Jason Ebenstein (L) and Kyle Sausser

MFour has added two new employees who’ll guide clients to its standard-setting, in-app mobile research solutions, and oversee the development and launch of new research tools and products that will give clients more options for high quality mobile data.

Kyle Sausser joins the team as a Senior Solutions Executive. He’s an experienced technology solutions expert, including a Senior Major Account Executive position at IT research and consulting firm Gartner, Inc., At Gartner he worked with top management of Fortune 1000 companies to help them get the most out of Gartner’s research and consulting services. Now Kyle will help leading market research firms and end clients exploit the vast data and insights capabilities of in-app mobile research technology. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing from Arizona State University, and is pursuing a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. Kyle enjoys travel with his wife, attending concerts and sporting events, and getting outdoors as a hiker, surfer and volleyball player. He’s also active with USC’s Challenge for Charity, which involves MBA candidates in volunteerism and philanthropic fundraising.

Jason Ebenstein joins MFour as a Senior Product Manager, taking a leading role in conceiving innovations and advances  in mobile research technology, and helping bring these enhancements and new data options to fruition. He arrives with seven years of experience in software product development, including past positions as a product manager for HireRight, Telogis and TeleCommunication Sytems, Inc. Jason earned a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from the University of Central Florida.

Welcome aboard, Kyle and Jason!

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile. Just click and read!

How Mobile vs. Online Is Like Horsepower vs. Horses

When A Brand Takes A Stand, A Mobile Health-Check's A Must

Download Our App And You'll Know What We're Talking About

And here's a Friday tune to get you pumped for the weekend.

One unusual aspect of the Trump presidency has been business leaders’ willingness to take firm stands on specific issues and events. The latest example is the administration’s decision to reverse the “Dream Act” policy that gave protected status to about 800,000 undocumented, foreign-born workers and students who’d come to the United States as children.

As AdAge reports, that action brought a fast response from tech sector CEOs, who haven’t hesitated to voice opposition to policies they see as threats to their pipeline of immigrant talent. The DACA announcement also drew a response from CPG titan Proctor & Gamble, which issued a statement urging Congress to  “find a legislative solution to provide employers certainty and allow the U.S. to continue to benefit from the contributions of the 800,000 Dreamers.”

When businesses take positions on hotly-debated issues such as immigration enforcement, they enter a complex arena. Any political stand or legal or regulatory controversy involving a brand has the potential to influence how consumers think and feel about it. In the case of DACA, some may see brands' support of Dreamers as a praiseworthy statement of principles. But some may take offense at what they interpret as an inappropriate mixture of business with politics. And like anything that can impact consumer sentiment, brands need to know exactly what's going on -- and fast.

In a far more extreme instance than anything brands might face regarding a stand on DACA, consider the textbook case of how Johnson & Johnson responded quickly and effectively in 1982 when news broke that several Chicago-area consumers had been fatally poisoned when they took Tylenol capsules, murdered by an unknown predator who had stalked stores' pain-remedy aisles, injecting cyanide into bottles of Tylenol. For a fascinating Fortune magazine account of how Johnson & Johnson's rapid response -- a response based on survey data -- saved one of the nation's most famous brands, click here. And note this passage in particular:

[Johnson & Johnson's CEO] called in...J&J's oldest advertising agency, to begin polling consumer attitudes. Initially he wanted to know how the public was reacting to the crisis, but he also knew the surveys would be indispensable in building a data base for what was obviously going to be, as he put it, "a very complicated communications problem."

Fast data from telephone surveys put Johnson & Johnson on the right track to a successful response that saved the Tylenol brand -- in the process providing the classic model for effective corporate crisis management. Thirty-five years later, there's no faster way to get a quick, reliable read than to reach out to a representative panel that’s gathered around a mobile survey app. Smartphone apps, far more than desktop browsing, are the leading pipelines to news and information exchange for today’s consumers. Consequently, fielding an in-app mobile brand-health survey will get the best crucial speed-read on consumer sentiment.

Researchers with pressing deadlines can expect reliable real-time data, speeded along thanks to completion rates of 25% in an hour and 50% in a day. Fast survey data from an engaged, representative in-app mobile panel can make the difference between spinning wheels or getting a crucial running start on managing the impacts of unusual or unexpected events. With accurate intelligence about the what, the why, and the emotions sparked by an unusual event, brands will give themselves the best chance of making the right decisions on messaging and actions going forward. Whatever the circumstance, they won't be flying blind.

To get a quick, real-time read on how an event is impacting a brand, researchers who use in-app mobile technology centered around an engaged, all-mobile panel that uses a state-of-the-art survey app can connect with a thousand or more relevant consumers in just a day. For more information on how to best execute quick-response, event-driven consumer research -- or any research that has to get done in a hurry -- just get in touch at solutions@mfour.com.

And for some humorous relief from the stresses of the moment or the politics of the day, click here for an entertaining video introduction to in-app mobile. 

At the intersection of technology and commerce, there’s no denying that history repeats. Take, for example, the growth of automobile ownership in the United States. A hundred years ago, the economy was irrevocably transformed when automobiles replaced horse-drawn vehicles. Today, the shift from personal computers to smartphones redefines how consumers get around – not in physical space, but in the emotional and intellectual space where they inform themselves and project their personalities. For market researchers who need to get inside consumers' heads and understand their emotions, the implications are obvious.

The latest data documenting mobile’s ascendancy over the desktops and laptops that defined the era of online research come from Salesforce’s Shopping Index report for the second quarter of 2017. It looks at how shoppers access information about brands and products. And by every measure, mobile dominates.

First, to get some historical context on epochal changes in consumer preferences, let’s go back 100 years, to when automobiles put horses out to pasture.

• In 1913, there were 1.3 million motor vehicles of all types registered in the United States. By 1917, there were 5.1 million. The Age of the Automobile had arrived.

Now here are some of Salesforce’s findings about digital shopping in the U.S.

• Mobile devices accounted for 44% of purchase orders placed online in Q2 2017, up from 32% in 2015.

• Orders placed on personal computers fell from 68% to 56%.

• Traffic from smartphones to retail websites grew from 44% of all visits in 2015 to 59% in Q2 2017.

• Factoring in tablets as well, traffic on mobile reached 65% of visits.

• Retailers received 35% of their website visits on PCs in Q2 2017 – down 12 points from Q2 2015.

• Mobile’s role also is growing among in-store shoppers: 59% used their mobile devices for shopping intelligence while inside a store.

• Mobile traffic from social media sites to retail sites accounted for 11% of all online shopping visits in Q2, 2017 – up from 4% in 2015. For PCs, the 2017 total was 2%, up from 1% two years earlier.

“Social is fast becoming the face of the brand, an important part of the marketing mix, and the point at which shoppers interact with a brand for the first time,” the Salesforce report affirms.

Insights such as these are helping everyone develop some horse sense about how to reach today’s consumers, including the need to establish best practices for testing and measuring the effectiveness of social media advertising. But the decision to trade up from online to mobile research is only the first step in your journey into the Smartphone Era. Next comes picking the best mobile methodology.

As brands such as PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch and Warner Bros. have discovered, in-app, rather than “mobile optimized,” is the choice that fully exploits smartphones’ powerful research capabilities, enhanced by proprietary, uniquely mobile technologies such as GeoIntensity® and GeoNotification® that enable precise, location-based surveys.

For a productive conversation about how in-app mobile can meet your specific needs, just contact us at solutions@mfour.com.

And for an entertaining video introduction to in-app mobile research, just click here.

Insights professionals increasingly recognize that they need to reach consumers on mobile, because that’s where consumers are spending their time. The conversation is shifting from “whether” to use mobile to “how.” 

So far, most of the discussion has focused on optimizing survey design for mobile. Should questions be phrased differently on mobile? Should there be fewer answer choices? Can you use grid questions? Do you need to keep surveys short? Do you need to add “gamification” features to hold attention?

These aren’t necessarily bad questions, because well-thought-out survey design should always be an important part of consumer research. But focusing on design doesn’t get you answers to the two fundamental questions you need to answer correctly if you want to get mobile right.

• Do you know the difference between in-app mobile surveys and “mobile optimized” surveys?

• And which one should you use?

Once you’ve opted for in-app mobile, the rest will take care of itself. And a good way to get acquainted is to take a top-of-the-line mobile app for a test drive, and experience mobile survey design and functionality first-hand. You can start immediately by downloading the Surveys on the Go® app for iOS or Android.

Answer some detailed demographic questions to establish your profile, and you’ve joined the the world’s largest, longest-running and fastest-growing all-mobile panel – more than 2 app downloads in the U.S., with 2,000 or more joining each day, solely from word of mouth.

Your profile will help determine which survey invitations you receive, including location-based studies that are made possible by the app's state-of-the-art GeoIntensity^® and GeoNotification^® technologies. As a consumer yourself, you’ll be helping brands and companies learn what they need to know about their target audience.  As an insights professional, you’ll be paying close attention to your experience with the app – and seeing for yourself how the app handles complex survey design, and whether it’s suitable to longer interviews.

There’s a chance you’ll experience some location-based research, getting survey pushes while you’re shopping or just after you’ve visited a store. And you may be asked to evaluate video content such as movie trailers and mobile ads, or to create a “video selfie” and tell about a consumer experience in your own words while you’re actually having that experience, or just after. You’ll be happy you don’t have to make any semi-educated guesses about something did or might have done in the past few weeks or months. With in-app location studies, memory bias is becoming just a memory.

Meanwhile, you’ll be earning  some coffee money, with the option of getting cash via PayPal, Visa or Amazon gift card. Each survey has a cash reward that varies with the length and complexity of the project. And when you’re terminated, you’ll still get a token amount for your trouble, usually a dime.

So try some hands-on learning about how mobile surveys work. Your experience as a mobile panelist will enhance your decision-making about that big decision between mobile-optimized and in-app mobile. To get started with your app download, just click here. And if you’d like to have a productive conversation about in-app mobile and how it can meet your specific needs, just contact us at solutions@mfour.com.

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile. Just click and read!

What Mobile Marketing Can Teach Market Research

5 Reasons To Mobilize Against Panel Fraud

Don't Let "Mobile Optimized" Surveys Sell You Short

And here's a Friday tune to ease you into a relaxing holiday weekend.

“Shibboleth” isn’t a word you read or hear very often, but you’ve probably read or heard fairly often that mobile surveys are only good for short interviews. And that, friends, is a shibboleth.

Here’s the Oxford Dictionary definition of shibboleth (which rhymes with “it’s a myth”): “A custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important.” And here’s why it’s applicable to common notions about mobile research:

• It has become a matter of belief that mobile surveys have to be kept short.

• The “particular class or group of people” who hold this belief is consumer insights professionals (although by no means all of them).

• This belief is “outmoded” and “no longer important” -- in fact, it’s damaging to brands’ ability to understand today’s mobile consumers.

Therefore: a shibboleth.

It’s unfortunate, but understandable, that many researchers have this misconception. The majority still are aware of only one type of mobile, when they need to understand there are two, and that they are categorically different. The  “mobile optimized” methodology is, in fact, only good for short surveys, if it’s good for anything. The other type is in-app mobile research, which is beginning to gain awareness, including the fact that it’s a reliable tool for surveys that take 20 minutes or more to complete.

“Mobile optimized” is a new buzzword for the same old surveys: online questionnaires that are housed on the internet. The only difference is that the familiar online methodology is now being repackaged to be accessed on smartphones. It’s essentially a superficial, cosmetic improvement: “mobile optimized” surveys are supposed to make online surveys look and behave better on smartphones.  But in fact, this approach is far worse than the traditional online method it aims to perpetuate.

In a mobile optimized survey, the phone connects to a website where the survey is housed. If that connection is interrupted or load-ins are delayed, the respondent is left frustrated and data quality suffers. That’s why mobile optimized surveys have to be kept short. Every additional question increases the chances that something bad will happen. And users who have no patience for poor performance on their phones will either race through the poorly-functioning survey, or simply drop it.

Instead of turning a smartphone into a miniature version of a desktop or laptop computer, in-app mobile research takes full advantage of smartphones’ unique capabilities. There is no connection to the internet, and therefore no impediment to smooth, user-friendly functionality. The entire survey loads instantly into the phone itself. The respondent then answers the questionnaire offline, where there’s no danger of frustrating delays and therefore no need to keep the survey short.

Go by your own experience as to whether the apps you use give you faster and more reliable experiences than when you use a browser or email link to connect to the mobile web.  If you’re like most people, you get antsy if you have to wait more than a couple of seconds for the content you’re seeking to load in. So in the mobile online (aka “mobile optimized”) space, keeping LOIs short is a must.

With in-app mobile, you’ll place your projects in a completely different category. Based on the experience of clients who’ve already moved to in-app, here’s what you can expect from surveys with LOI of 20 minutes or more:

• Completion rates of 90%

• Drop-off rates of no more than 6.5%

• Sophisticated survey design, including logic and branching

• A proprietary, all-mobile panel of more than 1.3 million U.S. members who are willing to engage fully with long surveys because the app’s fast, smooth functionality gives them a pleasurable experience every step of the way.

• Geolocation and multimedia features that let you do in-location studies in real time, and/or let you test video content such as advertising, or receive “video selfies” in which facial expressions, tone of voice, and in-their-own-words comments vividly bring home all the emotions that underlie consumer attitudes and behavior.

If you enjoy learning by doing, you can design and field an in-app mobile survey with MFourDIY® – the only all-mobile do-it-yourself research platform. Or you can join the Surveys on the Go® panel and take the app for a test-spin from the panelist’s point of view. Download SOTG by clicking here, and start earning some coffee money while you’re experiencing the truth about advanced, in-app mobile for yourself. We’re confident you’ll have an epiphany – but that’s a fancy term we’ll leave for another day.

For a productive conversation about how in-app mobile solutions can meet your specific research needs, just get in touch at solutions@mfour.com. Meanwhile, for an entertaining video introduction to in-app mobile, just click here.

In any profession or trade, it’s easy to get lost in day-to-day demands and lose track of the basic facts and objectives that are your foundations for success. With that in mind, here’s what insights professionals and marketers need to remember about consumer panels. The overarching insight here is that panel fraud and cutting corners to fill quotas will turn survey data into a corrosive force instead of a clarifying light to illuminate business decision-making. Today’s topic is…

The Research Client as Consumer: Be Fully Informed

When choosing sample, insights professionals need to be informed consumers themselves. Here are some useful guidelines.

• Demand transparent information about how the panel you’re buying is sourced, validated and safeguarded to prevent and detect fraud.

• Being an informed research consumer begins with setting a standard for data quality.

• Know how much quality you’re willing to sacrifice to achieve cost savings. The cheapest solutions inevitably are not worth the tradeoff in quality, given the stakes of getting your research right. Can you afford to be penny wise but pound foolish?

• To the extent they value quality, clients need to hold suppliers accountable whenever data quality suffers and the odds of duplicate responses and bot fraud rise.

• You have a safe and simple alternative to online panels, with all their complications, pitfalls and vulnerabilities. It's a proprietary, validated panel gathered around an advanced all-mobile survey app.

• In addition to security, the popularity of mobile apps assures that a well-designed survey app will attract a large, diverse, representative panel that can satisfy quotas for Millennials, Hispanics, African Americans and more. 

Educating yourself about in-app mobile is a lot less complicated than trying to get a handle on everything that makes online sample so slippery. For a detailed, productive conversation about how it pays to access an engaged, alert and representative mobile panel, just get in touch at solutions@mfour.com

Have you heard the one about the survey bot that walked into a store and stole a smartphone? That’s OK, neither have we. Everyone knows survey bots don’t own smartphones.

However, they can hijack your budget and your data by breaking into online surveys and posing as human respondents. Online is where computer bots lurk, unleashed by their creators to impersonate consumers, complete surveys, and collect reward payments. Bot fraudsters are very clever about avoiding detection by mimicking how real humans respond to surveys. When survey bots strike you get doubly defrauded – fleeced for the rewards money and the price per complete that’s built into your bill, and left with phony, reality-distorting data you assume is from real consumers.

Bots are increasingly on the march, to the point where one experienced insights professional, Joe Hopper of Versta Research, warns that “if you are purchasing access to survey respondents from panel providers, or from survey software providers…you are probably getting fraudulent data from automated bots or from survey-taker farms.”

So what can you do?

• Stick with online research and hope for the best, or

• Switch to in-app mobile surveys fielded to a validated, bot-free proprietary panel.

A well-designed research app is bot-free for the same reason your lawn or driveway is shark-free. It’s just not the right habitat. Here’s why:

• Each mobile device has a unique identification code. That means a phone can receive and answer a given survey just once. Each completed survey is validated as having been received from the same device to which it was targeted.

• To join an app-based panel such as Surveys on Go® a prospective panelist needs to have physical possession of a smartphone or a tablet. Bots don’t own phones.

• The panelist downloads the app to a phone, then registers to participate in surveys by answering a detailed, in-app questionnaire that elicits granular demographic information to inform targeting.

• Besides shutting out bots, the ID code insures against duplicate responses: only one complete per phone is possible.

• “Mobile optimized” surveys are just like online desktop surveys when it comes to bot fraud. They don't occur in an in-app safety zone; instead, the survey must be taken online, where data fraud lurks.

The good news is that bot fraud is one seemingly intractable problem for which there's actually a proven solution – if you know where to look. For a productive discussion about how in-app mobile can safeguard your data’s health and meet your specific research needs, including advanced location-based surveys powered by proprietary GeoIntensity^® and GeoNotification^® technologies, get in touch at solutions@mfour.com. And for an entertaining video introduction to in-app mobile research, just click here.

Here are some facts about the mobile economy for market researchers to chew on, culled from Pew Research Center’s most recent report on the economics of digital media. Drawing comparisons between 2011 and 2016, Pew's data show that advertisers have shifted their bets decisively to getting mobile right. Investments in desktop advertising  dropped $5.5 billion over five years, while ads targeted to smartphones rose $45.1 billion. 

Is there a lesson in this for the market researchers whose work serves the marketers who are increasingly all-in on mobile? Should researchers follow marketers' lead and reach consumers where they really are (smartphones) instead of trying to interpret data from the increasingly unrepresentative minority who've stayed put on desktops?  Is it OK to assume that what worked best five years ago still works today? One thing is certain: as soon as you decide to go mobile, you can catch up in a hurry once you've done a little research into which mobile methodology to choose.

Here are some of the key markers reported by Pew and compiled by eMarketer. They show how reality has changed, and where it’s going.

• 2011 U.S. ad spending on Desktop-Laptop, $30.4 billion; on Mobile, $1.6 billion

• 2016 ad spending on Desktop-Laptop, $24.9 billion (-18.1%)

• 2016 ad spending on Mobile, $46.7 billion (+2890%)

• Mobile share of all U.S. advertising: 1% in 2011; 24% in 2016

• Desktop/laptop share of all U.S. advertising: 19.6% in 2011, 12.8% in 2016

Clearly, the smart money has concluded that mobile is where people live. So doesn’t market research need to meet them there, too?  With this in mind, here are a few pointers on how to adjust painlessly to the new research realities of the Smartphone Era.

• First, understand that market researchers have realigned before in the face of changing consumer behavior. That’s how the industry went from telephone to online surveys about 20 years ago.

• If your brand is investing heavily in mobile advertising, do some serious thinking about whether you’ll risk a fundamental misalignment between the marketing and market research functions if you don’t make the shift to mobile.

• Next, get up to speed on the state of the art in mobile research, understanding that not all approaches to mobile are equally advanced or effective. Learn about the categorical difference between the two top approaches: in-app and “mobile optimized.”

• Flurry Analytics has found that mobile users spend 92% of their time using apps to access content and carry out tasks, compared to 8% spent using a browser to connect to the mobile web.

• Because they connect respondents’ smartphones to websites to take online surveys, “mobile optimized” research is aligned with the 8% preference level instead of the 92%. 

• "Mobile optimized" is prey to all the problems of the online space, including poor performance -- the commonplace dropped signals and slow load-ins that alienate panelists and diminish completion rates and data quality. .

For a productive conversation about how the in-app mobile approach can align you with the new consumer reality and address your specific research needs, just get in touch at solutions@mfour.com.

Blog bonus: for a quick and entertaining video introduction to mobile research, click here.