'Tis the season to be spending, and when shoppers are feeling comfort and joy about their economic circumstances, brands and retailers tend to benefit.  To this end, let’s look at a few interesting insights from the National Retail Federation on how this holiday shopping season is shaping up for retailers nationwide.

• U.S. retail sales, including e-commerce and mail order, are expected to reach $655.8 billion for November and December, up 3.6% from 2015.

• That would mark the 14^th year of growth for holiday sales in the past 15 – the only exception being 2008, as the economy fell into a deep recession.

• Despite certain predictions that brick and mortar stores are on the way out, 82.2% of expected 2016 holiday sales will take place in-store. But e-commerce is indeed coming on as the NRF expects combined online and mail order sales to make up 17.8% of holiday expenditures, with e-commerce growing 7% to 10% over 2015.

• The retail sectors that are most dependent on holiday sales, based on 2015 results, are jewelry stores (27.4% of annual revenues are crammed into the two months); department stores (24.2%), sporting goods/hobby/books/music (23.2%); and discount department stores (23%).

• Other categories doing 20% or more of their annual business during the two holiday months are electronics/appliance stores, clothing stores, and shoe stores.

• e-commerce and mail orders are expected to reap 22.5% of their annual sales during November and December.

•  As a benchmark, note that November and December account for only 16.3% of the year’s 362 shopping days – leaving out Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.

• The NRF found that the average shopper expects to spend $935.58 on holiday purchases this year – a 1.8% downtick from last year’s record  of $952.58. Where will those shopping dollars go?

Gifts: 62.94%

Non-gift purchases driven by holiday discounts: 14.96%                                  

Candy and food: 11.18%

Decorations: 5.85%

Greeting cards and postage: 2.93%

Flowers and potted plants: 2.18%

• Those who buy gifts also receive them – and this year’s most preferred items are gift cards, favored by 61% of the NRF’s respondents; clothing/clothing accessories, 51%; and entertainment content (books, CDs, DVDs, videos and video games), 40%.

The story is not just in the numbers. Holiday shoppers aren’t simply looking to buy; they’re looking to buy for people they care about. This affords marketers and researchers a special opportunity to gain insights into consumers’ deepest emotions about brands, products, and the shopping experience. Research, in particular, can benefit by looking at the holidays not as a time to wind things down, but as an opportunity to gain insights when shoppers are most engaged in the shopping experience.

 

An ideal way to get an immediate jump on holiday consumer research opportunities is with MFourDIY ™ -- the nation's only all-mobile, DIY survey-building platform.  You can program and field a survey in less than an hour, allowing you to start reaping insights in time for Black Friday, and then on through the holiday season.

 

To learn more, email the most solutions-focused person in DIY mobile market research (his name is Chris) at ctyau@mfour.com.

 

 

Pundits were predicting that the Hispanic vote would put Hillary Clinton over the top and into the White House. While that didn’t happen, Hispanic Americans continue to be a growing force, both in the electorate and in consumer markets. How many reasons are there for marketers and researchers to make understanding Hispanics a top priority? The answer is 57 million – the nation’s Hispanic population. With this in mind, MediaPost columnist Lee Vann looked at voter statistics to frame a few broader insights.

• Nationally, Hispanics made up 12% of eligible voters – 27.3 million total.
• With nearly one million Hispanics in Florida casting ballots in early voting, “this year’s election clearly showed that Latinos can be united, motivated, and mobilized by clear and relevant messages.”
• Accounting for 10% of registered voters in Connecticut and Illinois – and more than 7% in Massachusetts, Idaho, Rhode Island, and Hawaii – Hispanics have become a major presence all across the United States.
• Hispanics are avid mobile adopters, so when marketers and market researchers think about sending those “clear and relevant messages,” they need to think about sending them via smartphone.

If you’re looking to appeal to Hispanic Americans, it’s important that you keep them top-of-mind as you develop your market research strategy. Once you’re able to develop the right message for this growing voter and consumer group, you also need to make sure you’re presenting your value proposition through the right marketing channels. And that’s true whether you’re trying to sell a candidate or a product.

 

 

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile research as you head into this pre-Thanksgiving weekend:

 

• 4 Surprise Insights: Deciding What to Watch on TV 

• Pinpoint Respondents By the Apps They Use

• Understanding Mobile Gives Legacy Media a Chance

 

And here's a Friday tune to send you into your weekend rocking out thankfully.

 

 

Yes, quality matters. In fact, a quality experience is not only worth paying for, it’s worth waiting for. We’re not talking about a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, an ambitious home remodeling or a lavish wedding. We’re talking about the mundane, everyday activity of finding something good to watch. A new study by Ericsson ConsumerLab yielded some surprising insights into what people will do for quality.

• 44% of Americans who watched regularly scheduled free TV programs said that at least once a day while flipping through channels, they failed to find anything worth watching. That compares to 34% of subscribers to paid services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime.

• Only 51% of free-TV watchers said they were satisfied with the overall experience of searching for programs. Paying subscribers had a satisfaction rate of 63%.

These figures suggest a need for more research into the “why” –  that is, what are viewers’ reasons for being satisfied or dissatisfied with their searches for the right programs? The above numbers identify a big consumer satisfaction problem. Probing for the reasons could help solve or at least alleviate it.

• Free TV viewers spend 15% of their TV time searching for programming to watch.

• That’s proportionally way less time than paying subscribers spend searching for programs. It’s 34% for Netflix users, 29.7% for Amazon Prime, and 24.6% for Hulu.

Usually, consumers would be expected to choose the more time-efficient option – free TV – over the one where the cost-benefit ratio of time spent searching for programs seems much worse. Yet clearly there’s a great hunger to watch programs we must pay for.

Ericsson puts it this way: “The time-consuming discovery process can be frustrating, yet it is acceptable because [Video on Demand] enables consumers to find content they want to watch, when they want to watch it.” The takeaway is the importance of offering quality. Paid-TV consumers are willing to pay not only in dollars, but in precious time, to access quality programming. For them, “quick and easy” is less satisfying than “be willing to work for what you want.”

 

But clearly, the Ericsson study shows room for improvement for both paid and free TV providers. Picking a program to watch is a kind of shopping experience, and a third or more of TV providers’ customers aren’t happy with it. The TV provider that can acquire insights pointing to a solution could be rewarded with a nice competitive advantage.

 

 

It’s vital for any brand or company to make 5-star service its top priority. Sam Walton, who founded Walmart and Sam’s Club, put it best: “The goal…is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary.” It’s with that in mind that we’re on a mission to make sure our clients succeed with their research studies while giving them service that aims for Sam Walton’s ideal. But those successes depend on our other million-plus customers—the active panelists who use the all-mobile Surveys on the Go® app. Their satisfaction has to be 5-star because they’re the people who are providing answers and insights for our clients.

 

Being all about above-and-beyond service means giving our panelists a fun, seamless survey experience on their smartphones. It’s the only way to earn their honest engagement – without which all would be lost. That’s why we’re happy when they share their satisfaction with the rest of the world. In fact, we get 5-star ratings on our app daily. Every person and every comment matters, including these much-appreciated thoughts from this morning:

 

Fun App I'm in love

★★★★★

“Getting paid for your opinion in a survey all adds up.”

by Stefanie Richardson on 11/16/2016

 

Amazing!

★★★★★

“It really works. Very convient. And they actually pay you!”

by Aurianna Duran on 11/16/2016

 

Easy

★★★★★

“I love this application because it's easy to use and I love completing surveys. You also get financial benefits from doing them.”

by Cassandra Johnson on 11/16/2016

 

Free money is fun!

★★★★★

“Not hard, makes you money, surveys help make companies better, win-win all around!”

by Andrew Chinn on 11/16/2016

 

Yay!

★★★★★

"Yay! Just made extra money for my once a week Starbucks mommies get together."

by Geekmonkies on 11/16/2016

 

Keep it simple and keep your focus. As Sam put it, the goal is “not just the best, but legendary.” We take that to heart. After all, we love 5-star ratings.

 

You can click here and here to see more on how panel members respond to our commitment to 5-star service.

 

 

It’s down to the final five in the countdown of the Top 25 apps. With App Tracking technology, you can now see which apps your customers (or prospective customers) are downloading. So click on the icons below to see how many Android users on the all-mobile Surveys on the Go® panel have downloaded the top apps. By delving into their proven interests and preferences, as reflected in their apps, you can learn more about your audience than ever before.

 

The Top 25 is for fun, but remember that there are many more apps you can track to bring top-tier mobile research to your finger tips.

 

 

 MFour continues to expand with more hires this month, adding three new members to a team that has more than doubled in the last two years. The new staff members will drive ongoing enhancements that advance survey technology and power clients’ research projects. They include Software Engineer Arian Ashraghi and Quality Assurance Engineer Alex Oakley, who’ll join the Labs & Engineering team. Elliot Seid, a Resarch Associate, joins the Operations department.

 

Arian is an experienced app developer who’ll play an important part in advancing MFour’s capabilities, including creating new features for its best-in-class survey products. He’s an even more experienced violinist, having performed in concerts since taking up the instrument at age six. As an entrepreneur, Arian founded his own company, Irvine-based Freeglob, where he developed and marketed a shopping and social networking app called ShoppingAround. Arian is a graduate of Roudehen Azan University in Tehran, Iran.

 

Alex’s focus is to help ensure top quality in technology, including perfecting processes and defining best practices. He launched a quality assurance department in his previous job at SpinDance, a tech company in Michigan. Alex had lived in Michigan all his life until his recent move to Southern California. He says he’ll continue to root for all the Detroit sports teams, making him a natural fit with MFour’s company culture of widely-varying sports allegiances.

 

Elliot will support multiple facets of research projects, including fielding, monitoring, quality control and data analysis. Elliot is a graduate of University of California, Irvine, with a degree in Psychology and Social Behavior. He comes to MFour after previous jobs at Blizzard Entertainment and Stanford University.

 

We’re excited to welcome these three team members and will soon be announcing more new hires.

 

 

 

Each print edition of the New York Times has the motto “All the News That’s Fit to Print” at the top of the page, but according to the latest earnings report, it may want to update its motto to “All the News Fits into Your Phone.”

 

If you follow the money, the takeaway is that our great institutions are challenged by – and finding ways to adapt to – the mobile era that we’re in now. And that includes the market research industry, where the question is shifting from “should we use mobile studies?” to “what’s the best approach to mobile studies?” Key 3^rd quarter results tell how the New York Times is adapting – and starting to reap particularly promising rewards in the mobile realm:

• Digital advertising grew 21%, but Times executives announced that revenue from “traditional” display ads for desktop was “weak.”

• Mobile stepped into the gap left by the decline of desktop as mobile ad revenue “continued to grow at a rapid rate,” and now represents 24% of all digital ad income.

• The Times ended the quarter with 1.56 million digital subscribers, up 30% over a year ago.

• Revenue from digital circulation (readers’ subscription fees) rose 15.4% for the quarter, while revenue from print circulation fell 1%.

• Print advertising revenue fell 19%, continuing the downslide that has dogged newspapers for years, placing them on the endangered media species list.

But as the Times’ commitment shows, there’s hope in transformative mobile adaptation.

 

 

 

 

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile research as you head into the weekend.

 

Whatever else you do, don't forget to check at the bottom for something that's both fun and relevant.

• 3 Tips for Keeping Up in the Mobile Marketing Race
• Should Market Research React to Polling Errors?
• Hurdles to Accurate Polling Predictions

And here's a Friday tune to send you into your weekend bopping to a positive vibe.