Kantar's Profiles Blog

For those not aware, video is here.

Social media sites have embraced the use of video as a main activity for their followers. Video is being used to explain (or give instructions), give opinions, share information or give updates. Video may soon become the new ‘texting’.

Mobile industry data sites are expecting the use of video to be the main usage of data over the next few years. It already has seen some growth, but the expectation is that it will soon eclipse anything else that we do on the smartphone.

Mobile diary panels consist of respondents documenting their behavior patterns in real time – they tell us what they eat, who they talk to, where they shop, what they buy and how many times. You can leverage these projects to assess brand loyalty, test product strategies and evaluate customer demographics.

To ensure your respondents are successfully logging accurate behaviors, the topic of your mobile diary project should be relevant to your respondents, not just your clients. More importantly, it should be simple and short. Eye-catching (i.e., fancy or pretty) question types make the survey interesting to look at, but when it is taken multiple times (in a diary study), it loses its luster. Keeping it simple and short (KISS) makes it easier for respondents to partake quickly.

Will voice technology have a major impact on the collection of data in marketing research?

Surveys are changing. Even with PCs and tablets available, respondents are choosing to complete surveys on their mobile devices. Open-ended questions are often reduced or eliminated as a way to shorten surveys for mobile compatibility; voice technology may enhance the survey experience on a mobile device by having the surveys read to you and enabling you to respond using your voice rather than typing on these small screen devices. Voice technology is quickly replacing both reading and typing on small screen mobile devices. 

After an initial burst of interest in mobile ‘location’ services, the hubris died down a little. However, there has been renewed interest in location, once again, as technology has made some strides to catch up with the expectations of the marketing research industry.

Location is seen as a piece of the puzzle within the ‘Path-to-Purchase’ process to help understand how consumers react within the store and what might impact them at the point of sale. Simply, where do they finally make the purchase?

Our industry is at a cross roads, not for the first time. More than ten years ago, the online revolution transformed the way marketing research was conducted and allowed us to tap into a more readily available set of respondents.

Fast forward to today and a similar shift is underway with mobile. Our need to engage willing survey participants is again a driving factor. This time, however, it’s from traditional, static online to online on-the-go. This shift is arguably a lesser transformation than an offline mode moving to surveys being programmed, completed and returned through an online platform. But it is nevertheless significant.

No, actually they do.

There is a feeling that mobile surveys make open-ended questions more difficult. Mobile is used mostly as a communications device -- writing or texting is one of the main activities that we use it for. We see this behaviour every day in the streets where everyone is writing to someone on their device regardless of it being a text, an email or social media post.

Rarely do U.S. government rulings impact the market research industry, but one recent change defines the future of our industry. Since 2014, several industry associations appealed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow marketing researchers the freedom to use auto-dialers to call mobile phones; however, the FCC recently implemented new regulations to expand the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) which prevents the use of robocallers on mobile phones even in the use of market research. By eliminating this outdated and increasingly costly method of data collection, the government got it right.

Does the distraction induced by mobile devices impact a respondent’s attention?

Consumers are following, perhaps even driving, the move towards mobile technology. Asia Pacific remains at the forefront of this adoption, with Nielsen recently reporting that smartphone penetration is at its highest in Hong Kong and Singapore at 87%, followed by Malaysia (80%), Australia (75%) and China (71%).

Getting feedback from panelists gives you a perspective about survey design that you sometimes miss. They are honest and straight to the point. Whether on PC or mobile, respondents consider grid questions tedious and rate surveys with more grid questions as less enjoyable. Comments include:

• Too many questions on the pages. Too many columns. Difficult keeping track of what box to check.
• This survey was HORRIBLE. It was TOO wide & TOO long to fit the screen so I had to keep sliding back & forth.
• I hate having to fill in so many bubbles.
• I can’t stand surveys with buttons across and all those rows down. They give me a headache.