For a batter, it’s going five for five.

 

For a golfer, it’s a hole in one.

 

For a bowler, it’s rolling 300.

 

For a movie, it’s an Oscars sweep.

 

And for a mobile app, it’s a five-star average rating in Apple’s App Store.

 

MFour is especially proud that the latest version of our Surveys on the Go® mobile market research app (officially, iOS App V2.13) sports a five-star average rating – based on hundreds of unsolicited ratings since it was introduced on Oct. 1.  

 

The average reflects just a tiny bit of rounding by Apple –the vast majority are five stars and all but a few are either 4’s or 5’s. Some of our most pleased panelists are just tough graders.

 

Below you’ll see some characteristic comments in full. But first you need to know why our five-star rating matters to you.

 

Market research is experiencing huge problems recruiting panelists – online surveys can’t find the right people and they can’t find them fast enough. The advanced mobile research that MFour pioneered when it introduced the first version of Surveys on the Go® in 2011 solves these problems with a harmonious marriage of technological innovation and a carefully cultivated, high-quality panel. 

• We’re in the smartphone era, and there’s nothing that impresses a smartphone user more than an app experience that works perfectly and is fun and rewarding.
• A smooth and engaging survey-taking experience such as our panelists enjoy is crucial to capturing reliable data.
• Clients access the industry’s only all-mobile panel, now totaling more than one million active members.
• The panel is growing by more than 2,000 daily, just by word-of-mouth recommendations such as those you’ll see below.
• Surveys on the Go® has been the most downloaded market research survey app in the App Store each month for nearly three years.
• And since everybody in the smartphone sphere likes it, everybody is present and accounted for, including Millennials, Hispanics, African Americans and parents of young children -- groups that researchers who remain committed to outdated online survey methods still consider hard to reach.
• With advanced, app-based mobile research, all U.S. demographics are at researchers' disposal.                                                                                                                            

 

Enough explanation. The people have spoken, so let's hear them speak!

 

 

For the full story, click this link, then click on "View in iTunes" under the green "On Go"  logo.

 

 

AT&T’s proposed $85 billion purchase of Time Warner Inc., is the latest big-bet business move driven by a huge corporation's need to stay competitive in the mobile era that's defining our lives as consumers and social beings. 

 

"This deal further solidifies the fact that mobile is king," former Time Warner executive Peter Brack told the Los Angeles Times.

 

CNNMoney correspondent Brian Stelter's take is that this deal is happening because of "the ways that phones have changed our lives."

 

“Changed our lives” most decidedly includes the life of the market research industry. Its present and future depend on whether it will take a cue from giants such as Facebook, Google and Intel -- and now AT&T -- and embrace the mobile era.

 

For AT&T, acquiring Time Warner (in a deal that is subject to federal antitrust review), would make it an all-purpose mobile colossus, ranging across the landscape as both a provider of mobile connections and a seller of highly desirable mobile streaming content in news, sports and TV and film entertainment.

 

Time Warner brands – including HBO, Warner Bros., Turner Broadcasting and CNN, would give AT&T new opportunities to package content to attract and retain customers in the hotly competitive mobile carrier sphere.

 

 “Think about the way you use your phone,” CNN's  Stelter writes. “Even in the age of Snapchat, you spend a lot more time watching media than you spend making it. And if you're anything like me, you're increasingly watching that media right on your smart phone and other mobile devices.”

 

AT&T's big bet reflects its own analysis that the vast capabilities and the near-universal embrace of mobile devices are signals to plunge in as deeply as it can. For market research, it’s a move worth following – not just as a news development, but as an example of high-level business strategy following consumers' reality. 

 

After decades spent gearing studies to personal computers and online panels, MR professionals increasingly recognize the need to pivot to mobile. Embracing advanced, state-of-the-art mobile methodology will solve lingering, widespread panel problems. Besides making traditional research survey data more reliable and demographically representative, smartphone capabilities open up entirely new windows, such as in-their-own words video responses and location-based studies powered by phones' GPS feature.

 

If you'd like to learn about the possibilities and best practices in mobile research, don’t be shy. Just click here. We won't inundate you with 85 billion reasons to go mobile; just a few ideas and research solutions will start you off on the path to your mobile future.

Jade Bunke has joined MFour’s team as Director of Marketing. He brings years of experience in marketing science, driving brand differentiation and providing insights into consumer behavior. Jade has lectured widely to business and academic audiences, taught college-level courses in business communications, and is the author of “Seven Principles for Market Dominance: Business Insights for a Global Economy” (2010).

“We’ve worked hard to build our brand. We think Jade is the perfect person to protect and enhance it,” said Chris St. Hilaire, MFour’s founder and CEO.

Jade has a Masters of Business Administration from Pepperdine University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Classical Civilizations from the University of California, Irvine.

“MFour is leveraging advanced technology to shape the future of consumer intelligence in a mobile-centric culture,” says Jade. “It’s truly an honor to join such a forward-thinking organization.”

Heading to Park City for CASRO conference? We'll be there too... here's our booth, come check us out! 

 

We at MFour are really looking forward to Halloween.

 

It isn’t just the candy, the costumes, and the spooky fun. It’s also the end of the month – and that means another opportunity to extend a winning streak of which we’re really proud.

 

Come Oct. 31, we expect our Surveys on the Go® app to be ranked yet again as the most downloaded market research app at Apple’s App Store. It would be our 32^nd consecutive month at #1, going by end-of-month rankings compiled at AppAnnie.com.

 

It’s no accident. MFour pioneered all-mobile, app-based market research when it debuted Surveys on the Go® in 2011. Our software developers in Labs & Engineering have been adding new features and functionalities ever since, keeping us at the forefront and defining the state of the art in mobile research.

 

Because the technology is right, the app works beautifully, and our clients get to field sophisticated surveys that are simple for respondents to answer. This sets up an ongoing virtuous feedback loop, in which smooth, problem-free functionality creates satisfied and engaged survey takers. And satisfied, engaged survey-takers satisfy clients’ need for fast, reliable and insight-laden data.

 

The Surveys on the Go® panel has grown to more than a million active members, all by word of mouth. It continues to grow by more than 2,000 new members each day, making the panel ever more efficient when it comes to putting clients in touch with representative numbers of the Millennials, African Americans, Hispanics and parents of young children they can’t reach by any other means.

 

Obviously this is an instance in which quality has led to quantity – which is just how a business ought to grow.

 

Our nearly three years at #1 in downloads is compelling on its own, but there’s another number we’re extremely proud of: our average rating of 4.5 stars out of a possible five at the App Store, generated by nearly 14,000 users who have posted unsolicited, public ratings and reviews of Surveys on the Go.®

 

So come Oct. 31, chances are we won’t need candy to experience something very sweet.

 

A very happy Halloween to all.

 

And to researchers who haven’t yet experienced what MFour’s advanced, state-of-the-art mobile research can do, remember that we’re on a big winning streak. It’s no trick, and you can get in on the treat.

 

• New: Use Advanced Mobile Targeting
• Don't Let Online Do This To You!
• What MR Must Unlearn About Mobile

We made it into MR Web this morning for our press release on App Tracking & Mobile Device Targeting.

Check it out below:

 

Remember the Beatles refrain that goes "Boy, you're gonna carry that weight a long time?"

 

One of the big risks in market research is having to pile too much weight on too few respondents. When a study requires a certain number of responses from a given demographic, but just can't get enough valid completes, the data will distort reality instead of illuminating it. Data from too few qualified panelists gets too heavily weighted -- sending the study down the long and winding road to unreliability. 

 

A recent article in the New York Times tells a cautionary tale of what can happen when a thin sample becomes too heavily weighted.

 

A respected national online political poll was unable to reach enough African American Millennials as it tracked the presidential race. The pollsters found themselves forced to put a drastic amount of weight on the single African American respondent they were able to reach in the 18- 21-year-old age group. He happened to be a Donald Trump supporter -- and therefore highly unrepresentative of African Americans overall, who overwhelmingly favor Hillary Clinton. The poll fell out of sync with other national election surveys -- and, it appears, with the facts on the ground.

 

Consumer surveys that can't access the right respondents face the same burden, and inevitably will fail to reflect reality. It happens all the time, and the problem has become especially troublesome for tracking studies. But it doesn't have to be that way.

 

Online surveys designed for desktop and laptop computers and relying on email notifications are faltering because the public they need to reach has embraced today's technology, the smartphone, over yesterday's -- the personal computer. The solution for researchers is simple: they can go where the public has gone and embrace the smartphone, too.

 

Recognize that the U.S. public has migrated to mobile, and that it responds faster and more reliably to in-app survey alerts than to email notifications. Seek respondents on their ever-present smartphones and you'll quickly and efficiently find exactly who you need.

 

Our panelists include fully representative, reliably accessible numbers of all the supposedly "hard to reach" groups -- African Americans, Hispanics, Millennials and parents of young children -- who are especially engaged with their phones. When they are present and accounted for, there's no need for distorting weighting.

 

Here's some (unweighted) data that tells the story:

• Among Millennials, majorities of African Americans (57.1%) and Hispanics  (51.6%)  spend five hours or more per day on their smartphones. 

• 92.3% of Millennials use their phones at least several times a day, compared to 32.1% for laptops.

• Only one-third of Millennials (33.1%) say they use a desktop computer at least once a day.

 

(These are findings from MFour's Millennial Insights Project, a demographically representative recent survey of 1,000 U.S. Millennials.)

 

A 2015 study by the Pew Research Center found that “smartphone ownership is nearing the saturation point with some groups: 86% of those ages 18-29 have a smartphone, as do 83% of those ages 30-49."

 

Is there any good reason for market research, whose job is to understand what people think and feel, not to reach out to the public on the device it has chosen overwhelmingly for expressing thoughts and feelings?

 

Granted, older demographics have not gravitated quite so thoroughly to mobile. But even among them the numbers are growing.

 

In tracking studies that need to encompass all age groups, it can still make sense to continue using online surveys for the older demographics that remain more comfortable with them. Researchers can then blend those results with mobile data from the mobile-oriented  majority.  

 

Through integration and calibration, the validity of past online tracking can be preserved through a gradual transition to mobile research. Continuity with historic tracking data need not be broken.

 

Yes, this is weighting. But it's judicious weighting that increases tracking studies' reliability while helping them move gradually into the mobile era.

 

Change is never easy, but the rewards of all-mobile, app-based research are too great, and the consequences of remaining behind the times with online surveys and email notifications are too drastic. Soon, political pollsters and consumer researchers alike will be happily mobile and relieved to work with data that's not burdened by a lot of unhealthy weight.

 

To get a personal demo of how app-driven mobile works, and how it will work for you, please click here. 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a headline worth pondering: “Brands to Ad Agencies: Diversify or Else.”

 

It tops a New York Times article that relates how some big clients “have publicly put pressure on the agencies they work with to hire more women and minorities.”

 

Market research also faces a work force diversity challenge.

 

We’re not talking about whether the staff members at MR firms and brands’ research departments sufficiently mirror the public they’re trying to understand. We wouldn’t presume to claim any insights about that.

 

We’re talking about the vast work force that provides market research with the raw material the industry’s professional staffs need to do their jobs. It’s a work force of millions of survey respondents, and it’s absolutely imperative that they mirror our nation in all its diversity. They produce the raw material on which our industry thrives: data about what they do, think and feel as consumers. From the data they give us we mine insights into how American business can satisfy the wants and needs of the American marketplace.

 

When it comes to survey respondents, “diversify or else" is just common sense. 

 

It’s MFour’s contention – actually it’s MFour’s entire premise – that the only path to understanding American consumers in all their diversity is to approach them in a way that’s familiar, comfortable, engaging and convenient. It means reaching out on the smartphones that are in almost every hand, pocket or handbag.

 

The smartphone is our society’s great common denominator. It serves multitudes in myriad ways, and is embraced by nearly all. This is the fact of how information is exchanged in the 21^st century. Now, more and more professionals in the market research industry are starting to come to grips with this reality. 

 

It’s sinking in that online research is no longer a reliable pipeline for rich, representative data. Reaching Millennials, Hispanics, African Americans, and, increasingly, any other consumer demographic, means finding and engaging them on the devices that are instrumental to their day-by-day, hour-by-hour existence.

 

It's also important to note the public's growing indifference to (and frustration over) stuffed email inboxes, where invitations to take online surveys land, then are readily deleted or ignored.

 

Online panelists are expected to open an email, then click on a link to access a survey housed on the web. It's cumbersome and inefficient -- in contrast to all-mobile "native" apps that simplify the process to a single step: answer a push prompt that sounds on the phone,  then take the survey. The app is integral to the phone, and therefore appreciated. Each panelist has chosen to download and use MFour's Surveys on the Go® app. Each is free to sound off about it with public ratings and comments at the App Store and Google Play. SOTG's rating at both sites is more than four stars out of five.

 

Survey apps align with the ethic of transparency and accountability that Americans cherish. And in strictly practical terms, they harmonize with Americans' preferences in information and communications technology.

 

 

So when it comes to market research,  “diversify or else” is just another way of saying "app-based mobile or else."

 

 

The best way to get there is to click here.

 

MFour is there in (hopefully) sunny Boca Raton, Florida at TMRE this  week. Make sure to find us at booth #420 and we'll talk mobile.