A Forbes Insights study of more than 500 senior marketing executives worldwide attests to the continuing difficulty of understanding consumers well enough to form insights that lead to smart business decisions.

– 66% of respondents said obtaining the quality they need is one of the three toughest challenges surrounding consumer data. 42% pointed to quantity as a chief data concern.

– Among retailers, 76% cited data quality as a top challenge, with 32% citing quantity.

–  Marketers for brands and manufacturers appear to be more confident than their counterparts in retail when it comes to the quality of the data they obtain. Among brand marketers in the survey, 48% cited quality as a leading data challenge, compared to the 76% of retailers.

– 61% of the brand marketers surveyed cited not getting sufficient quantity as a chief data concern; most of the marketing executives for retailers were not greatly concerned about data quantity, with 42% citing it as a top-three concern.

–  Among marketing executives in the U.S. and U.K., more than 80% said the hardest phase of the consumer journey to understand is the “evaluation” stage, in which shoppers are comparing products and brands as they decide what to buy.

– Overall, only 60% of retailers’ marketing executives surveyed said they were confident they’ve been “very successful” at deriving valuable insights from their data; for brands and manufacturers, 85% were confident they were getting the actionable insights they needed.

The dominance of smartphones as a key consumer technology for product evaluation and, increasingly, for purchase, makes them a key part of the equation for data and insights. Advanced mobile-app research technology, paired with a rapidly responsive and representative consumer panel, is the solution to many of the data-quality anxieties that the study by Forbes Insights  identified. This unique combination of mobile research technology and engaged survey-takers who use it can bring you the “who” and the “why” – the qualities that are fundamental to a reliably useful understanding of consumers, thoughts, emotions and actions. To learn more about how mobile-app research can meet your projects’ specific needs for quality data, just get in touch by clicking here.

Nowadays it’s getting harder to trust information, and that puts all the more pressure on verification for anyone who needs to deal in facts – not least brand executives whose decisions are directly reflected in bottom lines. The fundamentals that shape consumers’ responses to their worlds have shifted radically over the past ten years. Every hand that isn’t holding a smartphone has one in reach, and that creates a new, high-risk, high-reward landscape for consumer research. In other words, there's a new application for the old-fashioned advice popularized by Ronald Reagan: "Trust, but verify."

Here’s a ledger of some of the most important risks to valid, trustworthy data, followed by brief statements of corrective actions made possible by mobile-app research technology that attracts today’s smartphone-centric consumers.

Risk: Not meeting consumers where they want to be met. Research that doesn’t reach out via smartphones disregards the fact that about 80% of U.S. adults have them, and that consumers in the prime 18- to 54-year-old range use their phones two to three hours a day, on average (per eMarketer). Data derived from a narrowing segment of desktop users will be too thinly-based to trust. Panel erosion is the fundamental first failure that sets research off on the wrong track, compounding errors beyond any hope of correction and trustworthiness.

Corrective: Mobile-app research tools not only let researchers connect with the mobile public, but remove performance roadblocks such as slow downloads and dropped signals that frustrated users will encounter when a survey is housed online instead of embedding instantly into panelists’ phones. Happy survey-takers are more engaged, a requisite for accurate, trustworthy data.

Risk: Poor survey functionality that compromises data. Instead of capturing emotions provoked by products and experiences, a badly functioning survey on mobile will capture respondents’ frustration with the process itself. The responses aren’t valid reflections of their reality.

Corrective: Technology that meets consumers’ expectations of speed and smoothness when using their phones. Their emotions toward the process itself won’t color the data with frustration or alienation. A reliable research process leads to trustworthy outcomes.

Risk: Outright fraud and response duplication. Conducting research online puts you in a danger zone where fraud schemes are an acknowledged, but often hard-to-detect problem. There’s real anxiety in the industry over how sophisticated survey-robots increasingly can mimic human survey responses.

Corrective: Mobile devices have built-in advantages, starting with unique device IDs that prevent duplication (a device with a given ID is limited to taking a survey once). They also reveal the phone’s location, for further validation. Obtaining photos or videos from respondents also validates that they’ve actually had an experience – for example, images of store aisles, products, and receipts that are specific to the study.

Risk: Race-to-the-bottom, price-cutting panel providers who give you what you pay for. At a basement price, the research provider won't take pains to consistently implement effective measures to monitor studies, detect anomalies, and reject poor-quality responses.

Corrective: A conscientious commitment to service and quality. It takes effort and will, and it makes all the difference when it comes to obtaining data you can trust because you know it’s been systematically and painstakingly scrutinized and validated.

For a productive conversation about how to obtain verified mobile data you can trust to power the insights you need, just get in touch by clicking here.

Welcome back from your long weekend of feasting and earlyish shopping. Now, if you’re like many Americans, you’re considering whether to pounce on today’s Cyber Monday deals. But, since you’re an insights professional or a brand marketer, you also have your antenna up for information about how holiday shoppers are thinking and acting.

Nielsen’s VP for Consumer Insights, Jordan Rost, says his company’s research suggests that Cyber Monday shopping actually had its “peak day” last year (an estimate from Adobe put sales at $3.45 billion for 2016, up 12% from 2015). Going forward, Rost said, limiting the best prices to a single must-shop day "goes against what consumers are looking for" –  the freedom to shop when and where they choose, online or in-store, without sacrificing pricing advantages. 

That means holiday season retailers need to do it all, all the time – and not just online. Consumers, Rost tells us, also want to “get that store experience that complements what we’re able to buy online…throughout the rest of the holiday season.”

Now, with smartphones fundamental to shoppers’ journeys both online and in-store, researchers have unprecedented opportunities to reach them in-the-moment on their indispensable mobile devices.

– Timeliness: Mobile GeoLocation studies let you intercept validated panelists as they enter and exit a store. You can interview them in the very act of shopping, or just after they’ve left the store.

– Data Quality: Mobile data validation is ironclad, thanks to mobile devices’ location function and photo capability. Seeing is believing – just ask respondents to snap pictures of products, store shelves or purchase receipts, and you have your proof of their purchases and of their presence in the places relevant to your project.

– Fast Action: Insights come fast enough to inform brands’ ability to take timely action on issues such as product placement and verifying compliance with display agreements. Retailers can identify issues shoppers are having, and make on-the-fly improvements to the shopping experience.

For a productive conversation about how mobile-app research can address your projects’ specific needs, whether for the holiday season or longer term, including  mobile integration into tracking studies, just get in touch by clicking here.

It’s the time of year when everybody’s talking turkey, and every grocery and a great many restaurants are still selling them. In the spirit of the holiday, the U.S. Census Bureau has provided some timely data on the turkey phenomenon. The turkey (Meleagris gallopavois is its official scientific name), is more popular, and populous, than ever. There are two-thirds as many of them in the U.S. as there are homo sapiens, and as of 2016 the turkey population was growing 6 to 7 times more rapidly than the  human population.

–  According to the Census Bureau, the nation’s turkey population reached 244 million in 2016, up 4.5% from the year before.

– The human population in 2016 was 323 million, up 0.7%  from the previous year.

– Never mind a chicken in every pot – there could be two turkeys in every household if those 244 million were apportioned equally among the nation’s 118.9 million dwellings.

– Despite the proliferation of domestic turkeys, the U.S. runs a trade deficit in the birds – importing $25.8 million in live turkeys in 2016, while exports ran to about $12 million, for a $13.7 million deficit. 99.9% of those imported gobblers came from Canada, and 0.1% from France. The French word for turkey is “dinde,” by the way.

–  America was home to approximately 66,000 grocery stores in 2016, as well as 3,500 baked goods stores to help supply the desserts that many feasters will be too stuffed to consume – but will probably consume them anyway.

– Faced with preparing all those Thanksgiving feasts, U.S. households are well-equipped: according to 2011 estimates, 98.6% of them had a gas or electric stove.

– Leftovers shouldn’t be a problem, since 96.8% of homes had a microwave.

Talking turkey with turkey consumers isn’t a problem either. About 80% of adult Americans have smartphones, and mobile research is fast enough to gain insights before all that food has even been fully digested. White meat or dark meat? Home-cooked or prepared elsewhere for pickup or delivery? Tolerance for leftovers: how many additional turkey meals do you think you can you stand? What do you plan to serve or eat for Christmas dinner? Turkey again? All you have to do is think of what to ask, then field it to a U.S. panel of more than 1.3 million active members who are fully engaged with their phones and ready to gobble up your questions and feed you back accurate, validated, hand-cleaned data.

Here’s wishing a sweet, tasty and blessed Thanksgiving to all. And remember, to talk turkey about how mobile-app research can get you quick-hit data faster than it takes to roast a royal-sized Tom, with a 25% response rate in an hour and up to 50% in a day, just get in touch by clicking here.

Ron Sellers of Grey Matter continues to fight the good fight for data accuracy and reliability. His most recent article for GreenBook is especially worth reading, because it’s not just a litany of complaints, but gives readers specific advice on how to weed out suspect data and obtain quality that's validated and accurately represents consumer reality.

“This takes a lot more than digital fingerprinting or pre-programmed algorithms,” Seller writes. “Usually, it requires going line-by-line through the data to find and remove problem respondents.” Without that attention to detail, he warns, “frankly, they just miss a lot.”

We don’t think anyone will go wrong by taking Ron Sellers’ constructive criticism and sensible advice to heart. To read his article, click here.

And for a productive conversation about how mobile-app research meets the quality challenge to fulfill your projects' specific needs, just click here.

It’s conventional wisdom among insights professionals that it’s becoming increasingly hard to recruit people to take consumer surveys. But it ain’t necessarily so.

This dynamic changes when consumers think they’ll get a fair cash reward and a good experience when they participate in market research. The answer is to meet them where they’re most comfortable – on their smartphones.

So far this year, the Surveys On The Go® market research app has ranked in the Top 125 97.2% of the time among U.S. Android users who download the app at Google Play. 78% of the time it has been in the Top 100.

At Apple’s App Store, SOTG’s iOS version has been in the Top 125 99.3% of the time since July 1. And for 51 consecutive days, as of Nov. 20, it has held a spot in the Top 100 iOS Lifestyle apps, currently ranking 51^st. The download figures are from the app analytics company, App Annie.

Driving these numbers is the quality of the survey-taking experience enjoyed by more than 1.3 million active Surveys On The Go® panel members. The app consistently earns user ratings of 4.5 stars out of 5 in unsolicited public feedback posted at the two app stores, based on more than 62,000 ratings to date. These ratings, and word-of-mouth recommendations among friends and acquaintances, are the keys to the panel’s growth. SOTG naturally attracts more than 2,000 new members a day without any advertising or other recruitment outreach.

The takeaway is that today’s consumers really do want to take surveys, if they’re properly engaged in the mobile space where they’ve chosen to live. For a productive conversation about how mobile-app research can handle your sample requirements and provide solutions for your projects' specific needs, 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!

Only Quality Ads Will Break Through on Social. Here's How.

A Marketing Man from Mars Shares Sweet, Data-First Insights

Brand Authenticity: Why Keeping it Real Keeps Brands Healthy

And here's a Friday video that's in tune with the Thanksgiving spirit.

Here’s a bit of advice about consumer insights that’s short and sweet – and so fundamentally important that it needs to be constantly reiterated. It comes from Andrew Clarke, Chief Marketing & Customer Officer of Mars, the iconic candy company that produces M&Ms, Milky Way bars and much more.

The UK marketing periodical, Campaign, reported on a recent talk Clarke gave in England, where Mars is headquartered. Here's the key quote:

“`Marketers should trust data,’ Clarke said. `It's very easy to make bad decisions in today's world. It's much easier to make brave decisions if you have the right information. But it's very stupid to make brave decisions without data.’"

There’s been a drumbeat of coverage in business publications about how the role of a Chief Marketing Officer is changing, and how pressured and insecure the position has become. Clarke addressed this uncertainty head-on, noting a study in which – yikes! – 80% of CEOs surveyed said they were not impressed by their CMOS.

Instead of playing defense, Clarke urged marketers to embrace imaginative thinking and innovation, because imagination and innovation are what marketing should be about.

“I think being a Chief Marketing Officer is brave….We’re the ones trying to take the future forward, and that future is tricky,” Clarke said.

It’s a fundamental truth that one of the most important keys to moving brands forward is trustworthy data on which their executives can base decisions. But it’s crucial to realize that as the world and its people change, achieving the fundamentals requires innovative and imaginative tactical adjustments that get ahead of, or at least keep up with, the pace of change. That’s what we think Clarke means when he defines marketing as a brave attempt to “take the future forward.”

If only 20% of CMOs are currently valued by their bosses, it’s time to disrupt the status quo. That’s not going to happen if marketers and market researchers fail to take a close look at their customary data streams. They should consider a methodical examination of whether the data they’re getting and the recommendations they’re making to those skeptical CEOs are truly representative of today’s consumers.

At the top of the list of innovative tools for obtaining consumer insights are mobile-app surveys and passive-data collected from a panel of consumer research app users. It’s not just the innovative technology that matters, but the way in which tech-focused, app-centric consumers will gravitate to an engaging survey app that lets them easily share opinions via the smartphones that are at the center of their comfort zones for information and communication. For a productive conversation about how mobile app research works, and how it can meet your specific project needs, just get in touch by clicking here.

There's a strong current of opinion in the world of digital advertising that says it's increasingly disliked by consumers and possibly on the way out.  An article along those lines appeared in a recent edition of Chief Content Officer magazine, under the headline “How Advertising Is Killing the World Wide Web.” 

Writer Kirk Cheyfitz painted the situation surrounding digital advertising in shades of black:  “A plague of bots has brands paying to have their ads clicked by non-humans. Wildly varying `view-ability’ standards allow few ads humans can view, while other ads make it impossible to see anything but the ad....Bad ads, maddening interruptions, mindless product claims and general abuse of customers online – have come home to roost.” Citing eMarketer, Cheyfitz reports that 75 million U.S. consumers are using ad blockers, and that blocker use continues to grow by double digit percentages each year.

If there's a way out, the article suggests, it's placing all bets on quality. Offer  consumers a quality experience, starting with respecting their right not to have their activities on social media and websites intruded upon by ads that block content and won't go away.

Now that quality assurance in the social media advertising realm is so badly needed, agencies and brands need tools and processes to achieve it. One that deserves a close look is Social Ad Testing, which lets advertisers assess how consumers perceive mobile social media ads before a campaign has been launched.

– First identify members of a mobile research panel who fit the ad's targeted profile.

– Next, inject the ad you're testing into these consumers' actual personal news feeds. 

– The result is a real-life, in-the-moment test, rather than a simulation, because the ad appears in the same environment as the content that brings people to social media in the first place. Can the ad do its job in the tough social environment, where it competes for attention with posts from the recipient's friends, families and trusted content-sharers?

– The answers come from first gathering passive behavioral data showing how recipients interact with the test ad --do they show engagement by  clicking on, sharing, liking the ad, or enabling a  video ad's audio track?

– Then the same recipients receive a survey that provides deeper insights into whether they noticed the ad and its brand or product. Shown the the ad again in their news feed, they'll answer questions that shed insights into what grabbed them, or what's boring or irritating them. 

– The advertiser can proceed confidently if the test signals are good, or, if they're not so good, make the needed adjustment to the concept and content and then retest to see if the problems have been solved.

If quality is the ultimate battleground on which digital advertising must make its stand, Social Ad Testing is a good ally to bring to the fight. For a productive conversation about how Social Ad Testing and other mobile research solutions can meet your projects’ specific needs, just get in touch by clicking here.

Three themes jump out of the New York Times' consumer guide to the 2017 holiday season’s top video games and gaming devices: mobility, versatility and authenticity.

The Times praises the Nintendo Switch – a gaming console that’s been flying off the shelves since its introduction months ago – as the year’s hottest device. One of the key selling points is its versatility. Switch is an at-home console that can be removed from its dock and double as a mobile device for on-the-go play.

And “Call of Duty: World War II” is being pegged as one of the season’s hottest games, with an emphasis on authenticity as a selling point. The game puts players in the shoes of a U.S. Army infantryman fighting his way through the European theater, and the Times notes that its designers engaged an expert historian to help them get the details of weaponry and combat settings just right.

While the smartphone’s impact on consumers is relatively new (this is the 11th holiday season in which gift-givers can buy their dear ones an iPhone), the need for brands and products to provide quality mobile experiences is no longer news, but a given. On the other hand, authenticity as a key selling point isn’t new at all: many a Baby Boomer probably still can hum the nearly 50-year-old jingle that celebrates Coca-Cola as "the real thing."

Experts who parse today's generational attitudes have identified a craving for authenticity as perhaps even more of a hallmark for Millennials and Gen Z, who together will dominate the consumer economy for decades to come. We're in an age of social media, when any hint of dissatisfaction with a brand’s messaging can instantly go viral. Consumers who perceive a message as inauthentic have the power and platform to stir up some hurricane-force blowback.

For marketers, the challenges in a world of mobile consumers who insist on versatility and authenticity are both technical and creative. The technical imperative in connecting with consumers via their smartphones is to ensure that every interaction provides a seamless, enjoyably functional affirmation of their emotional and practical investments in their devices. The creative imperative is to achieve marketing impressions that reward consumers' desire to connect with content that has the imprimatur of authenticity. A valuable bookend to authenticity in branding is to use a satiric brush to paint competing consumer options as silly and inauthentic, as in Direct TV's commercials mocking cable.

For insights professionals, meeting the technical challenges of studying mobile consumers comes down to partnering with mobile research providers who have put the most time, thought, energy and commitment to quality into designing mobile capabilities and solutions. For marketers, achieving authenticity (or gaining an entertaining advantage by poking fun at inauthenticity) requires purposeful and timely pre-launch testing of a campaign’s creative content, especially on social media. For a productive conversation about how to succeed on both the technical and the creative fronts as you address your projects’ specific needs, just get in touch by clicking here.