Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile. Just click and read!

Do You Care Whether Your Research Partner Knows How To Innovate?

Why Research Experiences Should Never Be Gray

Facebook's Ad Environment Got Tougher. Here's Your Next Move.

And here's a Friday video to get you all charged up for your weekend.

Dorian Smiley, Vanessa Hernandez, Kristin Caiella (L-R)

“Innovation lags in countries where the culture emphasizes risk avoidance and where R&D is seen purely [as] an expense, not an investment.”

This quote from Prinn Panitchpakdi, an investment executive in Thailand, jumps out from a new Bloomberg report on how nations rank in several measures of innovation. He couldn’t be more correct, and what’s true of countries is equally true of industries and individual companies. If innovation isn’t a core value, stagnation follows.

The bad news is that by Bloomberg’s calculation, the United States has slipped out of the global Top 10 for innovation. We were leapfrogged in the new rankings by France, which jumped from 11^th to 9^th, while the USA slid from 9^th to 11^th. South Korea came in first, with an aggregate score of 89.28 across the seven categories Bloomberg used in its rankings. The United States’ score was 80.42, about 10% below South Korea. Others in the Top 10, in order, were Sweden, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Finland and Denmark (#s 2 to 8), and Israel (10^th).

The U.S. ranked first in “high-tech density” – a measure of a nation’s share of the globe’s tech companies. It was second in the share of patents awarded to its residents, sixth in productivity per worker, and 10^th in “R&D intensity,” defined as research and development expenditures as a percentage of GDP. Of greatest concern was the United States’ #42 ranking in “Tertiary efficiency,” an educational metric that factors in the percentage of the population that’s enrolled in post-secondary education or has earned a higher-education degree, as well as the proportion of science and engineering degrees among the educated populace.

Should brands and companies value innovation? Only if they want to share in the prosperity that comes with a growing economic pie, instead of scrambling for bites of a shrinking one. In the market research sphere, valuing innovation means making it an important part of your own scorecard when you’re seeking the technology, panel engagement, and survey and analysis capabilities you need to obtain data and insights that are timely, validated, accurate, and provide a trustworthy basis for the business decisions that will drive a company’s growth.

While “what can you do for me?” is certainly the foremost question you should ask when you’re vetting potential research suppliers, it’s also worth asking, “what are you doing to invent a better/faster/easier/more reliable way for me to achieve what my research needs to achieve?" If the answer is hemming and hawing, you know you are not talking to an innovator. But if you get an answer full of specific details about new research capabilities you can use, including what they do, how they work, and why they aren’t the same old approaches and techniques repackaged under an innovative-sounding name, then you’re in the presence of a real innovator who can help you drive your brand's success.

Products and solutions such as mobile-app surveys, real-time GeoLocation studies, video-enriched surveys, and Social Ad Testing are among MFour’s investments in market research R&D. The newest MFour capability, Path to Purchase Solutions, weds Big Data to survey data by tracking consumers’ daily journeys to 12.5 million U.S. retail locations and other points of market research interest. You can also get the most pinpointed location-based surveys, reaching shoppers in-store or in a mobile exit survey.  

Here’s another quote about the importance of innovation, this one from Amy Jones, Vice President of Market Research for Warner Bros. Pictures: “MFour is always trying to do new things. They’re presenting us with new ideas and new ways of doing research.”

For a productive conversation about how mobile-app research and innovation can fit your projects’ specific needs, just get in touch by clicking here.

Facebook just made life more challenging for advertisers who want to reach more than 200 million U.S users and more than 2 billion worldwide.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that the social media dominator will privilege content posted and shared by its users’ family and friends over advertising and other commercial content. The reason he gave was that “posts from businesses, brands and media [are] crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect with each other." Consequently, the algorithm governing the Facebook News Feed has been changed to favor posts by friends, along with content that drives commentary and sharing.

Some advertisers may be thinking of leaving Facebook, but its massive audience still presents a huge opportunity for those who can create great content tailored to succeed in the social media ecosystem. Instead of retreating, advertisers can take Facebook’s new policy as a challenge to up their games, and create meaningful, attention-getting messaging that will drive the kinds of engaged interactions Facebook's new algorithm will promote.

That’s easier said than done, but when was effective advertising ever easy? It takes intense effort to get the creative, the placement and the timing right. In the social media ad space, that means putting an ad to the acid test before it's launched. A unique solution called Social Ad Testing lets you see whether your ads will sink or swim in social media users’ actual personal news feeds -- including Facebook's newly-altered environment. Here’s how it works:

– First, select members of a proprietary mobile-research panel who match an ad campaign's audience.

– Then inject your test ad into these targeted consumers' news feeds, whether on Facebook or other platforms, including Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

– Recipients will experience the test ad as part of the regular stream of content flowing through their news feeds. They won’t know it’s a test, so their reactions will not just simulate reality – they’ll be reality.

– In the first phase of the test, advertisers will learn by simply observing a test ad’s recipients. Does the ad do what Facebook now says content should do – that is, drive shares and comments? Further, what's the viewing time, and how likely are viewers to click on the ad or turn on a video ad's audio?

– In the next phase, advertisers get to interact with their test recipients by sending them a survey that asks for both unaided and aided recall and qualitative opinions about the ad. You’ll direct them to see the ad again, and then capture their comments on what they liked or disliked, what they found memorable, forgettable, or completely ignorable, and whether they intend to shop and buy.

– If the test shows your planned ad is well-received and strongly positioned to drive sales, then launch it with confidence and, perhaps, boost its budget on social media.

– If the ad does not test well, then rework it, based on your test respondents’ comments and interactions. Retest until ready for success.

– Test how ads fare across different social platforms. Is the altered Facebook News Feed still a good home for your social campaign? Or does your comparative testing show that awareness and engagement are higher with the target audience on another social platform?

The bottom line is, the better your advertising is, the better experience its recipients will have. And therefore, the more likely it will be to flourish amid social media users' news feeds, including Facebook's changed environment. For a productive conversation on how Social Ad Testing can help you prepare for successful social media campaigns, just get in touch by clicking here.

As it moves into its second decade, there’s a sure sign that the Smartphone Era has reached a milestone in total engagement: a New York Times tech advice column on how to disengage from your phone by making its screen and apps less colorful, and therefore less enticing.

Here’s how writer Nellie Bowles starts her account:

“In an effort to break my smartphone addiction, I’ve joined a small group of people turning their phone screens to grayscale — cutting out the colors and going with a range of shades from white to black....the goal of sticking to shades of gray is to make the glittering screen a little less stimulating.”

Yes, we should all drink responsibly from the mobile fountain. But being human, we have a natural desire to stay on the alert, whether it’s for opportunities to have fun, to get a good buy, to simplify the tasks of daily life, or to get news updates from the New York Times.

One expert quoted in the Times article says that our brains are wired to respond to colors – hence device- and content-providers' interest in making mobile apps and mobile screens stand out with vibrant hues. “Color and shape, these are the icebreakers when it comes to grabbing people’s attention, and attention is the new currency.”

With advances in mobile research, it’s now possible to get a specific understanding of mobile apps' effectiveness in engaging consumers' attention and pushing them along the Path to Purchase. Here’s how:

– Consumers who’ve downloaded a mobile research app to join a proprietary panel agree to allow tracking of the apps on their phone.

– Brands can survey users of their apps, or their competitors’ apps, about their experiences with the apps, and more broadly about their brand and product loyalties and opinions.

For consumers, taking surveys and permitting the capture of phone location and phone usage data is a purposeful, sensible, considered use of their phones, rather than a sign of addiction or compulsion. The data and insights you can expect to flow from that interest and engagement won’t be grayed-out, as long as your surveys reward mobile users' desire for seamless and worthwhile experiences on their phones.  For a productive conversation about how mobile-app research capabilities can help you uncover the colorful, full-spectrum consumer stories you need to tell, just get in touch by clicking here.

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile. Just click and read!

New Location Tracking Follows Travelers Where They Lead

Get To Know Your Most (or Least) Loyal Customers

Location Research Wisdom, Straight from the Beatles

And here's a Friday song to kick off your weekend travels.

If a 32-year-old male Hispanic homeowner who’s married with two children and earns $50,000 to $74,000 a year stops at a Starbucks on a Monday morning on the way to work, how likely is he to do it again during the week? If his coffee stop on Tuesday is at a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts rather than the Starbucks, what’s his reason for the switch?

This is the kind of complex consumer algebra you now can solve with Path-2-Purchase™ location studies. The concept is similar to previous GeoLocation studies, but instead of a snapshot of what happens at a single location, it’s a moving picture of a consumer’s journey through the day, every day.

In the case of our young father with the morning coffee habit, the same advanced, smartphone-enabled location tracking that places him at Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts on a given day will track what happens afterward, or on the day after. Is he a Starbucks loyalist – except for the days when it’s his turn to bring in donuts for his team at work? Was he unhappy with the wait-time during his Monday coffee stop, leading him to switch shops the next morning? Or does further tracking indicate he’s brand agnostic when it comes to coffee, and stops at different shops on different days for more complex or more indistinct reasons?

What makes this hypothetical respondent particularly valuable to consumer research is his engagement with the Surveys on the Go® mobile research app. As one of more than 2 million U.S. panel members who have downloaded  the app, he will have agreed to have his movements tracked on his phone, and he’ll be eager to take part in surveys triggered by proprietary GeoNotification® technology after his presence is detected in one of 12.5 million U.S. locations. Meanwhile, when he downloaded the app he provided detailed profile information such as ethnicity, parenthood and income – a profile crucial to meeting your need for reliably accurate, representative panel segmentation.

You can think of Path-2-Purchase™ as a blended brew of always-on Big Data tracking, augmented with targeted surveys fielded to the right people at the right time and place. You can expect insights that have a richer, more nuanced flavor that lets you tie numbers to people as you tell the story of what’s driving consumers’ daily decisions. For more on how Path to Purchase™ targeting, tracking, and survey capabilities can help give you that richer blend of data you need to tell the story, just get in touch by clicking here.

Unlike consumer data, song lyrics don’t have to make sense. Consider “Hey Jude,” a mega-hit by the Beatles that we may be hearing even more of than usual this year, since 2018 marks the 50^th anniversary of the song’s 1968 release. The tune probably has been heard many billions of times since then, if you count each individual impression from airplay, analog and digital media, downloads, renditions in piano bars, and by Baby Boomers singing in the shower. But in all those repetitions, has any listener really understood what Paul McCartney meant when he sang, “the movement you need is on your shoulder?”

It’s not a problem. Song lyrics are made to be puzzled over, misconstrued, or ignored, as the listener sees fit. Good consumer data, on the other hand, is more science than art, so it has to be straightforwardly validated and intelligible. Top quality data may not be on consumers' shoulders, but it's certainly in their hands, thanks to advanced mobile app research technology that lets you reach them via their phones, wherever they happen to be.

The way in which we access “Hey Jude” has gone through many technical iterations – starting with this live TV debut performance that introduced the song to the world. Just as music-delivery technology has evolved over the years, mobile location research technology continues to evolve, too. The latest iteration, Path to Purchase, gives researchers a uniquely powerful and accurate tool for understanding consumers’ movements through space and time as they go about their lives as economic beings. It’s now possible to identify someone who has lunch each workday at a Burger King, but never goes to McDonald’s – or vice versa. What created such loyalty? How can it be sustained? What could open a crack for competitors and put some of that BK loyalist's lunch-wallet in play? The answers begin with finding the right people to ask. 

But that presents a big obstacle: consumers' much-lamented unwillingness to participate in market research. According to anecdotal accounts, response rates for conventional online surveys are typically 3% or less. Somewhere along the line, trust was misplaced, and engagement was lost. But now there's an antidote: mobile-app research technology that’s as instantly accessible and naturally appealing to the consumer as a catchy pop tune, because it's attuned to how today’s consumers live and how they want to be engaged. Experience shows that studies fielded to a large, representative panel of consumers gathered around a mobile app generate response rates of 25% in an hour and 50% in a day. For location-specific Path to Purchase studies, panelists trust the app and the process enough to agree to have their movements tracked, and they're primed to receive and answer surveys at the moments and places most opportune to your research.

If you’ve been settling for those response rates of 3% or under, maybe it’s time to heed the Beatles’ advice in “Hey Jude” to “take a sad song and make it better.”  As for "the movement you need is on your shoulder," although it may never make literal sense, a sympathetic listener still can get a pretty good idea of what that line is driving at. The Beatles are urging us to seize new opportunities, to embrace change without hesitation. Looked at in that light, the movement you need really is on your shoulder. For a productive conversation about how mobile-app technology and panel can meet your projects' specific needs, just get in touch by clicking here. 

Brands competing for the U.S. travel and tourism dollar can tap into a multifaceted new trove of consumer data to gain previously unobtainable detail and specificity as to the “where,” “when,” “why” and “how much” of American travelers’ comings and goings.

Here are some of the questions you can pose to travelers whose movements you can follow from city to city and from place to place within a destination city. The key is  the unprecedented Path 2 Purchase™ Platform, powered by new levels of accuracy in smartphone location-tracking technology, combined with a first-party mobile panel whose members are willing to be tracked along the path to purchase and respond quickly to surveys that reach them in the right places at the right times. 

– When travelers arrive in a city and check into a hotel, but then switch lodgings during the same trip, what’s happened to make them go to the trouble of moving around? Location tracking tells you when they’ve switched and where they’ve gone; survey them immediately while the “why” and its related emotions are fresh in mind.

– Why do leisure travelers who are vacationing in a city pick one of its big attractions over another? And if they experience more than one of a city’s competing attractions, which one did they enjoy more – and why? Field surveys to location-validated tourists who have been to one or more leading attractions during their stay.

– What kinds of incentives will persuade convention-goers to venture beyond an event’s immediate environs to sample restaurants and other attractions elsewhere in the host city? Identify those who venture more deeply into a city through location tracking, and see what they have to say; compare them to those who stay close to the confab.

Answers to questions such as these are obtainable now, thanks to a unique pairing of Big Data and traditional survey methodology. Often portrayed as antagonists, Big Data and survey research have been brought together as complementary partners to deliver insights that neither could provide without the other.

On the Big Data front, smartphones’ location tracking traces pathways taken in real time by members of a proprietary panel of more than 1.3 million active U.S. members.

On the traditional, survey-based research front, effectiveness still depends on the panel’s diversity, representativeness and engagement, as it has since long before “Big Data” became a buzzword.

– Consumers must be willing to opt in to have their locations tracked.

– If properly engaged, they’ll respond readily when they receive surveys at times and places that are relevant to a client’s research.

– An engaging experience is indispensable to building and maintaining a panel whose demographic and ethnographic depth and diversity can support careful segmentation and sophisticated projects.

Unlike traditional online surveys and “mobile-web” surveys housed on the internet, response rates and engagement won't erode when the panel congregates around a trusted survey app. With panel consistency and growth assured, a great research app can be continually refined and developed to give insights professionals decisive new capabilities.

The pairing of timely Big Data location data with traditional consumer insights methodology opens new research doorways into the $836.6 billion or more Americans spend annually on domestic travel for business or pleasure, as estimated by the U.S. Travel Assn. If you’re working to increase your brand’s or client’s share of that pie, the Path 2 Purchase™ Platform gives us a lot to talk about. Just get in touch by clicking here.

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile. Just click and read!

Can You Trust Consumer Data If Consumers Don't Trust You?

GreenBook's Welcome Step Toward Relevant Mobile Terminology

Get Your SWAT Training for Brand Emergencies Here

And here's a Friday song about the only flu strain we'd want you to catch. Salud!