Update of Microtab now available
Atlanta-based research software firm Microtab Inc., has released Microtab XP 2005, an update of its crosstab software. Enhancements include a new charting add-on module for the Professional Edition which helps users create pie charts, bar charts and column charts. All the charts can be either two- or three-dimensional and pie charts can be displayed in an exploded format. Charts can present either frequencies or percentages. The module allows for one-click batch creation of charts. The charts can be saved to Word and/or copied and pasted to a PowerPoint presentation. This optional module complements the SPSS Add-on Module released in 2003. The Standard and Professional Editions of Microtab XP allow unlimited questionnaire length and unlimited table length on as many as 10 million surveys. The Professional Edition also includes sample balancing, statistical testing and data manipulation features. Both of the Windows-based Standard and Professional Editions come with 24/7 free support, online searchable help and reference and tutorial documentation. For more information visit www.microtab.com.
Create presentations from tab data
New from Ontario-based data processing firm ATP Canada is Rosetta Studio, a tool that automates the creation of customized PowerPoint or Excel presentations from tabulated data. Rosetta Studio accepts tabulated input from Quantum, CfMC Mentor, Wincross and E-Tabs packages. It lets users: save charts/tables as templates; export multiple charts/tables at the same time; create new presentations or customized tables from wave/tracking study data; duplicate any table or chart at any time; share chart or table templates over the network; globally edit stub text; and put a password on tables in the output. For more information visit www.atpcan.com.
SurveyGold 7.0 debuts
Golden Hills Software, Inc., Colorado Springs, Colo., has released SurveyGold version 7.0 Standard Edition, an upgrade to its Windows-based survey software package. Surveys can be conducted online, on paper or over the phone. Surveys authored with SurveyGold Pro can be exported and subsequently imported by any other SurveyGold user, allowing surveys to be authored centrally and distributed remotely. SurveyGold Pro surveys are distributable to any other SurveyGold 7.0 Pro or Standard user in the world. Survey results collected by SurveyGold Pro users can be exported and shared with other Pro users, allowing results from remotely-conducted surveys to be centrally gathered for reporting and analysis purposes.
Other new 7.0 features include a compact user interface with a spellchecker that supports 12 languages, support for ranking questions, and improved Web survey form and confirmation style consistency.
SurveyGold also provides custom Web formatting of colors and fonts, Web survey responses submitted using the secure sockets layer (SSL) Internet security protocol, and enhancements when filtering survey results. Additionally, this version allows users to publish Web results in a browser, provides enhanced filtering of results, and has improved processing of Web survey responses. For more information visit www.surveygold.com.
Services provide POS data on purchases by Hispanic, African-American consumers
VNU Marketing Information is now offering two new services, Target Track and Homescan African-American Consumer Panel. Target Track, a joint offering of ACNielsen U.S. and Spectra, analyzes point-of-sale data from food, drug and mass merchandise stores to quantify sales among Hispanic and African-American consumers, highlighting those categories and brands that skew toward each segment. In addition to performance tracking, the service also analyzes promotional effectiveness within each segment. Target Track offers reporting across the total U.S., as well as within 20 census-based retailer trade areas, 13 African-American markets, and 11 Hispanic markets.
The ACNielsen Homescan African-American Consumer Panel provides integrated shopping and attitudinal insights into African-American consumers so that marketers can understand their product preferences. The panel consists of a nationally-representative sample of African-American households. Panelists record UPC purchases made at any retail outlet using in-home scanners and then upload the information to ACNielsen for analysis.
The Homescan African-American Consumer Panel is a subset of the ACNielsen Homescan consumer panel. The national panel is being expanded from 91,500 households to 125,000 households by the end of 2005. For more information visit www.acnielsen.com.
TNS, Mediaguide team to track advertising
Beginning June 1, 2005, TNS Media Intelligence, New York, will begin tracking advertising occurrences on local radio stations in 30 top markets across the United States through a partnership with Mediaguide, Berwyn, Pa. Initially, TNS Media Intelligence will monitor 15 stations per market, both AM and FM, with additional stations being added on a regular basis. Tracking of ads will be done 24 hours a day, seven days a week and all recorded advertisements will be monitored. Mediaguide uses digital fingerprinting technology to monitor nearly 2,500 terrestrial radio stations in almost 200 U.S. markets. For more information visit www.tns-global.com.
ACNielsen launches Shopper Trends
ACNielsen has launched Shopper Trends, its retailer equity measurement service. Shopper Trends, available across 23 U.S. markets, allows grocery and supercenter retailers to assess the impact of shopper attitudes on their brand equity, on the loyalty of their shoppers and on actual sales.
Shopper Trends uses an online survey methodology that asks shoppers for their opinions about a range of factors that go into brand equity, as determined by Winning Brands, ACNielsen’s brand equity model. This attitudinal research, which allows ACNielsen to create a “store equity index,” is then linked to information about actual consumer shopping behavior from the ACNielsen Homescan consumer panel to determine the impact of the store’s brand equity on actual sales. For more information visit www.acnielsen.com.
New app for mobile data collection
Australia-based software firm Myoporum has introduced a new Web application called Mobile Data Collector which allows users to create Web-based data collection forms that can be completed by users with Internet-enabled mobile devices such as a BlackBerry, Palm or iPaq PDA, or Internet-enabled mobile phone. Once the data collection form is configured via a Web browser, the output is automatically configured to meet the needs of the mobile device connecting to it during data collection. For more information visit www.mobiledatacollector.com.
Report examines influences on consumer decision-making
Knowledge Networks, Menlo Park, Calif., has released Consumers in Transition, a 270-page report - available in book or CD-ROM format - combining articles and over 100 pages of charts focusing on the major themes influencing consumer decision-making.
Consumers in Transition is a joint product of Knowledge Networks and Kaagan Research. The report is based on four studies conducted from 1992 to the present, focusing on topics such as: the growing influence of religion in secular decisions; the increasing fluidity of adult life stages once considered immutable; the acceleration of childhood in the 21st century; the reinvention of gender roles and family values; and the continuing power of the American Dream.
Consumers in Transition includes: 12 analytical articles; complete answers to the 2004 Sextant survey of consumer attitudes; charts showing trends in answers to the Sextant survey; and charts analyzing the Sextant data by societal “tribe.” For more information visit www.knowledgenetworks.com.
Experian product links with Simmons data
Costa Mesa, Calif., information firm Experian has launched Addressable BehaviorGraphics, a system that unites client data, such as existing primary research, branding studies and customer lists, with Simmons syndicated consumer information and Experian household-level data to provide a customer view that bridges mass, direct and addressable media.
Addressable BehaviorGraphics operationalizes behavioral targeting. Marketers can translate their attitudinal and behavior-based customer segmentations and creative strategies into tactical media buys that deliver a single customer definition across all advertising channels. The system is designed to synchronize campaigns across media channels, enabling media-neutral targeting, campaign execution and measurement.
The system delivers audience models scored to integrated data sets such as client brand segmentation schemes, awareness and usage tracking studies, advertiser data, Simmons and Experian information. And it produces a single, media-neutral definition of a target audience based on behavior and the value of the consumer segment rather than the limitations of the media. This definition is then applied to 110 million American households in Experian’s INSOURCE Consumer Database and media subscriber bases. For more information visit www.experian.com.
Track news impact on pharma firms
East Hanover, N.J.-based NOP World Health and Roper Public Affairs have introduced Pharma NewsFlow, a new research program that tracks the impact of recent news stories on the reputation of the pharmaceutical industry, as well as of specific companies and therapeutic categories. Pharma NewsFlow provides a yardstick for measuring the effects of press coverage on the attitudes and behaviors of health care stakeholders such as physicians, consumers and managed care pharmacy and medical directors over time. For more information visit www.nopworld.com.
New scan-based c-store service from IRI
Information Resources, Inc., Chicago, and eRevolution, a provider of POS scanning technology, have announced a strategic relationship to provide a scan-based sales tracking service for the convenience store channel. The two companies will implement eRevolution’s scanning technology at participating convenience retailers to provide sales information across an expanded sample for IRI’s InfoScan Convenience Store Tracking Service. The initial rollout of the service calls for adding a minimum of 2,000 scanning stores to IRI’s existing service. IRI will provide more granular insight into the convenience channel on a weekly basis, covering all available categories. For more information visit www.infores.com.
Firms team to conduct medical focus groups
A partnership between Estco Medical, a Bethesda, Md., marketing firm, and Rocon Analysis, an Irvine, Calif., market research firm, allows Estco clients access to Rocon’s proprietary group of 12,000 cooperating physicians across all specialties for research purposes. The partnership also incorporates Rocon’s market research studies with Estco’s Medigent Imprint software, which replicates real-world focus groups and in-depth interview settings. Imprint features reports and transcripts generated in real-time, group moderators and secure login areas. Rocon designs and develops customized questionnaires to obtain the information needed by the client. Rocon uses Imprint’s online technology to implement the collection and tabulation of the data and then provides outcome analysis. For more information visit www.medicalfocusgroups.com.
Arbitron offers custom research for broadcast sporting events
Arbitron Inc., New York, is offering a new custom research service designed to enhance audience estimates for local radio listening to sporting events. The customized sports studies will deliver pre-, post- and in-game average-quarter-hour and cume ratings. Combined with Arbitron’s local market ratings service, the studies will present a measurement of the broadcast audience to sporting events.
The telephone-based survey will be conducted the day after the radio broadcast of the selected event or series of events. Interviewers will ask about radio listening during a pre-determined daypart which will include the pre-game, game and post-game broadcasts. All survey participants will be age 18 and older. Additional options will be available to clients including: the listening location and listening frequency and consumer impressions of the sports broadcast. For more information visit www.arbitron.com.
New products from ESRI
Redlands, Calif.-based ESRI is now shipping PLTS for ArcGIS 9 Defense Solution. Defense Solution provides tools to reduce cost and improve the efficiency of creating and maintaining topographic databases for publishing professional map products and data analysis. PLTS for ArcGIS leverages the object-relational ArcGIS technology to streamline production in a consistent process.
Defense Solution allows for creation and updating of many products including Foundation Feature Data (FFD), Vector Map Level 1 (VMap 1), 1:250,000 scale Joint Operation Graphic-Air (JOG-A), Vector Map Level 2 (VMap 2), and 1:50,000/1:100,000 Topographic Line Map (TLM) products. Other defense data models and products are also available with Defense Solution and can be customized to meet user requirements. For more information visit www.esri.com/plts.
ESRI has also released MapObjects-Java Edition Version 2.1, a collection of pure Java client and server-side components used to build custom, cross-platform mapping and GIS applications. Software developers can use the components for development or take advantage of the programming interface for fine-grained control.
Resulting applications will perform a variety of spatial-based query and display functions at the presentation, Web, and server tiers, depending on user requirements. Other new features include support for digital terrain elevation data (DTED) raster image data; improved layout and printing capabilities; performance improvements when browsing image directories or loading images; support for nautical miles as a unit for map scale bar and measurement tools; and numerous bug fixes. For more information visit www.esri.com/software/mojava/index.html.
Briefly
Norway-based FIRM is now offering Confirmit CAPI, a computer-aided personal interviewing module that will enable companies to manage survey authoring and reporting activities via a single application. For more information visit www.confirmit.com.
Millennium Research Inc., Apple Valley, Minn., has introduced Loyal for Life, a proprietary market research methodology that allows companies and product lines to analyze and quantify customer loyalty. For more information visit www.millenniumresearchinc.com.
Nashville-based 20/20 Research is now offering Japanese language support for its Qualboard online bulletin board application. Qualboard research studies can now be launched in English, German, Spanish, French and Japanese. For more information visit www.2020research.com.
European Web portal Ciao has launched a new proprietary online panel, Access: Poland, which currently features 25,000 members. For more information visit www.ciao-ag.com.