The topic on many a mind at the Quirk’s Event West this week was “Location. Location. Location.” Yep, what matters most in real estate is also what matters most in understanding the consumer journey, and attendees came away with a better awareness of what they can achieve after being introduced to unique Path-2- Purchase™ Platform solutions by MFour.

Path-2-Purchase matches real people with the places they go to give insights professionals previously unobtainable data and insights into consumer journeys across 12.5 million U.S. locations. Leveraging MFour’s 2 million member, first-party panel, Path-2-Purchase shows where consumers are, where they are going, and where they have been in the past, as well as how often and how long they stayed during each visit.

Here are some key uses  we touched on with our Quirk’s Event visitors:

– Identifying and understanding consumers who eat at restaurant chains.

– Tracking travelers at theme parks over their entire stay.

– How to identify and understand loyal customers, competitors’ loyalists, and consumers in a given vertical who are in play.

–  How mobile-app location research accomplishes ironclad validation of people and places.

We also talked a lot about Do-It-Yourself research, and what sets our MFourDIY^® platform apart from other DIY products. Which meant we talked a lot about features such as demographic reach, panel quality and validation, and noted that MFour's DIY platform is sophisticated as well as speedy and cost-efficient, with full location-research and multimedia question and capture features.

Thanks to all who came by to talk consumer insights with us. To continue that conversation, or start a new one, you can set up a live demo just by clicking here.

And to learn more about mobile-app research on the Path-2 Purchase™ Platform, browse our searchable blog. Just click here.

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

The New Best Practices for Measuring ROI on OOH Campaigns

Research Pain Points Are Everywhere. Here's Your Pain Relief.

Consumers' Big Data Is Great, and Surveys Complete the Picture

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

Out of Home advertising (OOH) has produced its share of indelible creative moments.

– The “Coppertone Girl” with her mischievous dog

– The spelling-challenged spotted cows of Chick-fil-A’s “Eat Mor Chikin” campaign.

– And, literally above all others, the Goodyear Blimp.

As for OOH effectiveness, the Rapport agency offers this report, based on case study findings from the IPA (Institute of Practioners in Advertising).

The audience for OOH is, by definition, on the move. That makes mobile GeoLocation studies the ideal way to find actual consumers who’ve been exposed, and to survey them to determine lift in ad awareness, brand and product awareness, and intent to purchase. To learn how it’s done, and how it can meet your specific needs for advanced OOH metrics, just get in touch by clicking here.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, now is the winter of the consumer research industry's discontent. The recently-released GreenBook Research Industry Trends Report (GRIT) announces that insights professionals "are unequivocal in their belief that the industry is under immense pressure to change.”

Here are key quotes from the report, a wide-ranging, twice-yearly, survey-based snapshot of the industry. Once more, the quality and representativeness of consumer panels is an acute concern.

– "Most corporate researchers aren’t very satisfied with multiple aspects of industry research."

– "The dominance of online surveys is striking: they make up 56% of technique usage by project. Mobile-only surveys remain a distant second, at 14%.”

– "Technology/innovation is considered the biggest challenge facing the industry.”

– The most frequently-cited specific challenge is data reliability. As one of the study's nearly 1,600 respondents said, "real consumers are often not inclined to take part in research....due to lack of consumers’ interest, it’s difficult to generate reliable, sincere and in-depth answers.”

– One important way to meet these challenges is "leveraging technology to get insights where people are, where they make decisions, where they use products and services.”

– "Examples [of new methods] mentioned in the survey include using mobile devices and geo-fencing for in-the-moment research and retail experience surveys.”

In fact, in-the-moment research is here already, along with a solution to the panel woes long documented by GRIT. Newly-developed mobile-app Path-2-Purchase™ solutions let researchers identify the right consumers to follow, then track and map their movements. The result is a highly intelligible and quickly useful trove of Big Data that lets researchers pinpoint important consumer segments by who they are, where they go, and how often. They can then create surveys to discover the "why" of consumer attitudes and behaviors – the crucial factor that Big Data alone can't provide.

As for the deep concern about panel quality and representativeness documented in the GRIT Report, the way forward is simply to follow where consumers already have led: to a deep and ongoing engagement with mobile apps. By harnessing seamless, in-app survey functionality combined with a fair cash incentive, insights professionals will bring back those disappearing research participants.

There's ample outside validation of mobile-app panelists' engagement and satisfaction with the in-app research process. WatchMojo, a website and YouTube channel that churns out Top 10 lists on just about everything, recently cited the leading consumer research app, Surveys On The Go®, as one of the “Top 5 Apps That Can Make You Money."

Beyond that, mobile-app research clients can verify engagement simply by checking the unsolicited comments and ratings panel members leave at Apple’s App Store and Google Play. For Surveys On The Go® the ratings are consistently about 4.5 stars on a scale of 5.

Here’s one last quote from GRIT: “As authors of this GRIT Report, we think the industry will navigate these changes well and will thrive in the long run.” You don't have to wait to get started.

To download the GRIT report, click here. And for a productive conversation about the mobile-app solutions that can meet your projects’ specific needs and help your brands or clients thrive, just get in touch by clicking here.

Here’s a hearty welcome to Orange County, California to all conferees at the Quirk’s Event, West Coast Edition, running Tuesday and Wednesday.

Stop by the MFour booth, #701, for unique experiences from the hometown research solutions team (our headquarters is a quick skip in a beachward direction from the event’s location at the Hotel Irvine).

One unique experience at the MFour booth will be learning about Path-2-Purchase™ consumer mapping. This location-based set of solutions takes a giant step forward in understanding who’s frequenting locations relevant to your brand or your rivals’ brands – and how frequently they’re going. Among its many uses is identifying brand loyalists, brand agnostics, and brand rejecters, so you can reach them with complete accuracy. In addition to our Big Data location capture, you'll obtain survey insights into the “why” to give you a full picture of the consumers you most want to target.

Speaking of targets, MFour’s booth also gives you a chance to have the Cornhole Experience. Sharp targeting is the difference-maker in data quality, and in this exacting test of hand-eye coordination as well. Test your skill at Cornhole before or after you’ve gotten an earful about advanced, mobile-app research. Winners at Cornhole get an MFour T-shirt. Winners at mobile-app research get the data they need to get the business results they need.

Pat Brassil, Todd Costello, Andreas Hoelting and Blake Skorich are your mobile-app research experts and hosts at the Quirk’s Event. When you meet Todd, a transplanted loyal son of Philadelphia, tell him you’re rooting hard for his Eagles in the Super Bowl. Maybe he’ll sneak you a T-shirt, or at least give you directions to a nice little cheesesteak joint. And if you’re interested in fast cars as well as fast research, Andreas is your man for in-depth insights.

For those who aren’t enjoying a winter respite in sunny Southern California, a productive conversation about how advanced mobile-app research can meet your projects’ specific needs is always available, just by clicking here.

Here are some interesting viewpoints on accessing the most relevant and trustworthy consumer data, from “Take Your Customer Relationship To The Next Level,” a recent MediaPost column by Spyro Kourtis, President and CEO of HackerAgency, a Seattle marketing firm.

– "Without a 360-degree holistic view of the customer you will never get the true personal connection. Traditional companies most often have this problem because of their multiple customer databases through their retail stores, online, credit cards. All this data can get in the way of a clean view of each individual.”

– "One can aptly describe “brand” in a single word: “personality.” In your most successful relationships, you are appreciated for who you are. In turn, brands who have a special connection with their customers based on their personality are at an advantage.”

– "If You Don’t Know, Ask! Finding the right nugget to bring you closer to a customer can be a challenge, and if you and your marketing teams haven’t figured out a recipe for success, remember that surveys can be your friend….[Properly done], the data you capture will be acted upon, useful and valuable to both you and your customers.”

Makes sense to us. How about you? Here’s the full commentary. And to set up a one-on-one conversation about how mobile-app research can let you find and survey just the right people – including your customers or a competitor’s – at just the right places and times, get in touch by just clicking here.

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

Do You Care Whether Your Research Partner Knows How To Innovate?

Why Research Experiences Should Never Be Gray

Facebook's Ad Environment Got Tougher. Here's Your Next Move.

And here's a Friday video to get you all charged up for your weekend.

Dorian Smiley, Vanessa Hernandez, Kristin Caiella (L-R)

“Innovation lags in countries where the culture emphasizes risk avoidance and where R&D is seen purely [as] an expense, not an investment.”

This quote from Prinn Panitchpakdi, an investment executive in Thailand, jumps out from a new Bloomberg report on how nations rank in several measures of innovation. He couldn’t be more correct, and what’s true of countries is equally true of industries and individual companies. If innovation isn’t a core value, stagnation follows.

The bad news is that by Bloomberg’s calculation, the United States has slipped out of the global Top 10 for innovation. We were leapfrogged in the new rankings by France, which jumped from 11^th to 9^th, while the USA slid from 9^th to 11^th. South Korea came in first, with an aggregate score of 89.28 across the seven categories Bloomberg used in its rankings. The United States’ score was 80.42, about 10% below South Korea. Others in the Top 10, in order, were Sweden, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Finland and Denmark (#s 2 to 8), and Israel (10^th).

The U.S. ranked first in “high-tech density” – a measure of a nation’s share of the globe’s tech companies. It was second in the share of patents awarded to its residents, sixth in productivity per worker, and 10^th in “R&D intensity,” defined as research and development expenditures as a percentage of GDP. Of greatest concern was the United States’ #42 ranking in “Tertiary efficiency,” an educational metric that factors in the percentage of the population that’s enrolled in post-secondary education or has earned a higher-education degree, as well as the proportion of science and engineering degrees among the educated populace.

Should brands and companies value innovation? Only if they want to share in the prosperity that comes with a growing economic pie, instead of scrambling for bites of a shrinking one. In the market research sphere, valuing innovation means making it an important part of your own scorecard when you’re seeking the technology, panel engagement, and survey and analysis capabilities you need to obtain data and insights that are timely, validated, accurate, and provide a trustworthy basis for the business decisions that will drive a company’s growth.

While “what can you do for me?” is certainly the foremost question you should ask when you’re vetting potential research suppliers, it’s also worth asking, “what are you doing to invent a better/faster/easier/more reliable way for me to achieve what my research needs to achieve?" If the answer is hemming and hawing, you know you are not talking to an innovator. But if you get an answer full of specific details about new research capabilities you can use, including what they do, how they work, and why they aren’t the same old approaches and techniques repackaged under an innovative-sounding name, then you’re in the presence of a real innovator who can help you drive your brand's success.

Products and solutions such as mobile-app surveys, real-time GeoLocation studies, video-enriched surveys, and Social Ad Testing are among MFour’s investments in market research R&D. The newest MFour capability, Path to Purchase Solutions, weds Big Data to survey data by tracking consumers’ daily journeys to 12.5 million U.S. retail locations and other points of market research interest. You can also get the most pinpointed location-based surveys, reaching shoppers in-store or in a mobile exit survey.  

Here’s another quote about the importance of innovation, this one from Amy Jones, Vice President of Market Research for Warner Bros. Pictures: “MFour is always trying to do new things. They’re presenting us with new ideas and new ways of doing research.”

For a productive conversation about how mobile-app research and innovation can fit your projects’ specific needs, just get in touch by clicking here.

Facebook just made life more challenging for advertisers who want to reach more than 200 million U.S users and more than 2 billion worldwide.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that the social media dominator will privilege content posted and shared by its users’ family and friends over advertising and other commercial content. The reason he gave was that “posts from businesses, brands and media [are] crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect with each other." Consequently, the algorithm governing the Facebook News Feed has been changed to favor posts by friends, along with content that drives commentary and sharing.

Some advertisers may be thinking of leaving Facebook, but its massive audience still presents a huge opportunity for those who can create great content tailored to succeed in the social media ecosystem. Instead of retreating, advertisers can take Facebook’s new policy as a challenge to up their games, and create meaningful, attention-getting messaging that will drive the kinds of engaged interactions Facebook's new algorithm will promote.

That’s easier said than done, but when was effective advertising ever easy? It takes intense effort to get the creative, the placement and the timing right. In the social media ad space, that means putting an ad to the acid test before it's launched. A unique solution called Social Ad Testing lets you see whether your ads will sink or swim in social media users’ actual personal news feeds -- including Facebook's newly-altered environment. Here’s how it works:

– First, select members of a proprietary mobile-research panel who match an ad campaign's audience.

– Then inject your test ad into these targeted consumers' news feeds, whether on Facebook or other platforms, including Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

– Recipients will experience the test ad as part of the regular stream of content flowing through their news feeds. They won’t know it’s a test, so their reactions will not just simulate reality – they’ll be reality.

– In the first phase of the test, advertisers will learn by simply observing a test ad’s recipients. Does the ad do what Facebook now says content should do – that is, drive shares and comments? Further, what's the viewing time, and how likely are viewers to click on the ad or turn on a video ad's audio?

– In the next phase, advertisers get to interact with their test recipients by sending them a survey that asks for both unaided and aided recall and qualitative opinions about the ad. You’ll direct them to see the ad again, and then capture their comments on what they liked or disliked, what they found memorable, forgettable, or completely ignorable, and whether they intend to shop and buy.

– If the test shows your planned ad is well-received and strongly positioned to drive sales, then launch it with confidence and, perhaps, boost its budget on social media.

– If the ad does not test well, then rework it, based on your test respondents’ comments and interactions. Retest until ready for success.

– Test how ads fare across different social platforms. Is the altered Facebook News Feed still a good home for your social campaign? Or does your comparative testing show that awareness and engagement are higher with the target audience on another social platform?

The bottom line is, the better your advertising is, the better experience its recipients will have. And therefore, the more likely it will be to flourish amid social media users' news feeds, including Facebook's changed environment. For a productive conversation on how Social Ad Testing can help you prepare for successful social media campaigns, just get in touch by clicking here.