MFour announces the hiring of veteran data expert Muhammad Amer as Director of Data Science, along with Mike Erickson and Michael Victory Trieu as Software Engineers.

Amer will play a leadership role in identifying, obtaining, and delivering the consistent, high quality data clients require to drive clear consumer insights and smart business decisions. Before joining MFour’s rapidly growing team, he was Vice President of Data Science for CJ Affiliate and Director of Data Science at YP. The father of three holds a Ph. D. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. After spending his work days training a keen scientific eye on data-targeting opportunities and challenges, Amer enjoys training it on bullseyes and the occasional deer as an avid competitive archer and recreational bow hunter.

Mike Erickson will be a team leader in the Labs & Engineering department, driving continued advancements for the Surveys on the Go® research app and MFourDIY® – the nation’s only all-mobile DIY survey-building platform. He brings more than 20 years’ experience in software development and team management, including the founding of his own development and consulting company, Automated Solutions Group. One of Mike’s outside passions is coaching youth sports.

Michael Trieu will be involved in all aspects of software development for MFour’s app-based mobile research solutions. He arrives with experience in building and maintaining custom web applications for OneScreen Digital Media, Turn-key Systems and FortuneBuilders Inc. Michael earned a Bachelor’s degree in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine.

Welcome aboard, Amer, Mike, and Michael!

No one really knows how April Fools’ Day got started, but the first all-mobile survey exploring how Americans plan to observe it found that 63% of us are ready to pull pranks, play tricks, and tell fibs. If it’s true that knowledge is power, perhaps some of the information we collected from 300 respondents ages 17 and older will help you form a game plan for fending off the pranks of others, or for perpetrating your own.

• 38.1% of respondents who plan to play pranks said they will falsely announce a pregnancy, wedding engagement, or other major life event. Men and women were equally likely to say they’re plotting this sort of fib. “Spread fake news” was another popular falsehood – planned by 37.6%.

• Beware of people offering you food, especially if they’re women. 27% of respondents said they planned to trick victims into eating something that doesn’t taste the way it should, with 33.7% of women and 20.6% of men intending to weaponize edibles for an April Fools gag.

• Gird yourself against possible close encounters with creepy-crawlies. 33.9% of respondents planning pranks said they’d be deploying toy spiders, rats, snakes, etc., to get a rise out of their victims. Men stated a greater preference than women for fake vermin pranks, 37% to 29.3%.

• Whoopie cushions, handshake buzzers, and similar gag items haven’t gone out of fashion. 28% of our prank-intending respondents expect to embarrass victims with noisemaking devices.

• Creating chaos out of order has its fans: 19.6% of pranksters said they’ll re-organize someone’s office or cubicle without permission. 15.9% said they’ll cover pictures, screens and other surfaces people usually expect to be left alone.

• 35% of male pranksters and just 13% of women said they intend to play the “Circle Game” – Google it if you don’t know what it is, but it’s one of those little competitions that end with the loser having to tolerate a punch in the arm.

• “The safety of your own home” loses some of its meaning on April Fools’ Day. 79.4% of respondents planning pranks said they’d be executing them at home, compared to 39.7% at work. 54% said they plan to pull pranks while they’re with friends.

• Most April Foolers want to be eyewitnesses to their own mischief rather than relying on a communications device. 29.6% said they’d try to prank people by text message, 22.2% by social media, and 16.9% by telephone call.

• Friends (56.6%) and significant others (49.2%) are the most likely April Fools targets, trailed by parents (33.9%), siblings (32.8%), children (28%), and colleagues (21.2%). Only 3.2% of respondents who plan to pull pranks said they’ll be targeting someone they consider their nemesis. Women are significantly more likely than men to target a significant other (57.7% to 41.2%), while men have fewer qualms than women about April Fooling a friend (63.9% to 48.9%).

By and large, all this trickery, fibbing, and pranking is harmless. 58.7% of respondents said they’d never suffered any “bad consequences” from being targeted on April Fools’ Day, and 54.7% said they’d never experienced any bad consequences from perpetrating a trick. 58% of respondents said that they typically laugh when they’ve been April Fooled; very few reported ever becoming angry (5.3%) or brought to tears (2.0%). 27.3% said they retaliate by playing a prank on whoever pranked them.

Perhaps April Fools’ Day persists because it seldom results in real trauma. 6.0% of respondents said they’d suffered physical injury from being on the receiving end of a prank, and 8.0% said a relationship or friendship had been damaged because of what a prankster had done to them. Perpetrators of pranks reported similar results. 8.0% said they’d suffered a physical injury from carrying out a prank, and 7.0% reported that pranks they’d played had done real damage to a relationship or friendship. We also asked respondents to share memorable pranks they’d done or had done to them.

• The most ambitious: “I duct-taped all my friend’s furniture to his ceiling.”

• The liveliest: “Someone loaded my office with rabbits.”

• Some underscored the hazards of snacking on April Fools’ Day: Green food coloring in cereal bowls, vinegar in popsicles, mustard masquerading as icing, red hot peppers in whatever.

• The oddest: Replacing all the faces in framed family photos with a photo-shopped image of the distinctly non-glamorous actor, Wallace Shawn.

• And one that was way, way, way off base: “I came back from a doctor’s appointment and explained I had cancer and four months to live. My boyfriend started crying, and I couldn’t hold back the laughter.”

Thanks, we’ll take the bunnies. Here’s wishing everyone a fun, trauma-free April Fools’ Day!

Business means business, fooling around means fooling around, but on April Fools Day, one out of four Americans are willing to take their shenanigans to work. That’s one of the business-related takeaways from a survey of America’s only all-mobile market research panel. We collected responses from 300 panelists 17 and older about how they mark the annual day in which we all get license (well, more license than usual) to play pranks and tell fibs. Here’s part of what they told us:

• 69% of respondents said they typically indulge in April Fools foolery

•  25% said they carry their hijinks into the workplace

• 29.3% of men report they’ll be April Fooling in the workplace; for women, it was 20.7%.

• 36.3% of Millennials intend to play workplace April Fools pranks

• Among Gen Xers, 23.4% said they’ll be pranking at work

21.8% of those who plan to play pranks said they’ll target colleagues, but colleagues were second only to parents (19.8%) as the people least likely to be pranked. Friends (53%) and significant others (46%) have the most reason to be on guard against trickery.

Hispanics were the ethnic group that reported the most enthusiasm for April Fools Day pranks – 76.7% said they plan to participate, compared to 61% of Caucasians and 60% of African Americans. But Hispanics were slightly below the national average when it came to taking the festivities into the workplace – 23.3% intend pranks there, as do 26.2% of Caucasians and 20% of African Americans.

The negative consequences tricksters can suffer when they go too far or prank the wrong person indicate a sense of propriety, or at least a sense of limits, when it comes to the workplace. 45.3% of all respondents said they’d experienced some kind of unpleasant blowback for tricks they’d played – but only 2.7% said that they’d suffered a “professional reprimand” for taking liberties on April Fools Day. That was the fewest among six possible consequences respondents were asked to choose among.

What type of businesses benefit from people looking to pull a prank on April Fools Day? Retailers might notch some extra sales from the 17.7% of respondents who said they’d be deploying whoopee cushions and other gag items that make embarrassing noises. And the market for fake vermin could see an uptick: 21.3% of respondents said they plan to unnerve unsuspecting victims with toy bugs, rodents, snakes and such.

Plastic wrap, duct tape, baking soda, ramen noodles, food dye and, of course, toilet paper, are other consumer items our respondents said they’ve deployed (or had used against them) on April Fools Day. But we’ll get into that tomorrow when the MFour blog will unveil further revelations about what happens when Americans turn into April Fools.

Is April really the cruelest month, as T.S. Eliot proclaimed? The results of a new survey will assess whether it at least starts off that way. MFour gathered data from 300 members of the nation’s only all-mobile research panel for insights into how Americans mark April Fools Day. Does a national cruel streak surface? Or is it all in good fun? How willing are employees to bring April foolery into the workplace? And what do open-ended responses tell us about how far people are willing to go?

On Tuesday, we’ll focus on April Fools Day in the workplace, and Wednesday’s MFour blog will look at just how Americans expect to experience this annual day when they can claim a license to act obnoxiously. In other words, just how cruel or good-naturedly silly do we get when our usual expectations of proper behavior get lifted for a day? Innovative, in-app mobile research technology and an engaged panel of smartphone respondents get to the bottom of it as you hatch your own plots or plan your own defenses.

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile as you head into the weekend.

• Why Big Data Isn't Big Enough for Mobile Ad Measurement

• Food for Thought: Risk & Opportunity in Mobile Innovation

• Dear Diary Study: Sorry, I Can't Remember What I Bought

And here's a Friday tune to get you dancing into the first weekend of spring.

When Burger King introduced its classic “Have It Your Way” ad campaign, it was talking about customizing what you have for lunch. Now the phrase is taking on a new meaning for restaurant chains as mobile technology allows customers to submit orders via smartphones ahead of time.

Blooomberg reports that mobile order-ahead options are maybe too successful for the restaurants that have begun to offer them. Many “were caught off guard with just how big of a hit the technology is turning out to be.” The obvious upside is convenience – instead of standing in line to order, and then waiting again for the order to be filled, diners call in advance and their meals or beverages are ready and waiting when they arrive. But there have been some unforeseen challenges:

• At Starbucks, where nearly 1,200 stores have mobile ordering, lines to pick up orders sometimes give walk-up customers an impression that the store is over-crowded, causing them to skip a visit.

• Responding to some early mix-ups, TGI Fridays is hiring what might be called mobile-order concierges at each outlet. Their sole task is making sure the orders move from the kitchen to the pick-up counter, promptly and to the right customer.

• Chick-fil-A is speeding the process at some locations by running mobile orders out to arriving customers’ cars instead of asking them to come inside for a pickup. It’s a back-to-the-future solution reminiscent of how old-fashioned ‘50s drive-in restaurants used to do business.

• Chipotle is letting mobile-order customers reserve a pick-up time in advance, which it says promises to cut their waits in half.

The rewards of getting it right clearly are impressive – mobile payments firm Crone Consulting told Bloomberg that if done right, mobile order-aheads can increase a store’s sales by 30%. Consequently, digital advance orders could account for half of all quick-serve meals five years from now. Currently, fewer than 10% of chains offer mobile advance ordering.

Consultant Richard Crone warned that this is a double-edged opportunity. “Product, process, and people have to be re-engineered to pull this off.” And if restaurants don’t get it right, “we could see a bunch of stores actually going out of business.”

Need we point out that market research is also going through transformative times that are full of opportunities and risks? The stakes are high, and there’s no denying that “product, process and people have to be re-engineered” for research success. Get it wrong, and you could lose your lunch.

Luckily, the shift to true-mobile consumer research doesn’t have to be anywhere as logistically wrenching and fraught with risk as the shift to mobile restaurant orders. MFour gives you proven, advanced-mobile solutions you can turn to right away. For many users, MFourDIY® – the only all-mobile do-it-yourself research platform – is an ideal way to embrace change and meet today’s mobile consumers where they live. For more info, contact sales@mfour.com.

MFour has hired two more employees in Sales and research Operations as its major growth push continues. Cameron Massa joins the Operations team as a Survey Fielding Team Member, devoted to providing clients with quality and consistency in the design and fielding of surveys. His training has included a Software Engineering concentration in Computer Science at the University of La Verne. He’s also been a materials tester in the building industry. Cameron’s leisure interests include playing baseball, gaming, and playing guitar and piano.

Jacob Savage joins the Sales team as a Solutions Development Representative who’ll reach out to brands and market research firms to demonstrate how MFour’s true-mobile solutions can upgrade the quality, consistency, and efficiency of their survey-based research. He’s had previous positions in customer service at AT&T and the Irvine Company, and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business from California State University, Fullerton. Jacob’s leisure-time pursuits include surfing, snowboarding, and honing his chops on the guitar.

Welcome aboard, colleagues!

The irony of relying on Big Data to tell you how  your mobile ads are working is that it isn’t big enough. Instead of bringing clarity, an overabundance of aggregate  information will only confuse your efforts -- unless you augment your mountain of Big Data with ’qualitative insights from real people. As management guru Peter Drucker put it, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” But you can  measure how high the stakes are for getting mobile ad measurement right:

• Smartphone adoption in the U.S. has reached 77%, according to Pew Research Center, including 92% of 18- to 29-year-olds. Even among somewhat later adopters, ages 50 to 64, smartphone use has reached 74%.

• Advertising has followed consumers onto their smartphones to the tune of $58.3 billion, the amount eMarketer predicts will be spent on U.S. mobile advertising in 2017 – a 15.9% increase.

So finding a way through the current ad-measurement wilderness is crucial. But here’s the problem:

• A recent study by Northwestern University researchers revealed how NOT to do it. The authors warned against “the deficiency of using data alone.” What’s needed, they concluded, is “a theory of behavior, i.e. the mechanism by which advertising works on consumers….Testing should aim to discover the `why,’ not just the `what.’” 

• A commentary by AJ Mathew in Advertising Age entitled “Why We Need a More Human Approach to Mobile Measurement” drives home the point: “Our industry still needs a push to look beyond primitive metrics such as CTR to determine ad effectiveness. Instead, we need to look at advertising performance from a basic, human approach.”

In other words, the consumers you’re trying to reach aren’t just an aggregation of Big Data telling you where they’ve been and what they’ve bought. To get real business insights, including how aware and responsive audiences are to mobile advertising, you’ve got to talk to them. The best way forward is to reach consumers on the devices that define how they interact with today's mobile-centric world.

MFour is currently pioneering a new way to measure mobile ad effectiveness. This new approach allows you to identify the demographic makeup of consumers exposed to your ads – and then survey them to get that crucial human factor. To learn more about the much-needed game-changer in mobile ad measurement, contact sales@mfour.com.

Who’s the 800-pound gorilla of consumer research? The U.S. Government.

The best information we have about how much Americans spend in the aggregate on different categories of consumer products and services comes from the feds, via the Consumer Expenditure Survey. Taxpayers kick in $213.6 million a year to support the research division of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which conducts various surveys that chart economic activity and provide insights that establish important indicators such as the Consumer Price Index.

You don’t have a research budget in the hundreds of millions, but you do have the ability to get consumer insights much faster and in more detail than the feds. We’ll tell you how, but first here’s more on how that 800-pound research gorilla operates.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey involves two different ongoing studies commissioned by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and fielded by the Census Bureau. There’s a written questionnaire called the “interview survey” that focuses on recurring expenses such as rents, mortgages and car payments. Members of this panel fill out a survey each quarter detailing their recurring payments over the previous three months. The second study obtains data about more day-to-day consumer spending. Members of the day-to-day panel keep a diary for two weeks, reporting at the end on each purchase made by a household member.

Using this methodology, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that Americans spent $385.7 billion on eating out, and $514.7 billion to eat at home during 2015. And that the national grocery bill for at-home food consumption included $98.6 billion for fruits and vegetables, and $106.7 billion for meat, poultry, fish, and seafood.

But this method has an obvious recall problem. Even an engaged panelist can get too busy to keep receipts or remember to write down expenditures. So to some extent, Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates ride on its panels’ guestimates. For precise research and Point-of-Emotion® insights, your best bet is an advanced, in-app mobile survey fielded to an engaged all-mobile panel. Using phones’ GPS capabilities, you can GeoLocate consumers and pop them questions when their actions and experiences are freshest in mind.

Guestimates may be good enough for government work, but not for yours. And in MFour’s experience, mobile diarists come through with accurate, validated data because using their phones to report their activities comes naturally – after all, that’s what they’re doing when they post to Facebook. You can expect a re-contact rate of 85% for mobile diary studies and for other projects that call for repeated surveys over time.

To learn more about true-mobile diary studies, contact us at sales@mfour.com.

Here's a special St. Patrick's Day edition of our Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed as you head into the weekend.

• Mobile Consumers State 78% Preference for St. Paddy's Day

• Americans Reveal Their Love Affair with the Color Green

• Did St. Patrick Invent Green Beer? 11.8% Say Yes

And here's a rollicking St. Patrick's Day tune to fuel your holiday revels.