••• mobile research
Fuel Cycle adds geolocation to app
Ask questions, capture impressions
Research and community intelligence platform Fuel Cycle, Los Angeles, has added new geolocation capabilities for its mobile app, allowing businesses to use location-based research to capture location-specific customer intelligence. Brands can use the geotargeting feature to ask questions relevant to a location and capture the user’s impressions in-the-moment through photos, videos, surveys and more.
••• shopper insights
Companies team for VR shopping tools
Azure Knowledge, Advanced Simulations partner
Kennesaw, Ga., virtual reality research provider Advanced Simulations, in partnership with research company Azure Knowledge, has introduced new virtual reality research products: 4D Shopper Plus uses Azure Knowledge’s DigiWalks technology to put shoppers in an immersive environment based on photographs of actual stores, while 4D Shopper VR turns the immersive environments into virtual reality, allowing shoppers to walk through stores and pick up and interact with products. 4D Shopper is used to test the in-store and on-shelf impact of packaging, pricing, promotions, shelf assortment and shelf layouts.
••• research communities
Toluna adds DIY community product
Build, create, recruit
Researcher Toluna, Wilton, Conn., has launched QuickCommunities, an addition to its digital insights platform QuickSurveys. QuickCommunities is a DIY product that allows users to build, create and recruit target consumers into a custom community experience for discussions, events and/or focus groups. A Web-based community portal is created using Toluna’s wizard that provides customization options to ensure compliance with a company’s brand guidelines. Businesses can target community members directly from Toluna’s global consumer panel, selecting from more than 200 demographic and behavioral profiles, and then launch the community and invite members.
••• behavioral economics
CMI solution reflects consumer purchase choices
Multi-staged exercise
Atlanta research firm CMI has expanded its behavioral economics solutions suite with the addition of yChoose, a multi-staged exercise that simulates real-world behavior designed to reflect the several choices a consumer makes during a given purchase decision. YChoose identifies the influencers within a consumer’s habitual decision-making loop, providing marketers with targeted strategies to increase brand choice over the competition. It is the third product to be added in the firm’s behavioral economics-based solutions suite, followed by yPrescribe and yQuote.
••• research communities
Harris Interactive UK launches PopUP Communities
Qual and quant
Harris Interactive UK, London, has launched PopUP Communities, a research solution that enables clients to run qualitative and quantitative research more quickly than traditional methods. The solution allows target audiences to be recruited and participating within hours, with projects adapting as they progress. PopUps can support initiatives like product or concept development, usage and attitude studies and communications development.
••• virtual reality
Isobar, MIT Media Lab VR collab
Focus on emotional response
Digital agency Isobar, New York, in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, has developed a virtual reality emotional measurement and analytics platform that captures and analyzes behavioral data in virtual reality. The platform will be integrated with Isobar’s MindSight tool to further understand the emotional response to content delivered in virtual, augmented and mixed reality experiences. Isobar also integrated its platform with iMotion’s biometric research platform, which measures human emotional response to visual stimuli.
••• Briefly
Nonprofit organization Women in Research, Los Angeles, has launched its WIRexec program, an invitation-only membership program for corporate senior research executives and supplier/agency side executives and entrepreneurs.
Reston, Va., firm comScore has made upgrades to its MMX Multi-Platform and Mobile Metrix in Malaysia with the introduction of mobile consumer panel data, expanding its measurement of mobile audiences in Malaysia and allowing for better reporting of visitation, engagement and demographics, including new segments for age and gender. MMX Multi-Platform and Mobile Metrix combine data from desktop and mobile consumer panels with data from the comScore census network, providing persons-based measurement of total digital reach.
Thomson Reuters has launched Thomson Reuters Labs – The Incubator, a Switzerland-based start-up incubator that will host early-stage entrepreneurs building products in big data, advanced analytics, distributed ledgers, artificial intelligence, machine learning and other transformational technologies.
Kantar Media, New York, has expanded its cross-platform ad intelligence capabilities by making available programmatic advertising data, providing more detailed insight into digital ad buying channels. The data includes digital ads monitored on display, mobile and online video platforms.
Kantar, London, has launched Kantar Activate, a new service that integrates consumer insights and behavior from across the Kantar portfolio with behavioral shopper and media data, allowing clients to leverage the studies they run with Kantar for targeting purposes.
San Mateo, Calif., firm SurveyMonkey has launched its People Powered Data platform, which helps businesses turn voices and opinions into data. As part of the new platform, the firm has also introduced SurveyMonkey CX, SurveyMonkey Engage and SurveyMonkey Audience, a suite of targeted products that provide customer, employee and market-powered data.
Chicago-based researcher IRI has introduced a new premium service that provides point-of-sale market measurement data to its U.S. clients in five days, compared to the industry standard time frame of eight to nine days.
Mobile marketing services firm 3Cinteractive, Boca Raton, Fla., has released its Chatbot Consumer Report, showing how consumers interact with chat bots and their preferences on using the technology when communicating with brands.
U.K. video insight platform Voxpopme has released new sentiment analytics for video, powered by IBM Watson, which uses machine learning and natural language processing to identify underlying sentiment. This is used to process the transcribed text of videos in the Voxpopme platform, returning a polarity on every sentence of each video and determining whether it is positive, negative or neutral with an associated score.
Campbell, Calif., customer engagement solutions firm [24]7 has introduced [24]7 Customer Journey Analytics, a solution that analyzes and visualizes customer journeys that occur over time, extend across channels and devices and span different IT systems, providing insight into the causes of problems along a customer journey.
Reston, Va., firm comScore has introduced MyMetrix Explore, a data exploration and visualization platform that allows clients to create customized analyses, reports and visualizations.
Boston-based market intelligence firm InCrowd has launched its Global MicroTracker, an automated market monitoring solution for life science and pharmaceutical brands in competitive global markets.
London-based research consultancy Acacia Avenue has launched its automated names test on ZappiStore’s online platform. The firm’s Namer solution uses behavioral economics thinking to help brands access consumers’ instinctive response to their names. The solution is currently live in the U.K., U.S. and Canada and will be launching in eight other markets by the end of 2017.
Boston-based consumer insights firm Crimson Hexagon has released its proprietary image analysis capabilities to help brands and agencies gain insights from photo data. Brands can apply Crimson Hexagon’s analytics engine to images to recognize scenes, objects, actions, faces and logos to learn who, how and where consumers engage with their products.
Mobile marketing engagement firm Swrve, San Francisco, has made available its Premium Analytics offering, an add-on to its existing Swrve Mobile Engagement Platform that provides organizations with insights, reporting and analytics capabilities in relation to customers’ mobile usage.
Kantar Media, London, has enhanced the capabilities of its Kantar Twitter TV Ratings tool with the integration of Facebook data, allowing clients to see counts of Facebook posts, likes, comments and shares pertaining to TV programs. The Kantar Twitter TV Ratings tool will be renamed as Social TV Ratings.
Canada-based voice of the customer solutions firm iPerceptions has released AI Text Analytics, which uses natural language processing and machine learning technology to evaluate open-ended feedback and organize comments by praise, problem, suggestion or brand mention.
Maritz Motivation Solutions, St. Louis, has launched the Engagement Potential Index, an assessment for executives and HR practitioners to measure their company’s current culture and engagement potential against industry benchmarks.
Netherlands-based research firm Nebu has launched its corporate social responsibility program by supporting 100WEEKS, an organization that focuses on helping women in developing countries to get out of poverty. 100WEEKS rolled out its program in Rwanda in 2015 and will expand into Ghana by the end of 2017. It will provide 100 weeks of financial support and financial coaching to 100 women in cocoa-producing communities. Nebu will support the organization by providing survey and research tools to measure the impact the money has on the women’s lives.
U.K. mobile survey solutions firm OnePoint Global has introduced the next generation of its mobile survey platform’s user interface. The enhanced capability allows researchers to deliver surveys onto any device, as well as create and launch their mobile research projects from any mobile device.
Shelton, Conn., researcher SSI and Alaska Airlines have introduced a new loyalty rewards program, The Opinion Terminal. The program enables Mileage Plan members to earn award miles by participating in surveys and will provide SSI customers with more access to consumer and business travelers’ opinions.
Research Rockstar, Southborough, Mass., has announced a 10-episode series, “Conversations for Research Rockstars,” available on YouTube and as a podcast on iTunes. The series will be hosted by company President Kathryn Korostoff.
Warren, N.J., researcher Lightspeed has launched the Gravity Network, a partnership arrangement between data providers and platform companies to support the demand for sample for insights projects. This includes companies in the research and panel space as well as more technical platforms in media, data and CRM.
Waltham, Mass., speech and customer engagement analytics firm CallMiner has expanded its multi-language and data protection capabilities by making its platforms available in nearly 30 different languages and dialects. Multiple languages are also certified with full PCI-compliant redaction that removes sensitive information like addresses and ID numbers.
Customer insights platform UserTesting, Mountain View, Calif., has launched Live Conversation, a solution that allows product teams, marketers, UX and CX professionals to more effectively conduct live interviews with customers.