Here’s a statistic consumer insights professionals might consider memorizing: Pew Research Center now reports that 20% of adult Americans rely solely on smartphones for their internet access. That’s up from 13% who reported relying on mobile phones alone in a Pew study in 2015.

Your own data needs to be representative across whatever demographic you’re trying to understand. Which means you need to reach the public where it lives. Just as railroad stations gave way to airports as the main hubs of physical journeys, personal computers are giving way to mobile for consumers' digital journeys. That’s especially true for crucial, traditionally “hard to find” Hispanics, African Americans and young-adult consumers. Reaching out to them on a personal computer for consumer surveys is barking up the wrong device. Data from Pew studies conducted in January, 2018 and in 2015 shows why:

• Hispanics: 35% are now smartphone-only, up from 23% in Pew’s 2015 study.

• Ages 18-29: 28% are smartphone-only, up from 19% in 2015.

• African Americans: 24% are now smartphone-only users, up from 19% in 2015.

• Whites: 14% are smartphone-only in 2018, up from 10% in 2015.

• Age 65 and older: Even among these slower adopters, smartphone-only use is now at 10% of the senior population, up from 7% in 2015.
  

One obvious takeaway is that in order to reach the representative slices of the public that market research requires, it has be done with mobile. But what you need to know is a bit more nuanced than that. We'll tell you why in our next blog post, so stay tuned. In the meantime (or at any time), you can have a personal, one-on-one info session and demo on state-of-the-art mobile research capabilities, simply by clicking here. 

Are you ready to join the wave of consumer insights professionals who are diving deep into mobile research? If the answer is yes, then congratulations on making that transformative decision.

But taking the dive is just the first step. No methodology will work if the execution is poor. With that in mind, here are eight key questions any savvy mobile-insights buyer should ask. And be sure not to settle for anything less than answers that are authoritative, assured and completely specific to the kinds of projects you need to accomplish. 

• Is the mobile research you're selling the same as your online research, only more portable?

• What specific research capabilities does mobile bring to the table?  

• Where's the sample coming from?

• What level of representation and responsiveness can I expect? 

• Is it true that mobile surveys need to be kept extremely short? 

• I've heard the way to go is "mobile optimized." What exactly does that mean? And is that really true?

• There's lots of talk in the insights industry about how important it is to give survey-takers a quality experience. How does your mobile system accomplish that?

• Can you give me some validation about response rates and respondents' satisfaction with your mobile surveys?

You can get the fast, authoritative answers you need to these questions and more by setting up a one-on-one demo that will focus on meeting your projects' specific needs, and how they align with mobile research capabilities powered by proprietary technologies such as GeoIntensity^® and GeoNotification^®, which enable state-of-the art location-based surveys.

We'll talk about tailoring solutions to your needs, whether it's a custom-research project where MFour provides everything from design and programming through analysis, or taking advantage of the fast insights you can get from a proprietary, mobile-only automated research solution such as Path-2-Purchase™ Platform and  MFourDIY^®. Just get in touch by clicking here.

Consumer insights professionals need to understand today’s consumers in their natural environments, and by now they know that means reaching them on mobile.

Recent readership statistics reported by the Assn. of Magazine Media affirm just how big and necessary the mobile ecosystem has become for anyone who needs to engage consumers. The study shows that mobile devices continue to achieve separation from desktops and laptops as U.S. consumers’ choice for magazine content.  

• The association's Brand Audience Report for March says that 32.2% of the month’s 553.6 million magazine readers arrived via mobile, up 8.5% year over year.

• Only 11.6% of magazine site visits occurred on PCs, down 8.9% from March, 2017.

The report also shows that, of the five most-read publications, three received their greatest audience share from mobile. And all five attracted far more readers on mobile than they did on PCs. Here are the comparisons:

• WebMD Magazine: 59.1% of 60.8 million March readers were mobile; 21% arrived via PC.

• Allrecipes: 60.7% of 46.2 million readers were mobile; 19.9% PC.

• ESPN the Magazine: 43.7% of 96.5 million readers were mobile, 25.7% PC.

• People: 36.8% of 78 million readers were mobile; 8% used PCs.

• AARP magazine: 14% of 49.4 million readers were mobile; 7.9% used PCs.

In fact, of the 116 titles for which the Assn. of Media Magazines provided comparisons, only five attracted more readers on PCs than on mobile: Automobile, Car Craft, Flying, Hot Rod and Street Rodder.  Prestigious titles in which mobile access dominated over PCs include The Atlantic, Car and Driver, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Esquire, Fortune, GQ, Money, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Smithsonian, Time, and Vogue.

Print readership + subscriptions to digital editions of print publications retain an overall lead, according to the study, at 51.3% of total magazine readership. However, that category continues to drop, with a 1.7% year-over-year decline compared to mobile readership's 8.5% rise. This suggests that established mag readers and, perhaps most important, new readers, are turning to mobile.

The key takeaway for market research and marketing is that following mobile consumers into their natural environment is crucial to growth for virtually any business. Which is exactly what MFour has been urging since 2011, when it pioneered mobile market research by introducing Surveys On The Go^® as the nation’s first all-mobile research app.

For insights professionals who are ready to dive into mobile, these are the questions that need fast, authoritative answers: 

• What are the best practices in mobile market research? 

• What are the most advanced capabilities for obtaining the most relevant, accurate and insights-rich data?

• What sample quality and representation should I expect?

• In going mobile, does gaining access to consumers mean having to dumb down my research and sacrifice data quality?

You can get all these answers and more by setting up a one-on-one demo that will focus on meeting your projects' specific needs with proprietary, mobile-only research products such as Path-2-Purchase™ Platform and MFourDIY^®. Just get in touch by clicking here.

The new Path 2 Purchase™ Platform  powers unprecedented consumer insights opportunities by giving researchers new ways to visualize observed behavioral data and enrich it with validated, first-party survey data.

The key that opens the door is continuous tracking of mobile consumers’ journeys through space & time.

• By “space” we mean 12.5 million U.S. locations, including all stores of the top 1,000 retailers.

• By “time” we mean always and continuously, because Path 2 Purchase™ never sleeps.

• Whose movements are being tracked? Members of the nation’s largest all-mobile panel.

• Why are they special? They form a uniquely engaged, first-party research audience who accurately represent the entire population of U.S. smartphone users.

More than 2 million consumers have downloaded Surveys On The Go^®, the proprietary consumer research app that powers Path 2 Purchase™ and  other MFour offerings, including MFourDIY^®. The panel grows by about 2,000 new arrivals each day, strictly by word of mouth.

Another fact worth knowing: churn for the average online panel is nearly ten times greater than turnover among Surveys On The Go^® users.

Here’s more about how Path 2 Purchase™ works, and what you'll be able to accomplish: 

• Surveys On The Go^® users agree to turn on their devices’ location function, knowing they’ll receive opportunities to take location-based surveys and enjoy reliable cash rewards.

• Tracking their journeys through retail space, coupled with validated demographic and ethnographic profiling, creates unique targeting possibilities.

• Path 2 Purchase™ users get access to a dashboard that enables them to choose among more than 200 demographic and ethnographic criteria.

• You select which consumers to track, and which ones to survey, using special GeoNotification^® alerts, to learn the “why” behind the “where” of their day-in, day-out journeys.

• The data you’ll see as you play with different time/place/profile combinations on the Path 2 Purchase™ dashboard is pulled instantly from an exhaustive Consumer Knowledge Center, where all the location data coming from all those phones is continually stored, sorted, and updated by the minute.

• As you view each combination of space, time and profile, consumer segments you hadn’t even considered might well jump out at you and point the way to surprising new research possibilities.

• For example, who has been to a Walmart four times over the past month? Who are the Walmart-rejecters who never go – and do they shop at Target instead?

• Does a certain profile group prefer shopping on weekday evenings, or is it more likely to go to a Walmart or Target during weekends?

• Path 2 Purchase™ lets you identify them, then go a step further by surveying them about why they do what they do, with an incidence rate of 100%, because you’re only targeting the exact validated consumers you need to talk to.

To summarize, this is right-place, right-time location research on steroids, enabling you to be absolutely certain of consumers’ paths through space & time, then reach out to them at the optimal place and time: when they’re currently in a store, or just after they’ve left. It’s the ideal workaround to eliminate recall bias. It’s the way to exercise your research mastery.

To schedule a Path 2 Purchase™ demo and learn more about how it will help you capture the specific insights you need, just click here.

Will your brand’s social media ads stand a chance when the consumers you need to reach are glued to cute-puppy pictures and Taylor Swift videos?

Watch “Ad Measurement, Attribution and Lift,” the latest installment in MFour’s Expert Event Webinar Series, and you’ll learn how to answer that key consumer insights question with a definite “Yes.”

It’s a brisk, 25-minute look at the most advanced advertising research capabilities, as Vardan Kirakosyan, MFour’s Vice President of Research Solutions, and Senior Research Consultant  Allyson Wehn walk you through new ways to test and measure your ads by first identifying the real consumers you need to study, and then seeing how they respond when they receive the ads in their actual social media news feeds.

You’ll come away with these important insights:

• Why third-party profiling data doesn’t work and needs to be replaced to avoid substituting inferences for actual consumer realities.

• How behavioral location data first validates, then puts you in touch with, the real consumers whose observed interactions and survey feedback will help you avoid creative mistakes and maximize appeal and lift.

• How to inject your ads into these validated consumer groups’ actual social news feeds, to test whether they really are capable of commanding their attention and driving awareness and intent to buy.

“With the tools we have available, advertisers and researchers can become comfortable with change,” Kirakosyan sums up. This webinar is your introduction to those tools. To watch it now, just click here.

The answer is that, until now, reliable consumer insights obtained by identifying real people’s actual, validated buying journeys have been out of reach.

The new solution, Path 2 Purchase™ Platform, gives clients a panoramic window on real consumers’ journeys along their paths to purchase, both historically and in real time. The key is a first-party cohort of consumers who’ve downloaded an advanced survey and data-tracking app and can be observed as they move among locations relative to your research. And, thank to proprietary GeoNotification^® technology, you can approach them with a survey at times and places of your choosing.

Path 2 Purchase™ gives you easy, one-stop fulfillment of all fundamental requirements for accurate, validated consumer data. Among them are:

Representativeness: Reach that reliably includes groups that are hard to access with online surveys. There’s strong representation of Hispanic consumers (20%), African Americans (14%) and Millennials/Gen Z, including ages 18-34 (66%).

Quality Experience: The consumers  you’ll reach are gathered around and engaged by Surveys On The Go^®, the highest-rated consumer research app. It earns glowing reviews and a 4.5 stars out of 5 rating on the Apple iOS and Google Play stores that reflects some 100,000 individual ratings. There’s no better indicator of the kind of smooth, rewarding panelist experience that’s at the heart of obtaining accurate, trustworthy data from representative respondents.

Right Research Environment: Apps are the mobile environment of choice, accounting for 92% of the time U.S. consumers spend with their smartphones. Meet them where they want to be met, with an excellent app experience that secures the engagement and panel stability needed for trustworthy consumer insights.

For a one-on-one demo to learn how Path 2 Purchase™ and its first-party consumers can power your specific research needs,  just get in touch by clicking here.

If you’re talking to the wrong consumers, consumer data and consumer insights suffer. A recent GreenBook webinar called “Working Together To Improve Respondent Experience” reminded us of the deeply inadequate state of online consumer panels, and the threat it poses to your ability to do your job and secure your standing in the decision-making process.

Kristopher Sauriol, Senior Director of Global Research Insights for Visa, was one of the participants, and he summed up the problem and what’s at stake in just a few words:

 “Your data is only as good as the people who are taking your survey….[But panel quality] is not always something research agencies  are forthcoming about….you either should ask, or you should look at some other agencies that do consider this a factor.”

We’d take it just a step further. Accessing validated consumers who are fully engaged in sharing what you need to know is not just “a factor.” It’s the factor. Finding them is a matter of reaching them in their preferred environment, via their preferred technology, the mobile app.

MFour’s story, in a nutshell, is that we built the app, 2 million representative U.S. consumers have downloaded it, and these are the consumers who are best situated to give the insights industry “data…as good as the people who are taking your survey.”

 It’s often said that memories make life worth living. But in consumer insights, too often they make life a headache.

Yes, we’re talking about recall bias, which is the error that occurs when survey respondents give answers based on faulty recall. It’s a harsh reality that while memories are made to be cherished, the reason we cherish them is because they are so easily lost. And in market research, data infected by recall bias compromises everything.

As the authors of a 2017 scholarly study examining recall bias put it, “simple…recall questions generate large measurement errors.” The study focused on a survey by the Canadian government in which respondents were asked how much they had spent on food over the previous four weeks. The answers consistently underestimated actual expenditures, compared to data from subsequent diary studies involving the very same respondents (the authors noted that the diary phase was considered more reliable, but had accuracy problems of its own because of data-distorting factors such as respondents growing tired of having to record expenses each day).

The good news is there’s now an almost surefire remedy for recall bias in consumer research. But first, let’s dig a bit deeper into the problem, by asking you to take a very quick survey.

• How often have you eaten quick-serve restaurant food in the past two weeks?

• How many times have you stopped for gas over the past four weeks?
  
  
• When did you last pass by a billboard for [fill in the name of the brand or product]? 

• Do you like being asked questions you can’t properly answer?

That last one is rhetorical and perhaps a bit facetious. But the fact is, recall-based research happens all the time, and it puts insights professionals in the uncomfortable position of having to present recommendations to decision-makers that the researchers know are tainted by recall bias. Until now there has been no reliable and affordable alternative, except to accept recall bias as a fact of life and hope it doesn't distort data too badly.

But now there is.

Users of the new Path-2-Purchase™ Platform are putting recall bias behind them. They’re targeting mobile consumers by leveraging smartphones’ GPS features to find real people in real time and in the most relevant places, for in-the-moment, Point-of-Emotion^® research. Instead of asking about experiences from a week ago, they’re getting insights into what their consumers just did – or are doing right now – along with vivid and trustworthy feedback on why they’re doing it and how it makes them feel.

It’s also important to note that with Path-2-Purchase™ you don’t have to even ask a question to learn how many times a consumer has been to a gas station or a quick serve restaurant over the past two or four weeks. Respondents opt in for location tracking that automatically tells you where, when, how often and for how long they’ve been in a given location. You can use that information to build a perfectly-tailored questionnaire. You also can track whether they’ve come in view of your brand’s billboards.

Early adopters of Path-2-Purchase™ Platform are beating recall bias at last, and so will you. For a one-on-one demo of how it can fill your projects' specific needs, just click here.

Sarah Chung, Jim Timony and Joan Martinez (L-R)

MFour welcomes three new employees who together bring more than 60 years of experience to its Sales and Operations teams.

In Sales, veteran market research executive Jim Timony joins as a Senior Solutions Executive, and Sarah Chung as Solutions Executive. Joan Martinez has joined the Operations team as a Senior Research Consultant.

Jim has been immersed in consumer insights for more than 25 years. At GFK he rose to Vice President of Media and Communications Research, and won an Employee of the Year award. More recently, he was Phoenix Marketing’s Vice President of Converged Technology & Media. He brings extensive experience in designing and overseeing qualitative and quantitative projects, and in guiding clients to new methodologies that provide a clear roadmap for growth. At MFour, Jim will help clients benefit from unprecedented capabilities, including measuring and testing mobile ads’ effectiveness and gaining insights via the new Path-2-Purchase™ Platform. Jim earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Economics from Franklin Pierce College. He’s a golfer and a football fan, and enjoys spending time with his family.

Joan has 20 years of market research experience across a wide range of business categories, which she’ll apply to understanding MFour clients’ goals and guiding them to successful projects, from survey design through analysis and recommendations. Most recently she was Research Director for Alter Agents, Inc. Joan holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from California State University, Los Angeles. She’s an avid golfer, and is especially proud that she was one of two women who qualified for the championship round of the 2016 Southern California Golf Association’s Amateur Net Score tournament. As befits a stats and numbers expert, Joan also has played competitive poker. She says she has been unusually successful in raffles and playing the lottery, which she attributes to having been blessed by Pope John Paul II when he visited her native Guam in 1981.

Sarah brings more than 17 years’ sales experience to MFour, including positions with Salesforce, Ingram Micro, Alteryx and Kimberly Clark. At MFour she will guide clients toward Path-2-Purchase™ solutions that include identifying audiences with behavioral and profiling data housed in Consumer Knowledge Center, coupled with real-time, location-specific surveys. Sarah is an alumnus of California State University, Long Beach, where her focus was business administration. She is a dedicated gastro-tourist, enjoys spectator sports (especially basketball) and likes spending time with her husband and her dog, Louie.

Welcome aboard, Sarah, Jim and Joan!

What if the expression, “find a needle in a haystack,” were an actual job description? Chances are there wouldn’t be many applicants. 

In our era of Big Data (an unprecedented information haystack that might as well be infinite), the consumer insights profession has been trying to figure out how to fit in. Is traditional, survey-based research at risk of being perceived as less relevant, or even outdated, in the face of so many bytes of digital information collected from customers?

The issues are well-framed in "How Customer Insight Can Be a Powerful Business Partner,” a recent article by authors from Boston Consulting Group’s Center for Customer Insight, in partnership with Cambiar and the Yale School of Management’s Center for Customer Insights. These passages really stood out (the italics are ours):

• “Consumers’ online and mobile activities leave a digital trail, giving companies vital insight about where to reach them; data on things such as their interests, habits, and choices, which may correlate to shopping decisions; and how to predict and influence future behaviors and purchases. Many organizations, though, lack the capabilities to follow that digital trail.”

• “[Companies] must ensure that [insights] leaders and practitioners can… adopt more creative methods, and leverage new data sources.”

• “The goal is to combine structured data with rich unstructured, qualitative data, including information on consumers’ emotional needs…”

These observations all point to the key challenge facing the insights profession: how to seamlessly integrate and enrich passive, observed behavioral data with qualitative and emotional insights to tell the whole story about real consumer journeys. A new solution called Path-2-Purchase™ Platform finally lets you overcome obstacles and meet the challenge with one-source, first-party observed and qualitative data. The result is validated consumer insights for everyone.

• For the first time, corporate researchers and brand stewards can access a single source that combines Big Data tracking of mobile consumers’ digital footprints with real-time, right-place surveys to illuminate their motivations and emotions all along the path to purchase. 

• Observational data from tracking 2 million carefully profiled and representative U.S. consumers’ journeys across 12.5 million locations becomes more valuable when it intersects with the ability to find targeted individuals in-the-moment and survey them immediately.  

• Being able to see who’s going where empowers researchers to identify important but previously off-the-radar consumer segments to reach out to and understand. 

• Instead of drawing inferences and modeling consumer profiles based on third party data, insights are driven by first-party data from known and validated consumers.

• Data is collected and stored in a Consumer Knowledge Center, where it’s available to enhance understanding and target surveys to precisely the right respondents for a given product or service.

You can learn more about Path-To-Purchase™ in a one-on-one conversation; feel free to schedule it just by clicking here. And for the full text of the article referenced above, click here.