••• mobile research
Dear Diary
Toluna launches the TolunaMobile Diary app
Toluna, a Wilton, Conn., research company, has launched TolunaMobile Diary, an app designed to enable companies to gather in-the-moment feedback on consumer activities through a variety of mobile survey designs, including diaries, ethnography and tracking across diverse topics in nearly any language worldwide.
The TolunaMobile Diary app is available for Apple and Android phones and tablets. It features a geo-locator, a flexible method of presenting questions and responses to users, the ability to present and upload images, a UPC barcode scanner and automatic reminders to prompt respondents to enter information based on location and event.
www.toluna-group.com
••• customer experience
Ask & Act, and an app
QuestBack debuts Ask & Act; updates EFS platform for mobile
QuestBack, a Bridgeport, Conn., research company, has launched Ask & Act, a survey management tool designed to give small to mid-size organizations insights from customer and employee experiences. Feedback is collected at multiple points throughout the customer or employee life cycle.
Ask & Act is intended to automate and simplify the way organizations create and distribute surveys and then populate results into reports in nearly any document format. The solution also automatically notifies management of results that require immediate action.
QuestBack has also debuted Enterprise Feedback Suite 10, a feedback and engagement platform designed to adapt to any mobile device and integrate social media engagement with online feedback.
The Web-based platform includes a mobile-first architecture, which optimizes online surveys to adapt for touch functionality and other capabilities on popular smartphones and tablets. Surveys automatically adjust to fit screen sizes for any mobile device.
The user interface allows enterprises to create custom surveys for fast deployment and integrates with existing enterprise software to optimize business decision-making through both VOC and VOE. The new platform also aims to enable feedback projects to be executed quickly and creatively with new question methodologies; built-in intuitive survey and layout editors; and a reinvented media library.
www.questback.com
••• sports and leisure
The lay of the land
Social media mining helps get inside the minds of golfers
Golf Datatech LLC, an Orlando, Fla., research company, has launched BrandTrac, an online golf marketing tool designed to track, evaluate and provide qualitative insights into consumer attitudes and opinions of leading golf brands and products.
BrandTrac is powered by Fayetteville, Ark., analytics company DataRank. DataRank collects online conversations from across social networks, blogs, forums, reviews and other sources to gauge the full online conversation directly from golfers. DataRank then processes the comments and applies a quality score/data ranking to each comment. This ranking is used to prioritize the most useful and most influential comments into the dashboard for golf marketers.
The BrandTrac DataRank Insights Dashboard is intended to allow a company to understand the number of posts being made about their products and brands. The sentiment of each comment is classified as positive, negative or neutral. The dashboard also provides full text of each comment to provide context and associative demographic information. The dashboard updates the data daily, providing evaluation of product, brand and/or marketing strategies.
www.golfdatatech.com
••• social media research
Image is everything
Piquora adds images, hashtags and influencers to its measurement
San Mateo, Calif., Pinterest analytics solution company Piqora (formerly Pinfluencer) has expanded its marketing suite to include trending image, hashtag and influential audience analysis from Instagram and Tumblr.
Piqora’s image recognition-based algorithms aim to enable marketers to track trending images, hashtags, followers and influential users on visual networks such as Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest. Marketers can discover hashtags and identify consumers across all three visual networks who have explicitly mentioned a brand or related themes for additional targeted marketing campaigns.
www.piquora.com
••• mobile research
Give a ‘shout’
App brings brand research to smartphones
New York research company Ipsos ASI has launched Brand Shout, a smartphone app designed to help brands better understand real-time reactions to their advertising and brand experiences.
The app is intended to allow advertisers and Ipsos clients to understand touchpoint exposure and optimize them by measuring in-the-moment reaction, including emotional response and effect on brand perceptions, to all touchpoints (e.g., advertising, social media, experiential and point-of-sale) before they’re post-rationalized; the motivations that drive purchase in-store, on-site or online at the moment those choices are made; and the power and influence of word of mouth.
www.ipsos.com/asi
••• mobile research
Socrates on your smartphone
Quester and Survelytics team up to improve mobile qual
Windsor Heights, Iowa, research company Quester has partnered with Mumbai-based Eki Communications to launch its mobile app on Eki’s Survelytics self-service mobile MR service. Quester has also lent Socrates, its software-based moderator, to the Survelytics platform.
Consumers using the Quester mobile app can select a language and then share their thoughts, ideas and emotions, as well as include photos, videos and audio, at home or in-store.
Additionally, Quester has added a social media analytics layer to its language analytics.
www.quester.com
••• diy research
Data for dummies
Democratizing data analysis with hands-off analytics
DataCracker, an Australia research software company, has debuted its flagship offering. DataCracker is an online data analysis and insights tool designed to help DIY researchers, many of whom lack a background in statistics, find and share insights from their survey data.
Users can import data from various major survey programs, including SurveyMonkey, Survey Gizmo, QuestionPro, Qualtrics, Survey Analytics, SnapSurveys, Toluna QuickSurveys and Super Simple Survey. Once the data is imported, a report is automatically written so your data can be mined for more insights. DataCracker’s Office-like interface is designed to work in Web browsers using HTML5 technology.
Interesting results are highlighted with arrows by using advanced tests of statistical significance. DataCracker also offers predictive modeling to determine which questions relate to each other and how. Reports can be shared as a PDF file, Web page or PowerPoint presentation.
www.datacracker.com
••• online research
Co-opting Consumer Surveys
Harris builds on Google’s offering with QuickQuery instant
Harris Interactive Inc., a Rochester, N.Y., research company, has introduced QuickQuery instant (QQi), which aims to bridge the gap between full-service research and Google’s Consumer Surveys self-service tools.
QQi is optimized for short quantitative surveys among either general population or high-incidence targeted populations. It reports data in real time and can deliver final results in less than a day.
QQi is powered by the Google Consumer Surveys platform and expands Harris Interactive’s online offerings beyond panel research by utilizing the “survey wall” methodology, whereby readers on a variety of Web sites respond to short microsurveys to access content.
www.harrisinteractive.com
••• research software
Management mode
Software module assists with primary research management
Boston research software company Northern Light has launched Primary Research Manager, a software application embedded within SinglePoint Strategic Research Portals intended to facilitate project management. By adding a project management tool within the same portal environment in which all of an enterprise’s research is indexed and accessed, research managers can provision, track and control primary research projects.
With the module, client staff can create projects with custom metadata; associate research documents with the projects throughout the project life cycle; control publication to appropriate groups; and manage milestones with research vendors. In addition, workflow steps can be implemented, such as moving the document to the next step in the workflow, approving documents for publication or payment of research vendors.
The module’s workflow features include automatically provisioning projects from an organization’s accounting and purchasing systems and generating alerts when documents are not available in the market research portal on the project milestone due dates. Also, to further streamline workflow, external research vendors working on a project can be given secure access to the system to upload documents directly.
www.northernlight.com
••• shopper insights
One-stop shopper insights?
Trio of tools to help understand what happens in-store
Prosper Insights and Analytics, Worthington, Ohio, has released its Shopper Marketing app. The Shopper Marketing app, along with Prosper’s analytics platform InsightCenter, aims to offer users a one-stop shop to obtain a deeper understanding of shoppers by highlighting key shopper data, including brand purchased most often, purchase frequency, average spend and in-store behavior (e.g., trouble finding products, reasons why). It also covers store shopped most often, reasons why, average spend and cross-shopping for eight major merchandise categories.
Additionally, Prosper’s Promotional Influence Score indicates whether or not each type of promotion is more likely to influence or not influence a specific segment of shoppers. Twenty-one different categories are measured.
www.shoppermarketinginsights.com
••• mobile research
Network schmetwork
USamp app revised to work without data connection
Encino, Calif., research company uSamp has updated iPoll, its mobile app, so that a network connection is no longer required for the user to fill out the survey questions. If the connection is lost while answering the survey, the user is prompted to upload the final responses once a connection is established. This network tolerance also aims to create a faster survey experience for respondents accustomed to having to wait for each photo/video response to be fully submitted before moving on to the next question.
The iPoll app is available on both iOS and Android devices.
www.usamp.com
••• diy research
Bringing DIY to mobile?
Zoho delivers robust survey creation tool
Zoho, a Pleasanton, Calif., provider of business applications, has launched Zoho Survey, an online survey tool designed to let users create, publish and report on the results of online surveys. The interface can create online surveys with a broad range of customizable themes and share the surveys with users through pre-integrated campaign management tools and social integrations.
Zoho Survey includes a variety of prebuilt survey templates for conducting surveys in customer satisfaction, education, human resources, marketing, marketing research and other areas. Users can also build their own, custom surveys that include multiple question types – multiple choice, ratings, text boxes and more – as well as add custom logic to surveys at the question and page level. In addition to the Web app, users can create and publish surveys on-the-go using the native iPad Survey Builder.
After the survey is created, users can preview the survey to see how it will display in standard Web browsers and on mobile devices. To deliver the best possible experience for mobile survey takers, Zoho Survey renders each survey for optimal display regardless of the target device, including tablets and smartphones.
Zoho Survey also supports collaborative survey review. A survey creator can invite colleagues to review and comment on a survey before publishing it and reviewers can add comments to each survey question. The survey creator can see those comments as they are added in real time.
Zoho Survey is also integrated with Google Apps and is available in the Google Apps Marketplace. The iPad Survey Builder for Zoho Survey is available in the Apple App Store.
www.zoho.com/survey
••• data visualization
See the fruits of your labors
Word Tree tool invites outside data
Revelation, a Portland, Ore., research company, has launched a public-facing version of its Word Tree text visualization tool. Revelation Word Tree is designed to allow users to copy and paste their text and then combine two visualizations to see what’s emerging in terms of frequency and the word in the context of the sentence, as well as the full text. Word Tree is intended to get users oriented with data, discover patterns and find impactful quotes.
http://wordtree.revelationglobal.com
••• panel research
More manageable
MARSC updates panel software
MARSC Limited, a Surrey, U.K., research company, has released an updated version of its MARSC software solution, featuring new tools to help manage the panel and panel portal.
The latest version includes MARSC Community, a panelist interface built into a content management system, making it customizable and scalable with multi-site management, multilingual content options and social media and community tools. There are also tools designed to monitor panel health, such as searching for potential duplicate panel members.
www.marsc.com
••• research software
Module for mass media
Research management platform geared toward media and communications
Research Reporter, Melbourne, Australia, has released a customized version of its integrated insights management platform, specifically designed around the market research needs of broadcast and cable networks, filmed entertainment and multichannel video programming distributors.
The solution lets media and communications companies plan, manage and track research projects; interact with, rate and review suppliers; and search and retrieve research, overnight ratings and secondary resources all from one online platform.
Research Reporter provides a configurable project and workflow management framework, secure content management and an extendable portfolio of modules for budget tracking, supplier oversight and third-party content integration.
www.researchreporter.com
••• health care research
Welcome to Obamacare
New service to help research get acclimated to the ACA
Reston, Va., research company comScore Inc. has introduced a service intended to provide detailed, aggregated and anonymous online usage metrics for the new health insurance marketplace, which began October 1 as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This service aims to offer insight into the entire online health insurance acquisition space, both on-exchange and off-exchange.
In addition to aggregate reporting for health exchange marketplaces, anonymous customer acquisition activity will be reported for aggregator sites and insurers.
Key reporting features include measurement of audience and visitation patterns to the Web sites of insurers, aggregators and exchanges; demographics of visitors to insurers, aggregators and exchanges; analysis of sources of traffic, including search and display advertising; measurement of traffic to quote start and finish pages and enrollment start and finish pages; measurement of both the federal and state exchanges; and insights into social media related to the ACA.
www.comscore.com
••• interviewing
Mobile for face-to-face
Offline CAPI solution gets a facelift
Nfield CAPI for Android, an offline market research solution for conducting face-to-face interviews using smartphones and tablets from Amsterdam, Netherlands, research company NIPO Software, has been updated with several new features. Updates include interviewers working on central survey targets; handling quotas upfront and during interviews; audio-recording;, customizable response coding; string manipulation capabilities; extended interviewer statistics; and improved multi-language support.
Nfield CAPI for Android combines Microsoft cloud and mobile Android technology to support the full range of market research projects.
www.nfieldmr.com
••• tracking research
The African audience
New solution to Pinpoint media usage among Africans
Dashboard Marketing Intelligence, a Cape Town, South Africa, research company, and advertising and media expert Dave Kelly have joined forces to launch Pinpoint, a media consumption and audience tracking tool for the African continent.
Pinpoint is designed to examine public usage of TV, radio, newspapers and digital. Data is tracked regularly and drawn from a demographically-representative sample across each city in the survey. Specialized field teams capture and upload interviews in real time using mobile and GPS technology.
A dashboard collates and reports the data via an interactive Web interface, which allows users to personalize their view of the information, as well as export it.
www.dashboard.co.za
••• Briefly
London research company Kantar Media has partnered with Twitter, Palo Alto, Calif., to develop a suite of tools designed to enable U.K. TV broadcasters to assess program and series, plan program promotions and assist media buyers and sellers in integrating social data into TV.
www.kantarmedia.com
San Francisco research software company Terapeak has released its platform for Amazon.com, offering product, offer and sales rank searches; pricing data; and competitor research and analysis.
www.terapeak.com
Swipp, a Palo Alto, Calif., social intelligence platform, has launched Swipp Polls for Facebook, an app designed for polling Facebook users. Results are presented via an infographic that plots sentiment on a numeric scale against demographic information.
http://apps.facebook.com/swipppolls
Portland, Ore., research company Rentrak Corporation has launched PreAct, a solution designed to monitor the audience conversation about a film as early as a year before release to provide insight into audience interest and the impact of pre-release marketing campaigns.
www.rentrak.com
Harpeth Marketing, a Franklin, Tenn., marketing consulting firm serving the market research industry, has released Marketing & Sales for the Market Research Firm: The Top 10 Tips for the Top 10 Tactics, a 23-page e-book focused on helping the reader get the most out of their tactical execution. The e-book is available as a free download at www.harpethmarketing.com/ebook.
New York research company GfK has debuted GfK Experience Effects, a tool designed to maximize brand experiences by combining classic advertising tracking with an assessment of how consumers interact with a brand’s experience points. The solution offers a set of experience points; a measure of the quality of the experience points; and instant feedback.
www.gfk.com
Bangalore, India, research company Borderless Access has debuted a health and wellness panel. The panel is profiled for 34 major ailments, 120 ailment subcategories, 15 lifestyle and wellness attributes, five health care access attributes and covers five countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and Mexico).
www.borderlessaccess.com
Research companies Applied Predictive Technologies (APT), Washington, D.C., and IRI, Chicago, have partnered to combine IRI’s point-of-sale data with APT’s Test & Learn software suite to allow CPG, retail and OTC health care companies understand the cause-and-effect relationships in their transaction data and accurately understand the impact of various operating initiatives.
www.iriworldwide.com
London research company DigitalMR has made its private online communities platform, eCommunity, available to marketing and marketing research agencies in selected countries around the world. ECommunity was previously only available to end clients.
www.digital-mr.com
Redwood Shores, Calif., software company Oracle’s Social Engagement & Monitoring (SE&M) product has been updated to provide listening support for Simplified Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish languages. Additionally, SE&M offers listening support for China’s Sina Weibo, as well as other Chinese networks and sources, and Latin America’s Reclame Aqui and Vostu social networking sites. SE&M enhancements include localized support with user interface, keyword support, latent semantic analysis support and data sources.
www.oracle.com
Netherlands research company Nebu has rolled out Dub InterViewer 7.1. The data collection tool is designed to allow users to design questionnaires and launch Web and telephone field studies.
Additionally, the company has debuted Nebu: live chat to offer clients live chat support from within its Dub Community platform.
www.nebu.com
Saqui Research LLC, Crown Point, Ind., has launched its Getting It Focused Today (GIFT) program for business executives looking to learn more about marketing research. GIFT includes DIY market research assignments, supplemented by instructional videos and readings. Assignments can be completed throughout the week and program founder Ursula Saqui also conducts weekly online chat sessions with participants.
www.saquiresearch.com
Paris research company Ipsos has launched Ipsos SMX, the company’s social media exchange. Ipsos SMX is designed help clients understand their consumers through engagement-based social media research.
www.ipsos.com
Research companies DataMarket, Reykjavik, Iceland, and ProQuest, Ann Arbor, Mich., have created ProQuest International DataSets, a collection of economic, demographic and social data in the world, accessible to ProQuest’s international network of college, university and library partners.
www.proquest.com
Civicom Marketing Research Services, Greenwich, Conn., has added Arabic to its list of supported languages for its marketing research tools for real-time online discussions.
www.civi.com
Opinionmeter International, a San Leandro, Calif., research company, has added advanced branching and piping functionality to SurveyManager, its DIY customer feedback platform.
www.opinionmeter.com
Anderson Analytics, a Stamford, Conn., research company, has been granted Patent No. 8,473,498 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for the natural language text analytics process utilized in its OdinText software.
www.odintext.com
VideoMining Corp., a State College, Pa., research company, has launched its Dollar Store and Warehouse Club Shopper Insights Programs. The studies are the first phase of research in these channels and will include data collected through online surveys to provide insights and analysis into the attitudes, behaviors and decision-making patterns of recent Dollar Store and Warehouse Club shoppers.
www.videomining.com
London research company Euromonitor International has launched Research Monitor, a reference database created for public and college libraries.
Additionally, Euromonitor International is has introduced the Center for Analytics, Modeling and Innovation, a cross-industry resource designed to help businesses quantify the relationships between economic and industry variables.
www.euromonitorintl.com
IRI, a Chicago research company, has released Convenience Stores: Keep the Core; Appeal to More, a report that investigates how convenience stores can find sustainable growth beyond fuel and cigarette sectors. The report is available at www.iriworldwide.com/Insights/Publications/TimesTrends.aspx.
The Carlson Group, Lombard, Ill., sponsored a white paper, titled Consumer and Shopper Insights: How to Develop Effective In-Store Communications, by Christopher Brace and Namrata A. Patel. The white paper is available at www.carlsongroupinc.com.
Exhibit Surveys Inc., a Red Bank, N.J., research company, has released Keys to Developing and Attendee Growth Strategy, a white paper on trade show/exhibition attendee growth. The white paper is available as a free download at www.exhibitsurveys.com/whitepapers.
Research companies Focus Forward and Panel Direct Online, Wayne, Pa., are celebrating their 10th anniversary this year.
Mindwave Research, Austin, Texas, will release the second wave of its technology-focused marketing and media syndicated study, Tap (Technology Advertising Planner), which explores the way B2B IT decision makers use content and information channels to guide their technology purchase decisions. With reliable media audience projections, Tap lets marketing managers, media planners and publishers model true integrated media plans with online and offline components.
Each wave of Tap captures 5,000 quantitative interviews and covers 150+ tech brands across 15 growing product categories; over 100 Web sites, social media and blogs; 50 print publications; 50 television shows; and 15 airports.
Mindwave will release future waves of Tap twice a year beginning in spring 2014.
www.tapstudy.com