Site gathers names of fraudulent online panelists
PureSample.com is an industry-wide initiative funded by Seattle-based Global Market Insite Inc. (GMI) to protect the credibility of online market research as a valid and reliable method of data collection. PureSample.com is a public data repository of e-mail addresses associated with panelists exhibiting low-quality or fraudulent response data. It includes GMI’s own database of fraudulent panelists’ e-mail addresses, which have been detected via the company’s countermeasures designed to combat online panel fraud.
Registered panel managers across the industry can now enter one or more e-mail addresses into the site’s search engine and view each e-mail address’ fraud score, as well as export a report. PureSample.com works like a credit bureau report for online panels, whereby any fraud score higher than 0 indicates that the panelist has already been reported. Panel managers can also file fraud reports for respondents with questionable credibility and search the database by e-mail addresses to determine if other panel managers have filed fraud reports against a list of their own respondents’ e-mail addresses.
Some current features include: secure access via user login for filing panelists (score-checking does not require login); filing of single or batched suspicious panelists; querying of single or batched suspicious panelists; weighting of each suspicious panelist per infraction; summary and detailed report responses.
Access is complimentary to any panel professional who wishes to add their list of fraudulent panelists to the PureSample database or assess their list of panelists against the PureSample database. For more information visit www.puresample.com.
TiVo, IRI partner to understand impact of DVRs
Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo Inc. and Information Resources Inc. (IRI), Chicago, have launched the IRI TiVo Consumer Insights Suite, comprising two new services, to help advertisers and brand marketers understand the impact digital video recorder (DVR) technology has on consumer viewing patterns and subsequent product sales, as well as to quantify the effectiveness of specific advertising campaigns and brand recognition programs in TiVo DVR households.
Additionally, the two firms are expanding their existing relationship. Utilizing second-by-second analysis and tracking it to actual consumer purchasing decisions, the expanded relationship provides viewer and consumer insights from a new national DVR research panel combined with new media and message testing capabilities to understand the evolving impact of DVRs.
The IRI TiVo Consumer Pulse solution gives advertisers insights on the effect of DVR time-shifting behavior on sales through an opt-in panel of viewing participants throughout the U.S. The new solution identifies sales impact for individual products and brands, delivers insights on consumers being impacted, and provides information on the viewing behaviors that drive the impact. Using a national opt-in panel of TiVo homes, generic DVR homes and non-DVR homes, IRI measures brand purchases to deliver understanding of brand performance in DVR households and the impact of DVRs on product launches, brand extensions and established brands. TiVo then measures second-by-second commercial viewership in the homes with TiVo service, making it possible for brand purchase results to be traced and compared to the actual viewership of commercials.
Through the IRI BehaviorScan DVR solution, clients will be able to test specific advertising creative while simultaneously tracking the purchasing behavior of TiVo households and compare that with generic DVR and non-DVR households within the same market. Advertisers can benefit from the split-test environment by determining how to execute different advertising plans based on what is most actionable and relevant to their target audience. Advertisers and media buyers will also be able to experiment with media, mix and creative strategies. For more information visit http://us.infores.com.
Industry org studies GLBT travel preferences
The Travel Industry Association has teamed with Rochester, N.Y., research firm Harris Interactive and marketing and communications agency Witeck-Combs Communications Inc. to conduct a survey to examine the preferences of GLBT travelers - and to contrast their preferences with heterosexual travelers. The study will examine GLBT preferences, attitudes, spending patterns and behaviors regarding destination and recreational choices for leisure travel (domestic and international), contrasting those findings with opinions of heterosexual adults.
The study will help to identify the print, online and broadcast media sources that are influential in GLBT individuals’ research and planning for leisure travel and will evaluate their awareness and attraction to gay-friendly destinations, lodging, cruise lines, airlines, car rental companies and travel providers. The national online survey will be conducted among approximately 2,000 self-identified U.S. GLBT adult travelers (ages 21 and older) who have taken at least one leisure trip within the past 12 months. In addition, another 500 U.S. general-population adult travelers will be surveyed. In addition to the lead partners, this research also is sponsored in part by the Albuquerque Convention and Visitors Bureau, Canadian Tourism Commission, Florida Keys and Key West (Monroe County Tourist Development Council), Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, Hilton Hotels Corporation, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, and VISIT FLORIDA. For more information visit www.tia.org.
RelevantView adds card sort to online capabilities
Research company RelevantView, Westport, Conn., has introduced RelevantView Card Sort to allow researchers to assess online how users group concepts, attributes and information together.
RelevantView’s Card Sort technology enables respondents to drag and drop text, symbols, diagrams and images, grouping items into categories. Elements to be sorted, such as concepts, brands, text, images or attributes, are grouped in one area. A second area contains the categories into which items can be dragged and dropped. Categories can continually be rearranged throughout the process. Users can then be probed further using standard questions for additional insight.
RelevantView Card Sort can be used to improve concept, text and graphic ranking; display lengthy attribute lists in a user-friendly format; and perform multiple sorts in a short period of time. RelevantView Card Sort also includes magnifying glass and shuffle-through features. For more information visit www.relevantview.com.
New research unit focuses on Arab consumers
Maktoob Research is a dedicated commercial research unit from Dubai-based Internet portal Maktoob.com that will use an online consumer database to help marketers understand Arab audiences. Maktoob Research has a database of over 600,000 Arab consumers between the ages of 20-45, including thirty-something Saudi women, Emirati business professionals and young North African trendsetters. Maktoob.com’s network in over 30 countries will enable Maktoob Research to execute projects in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt as well as in markets that are more difficult to reach with the traditional research methods, such as Sudan, Algeria and Iraq. For more information visit www.maktoob-research.com.
Ciao panel segments respondents on media preferences
Munich-based research firm Ciao has launched a global media panel which will allow clients to target survey respondents based on their preferences for various media including television, radio, newspapers and magazines. The media panel has been built across Ciao’s global proprietary online access panels via in-depth profiling of media consumption. Profiles include frequency of media consumption by type, as well as consumption of national newspaper and magazine titles, and television and radio stations. Currently, the media consumption panel covers 21 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K. for more information visit www.ciao-group.com.
Two new forecasting products from ARSgroup
Research firms ARSgroup, Evansville, Ind., and BASES, Covington, Ky., have teamed to incorporate the trial-building potential of ad copy into new product forecasts. Results of the ARS-BASES research are designed to allow marketers to measure advertising’s effect on new product sales prior to launch and adjust their plans accordingly. ARS-BASES’ two-year joint research and development effort involved parallel testing advertising videos for a broad range of new products. Standards were applied to the design, testing and analysis to insure that the data would be useful for forecasting. The results indicated that ARS Persuasion Scores, which measure advertising’s trial-building potential, can be used to adjust volume forecasts.
Separately, ARSgroup announced the launch of its ARS Impact product suite, a series of online solutions designed to help global advertisers measure a brand message’s potential to drive sales and to give them clear answers as to what can make a creative message stronger.
ARS Impact products evaluate advertising messages across a variety of consumer touchpoints to help companies to go to market with confidence.
The ARS Impact suite was designed to dimensionalize consumer thoughts, feelings and intended actions and provide an understanding of the sales effectiveness of brand messages in relation to past and current performance and with respect to the competition. The suite includes the flagship product ARS Impact TV as well as complementary products ARS Impact Print, ARS Impact Radio, ARS Impact Video, ARS Impact Outdoor and ARS Impact Net. For more information visit www.arsimpact.com.
Arbitron defines radio stations’ suitability for beer ads; tests PPM system for tracking audiences of unencoded stations
Arbitron Inc., New York, now offers its Arbitron 21+ AQH Audience Composition Report, a Web-based audience information service providing advertisers, agencies and radio stations with ratings information that clearly defines whether the audience to a particular radio station meets the beer industry’s guidelines for advertising.
The Beer Institute has established guidelines to limit beer advertising on radio to stations and dayparts on which 70 percent or more of the audience is 21 years of age and older. The Web-based system profiles the age 21+ average quarter-hour audience composition of individual stations for standard dayparts, as well as hour-by-hour.
Data for the 21+ AQH Audience Composition Report will release at the same time as Arbitron respondent-level data. This will help beer marketers ensure compliance with the 70 percent standard and enable them to make appropriate schedule adjustments.
Any subscriber to the Radio Market Report in any Arbitron Radio Metro will have free access to the service.
Separately, the firm is field testing the addition of an audio-matching capability to the Portable People Meter (PPM) electronic ratings system which would allow the PPM to track audiences to radio stations that choose not to encode their signals. The dual-function meter is capable of identifying a radio station using two methods of detection using existing Portable People Meter hardware. First, a dual-function PPM can detect inaudible codes in the audio of stations that are equipped with the Arbitron PPM encoder. In addition, a dual-function PPM can also collect audio signatures for any radio station, which are later matched to signatures collected by an in-market monitoring system. Arbitron’s current test is designed to calibrate radio listening estimates produced by audio matching to the estimates produced by the PPM encoding system for the same set of stations. Arbitron also successfully downloaded updated versions of audio-matching software into the current-generation PPMs that are in the hands of the 50 former PPM panelists who are participating in the dual-function field test. Delivered through household phone lines, the software upgrade demonstrated that Arbitron could remotely convert encoding-only portable meters to dual-function audience meters. For more information visit www.arbitron.com.
Kinesis Survey gets an update
Kinesis Survey Technologies, Austin, Texas, has released Version 4.0 of its survey creation software. Kinesis Survey is designed to enable a market researcher to construct, launch and analyze a Web or wireless survey. This latest edition of includes new features such as: point-and-click randomization and anchoring of rotational concepts, rotational groups and nested rotations; multilingual support (including Unicode for Asian languages); a translator function for online translation and automatic insertion of programming code to foreign-language studies; crosstabulation features including customizable banners and statistical testing; batch downloading of charts and graphs to Excel; auto-programming of some types of validation; automation of some advanced JavaScript functions, such as dynamic sum; and a Survey Robot for testing conditional logic on complex surveys. For more information visit www.kinesissurvey.com.
Vertis service taps research to develop marketing campaigns
Baltimore marketing firm Vertis Communications has introduced DataDrivenDesign, an approach to targeted communications that uses market intelligence and consumer research to better understand purchase plans and trends. The DataDrivenDesign approach applies data gathered from Vertis Communications’ proprietary research to develop targeted campaigns that speak to consumers on a personal level. Using the DataDrivenDesign approach, analysts identify consumers with the highest potential to purchase products or services by examining transaction data, geographical location, direct mail response and mailing lists. Armed with this data, Vertis Communications profiles consumers to determine high-potential habits. These consumers are further segmented into groups with similar demographics, lifestyles and behaviors. For more information visit www.vertisinc.com.
Companies team to offer panel of disabled mystery shoppers
GfK Mystery Shopping, New York, and Butler New Media, Conyers, Ga., have announced a joint venture that will provide GfK clients access to Butler’s Ability Mystery Shopping Panel. Utilizing the Ability panel of disabled consumers, GfK Mystery Shopping sends a variety of disabled undercover shoppers into stores nationwide to assess customer service and sales personnel performance. Participant information on service-animal usage, disability type as well as various demographic data such as age, race, sex and marital status is available. Store evaluations are based on salesmanship, service and presentation toward these individuals. The GfK service provides companies the opportunity to determine how their employees communicate with shoppers with disabilities when these individuals are sent to specific store locations posing as customers. For more information visit www.abilitypanel.com or www.gfkamerica.com.
New Web site offers consumer electronics info
Participants and subscribers to the Arlington, Va.-based Consumer Electronics Association’s (CEA) Market Activity Reports and Analysis (MARA) program will receive access to a new Web site with enhanced tools and features, such as customizable and downloadable reports, charts and access to historical data.
CEA’s MARA program is a source for factory-to-dealer sales in the consumer electronics (CE) industry. The MARA program is a three-step process: first, manufacturers submit their data to CEA; second, all data is aggregated and projected to represent the total industry; third, CEA distributes total industry data to participants and subscribers. Individual company market shares are never revealed. MARA data also serves as the foundation for CEA’s bi-annual industry forecasts.
Existing MARA categories include accessories, blank media, digital imaging, home and portable audio, home display technologies, mobile television technologies, video products, satellite radio and telephone. For more information visit www.ce.org or contact a member of CEA’s market research staff at mara@ce.org or 703-907-7763.
Online panel comes with free survey creation software
Common Knowledge Research Services, Dallas, announced that its Your2Cents Survey Creator software is available free with use of the Your2Cents Online Opinion Panel. Powered by Kinesis Survey Technologies, Your2Cents Survey Creator is equipped with everything needed to design and program online surveys from a user’s desktop or laptop without any additional hardware or prior programming experience. Survey questions and responses can automatically be generated from Microsoft Word or another text document without adding complex instructions or tags. Its menu-driven, user-friendly format accommodates complex survey designs. For more information visit www.commonknowledge.com.
Two new products from ESRI
Redlands, Calif.-based ESRI is shipping BusinessMAP Financial, a new, industry-specific version of its BusinessMAP database mapping software. Packaged with data from ESRI and datasets specifically designed for the financial services industry by RPM Consulting, a financial services data provider, BusinessMAP Financial provides a range of data and interactive features. BusinessMAP Financial, available for Windows 2000, XP Home or XP Professional, includes the following datasets: ESRI’s current-year estimates and five-year projections of population, age and income; lifestyle/lifestage segmentation data from the Community Tapestry LifeMode summary groups; branch locations, assets, deposits, loan and deposit potential from RPM Consulting’s BranchInfo and MarketBank data; asset, loan and other credit union data from the National Credit Union Association; Dunn & Bradstreet Business Listings; and street-level map data from North America from Tele Atlas.
With BusinessMAP Financial’s data and mapping features, users can conduct ring studies, drive-time analysis and demographic analysis to: visualize where customers are concentrated relative to service locations, ATMs and competitors; understand the demographics and market potential to strategically offer products and services by market area; and query databases geographically to target mail campaigns. For more information visit www.esri.com/bmapfinancial.
ESRI also announced that its ArcGIS Business Analyst desktop software will include ESRI’s 2006/2011 segmentation, demographic, business and shopping center data. This updated data in ArcGIS Business Analyst will help companies, agencies and organizations perform accurate marketing analyses faster and more efficiently. The 2006 data updates to ArcGIS Business Analyst 9.1 will include: segmentation data from Community Tapestry down to the census-tract level; business data for approximately 11 million U.S. businesses, from infoUSA (vintage January 2006); and shopping center data for 4,200 major U.S. shopping centers, from Directory of Major Malls (vintage January 2006). For more information visit www.esri.com/ba.
Briefly
Financial services company Experian, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is now offering Experian Research Services Online, an online market research service that integrates information from Experian’s database with market data from Simmons Market Research. Experian Research Services Online accesses Experian’s pool of online respondents to create online samples for market research. For more information visit www.experian.com.
Edison, N.J., research firm Schlesinger Associates has opened new qualitative facilities in Phoenix, Ariz., and Rosemont, Ill. Schlesinger Associates Phoenix is located in the Camelback region of Phoenix. Schlesinger Associates O’Hare is located five miles from the O’Hare International Airport. For more information visit www.schlesingerassociates.com.
London-based Research Now has created an online research panel of Hungarian consumers. For more information visit www.researchnow.co.uk.
The new Social Marketing research service from New York-based JupiterResearch uses best-practice analysis and consumer and executive surveys to provide marketers and site owners with recommendations on how to profit from the use of consumer-generated content, blogs, podcasts and other emerging media tools. For more information visit www.jupiterresearch.com.
Fresno, Calif., research firm Decipher Inc. is now offering the Survey Change Management System, a hosted application for clients who want to collaboratively make edits and provide feedback to their online surveys. In addition to making text changes directly in the online survey, clients can add and view programming instructions and access previous versions of the programmed survey. For more information visit www.decipherinc.com.
London research firm EMS has upgraded its facilities, opening three new studios, including a large one capable of housing two cars or seating up to 100 respondents. The facilities include wireless Internet access and eye-tracking and are also at street level and are handicap-accessible. For more information visit www.ems.eu.com.
BuzzBack Market Research has released its newest market research report, Teen 101: Exploring Teen Lifestyles and Nutrition, the first in a new series of studies exploring the lifestyles of today’s teens. Over 500 teens and young adults (ages 13–24) were surveyed about their lifestyles, including Internet activity, text-messaging activity, exercise, diet and attitudes toward leading a healthy lifestyle. For more information visit www.buzzback.com.
State College, Pa., research firm Diagnostics Plus is now offering a free white paper, Benchmarking Loyalty, Satisfaction, Customer Security and Net Promotion Among Manufacturing Firms, on its Web site at www.diagnosticsplus.com/loyalty/. It illustrates techniques that businesses can use to assess how vulnerable or loyal their customers are, based on a study measuring customer satisfaction, loyalty and vulnerability across 65 manufacturing companies using the firm’s Business-to-Business Benchmarking System (B3).
Research firm G & S Discovery, Carmel, Ind., has launched NaviGRANT, a data-filtering engine that finds, tracks and analyzes biomedical research grant trends. The subscription-based online tool uses a proprietary search algorithm to compile information on life science grants and funding trends. NaviGRANT is available via subscription. For more information visit www.navigrant.com.