MFour was featured in RFL Communications  for our use of fingerprint validation. Check it out below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sPePnRLp60

 

 

 

 

 

¡MILLENNIALS!

 

“What do Millennials Want?” is a question businesses and market researchers need to answer now and for many years to come. 

We take a particular interest in Millennials as consumers, and they make up a majority of our million-active-member U.S. survey panel. Consequently, we're ideally positioned for our ongoing Millennial Insights Project.

After publishing  the first three installments individually, we've gathered links to each one  in this post for easy reference, and for readers who may have missed them earlier. The project's first phase was  a survey of 1,000 Millennials fielded Sept. 10 and completed within two hours using MFourDIY™.  We reported findings about Millennials' preferences in Entertainment, Money and Finance, and Technology.

To see them, just click on the topic names below. Note that each segment gives a detailed account of the survey methodology; you also can follow a link from each report to access the survey's Project Tracker. We invite you to review  the questions we asked, explore the data we gathered, and get a sense of how we operate and what MFourDIY™can help you accomplish.  

Entertainment 

Money and Finance

Technology

Remember, MFour is unique in fielding surveys that respondents receive and answer solely on an app they’ve downloaded to their smartphones or tablets. Unlike flawed, quick-fix mobile methods, which simply repackage online surveys that require emails notifications and   web-based questionnaires, we engage today’s consumers where they live — on their phones and using apps.

Because we're uniquely positioned to reach Millennials, we'll continue to engage  them and report back on what we find. 

 

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

• Fingerprint Validation for Panelists
• Track Mobile Apps & Score Touchdowns!
• How You Can Watch TV Watchers

 

 

 

Today’s splintered TV viewing landscape demands a new research approach.

 

It sounds like something we’d say ourselves, but in this case it’s the theme of a very cogent commentary at MediaPost.com by media consultant Steve Sternberg.

 

He poses important questions that programmers and advertisers need answered, but that are beyond the reach of customary data-gathering methods in the TV/Entertainment sphere.

 

Writes Sternberg: “Methods of drawing samples might need to be revisited, not to mention ways to evaluate media usage even among standard demographic age groups. Consumers whose media usage was once relatively similar if they were in the same few demographic categories may no longer be as cohesive as we think. Large groups of broadly similar consumers now get their video content in substantially different ways.”

 

Sternberg poses a series of questions about how viewer characteristics and habits might vary across the many ways people now access programming, but says that for now the answers remain a matter of guesswork: 

 

“We can speculate on these things, but this is where research needs to go now,” he writes. “Change is happening too quickly, and research needs to turn on a dime.”

 

“TV might be everywhere,” Sternberg concludes, “but really good research is still nowhere near where it needs to be.”

 

To us at MFour, Sternberg’s article reads like a request for proposals.

 

Our value proposition is this: By applying advanced, all-mobile survey methodology, along with years of experience with numerous projects for entertainment clients, we can get the answers and insights Sternberg and many others crave.

 

Our fans include Derek Turk, Vice President of Ratings & Research for Lions Gate Entertainment, who has raved about MFourDIY™, the market research industry’s first and only all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey platform. “Easy to program and field,” Turk says.

 

For a deeper look into what MFourDIY™ (or our custom-built research solutions) can do in the advertising/entertainment realm, check out our recent report, “1,000-Millennial Study Explores Entertainment Consumption,” part of our ongoing Millennial Insights Project. You’ll see  that we can segment respondents by their individual viewing habits – enabling researchers to do a deep dive into the very questions Sternberg says are begging to be answered.

 

And please feel free to click above-right on "contact" to set up a demonstration.

 

 

It’s that time of year again, when autumn becomes a cornucopia of delights for sports fans.

 

The National Football League is in full swing; Major League Baseball has entered its climactic playoffs, the National Hockey League and National Basketball Assn. are back in action with preseason games, and qualifying rounds are underway in soccer’s biggest competition, the World Cup.

 

While fans feast on this menu, market researchers can feast on the insight-rich data to be had by surveying those fans – not just about their sports interests, but anything researchers might want to know about people who are avid about sports.

 

Whatever you want to learn from sports fans, MFour’s App Tracking capability is the surest, most efficient way to find them.

 

Here’s how it works:

 

We gather passive data telling us which apps the Android users on our million active-member Surveys on the Go® panel are using.

 

Clients target respondents who use a given app, then send them a survey they receive and answer with their smartphones.

 

The lines of inquiry are limitless. But reaching avid sports fans efficiently and reliably takes a very specific and specialized approach. Targeting them by the sports apps they use is the shortcut that will answer many a research need.

 

Here are a few of the popular sports apps whose users you can access with App Tracking:

 

• NFL Mobile
• NBA Mobile
• Fox Sports
• ESPN
• Yahoo Fantasy Sports

                                                                                                                                               

You can ask these committed fans anything. Gain insights into buying habits for sports merchandise, favorite game-day snacks, or the popularity and effectiveness of a particular star athlete’s product endorsements.

 

• Need to know what fans think is a fair price for a sports jersey?
• Trying to decide whether to cut ties with a player who’s been starring in a commercial, but now faces bad publicity over an off-field incident?
• Wondering about fans’ willingness to give up a big screen experience and watch games on smartphones?
• When it comes to preferences within a given product category, do football fans differ from baseball or basketball fans?

 

 

Finding the most attuned fans with App Tracking helps you score rapid insights.

 

 

And of course, app-based targeting brings the same advantages for reaching consumers with proven interests and preferences in any other category -- travel, entertainment, banking, technology, retail shoppers, and social media users, among others.

 

 

Mobile App Tracking is always in season.

 

To learn more, click on our contact button above and we’ll fill you in.

 

 

 

 

When Popeye says “I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam,” then toots his pipe, we believe him implicitly.

 

Everyone else has to prove it. Especially the people you’re counting on to take your research surveys.

 

Which is why MFour has added fingerprint scanning as its latest layer of validation to ensure that members of our all-mobile, Surveys on the Go® research panel are who they say they are.

 

Many phones have fingerprint recognition capabilities for unlocking the device (Apple’s Touch ID and Samsung’s Fingerprint Scanner, for example); MFour extends this so that SOTG members can sign in to the survey app with fingerprints that validate who they are. This adds another degree of assurance that respondents’ identities are confirmed and the data they provide is reliable.

 

Fingerprint scanning joins the other layers of respondent validation you get with MFour:

 

• Consistency between a respondent’s SOTG account and a linked Facebook account.
• Consistency between the respondent’s SOTG account and his or her survey payout account with PayPal, Visa, Amazon or Starbucks.
• GPS-enabled GeoValidation® to identify respondents’ whereabouts.
• Passive tracking data automatically captured from panel members’ phones.
• Data cleaning by our in-house research and operations experts, who analyze completed surveys for disqualifying signs of speeding, flat-lining, and open-ended responses that are too brief or make no sense. Data cleaning is provided at no charge.
• Respondents who cheat or give non-responsive answers are dismissed from the panel and locked out of rejoining.

 

From the panelists’ point of view, fingerprint scanning to sign in to Surveys on the Go® provides one more way to explore and enjoy a capability of their beloved smartphones. So it’s a win-win for respondents and clients alike.

 

They’re happy to let us (and you) check their credentials at the door.

 

 

 

 

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from our 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 to mobilize your spirits and get you humming.

 

Talking Technology With 1,000 Millennials

 

Trump v Clinton Mudsling Splatters MR

 

Follow Facebook's Lead...Into Mobile

 

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

 

 

The biggest names in business continue to place ever-bigger bets in the mobile realm.

 

Facebook, already a colossus of mobile reach and mobile revenue, aims to become even more colossal by introducing Marketplace, a newly-announced free mobile-shopping tool that will play matchmaker between buyers and sellers. It’s a leap into the secondary market in which Facebook becomes a space where shoppers and sellers can meet, negotiate prices, and solidify delivery plans – all inside its mobile app.

 

With $9.5 billion in mobile advertising revenue during the first half of 2016 (that’s 83% of its overall advertising income), Facebook can afford to create this new mobile Marketplace without charging sellers an entry fee. It’s likely to compete with Amazon Marketplace and eBay, which do take a cut of sellers' revenue, and Craigslist.

 

As with all big developments in the mobile realm – and they’re happening almost every day – there are important implications for market research. Clinging to online panels when consumers are all but living on their smartphones and turning to mobile apps looks increasingly like a dead end strategy. Mobile adoption is now all but universal, and the appeal of online research tools such as email and personal computers  is waning, especially among consumers under 40.

 

But change comes hard, and we know there's some hesitation to dive into mobile, even with the likes of Facebook telling you the water's fine.

 

 

With that in mind, here are three ideas to consider:

 

• If you’re clinging to online panel and still hesitant to try mobile, consider this thought piece that Michael Smith, MFour’s Chief Product Officer and Director of Panel, contributed to GreenBook.

• If you’re worried that going mobile will invalidate past online data that you value, you can reconcile, integrate and calibrate the historic online data with new mobile data, assuring a smooth transition to the new reality. No need to worry about a sudden jolt rupturing your research's continuity.                    

• If you’re ready for mobile but want to know more about the best practices and approaches – and are worried about whether mobile comes with certain limitations such as short surveys (they don’t, at least not in state-of-the-art mobile methods), this article by MFour founder and CEO Chris St. Hilaire will tell you what to look for.

 

If you don't have Facebook-style billions to bet on mobile, consider MFourDIY™, the first all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey-building platform, as a cost-effective way to kick the tires on mobile research, then take it for a first spin. Like many others who are taking that route, we think you'll enjoy the ride. 

Make sure you're on the lookout early next week for some news on a new feature that was included in our recent app update! We'll add the information here on our blog and on our social media channels.