously collected and published on a password-protected Web site. Decisive's WebView, which graphically displays data for company management to access and analyze on a realtime basis. Company management can drill down into the data to determine respondent demographics and specific feedback.