Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from MFour to keep you up to speed on mobile research as you kick off your weekend.

• Don't Be Clueless About "Mobile Optimized" Surveys. Compare!

• Lift the Fog to Get Metrics You Can Trust

• Taming Market Research's Elephant in the Room

And here's a Friday tune to get your tail wagging as you head into your weekend.

Comparison shopping is fun, and it’s always smart. In that spirit, you’re getting a chart to give you a quick start on choosing your mobile research provider. The checklist has mobile musts and one must-avoid – always beware of “mobile optimized” surveys that try to substitute mere appearances for technological substance. Instead, look closely at how the different mobile providers stack up in the categories that reflect real commitment to true-mobile research.

A note on terminology: GeoIntercepts are a generic GPS-enabled technology that can locate consumers in a certain vicinity when their phones’ “location” function is turned on. MFour’s GeoValidation® process, on the other hand, makes sure they’ve been exactly where you need them to be. Cached surveys, another feature from MFour, are questionnaires that load instantly into panelists’ phones. There’s no need for an often-unreliable connection to a web-based online questionnaire, because cached surveys are embedded in a mobile app. In-app surveys are natural and reliably easy for respondents, which leads to another indispensable mobile “must” – a large, demographically representative, highly-engaged all-mobile active panel.

The simple chart below can be summarized in a simple equation: only advanced, true-mobile technology plus an engaged, true-mobile panel will ever add up to successful mobile research. Understanding this, you’ll shop successfully for mobile solutions and never have to settle for wrong answers again. Let your comparison shopping begin.

Like it or not, we’re living in the Post-Quality Era.

Convenience and speed are now foremost in consumers’ expectations; the notion that some things are worth waiting for seems increasingly quaint. Intrinsic, commonly-accepted measures of “quality” that prevailed not long ago are still precious to some, but not the main consideration for most. And yet, along with being fast and convenient, the actual consumer experience must meet an acceptable standard of quality.

The need for utmost speed and convenience puts brands in a perpetual earthquake zone, with fault lines threatening to disrupt every familiar process they’ve had for creating and selling their products. What do consumers want? Will maximizing convenience and speed undermine quality to the point where satisfaction sinks and sales collapse? With everything on shaky ground, good research data is more essential than ever.

You know the stories about the sweeping changes that have transformed music, media, technology and other industries. Seemingly ironclad brands failed to anticipate or respond effectively to change as each assumed that its reputation for quality would matter more than newer, faster, more convenient ways to access information and entertainment. Their bottom lines over the past decade or more say it wasn’t so.

A new report from Boston Consulting Group entitled “How Digital Delivery Puts the Restaurant Value Chain Up for Grabs” forecasts similar disruption in the restaurant business. Increasingly, it says, food alone won’t win diners’ hearts. Getting it delivered fast and on demand, either by the restaurant itself or by a third-party who takes orders and handle deliveries for multiple restaurants, may be the new prime directive. Diners, like music and news consumers, will value effortless eating over investing the time it takes to eat out.

Meanwhile, as with news and music, there will still be a substantial market for the legacy experience of dining out. Will restaurants be able to satisfy both kinds of consumer preferences? How should they price dine-in and delivery options? Will convenience alone instill customer loyalty? Does excellent quality generate profits?  Should restaurants try to reward the dine-in experience over the deliver-out option?         

Answering these questions and many more will be imperative not just for restaurants, but for all kinds of products and services that must negotiate balances and tradeoffs between demands for convenience and speed on one hand, and quality on the other. Market research is no exception. Suppliers must provide tools that are fast and convenient, yet capable of satisfying clients’ demand for quality data and productive insights.  

It’s with that in mind that MFourDIY™ was created. The first true-mobile, do-it-yourself survey-building tool gives you the speed and convenience of intuitive, easy-to-used DIY technology. Quality data springs from a panel of more than a million smartphone respondents who are engaged by survey experiences that are fun and easy. For more on getting speed and convenience without sacrificing quality, just click here.

We’d never had a client fly in naked and carrying a bow before, but this was the one and only Cupid, and he needed our help.

After all these years of winging it, Cupid realized that he needs some mobile targeting to optimize his aim when he lets his arrows fly. The divorce rate told him that too many of his shots were missing the mark. With Valentine’s Day approaching, he needed to put some fresh insights in his quiver. Could we help?

We said we’d try, but how do you measure romance?

Well, like everything else, love has a consumer dimension. So we GeoFenced every major national outlet for flowers, candy and jewelry. Then we waited for natural shoppers among our million-plus active mobile panelists to show up and go about purchasing those all-important tokens of affection. Using proprietaryGeoIntensity® and GeoNotification® technologies, we delivered  exit surveys directly on their smartphones as they left the stores with gift purchases in hand – and quickly landed 1,000 demographically representative, GeoValidated® responses that gave vivid insights into what these romantic consumers had bought, and why.

Because the data displayed in real time as it came in, Cupid was able to fly out instantly to strike the biggest spenders with his arrows, tracking them down by their smartphones’ GPS location. Cupid said he’s hoping for insights into whether extravagant gift-giving correlates with lasting love.

There’s more research to come tonight – Valentine’s Day night. Again we’ll use GeoLocation to push surveys to panelists as they leave prominent restaurants, nightclubs, and other landmarks that couples frequent on their special occasions. Attitudes, behaviors, intention to buy (into a relationship, that is) – we’ll be asking about all of it, down to whether certain respondents remained calm when their dates ordered the lobster AND the filet mignon AND a $100 bottle of wine.

Of course, love doesn’t always happen in one night, so MFour is partnering with Cupid on an ongoing tracking study. At regular intervals we’ll be pushing surveys to members of our all-mobile panel at weddings, romantic hotels, on cruise ships, and, yes, in divorce courts – the whole works, to get their thoughts on falling in or out of love. We’re also discussing whether to do a recruit and kiss. Cupid is depending on us, because he wants to make those arrows count.

The research is gratis, of course, because what the world needs now is love sweet love, it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of. And we want to do our part to help.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody! May Cupid’s arrows hit their mark and send you into whatever embrace is just right for you.

And here’s a musical tribute to our newest client from one of the greatest singers ever. Sing it again, Sam!

Like all other business activities, advertising is moving headlong into the mobile realm for a very good reason: it's where you’ll find consumers -- glued to their smartphones. But change is coming so fast that brands lack reliable measures of how well their mobile ads are doing in raising awareness and driving sales. Now MFour is introducing a solution: Mobile Ad Metrics OnDemand – a method that lets researchers see within a matter of hours how well brands’ mobile ads are working.

Here’s how it works: Each ad received on a smartphone generates a unique ID number. Advertisers give us the IDs, then we match them against more than one million consumers on the nation’s largest all-mobile research panel. Mobile Ad Metrics OnDemand lifts the fog and provides previously hidden key indicators for ad performance. Solutions include:

• Verified basic & advanced demographics
• Mobile & in-app measurement
• Individual ad metrics or full-campaign options
• Same-day data delivery

Like all MFour clients, advertisers will get to know their audience by more than 200 demographic points: age, gender, ethnicity, income, region, marital status – even by whether they drive a pickup truck, an SUV, or a sedan. The panelist profiles will be that precise.

And be assured, our panel is America. The nation’s largest, most demographically representative panel precisely mirrors the mobile audiences you want to understand, including hard-to-reach Millennials, Hispanics, and African Americans.

With demographics in hand, you can survey your audience to measure preferences for brands and products – and now you can finally see how mobile ads influence those preferences.

To find out more about Mobile Ad Metrics OnDemand and all other MFour products, just e-mail us at sales@mfour.com or call 714-754-1234.

There’s an elephant in the room where market research lives, and it's playing havoc with brands' tracking studies.

The elephant is the widely lamented drastic decline in online sample quality and demographic representation. Studies, including trackers, struggle to reach enough young people and minorities. The result is a loss of continuity in tracking data as time goes by and online sample becomes increasingly less reliable in representing consumer reality. unreflective of consumer reality.

Still, it's not easy to accept the need for change. There's a natural human tendency to stick with what we know, and to continue using methods that have served us well over time. 

But now it's crucial to recognize that times have changed, and that consumer insights professionals need to adapt to the definitive new reality: mobile consumers want mobile experiences, and that includes participating in market research surveys. 

 MFour is the leader in connecting brands with mobile consumers, including full quotas of Millennials, Hispanics, African-Americans and Gen Z who need to be represented in tracking studies.

There's a way to adjust trackers gradually by migrating your outreach to smartphone-centric consumer groups to mobile, while preserving an online element for older, more PC-oriented demographics for as long as it seems to make sense.

Taming the elephant is easier than you think, if you think mobile when you think of trackers.

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from MFour to keep you up to speed on mobile research as you kick off your weekend.

• Don't Be Clueless – GeoValidate!

• Your Boring Surveys Suck. Here's Why.

• The Mobile Truth About Super Bowl Consumers

And here's a Friday tune to get your pre-Valentine's Day weekend off to an affectionate start.

MFour has added Sam Soto to its sales team as a Solutions Development Representative. Sam’s role involves reaching out to brands and market research firms to help them identify how advanced, true-mobile survey technology and an engaged, all-mobile panel can drive their projects. Sam brings superior listening and problem-solving skills to the table. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Marketing from Northern Arizona University, and previously worked in sales for Provident Equipment Finance. Sam doesn’t need to be sold on travel, the outdoors, and cooking. They’re his favorite leisure pursuits. Welcome aboard, Sam!

With Valentine’s Day approaching it seems appropriate to note that one of the greatest songs in the history of rock music is a Valentine to Market Research. It’s “See Me, Feel Me,” the climactic number from the Who’s 1969 rock opera, “Tommy,” which subsequently became a film by noted director Ken Russell, and a hit Broadway musical.

Right behind you, I see the millions.

On you, I see the glory.

From you, I get opinion.

From you, I get the story.

Wouldn’t you agree that’s market research in a nutshell? The data you elicit and extrapolate from your research provides the lens that allows you and your clients to see millions of consumers. From this data flows the glory you’re aiming for: difference-making business decisions informed by expert analysis. From you, clients get consumer opinion. From you, they get the coherent stories you’ve found in the raw data.

OK, the Who would probably disagree with this interpretation, but truth – or at least a fun spin on what we hear –  is in the ear of the beholder.

So if you know the song, you’ve got something to hum while hovering over your Valentine’s Day box of candy or sniffing a bouquet of endearment. And if you don’t, click here.

The millions, the glory, the opinions and the story don’t just materialize from thin air. You have to know where to look, and how – and then put your knowledge into action. Your best tool for getting on the fast, cost-efficient path to insights glory is MFourDIY™ – America’s only all-mobile survey-building platform. It’s especially useful for clients who need your help talkin’ ‘bout the Millennial generation. To take the first step, just click here.

Did we mention that one of the most memorable lines from another rock opera, “Jesus Christ, Superstar,” is “What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s happening?” That might be about market research, too.

You spend your work days trying to understand consumers — and that's why you're trying to connect with them through their smartphones. But when it comes to buying mobile solutions, you gotta proceed with caution. That's why you must ask these 5 questions of any mobile vendor you're considering.

• Are  you selling mobile-optimized research? So what makes it so "optimal?" You’ll hear that you should be buying “optimized” technology that lets online surveys look good on smartphones. But smartphone users spend more than 3 hours a day using apps, and just 20 minutes going online. Translation? In-app surveys make all the difference.

• I've  heard of mobile research apps. Is that the same as mobile-optimized? In a word, no. In two words, hell no. When asking this question, make sure you get a detailed answer that lays out the differences between research apps and mobile optimization in terms you can understand.

• So what’s the name of your survey app? This is better than asking, “do you have a survey app?” The only acceptable answers are the precise name of the app the company sells, or “we don’t have an app.” If the latter, you have to recognize that there’s a gaping hole in the vendor’s product line.

• Who’s on your research panel – and do they match the demographic points I need? If there’s no hard data to verify the answer, you’ve got a problem. Anything less than a specific answer about how the panel is recruited, its size, and its demographic breakdown should be a deal-breaker.

• How engaged is your mobile panel? Can I expect fast and valid completes? The answer will be upbeat, of course. But how can you verify it? You can’t – unless the panel you’re considering is built around a mobile survey app. In that case, the panelists themselves will tell you. Just visit the App Store and Google Play, where they’ve downloaded their survey app (Not to brag, but MFour's Surveys on the Go® app is the highest-rated and most downloaded survey app in the world).

So what now? The surest way to get clear, reliable answers to these 5 questions is to contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com . We’ll give you the shopping experience you deserve, and soon enough you’ll have all the true-mobile, in-app research solutions you need to understand consumers more clearly.