Why is the new GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) Report different from all others that have come before it?

It’s different because it's the first to include the magic words that will save market research: “Mobile in-app solutions.”

Here’s the full quote, from an anonymous respondent to GreenBook’s survey of 3,930 global respondents (49% of them from the U.S.):

“Mobile in-app solutions provide for more accurate, reliable and representative sample. As market research suppliers start to adopt this gold standard of data collection, sample and the data output will become better.”

It was one of the few confidently positive assertions in a chapter titled “The Future of Sampling.” That future will be bleak, the report says, unless the industry can find answers to the problems that are rapidly eroding trust in survey data. At the heart of the crisis is consumers’ disengagement from participating in survey research. 

Here's how GRIT's authors sum up the situation: “The frustrations from all sides [of the data-quality crisis] are real, and the risks are growing….The traditional model is no longer sustainable and will require painful change up and down the survey ecosystem.”

To quantify the data quality problem:

Is a limited budget constraining your ability to obtain the high-quality data and consumer insights you need? Are you muttering under your breath that the limits you’re under are penny-wise but pound-foolish?

Recognizing that you’re hardly alone, we’re helping you get the most bang, and the fastest turnarounds, for your research bucks by pointing you to MFourDIY^®.

Now through June 29th, the DIY Summer Promotion will put 20% to 30% more money in your pay-as-you-go account. $10k grows to $12k, 20k becomes $25k, and $50k rises to $65k.

• Design your survey intuitively on an easy-to-use interface.

• See results in real-time on your project tracker.

• Expect response rates of 25% within an hour and 50% within 24 hours.

• Get sophisticated design features and targeting variables at a cost-effective price.

The key to insights with MFourDIY^® is the quality and representativeness of the consumers you’ll reach: 2 million validated U.S. users who have downloaded Surveys On The Go^®, the most advanced, highest-rated and time-tested survey app.  

Score with attention-grabbing data and quality consumer insights that impress your decision-makers, and who knows? Maybe you’ll get a budget boost to boot. But regardless how money is being allocated in your organization, MFourDIY^® will get  you the speed, efficiency and effectiveness your stakeholders expect.

To sign up, just click here.

Should consumer insights professionals take an investment tip from the marketing departments of the brands they serve?

For brands, the smart money increasingly is on reaching consumers on their smartphones, according to a recently-issued report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) on how brands are dividing their digital ad-spend budgets. Here are key comparative figures for mobile vs. desktop ad revenues for 2017:  

• Overall spending: Mobile, $50 billion; Desktop, $38 billion.

• Percentage revenue gain, 2017 over 2016: Mobile, 36%; Desktop, 6%.

• Share of digital ad spend: Mobile, 57%; Desktop, 43%.

• The report also notes that in 2017, video ad spending on mobile rose by a whopping 54%, vaulting mobile ahead of desktop’s share of video ad dollars for the first time.

“Smartphones and tablets have become indispensable tools in the hands of consumers, from the moment they wake up to right before they go to sleep,” Anna Bager, the IAB’s Executive Vice President, Industry Initiatives, said in an announcement of the report. “A double-digit uptick in spend on mobile video is testament to both the pull of mobile and consumers’ never-ending demand for sight, sound, and motion—even while on-the-go.”

In the face of facts and business trends such as these, it seems increasingly incongruous that MFour’s solutions executives report pushback against mobile from a surprising number of consumer insights pros who want to stick with familiar, desktop-centric, online methodology. Among other things, last-gen approaches lose the chance to achieve compelling, location-based consumer understanding by accessing proprietary, smartphone-specific technologies such as GeoIntensity^® and GeoNotification^®. 

For a research industry that’s all about the numbers and how they’re trending, It just doesn’t add up. The boom in mobile advertising shows where the trend is going and where the smart marketing money already is. Unless we’re missing something, mobile is where the smart market researcher needs to be as well. In both consumer insights and consumer marketing, everything depends on being able to reach consumers, and the latest ad spending figures testify to how that’s best accomplished in the Smartphone Era.

For an informative and productive conversation about how you can invest in state-of-the-art, in-app mobile research to meet the engaged, validated, and representative consumers your own projects demand, just get in touch by clicking here.

Marketing and consumer insights professionals who've visited the the MFour blog have seen lots of posts about the new Path-2-Purchase™ Platform. Now you can experience it for yourself. We've debuted a free, interactive Path-2-Purchase™ dashboard, and as you play with it, you'll see it's a dramatic step forward for the art of targeting and tracking consumers across their buying journeys. 

Read the full details here. Or to jump right into your free trial, just click here.

The Path-2-Purchase™ dashboard is a highlight of a new MFour.com website that’s been fully revamped and redesigned for easy access to clear, detailed, transparent content that lays out the state-of-the-art in mobile market research, including MFour's noted location-based survey capabilities powered by proprietary GeoIntensity^® and GeoNotification^® technologies. Please spend a few minutes strolling around the site, which we believe you'll find to be the largest, most useful and substance-filled repository of information about mobile market research and its best-practices you've ever encountered.

Can the CPG industry speed up its delivery of store inventory to sustain profitability? And can the consumer insights teams for brands and retailers speed up their delivery of CPG data to meet the unavoidably punishing deadlines that come with the breakneck pace of today's on-demand mobile commerce? 

The rising demand for speed, the intensity of deadline pressure, and the huge stakes involved are documented in a recent study by the Grocery Manufacturers’ Assn. (GMA) called “How CPG Supply Chains Are Preparing for Seismic Change.” A key takeaway is that producers of consumer goods face increasingly intense pressure to deliver products faster, and to a more diverse array of outlets, including the warehouses of Amazon and other e-commerce sites as well as traditional bricks-and-mortar stores. Retailers, the report says, are enforcing delivery deadlines by imposing fines when product shipments don’t arrive on time. All for the sake of ensuring that shoppers will be buyers, not non-buyers.

Understanding non-buyers is crucial in any context, and Path-2-Purchase™ Platform gives the consumer insights teams of CPG brands and retailers an unprecedented opportunity for fast insights. Here's how it works:

• Researchers can track where validated U.S. consumers are now, and where they’ve been in the past, across 12.5 million U.S. locations, including all outlets of the top 1,000 retailers.

• Immediately target mobile surveys to any relevant consumer profile, with the ability to build custom segments based on who panelists are and where they’ve gone. 

• Identify and use proprietary mobile GeoIntensity^® and GeoNotification^®  technologies to approach consumers who sometimes go to your own store, and sometimes to a competitor’s stores.

• Talk to targeted shoppers instantly in-store or just after they’ve left, while the experience and their emotions are still vivid and unimpeded by recall bias.

• Identify non-buyers in the exit interview, and explore why they bought nothing, or didn't buy all the items they had intended.

• How big a factor is unavailability, as opposed to pricing? Did the shopper ask for help finding the product? Does the data point toward delayed or incomplete product delivery? Answer these questions and you'll give your decision-making research stakeholders a road map to reducing non-buyers and the lost sales they represent. 

For a productive conversation about Path-2-Purchase™ and how to use it for insights into non-buying behavior, just get in touch by clicking here. And to see the GMA’s report on CPG supply-chain issues, just click here.

Reed Gubernick (L) and Laura O' Campo

Here are some thoughts well-worth passing along, from Steve Seiferheld, Director of Market Research for the U.S. Division of tobacco-products company Swedish Match. They’re from a recent edition of Quirk’s Media’s ongoing Q&A feature, “Conversations with Corporate Researchers.”

What stands out is Steve’s willingness to call out complacency and inertia in the market research industry with a clear, strong voice. He’s rightfully adamant about the need for insights professionals to bolster their self-confidence about their importance to their organizations. To which we would add that confidence starts with an unshakeable self-assurance that the technological tools and data sources you’re using are state-of-the-art.

A lack of confidence in your tools and the data you've obtained with them is likely to color your presentations to decision-making stakeholders. Conversely, smart, specific recommendations  grounded in confidence that your data is state-of-the-art will go a long way toward earning you a respected spot at the decision-making table.

Take it away, Steve Seiferheld – and thanks!

• “We continue to focus on the same tired, in-the-weeds issues without being able to construct a simple story on how to move a business forward. Twenty-five years ago we were worrying about how to weed out bad survey respondents. Today, we are worrying about how to weed out bad survey respondents. Why?”

• “…let your objectives drive your methodology, and never vice versa. I choose the methodology that will make it easiest for my target audience to provide the type of feedback I need.”

• “Nobody seems willing to point out how we are our own enemy. Our industry needs voices to steer us toward being leaders in our organizations. Swedish Match values me because when I present, my key findings tell people what to do. Other researchers hurt our industry by worrying more about Likert scales and eye-tracking than how to acquire more customers and improve profits.”

• “Repeatedly I encounter corporate researchers who see themselves as subservient to marketing, sales and other functions. We cannot expect progress until researchers shed that mentality. My role is just as important as anyone else’s. I understand the consumer better than anyone else in my organization and understanding the consumer is vital to ensuring a company’s success.”

Golden State is America’s team in the pro basketball playoffs, but not by a landslide.

With the pro basketball season approaching its climax,  MFour sought consumer insights on viewership and team loyalties from more than 5,000 Millennial and Gen Z fans nationwide who are watching the league playoffs. Asked who they’re rooting for, Golden State was a fan favorite in 21 states, Cleveland was the top pick in 18 others, Boston won 7 states, and Houston just one – its home state of Texas.

A plurality of fans in Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah said they were watching the playoffs, but not rooting for any of the four semifinalists.

In the nationwide popular vote, fans were rooting for Golden State over Cleveland by a narrow margin of 27.5% to 25.7%, followed by Boston (20%) and Houston (15.5%). Golden State enjoyed coast-to-coast support, sweeping ten of the 11 Western states in which the majority of fans had a rooting preference, but also winning the South and pulling support from two Midwestern and two Northeastern states. Cleveland enjoyed fan support in all regions except the West, where only Montana fans opted for LeBron James and company.

In a nationwide survey of 5,032 Millennial and Gen Z respondents who are interested in pro basketball, 82.1% said they are frequent watchers as this season’s league playoffs near their climax. That includes 65.6% who report watching “nearly every game,” and 16.5% who said they’ve watched every game.

Frequent viewership ran even higher in states that are home to the four teams still in contention: Texas (94.7%), California (90.6%), Ohio (90%) and Massachusetts (88.5%).

But viewership also was intense among respondents living in some states that don’t have a pro basketball team, let alone one that’s still in the playoffs. That includes 93.7% of respondents in Virginia who said they have watched every game or nearly every game; 89.3% in Washington state, 84.7% in Kentucky, and 83% in Missouri. Survey respondents were ages 13 to 40.

As the conference finals continue with Golden State against Houston and Cleveland against Boston, rooting interest is fairly evenly distributed: 27.5% of respondents want Golden State to repeat as champion, 25.7% are for Cleveland, 20% for Boston and 15.5% for Houston. An additional 11.3% said they are watching but not rooting, since the team they wanted to win the championship has been eliminated.

Golden State owed its favorite-team status to female respondents, 38.8% of whom said they were rooting for the champs to repeat. Men, who made up 87.6% of all respondents, actually gave a rooting edge to Cleveland over Golden State, by 26.2% to 25.9%. 

Fans in Massachusetts appear to be the most deeply-invested in their home-state team, with 84.8% saying they are rooting for Boston. Among Ohioans surveyed, 78.3% are pulling for Cleveland.  Meanwhile, Golden State commands loyalty from just 53.1% of the Californians surveyed, and Houston has the rooting allegiance of just 44.8% of the respondents from Texas.

One big difference is that Boston and Cleveland each has its home state to itself, while Golden State and Houston both share their states with other teams – three others in California, and two others in Texas.

But even Massachusetts and Ohio residents who aren’t rooting for their home-state teams are rooting for somebody: not a single respondent from either state said he or she had no rooting interest at all. In California, 8.6% of fans said they’re continuing to watch the games even though they have no rooting interest, and 9.2% of respondents from Texas are watching but not rooting.

As for their views on individual stars, 40.7% of all respondents predicted that James Harden of Houston will win the league’s Most Valuable Player award, followed by 39.9% predicting LeBron James of Cleveland and 8.5% predicting that Kevin Durant of Golden State will take the honor.

The basketball fans surveyed also are heavily oriented to other professional sports: 87.5% said they are interested in pro football, 62.6% have an interest in baseball and 38.6% are fans of ice hockey, where the playoffs also are approaching a climax and competing for viewers. Professional soccer commanded interest from 30% of the basketball fans surveyed, and stock car racing had a 21.6% share.

Most of the fans who are watching the basketball playoffs said their interest doesn’t extend to the celebrity news surrounding one of the players, Cleveland center Tristan Thompson, whose relationship with reality TV star Khloe Kardashian reportedly is in jeopardy. Only 39.5% expressed an opinion as to whether the couple would stay together; 60.5% chose the answer, “I really don’t care, I have better things to do with my life.”

Methodology: The study was conducted May 10-14, fielded to validated, first-party U.S. consumers ages 13 to 40, who participate in research using MFour's mobile survey app, Surveys On The Go^®. The 15-question survey was begun by 17,972 consumers nationwide, of whom 5,076 met qualifying criteria; 99.1% of qualifiers completed the survey. Mean completion time was 2 minutes, 59 seconds. 

As Pew Research Center has documented, consumer insights research needs to be mobile to reach the representative slices of the public that successful market research requires. But there's a deeper layer of understanding insights professionals must master to get mobile right. Here are some tips as you explore mobile research solutions: 

• Understand why “mobile research” is not a generic term.

• Learn the key differences between the two kinds of mobile – “mobile optimized” (also called “mobile web”) and mobile-app.

• Be aware that “mobile optimized” research is traditional online research conducted on smaller devices. It’s a new vehicle for the same old online research environment.

• Consider data that shows consumers' overwhelming preference for the mobile-app environment over the mobile-web environment.  

• eMarketer reports that U.S. adult smartphone owners’ average daily mobile app usage exceeded mobile web usage by a ratio of 5.6 to 1 in 2017 – 145 minutes for apps, and 26 minutes for mobile web.

• This year, the gap is predicted to grow to 6 to 1 as time spent rises 6.9% for apps while staying level for mobile web.

The decisive takeaway is that when you’re talking about consumers inhabiting a mobile environment, you’re actually talking about people living in the mobile-app environment. Asking them to take surveys via the mobile web is tantamount to not using mobile at all.  

To dig deeper into the differences between mobile-app research and mobile-web/mobile optimized research, check out this blog post, “Mobile 101: Why Native App Technology Beats `Mobile’ Optimized.” Or you can set up a one-on-one demo to explore the whole story about how MFour’s mobile-app solutions can meet your own specific research needs. Just click here.