GfK Healthcare debuts two offerings
GfK Healthcare, a Blue Bell, Pa., research firm, has introduced Managed Markets Delegates on Demand, a quarterly omnibus study designed to offer pharmaceutical marketers the ability to access and query a panel of managed markets decision makers. Deliverables include a quarterly data report, charts and graphs for closed-ended questions and full verbatim reports for open-ended questions.
Additionally, GfK Healthcare has launched Brand BEAT (brand equity assessment and tracking), a package of health care-specific brand-positioning diagnostic tools for measuring the cognitive and emotional strengths of a brand. The core of Brand BEAT is the brand equity assessment, which aims to evaluate brand equity by calculating brand cognition (rational and logical elements) together with brand heart (emotional elements). This exercise serves to predict physicians’ future prescribing intentions and behavior.
Other diagnostic criteria applied through the Brand BEAT process to assess a brand’s strength include brand awareness (What level of awareness do physicians have of Brand X?); brand performance (How is the performance of Brand X viewed in its competitive context?); brand personality (Does the target group see Brand X as intended?); and brand message alignment (Do Brand X’s messages convey the promises as intended?).
Other modules within the Brand BEAT assessment include the brand attrition funnel and brand driver analysis. For more information visit www.gfkhc.com.
Carma expands social media offerings and upgrades NewsAccess
Washington, D.C., research company Carma International has updated its methodology to better measure social media coverage. As part of this initiative, Carma has devised methods for analyzing reader comments and hyperlinks appearing within social media to explore how discussion in the blogosphere affects brand image. Social media analysis is available through traditional human-based analysis and as a quick-pulse monitoring and measurement tool through Social Media Access or NewsAccess.
Carma has also enhanced its measurement tool NewsAccess to include Social Media Access so that users can choose to view social media results alongside traditional media results or display social media data in a separate interface. Other updates to NewsAccess and Social Media Access include applying tone ratings to articles and allowing customization of core charts and data tables. For more information visit www.carma.com.
IRI updates Total Store Advantage offerings; launches Foresight
Information Resources Inc. (IRI), a Chicago research company, has added Total Store Advantage (TSA) and Total Store Advantage Wall Street Edition to its suite of solutions built on IRI’s Liquid Data technology. TSA is designed to run analyses to shape product, price, promotion, assortment and merchandising strategies. TSA also aims to allow consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies to identify trends and growth drivers; benchmark performance; gain insights into competitor activities and strategies; uncover expansion opportunities; create standard reporting and workflows; eliminate manual data errors; and ensure accuracy for non-additive measures.
TSA Wall Street Edition customizes the TSA solution for security analysts, portfolio managers and other members of the investment community, as well as CPG executives that liaise with investors. TSA Wall Street Edition is also designed to give executives better information to understand the true state of competition and share position in total store and by category; follow mega-brand performance across categories to understand the strength and levels of investment being made; gain new insight into how reliant parent companies are on a retailer-by-retailer basis; evaluate success of partnerships/alignments and understand exposure to retailer changes; and create scenarios for actual or prospective mergers to determine new parent-company size, trends, strengths, weaknesses and avoid the need to wait for financial restatements.
Separately, IRI has launched IRI Foresight, an analytic-driven consulting capability designed for ongoing business and strategic planning that tracks approximately 400 economic indicators; identifies factors most relevant for brand or category growth; and offers forecasts of up to five years. IRI Foresight is intended to measure the effects of macroeconomic activity on consumer spending, including factors such as inflation, interest rates, unemployment rates, property values and credit availability. For more information visit http://us.infores.com.
Synovate introduces ‘always on’ research
Chicago research firm Synovate has introduced Synovate Community Panels, an online solution designed to allow companies to integrate qualitative and quantitative research to reach customers directly at any time for research purposes. Community Panels are customized online communities that allow companies to interact with groups of their customers and prospects and learn from them over time through multimedia surveys and discussion forums. This format allows a company to recruit once for its panel of participants and survey the group on a regular basis. Since participants in the panels are fully networked, they can initiate conversations at will rather than waiting for brands to pose the questions. The PulsePoll application in Synovate Community Panels is designed to gauge consumer sentiment within 24 hours. For more information visit www.synovate.com/communitypanels.
EMO Sensor gauges emotional reactions to marketing campaigns
Nuremberg, Germany, research company, The GfK Group, has debuted EMO Sensor, a tool intended to help marketers understand and manage consumers’ emotional experience with brands. GfK developed EMO Sensor in collaboration with the Institute for Consumer and Behavioral Research at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany. EMO Sensor aims to measure the emotions that consumers may experience when coming into contact with a brand. GfK will use the EMO Sensor primarily in the field of brand and communication research to help marketers evaluate and optimize marketing campaigns. For more information visit www.gfk.com.
Clarabridge updates its Content Mining Platform
Reston, Va., research company Clarabridge has launched version 3.3 of its Content Mining Platform (CMP) solution, designed to capture, transform and analyze free-form customer feedback from social media, CRM systems and customer feedback systems (e-mail, surveys, chats, etc.).
CMP 3.3 updates include increased text mining and analysis speed by seven times; decreased storage requirements by 50 percent for customers who manage more than a terabyte of data; 64-bit processors; and support for enterprise security standards.
The version has also added embedded reports that can be run directly from within the Clarabridge 3.3 Navigator interface and do not require use of a third-party business intelligence application. The Navigator also includes new ways to classify customer feedback using a combination of linguistic, Boolean and statistical approaches.
Other enhancements include a new sentiment engine designed to improve the accuracy of sentiment calculation and scoring; advanced statistical functionality to allow for predictive analytics and other advanced analytics; and expanded support for enterprise business intelligence and data warehouse platforms. For more information visit www.clarabridge.com.
United Sample partners to launch two new panels
United Sample, an Encino, Calif., research company, and Clear Sky Media, Toronto, have partnered to launch a survey platform for RedFlagDeals.com, a comparison-shopping Web site. United Sample will serve as the exclusive provider of a private-label panel Web site for Canadians (Surveys.RedFlagDeals.com). Participants registered with RedFlagDeals.com can sign up to take surveys in exchange for cash rewards. United Sample’s platform will pay the rewards in Canadian dollars through PayPal. United Sample will also manage all facets of the RedFlagDeals.com survey community, as well as its online panel.
Separately, United Sample and eSPIN, a Chicago entertainment network for teens and young adults, have launched www.Surveys4Teens.com, an online community where teens can earn rewards for sharing their thoughts. United Sample will manage the Surveys4Teens community as well as its online panel. For more information visit www.unitedsample.com.
Software aims to analyze with point-and-click technology
The Analytical Group Inc., a Scottsdale, Ariz., research company, has released WinCross Executive, a tabulation and reporting software offering intended to analyze data with a point-and-click solution. WinCross Executive is designed to generate crosstabs; publish reports and graphs directly to PowerPoint, Excel and Word; operate without programming or special commands; import other data types, including Excel, SPSS, delimited and fixed ASCII files; be compatible with other TAG products, including WinCross, WinQuery and QueryWeb; offer comprehensive statistical and significance testing; and import WinCross table and banner specifications for data mining and exploration. A free 30-day trial version is available. For more information visit www.wincross-executive.com.
Briefly
Chicago research company SPSS Inc. has released PASW Direct Marketing, a tool designed to automate the analysis of customers, prospects and campaigns and facilitate more effective campaigns. Its interface allows marketers to perform analysis with six analytical procedures: recency, frequency and monetary analysis, cluster analysis and prospect profiling. PASW Direct Marketing also includes postal code analysis, propensity scoring and control package testing. For more information visit www.spss.com.
The ARSgroup, an Evansville, Ill., research company, has introduced its ars.touchpoint test suite, a copy testing solution intended to provide the precision of offline testing with online convenience. The ars.touchpoint test suite relies on Internet bandwidth and growing consumer familiarity with rich digital media and enables the online collection of the ARS Persuasion metric at a level comparable to that of traditional methods. For more information visit www.arsgroup.com.
New Hope, Pa., research company Roger Green and Associates has debuted its DPS Tracker, an ATU/tracking system based on its Dynamic Practice Simulation methodology. The Tracker is intended for pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies. The yearlong program aims to combine a traditional ATU/tracking study with positioning and driver analysis. For more information visit www.rogergreen.com.
Columbia, Md., research company Arbitron Inc. has launched a combined panel for television and radio audience measurement in Canada using its Portable People Meter technology. In April 2008, BBM Canada chose the Arbitron and TNS Media Research joint solution to support this multimedia measurement initiative. For more information visit www.arbitron.com.
NDS, a Middlesex, U.K., technology solutions company, and TNS Media Research, London, have enhanced their joint TV audience measurement offering to include the RPDi solution, designed to identify individual viewers in homes who have agreed to participate in a measurement panel. For more information visit www.tnsglobal.com/mediaresearch.
London research firm TNS Magasin has combined its mobile brain-scanning technology with its eye-tracking services to track shoppers’ emotional and cognitive responses to what they see in a store. TNS Magasin has been using an electroencephalography system from Chicago neuroscience firm EmSense. The firm is also combining its software with German usability researcher Eye Square’s Web-based software. For more information visit www.tnsmagasin.com.
Los Angeles research company Interpret LLC has introduced MobileTrax, a tool developed to analyze consumer behavior surrounding purchase and satisfaction of mobile handsets and devices. MobileTrax is designed to provide handset and PC vendors, technology companies and mobile carriers with understanding of pre- and post-launch consumer awareness and buzz surrounding devices, as well as post-purchase satisfaction and usage models. For more information visit www.interpretllc.com.
Redwood Shores, Calif., advertising agency Rocket Fuel Inc. has launched its hybrid ad network that combines information from social, behavioral, contextual, search and other data sources to understand consumer interest and intent. Using its Progressive Optimization technique, Rocket Fuel uses automated testing and user-level targeting to adjust campaigns around the clock in hopes of boosting campaign performance within hours instead of the weeks or months it would take to analyze the data manually. For more information visit www.rocketfuelinc.com.
20|20 Research Inc., Nashville, Tenn., has debuted QualBoard 3.0, the latest iteration of its online qualitative research platform, which aims to improve bulletin board focus group software. Enhancements include customizable question types (text-based, multiple-choice, multiple-answer and media response); segmentation across an unlimited number of dimensions; unlimited content tagging capacity; central dashboard controls for moderators, clients and participants; and advanced media handling. For more information visit www.2020research.com.