It isn’t always easy to make the case for mobile research – even though by now the facts fall fully on the pro-mobile side.

About six years ago, forward-looking members of the market research community began predicting that the then-new mobile approach would soon change the industry as MR professionals grasped the research implications of smartphones’ powerful capacities:  fast computing, real-time data, geolocated questionnaires, and multimedia, among other compelling, research-friendly features.

Advocates predicted that by 2012, or surely by 2013, researchers would recognize that a change had come and embrace the new technology en masse.

One early visionary, U.K.-based survey software expert Tim Macer, wrote in the June, 2010 edition of Quirk’s Marketing Research Review that “mobile research presents the opportunity to get much closer to respondents at the moment of truth - the point they are actually engaging with services or interacting with products - than you can, say, with an online survey, where you’re still relying on the recall of the respondent at a point later in time.”

This was incredibly astute and forward looking – and MFour’s founders didn’t need persuading because they already were thinking along the same lines. In 2010 they laid most of the groundwork for MFour’s all-mobile survey business, and in 2011 MFour debuted Surveys on the Go®, the first all-mobile survey app, and had begun recruiting a smartphone-loving panel that now numbers more than one million active members.  

Advocates still struggle to convince their peers to embrace truths that seemed so self-evident even half a decade ago. Visionaries who assumed back then that all would soon acknowledge the rapid ascendancy of smartphones – and all it implied for market research – have been right about the dominance and omnipresence of smartphones in society at large, but wrong about MR’s eagerness to exploit them as the research tool of first choice.

Scientific research into the power of first impressions suggests at least part of the answer as to why there’s been more resistance to mobile research than its early advocates would have predicted or hoped.

“Even Fact Will Not Change First Impressions,” reads a 2014 headline in the online journal of the Society for Personal and Social Psychology. The study it reported had shown that “first impressions are so powerful that they can override what we are told about people.”

Many market researchers were understandably wary of early mobile advocates making enthusiastic assertions. Online surveys taken on personal computers had served them well enough. Why contemplate a radical fix to something that didn't seem broken? That conservatism, coupled with the psychological inclination to downplay facts that conflict with an initial reaction, explains why fully establishing mobile research has been a struggle instead of a cakewalk.

When facts and logic fail to carry the day, there’s a fair chance that myth has entered the mix.

And in market research, even some advocates have been susceptible to certain myths about what mobile methods can or can’t accomplish. Some  mobile proponents have voiced certain caveats about what they see as limits around mobile research -- giving heel-draggers  all the more reason to say mobile research was not the answer it had been cracked up to be.

Here are three of the biggest myths about mobile research:

Myth number one: Surveys on smartphones have to be kept short.

The feeling seems to be that there’s something about the phone that’s just not as functional as the personal computer. A number of advocates for mobile research also are advocates for shorter surveys across all platforms. They think lengthy questionnaires bore respondents and drive them away from surveys altogether.

This school of pro-mobile thinking holds that smartphones are suited only to  short, quick-hit surveys -- and that this limitation is in fact a blessing that will cut surveys down to a proper size.  But that sells both the phones and the public that loves them short. In MFour’s experience, there’s little drop-off even when interviews exceed 20 minutes. Of course, smartphones are indeed ideal for those short quick-hitters, but they do so much more. 

More evidence that smartphones can handle longer LOI surveys came from the survey GreenBook fielded to market research professionals to collect data for its 2015 Greenbook Report on Industry Trends (GRIT). The survey had an average completion time of 15 minutes – considerably longer than what some would consider optimal across all platforms.

“Interestingly,” wrote Greenbook editor Leonard Murphy, “the drop-off rate was higher among  PC/Laptop users, indicating that a “mobile first” design can mitigate completion rates and increase respondent engagement.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Myth number two: smartphone screens are too small for an adequate survey experience.

Actually, we can see the point here – but where research is concerned, the point is moot.

One also can argue that smartphones are too small for an adequate movie-watching experience: Film critics and many movie buffs do exactly that, insisting that the big-screen experience is sacred, and that when it comes to movies on TV, even the largest home screen won’t suffice. But the aesthetes have lost this battle. Whether it’s streaming movies or answering questions, a substantial majority is just fine with doing it on a smartphone.

According to a 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, one-third of all Americans had paid to watch film or television on smartphones – a figure that rose to 52% for respondents ages 18-29. Of course, a great many others who don’t pay for video content are using their smartphones to access an inexhaustible trove of free video. Even if we grant that the small screen is not ideal for watching video, the public has voted with its eyes, and they’re glued to what’s streaming on their smartphones. The lesson for market research is to optimize mobile, not to ignore it. 

Myth number three:  smartphone panels are not representative.

In a 2015 article in Quirk’s entitled “The Short Survey is King,” Paul Hudson, a U.K. researcher, asserted that not only was the short-survey myth a fact (“Researchers must recognize that mobile respondents have a significantly shorter attention span than online or in-person participants”) – but that, furthermore, smartphone users skewed toward the wealthy and would leave out other important survey demographics: “Income has an additional effect on smartphone penetration. Only 39 percent of individuals earning under $50,000 a year own a smartphone,” he wrote. “In comparison, 64 percent of individuals earning over $100,000 a year own one. So when considering any form of mobile market research, sampling is always an important and pressing issue.”

But a Pew study, also from 2015, found that 68% of all Americans owned smartphones – and that those with lower incomes were in the vanguard of those who’ve abandoned expensive broadband connections to the web, and instead had turned solely to smartphones as a money saving move.

“[Declines] in home broadband adoption are concentrated among lower- to middle-income households, rural households and African Americans,” Pew authors observed. “There has also been a drop in home broadband adoption among parents of children under the age of 18…. Today 13% of adults rely on their smartphone for online access at home (that is, they have a smartphone but no home broadband subscription), compared with 8% in 2013.”

In other words, people at the lower end of the income spectrum are even more reliant on smartphones than the wealthy. 

The late, great TV series, “Mythbusters,” never got around to taking on the legends of market research. It’s been fun taking up the cause and declaring them “Busted!”

All we can say to market researchers who want to cling to the myths in the face of the evidence is:  Sorry, but you’re mything out.

It's summer, and MFour has the hottest market research app in the United States.

Our signature Surveys on the Go^® app has spent 30 consecutive days ranked in the top 100 among lifestyle apps at both the iTunes App Store and Google Play.

As of Monday, Aug. 8, SOTG ranked 76th in the App Store and 89th in Google Play. The rankings are unmatched by any other survey app in the category. 

The hot streak reflects four essential truths about mobile apps, says Michael Smith, MFour’s Chief Product Officer & Director of Panel.

• Smartphone users will not tolerate less-than-perfect app performance.

• Building an app that works properly requires laser-like focus and dedication over the long haul. Experience counts.

• The penalties for app imperfection are immediate and harsh: public humiliation from thumbs-down comments and bad ratings, followed by the guillotine – a tap on “delete.”

• Competition is fierce, and survey apps that aren’t backed by experienced software engineering teams devoted to advancing app technology, and operations teams who help research clients optimize  mobile survey designs will be exposed and saddled with a reputation for unreliability.

“It all comes down to quality mobile survey designs,” Smith said. “If you have a slow, clunky, thoughtless app experience, you're not going to keep that app very long. MFour has committed the last five years to studying, developing and refining mobile survey design best practices."

MFour recognized early on that smartphones would dominate communications and information exchange. It has pioneered and continually advanced the all-mobile approach that has become the fastest-rising transformative force in market research as the dominance of mobile apps impels researchers to adjust after relying mainly on online surveys and panels.

Five more numbers help round out the story:

• 2011 – the year MFour debuted Surveys on the Go® as the first all-mobile survey app in the U.S.

• 1,000,000 – the milestone of active panelists using Surveys on the Go® that we passed this spring.

• 2,000 to 3,000 -- the number of new panelists joining each day. 

• $0 – what MFour spends on advertising to attract panelists, because the unsolicited, word-of-mouth ratings and comments we get are all it takes.

• 4.5 out of 5 – the average rating users award Surveys on the Go® on the App Store and Google Play.

While we think all these particulars are interesting, you don't have to commit them to memory. All you have to do is check the rankings.

When your project deadline looms and time is of the essence, it’s time to jump on the fastest data vehicle in the entire motor pool of market research – MFour’s all-mobile smartphone survey app and the fully-engaged, million-member panel that’s downloaded it.

Our custom research products and MFourDIY, the only all-mobile do-it-yourself research platform, both can get the job done fast. With MFourDIY, you can build and field your survey in less than an hour.

Here’s how it happens from the moment your survey fields:

1. Push notification – your targeted quotas, including demographically representative complements of hard-to-reach Millennials, Hispanics and African Americans, hear a cash-register “ca-ching” that alerts them to a survey opportunity. No outmoded email notifications needed.
2. Qualified panelists jump on the opportunity. More than one million Americans make up our active panel. They give our Surveys on the Go® app unsolicited raves and high ratings at the App Store and Google Play, and are eager to use it.
3. Native app -- with our native app, your entire survey loads straight into each respondent’s phone. No vulnerable internet connection required.
4. Survey presentation and function are tailored for smartphones, and the native app makes it easy and fast to answer – ideal for quick-hit questionnaires, yet smooth and reliable over LOI of 20 minutes.
5.  Data cleaning -- we do it in-the-moment as it comes in, ensuring the quality you need.
6.  Real time viewing as completes come in on your Project Tracker lets you get an early jump on analysis.
7. Completion rate: 95%.
8.  Completion speed: You get 25% of the completes you need within an hour; 50% within a day; 100% within two days. We told you it’s fast.
9.  Fast reporting. Automatic visualization tools instantly generate charts and graphs of your choice for presenting your data.
10. Deadline met, anxiety relieved. You’ve freed your mind to do your best thinking about actionable possibilities of the insights you’ve gained. You're set to make your best presentation to decision-makers.      

Here's More

MFour's 7-Eleven Speed Test

Love for MFour's Native App 

Chances are that electoral politics will revert to past norms after this crazy cycle, but the same can’t be said for political polling, whose norms have long been blown to pieces.

Remember H. Ross Perot, who ran for president against the first Clinton and the first Bush back in 1992? He memorably said that you could hear “a giant sucking sound” as U.S. jobs vanished overseas.

The giant sucking sound in today’s politics is the sound of dollars vanishing down a telephonic vortex, as pollsters use antiquated dialing methods in expensively futile attempts to reach Millennials, Hispanics, and other mobile-centric voting demographics.

MFour can help plug the gap. Pollsters and politicos can get the reads they need on voters who only use smartphones by using our voter-match capability. It connects them with proven voters among our million-member all-mobile panel, including otherwise hard-to-reach Millennials, Hispanics and African Americans. Voter matching is demographically representative through the 50 states. 

Besides filling poll quotas, our voter-matched panelists generate speedy responses because they are uniquely engaged with survey-taking. They've all downloaded MFour’s smooth-functioning Surveys on the Go® mobile app, and are eager and quick to respond. Pollsters can connect with them to fill their missing cell phone quotas fast, and at a sane cost.

They'll silence that giant sucking sound they hear when smartphone-using voters vanish from their radar. 

MFour Senior Solutions Executive Alex Colao can tell interested readers more. Message him at acolao@mfour.com.

More MFour:

Will the NFL Tear Us Apart?

Nine Things to Know About App vs. Email in Survey Notifications

MFour’s fast-growing staff now includes Anna Pabiadzimskaya and Anthony Nguyen, who’ll bolster the Operations team as Research Associates. They’ll help carry forward our commitment to top-quality service in fielding and monitoring clients’ projects. Their arrival continues an expansion that will see MFour double its staff to more than 100 in early 2017.

Anna is a recent graduate of California State Polytechnic Institute, Pomona, with a degree in Business Administration. She’s done marketing research with Lieberman Research Worldwide, and marketing and social media work for the nonprofit Hands For Africa.

Anthony arrives with a recent degree in Business Information Management from the University of California, Irvine. He’s done marketing work for Beacon Pointe Wealth Advisors. Anthony knows what it means to never skip a beat, having hosted a weekly electronic music and hip hop show on KUCI in Irvine.

Teamwork is fundamental to MFour’s company culture because it’s the most enjoyable and productive way to live and work.

It’s also fundamental to the results we generate for market research firms and leading companies and brands that trust us to deliver the data solutions they need, on-time and glitch-free.

Choose MFour, and you’re betting on a team in which different departments mesh and communicate with each other. Our cooperative, mutually supportive internal culture plays a big part in ensuring  you’ll get the data and insights you need to make smart reports and recommendations on the business decisions your bosses or your clients have to get right.

Like a championship pro football team whose offense, defense and kicking game all step up to complement each other, our Solutions executives, Operations staff and Labs & Engineering experts stay on our games to make each project score.

These days, the intense pursuit of teamwork is right in front of our eyes. Less than two miles south of our seventh-floor perch, with its panoramic views of a good swath of Irvine and Newport Beach, stretches the campus of the University of California, Irvine. From our windows we can make out the sports complex where the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams are in their first week of pre-season training.

Our team is back after their 20-year detour to St. Louis. But is it really “our team?”

An MFour staff that pulls together to get your questions answered isn’t exactly meshing with a cohesive answer to this one. We fielded a quick office survey and the results are in: when it comes to pro football, we’re a study in division and disunity, although we’d prefer to call it “diversity.” Football-wise, we have, shall we say, a marketplace of opinions.

Here, the 49ers, Raiders and Cowboys each have multiple fans. The Seahawks, Bears, Steelers, Giants, Cardinals and Texans also get outspoken support. The data suggests that our new neighbors, the Rams, have a way to go to be embraced.

Does this division over the important matter of pro football make MFour less of a team? Should you worry that, come Mondays, we’ll be bickering about what went down on the field on Sunday, instead of focusing on designing and fielding your research?

No way. Lively and friendly disagreement among peers is a social adhesive, not a solvent. Within a culture fed by a mutual goal and founded in mutual respect, banter and repartee aren’t just a lot of fun, but a pathway to cohesion and productivity.

Our little in-house disagreements over sports keep us laughing and joking and talking to each other. And when people start talking to each other, you never know where the conversation might lead.  Banter that begins with “my quarterback’s better than yours” can turn into a discussion of a project and how we can make the data and insights faster, clearer and farther-reaching for the client.

As this song by the terrific 1970s band Badfinger says, “successful conversation will take you very far.” 

And that's what the MFour team is all about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS2Ag7OwGRs

Get the Only All-Mobile DIY Solution

Tune in Wednesday, August 17, at 11:30 a.m., Pacific, for "MFourDIY: Getting Started," a webinar focusing on the industry's only all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey building platform.

Who’s the Facebook of market research? Why, MFour, of course.

No, we don’t have quite the same balance sheet as Mark Zuckerberg’s social media juggernaut, at least not yet. Facebook this week again announced quarterly earnings of “blockbuster” proportions, as New York Times put it, ringing up $6.4 billion in revenues and $2 billion in profit.

But looked at in a certain way, there’s one measure by which MFour outdoes Facebook.

Silicon Valley’s most successful concern is nearly all-in on mobile: Facebook reports that 92% of its 1.71 billion active monthly users check in via mobile devices. MFour is 100% mobile.

OK, so Facebook has approximately 1,700 times as many active users as MFour has active panelists. But the core, proven principle of market research is that a limited number of properly representative respondents taking well-designed surveys will get the job done. And that’s what we’ve been providing since 2011, when we debuted the first and still only all-mobile survey app.

MFour designs and continually advances software that powers the utmost in  functionality and versatility for surveys taken on smartphones and tablets. Along with the tech, we cultivate an engaged, proprietary panel of U.S. respondents who take those surveys solely on their phones and tablets, generating the reliable, demographically representative data our clients need.

More than one million active users have downloaded our native app, Surveys on the Go®.  And unlike online panels, they embody the full spectrum of U.S. consumers, with full complements of the Millennials, African-Americans and Hispanics who elude research that clings to the fading online survey approach.

A smartphone-focused panel plus a state-of-the-art mobile survey experience translates into quality data that’s fast enough to meet tight deadlines and validated to ensure sharp insights leading to effective business decisions.

All joking aside – and you do realize we’ve been joking, right? -- our kinship with Facebook comes from a mutual recognition that the world has gone mobile, and that responding accordingly with smarts, enthusiasm and an innovative spirit is the key to success.

Contact MFour to learn more about how to thrive with us in the all-mobile world.