From 2011 to 2016, smartphone adoption in the U.S. more than doubled – from 35% to 77%. It’s a case of consumer-technology history repeating itself – 100 years ago the automobile was driving to rapid dominance. From 1910 to 1914, car ownership nearly quadrupled, from 459,000 to 1.7 million.

Key findings on growing smartphone usage in the Pew Research Center’s latest report on mobile technology show that the point of saturation is arriving as late adopters jump on board.

• 74% of Americans ages 50 to 64 now have smartphones, up 16% from just a year ago.

• The 65 and older group, always the most conservative, also saw a big surge of 12% – with 42% now owning smartphones.

• “Smartphones are nearly ubiquitous among younger adults, with 92% of 18 to 29-year-olds owning one.”

Don’t get the idea that this means mobile research has topped out. The Model T of 100 years ago had four wheels, and so does a Tesla. But the Tesla would be almost unimaginable to the engineers who designed the Model T. What’s under the hood and under the roof has been the object of a century’s worth of innovation – and that won’t change as we move toward a coming era of self-driving vehicles.

The opportunity for researchers is that there’s always more to explore when it comes to mobile solutions. For example, the just-published Greenbook Report on Industry Trends lists GeoLocation technology as an “emerging technology” that’s not fully on the industry’s radar but deserves closer monitoring. Mobile qual is also still cited as “emerging” rather than established by the 1,500 research professionals who were surveyed for the report.

But mobile qual and GeoLocation are not experimental “maybes.” Both are established, field-tested and proven reliable. Separately they are indispensable to dead-accurate insights. Combined, they give you accuracy and vivid, in-their-own words responses as you talk to validated consumers both in-location and in-depth. Starting with proprietary, location-research technologies including GeoIntensity^® and GeoNotification^®, you can harness  two signature smartphone capabilities – GPS and multimedia – to find the right people, then make the most of it with video-enhanced questions and video-selfie responses that drive intense qualitative insights.

These fast and flexible technologies and more are already at your fingertips with MFourDIY™  – the only advanced, all-mobile survey-building tool. Contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com to learn how to put your research efforts in the fast lane.

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 Let Millennials Write You Off as Tech-Stupid

• How Will Motorists Behave in Self-Driving Cars?

• Slaying Deadlines to Keep Your Career Alive

And here's a Friday tune to give your weekend a rollicking start.

Yikes!

If you’re in market research – or just about any kind of business – you’ve got to be worried by theories being advanced by Dr. Stephanie Brown, a Bay Area psychologist and author of “Speed: Facing Our Addiction to Fast and Faster.”

• “The need to be efficient and instant leads to a dumbing down of information intake.”

• “Constant notifications and incessant pinging conditions us to look forward to the next e-mail, the next text, fueling an agitated inner state.”

• “People become scanners…cruising…across the screen to pick up bytes, rather than delving toward a deeper understanding.”

• “The link between speed and success is continually reinforced by American culture.”

There’s more, but you get the picture, because to some degree or other you’re living it. You’re speeding to get projects done, because your bosses or clients say the deadline just has to be met. Meanwhile, you’re fighting a tough battle not to make speed the enemy of quality survey design and thoughtful analysis.

And, oh yeah, the data-generating panelists upon whom everything in market research ultimately depends are facing the same pressures you are, including “notifications and incessant pinging” and other distractions that are likely to cause interruptions and drop-offs that compromise data, slash response rates, and slow the entire process.

We don’t know whether booking a therapy session with Dr. Brown would help – but we know that booking 30 or 45 minutes for a live demo or webinar to learn about MFourDIY™ will do you and your projects a world of good. It’s the nation’s only all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey design platform – and unlike a psychological consult your session will be free. This is the first step toward saying goodbye to that “agitated inner state” of which the good doctor so aptly warns.

• You’ll learn how to design and field a survey in less than an hour, on a true-mobile platform that gives you sophisticated capabilities such as GeoValidation® for in-location or after-visit studies, which are achievable only by fielding to smartphones.

• You’ll meet your deadlines because response rates from our panel are 25% within an hour, 50% within a day. That alone is proof that MFour’s million-member active panel makes survey-taking one of their priorities. Advanced, true-mobile technology that harnesses the power of a top-rated survey app makes the process fun and keeps panelists glued to their screens and immersed in your questions.

• You’ll have extra time to get lunch. You’ll be able to pause and take deep, relaxing breaths. And then, freed from that agitated inner state, you’ll do a bang up job of turning your reliable insights into business decisions that work.

Click here and see.

Will the consumer experience with self-driving cars be a big opportunity for market research?

The first  insights may come from Volvo, which used the Detroit Auto Show to announce a program called “Drive Me” to recruit families to test self-driving vehicles and report on their user experiences.

American drivers will have to wait their turn – Volvo is starting with 100 volunteers in Sweden who’ll drive a pre-designated route before moving to other countries. As you might expect, Volvo will collect reams of data generated by the autos themselves that will give insights into how the cars perform.

But the project has a strong qualitative research component: “Our research teams will be working closely with the trial users, gathering unique insights and learning about behavior behind the wheel while experiencing autonomous driving,” the automaker says.

More specifically, MediaPost reported that Volvo “wants to learn…what sort of things they would do in the car when it is driving them to their destination.” Might this include taking surveys in self-driving cars? Imagine using GPS technology to prompt “drivers” to take surveys when they cruise past a billboard. Doesn’t your company want to measure ad lift?

It isn’t premature to dream, is it? And it’s never too soon for you to get acquainted with the vast capabilities of true-mobile studies that use the most advanced mobile technology to harness the amazing power and functionality of smartphones. MFourDIY^TM – the first true-mobile do-it-yourself survey-building tool – is an ideal way to get started. Your internal research team will  reach people like never before, even when they're riding in a car.

To set up a test drive, contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com.

When it comes to talking to Millennials, the conversation has to begin with technology and innovation. They’re the first generation to have grown up with computers in their pockets, putting instant information and instant communication literally at their fingertips.

Millennials’ connection to advanced technology, and their pleasure in surfing the waves of technological innovation, are not going away. A report from the U.S. Department of Commerce gives a window on why. It’s called “Fostering the Internet of Things.” And it looks to a near future in which technology and its effect on consumer behaviors will explode in new, unpredictable directions.

The Internet of Things is not easily defined, but Wi-Fi on steroids is one way to think of it. It's constant connectivity for constant information flow that will make computer intelligence a personal factotum for a growing number of complex tasks. And it’s already making inroads. The new report identifies some of the likely changes that are coming fast:

• By 2020, there will be 4.1 billion connected devices in the United States – roughly a dozen for every American.

• The Internet of Things will generate at least $4 trillion a year in global commerce by 2025 – and possibly as much as $11 trillion.

• “From wearable devices that track infant heartbeats to supply chains that are capable of tracking an individual soda can from production to recycling...the Internet of Things portends significant and in some cases revolutionary changes.”

Against this backdrop of amazingly rapid change, your research interviews with Millennials are crucial for insights in virtually all product and service categories. They will not only be the first adopters of new technology, but also its leading innovators. Millennials, however, are famously hard to reach for consumer surveys. If that’s been your experience, look to MFour for solutions.

The MFourDIY™ platform, for example, is the only true-mobile, do-it-yourself survey-building tool that can connect you to more than 700,000 Millennials. And with it, you’ll meet Millennials on their own favorite technological turf, the smartphone. Please contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com for more details on how to engage Millennials in productive research conversations.

With the annual February celebration of Black History Month on the horizon, the U.S. Census Bureau is highlighting insights about the African American population that underscore how important these citizens are to the nation’s consumer economy. The figures are from mid-2015.

• The African American population of 46.3 million was up 1.3% from the year before.

• African Americans represent 13.3% of the population now, a figure that’s expected to rise to 17.9% by 2060.

• 84.7% of African Americans ages 25 or older are high school graduates, 53% had attended college, and 20.2% had earned a Bachelor’s degree or higher.

The role of African Americans in every aspect of the nation’s economy is a huge part of today’s conversation about America and its future. Census Bureau figures reflect a particular need for the mechanisms that drive the economy to kick in more strongly among African Americans, who continue to trail national averages in median income, entrepreneurship, and education beyond high school.

Because African Americans are writing such a vital chapter in America’s story, businesses of all sorts need the deep consumer insights that can be had only by talking to them directly. Are your research tools and survey panels up to that challenge? Can you find the African Americans you need to talk to without resorting to flawed panel-recruiting measures that are not only costly and time-consuming, but will also distort your data? If your research panel doesn’t include naturally representative numbers of African Americans, your ability to understand them as consumers is in jeopardy. And that goes for every other group that is playing a big role in shaping the U.S. consumer economy in the 21^st century – notably Hispanics, Millennials, and parents of young children.

The Census Bureau makes us aware of the broad demographic landscape, but market insights require a granular understanding of consumer characteristics. And that, in turn, depends on using the right survey technology and reaching the right respondents. MFourDIY™  – the nation’s only all-mobile survey-building platform – gives you the technology and the naturally representative panel you need, including more than 140,000 African Americans out of more than one million active members. Please click here for clear, detailed, and transparent information that will let you draw your own conclusions about how to proceed in an age of dynamic change and unprecedented consumer diversity.

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

• 6 Ways Advanced Mobile Can Drive Success
• The New Year's Resolution You've Got to Make
• Steve Jobs' Gift to Market Research

And here's a Friday tune to get you ready to strut your stuff.

“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign” was the hook for a big pop hit back in 1971.

Nobody back then imagined that automobile license plates could be turned into signage. It’s now a reality, rolled out this week at the Detroit Auto Show. Called the rPlate, it’s a digital version of the traditional metal license plate. While a vehicle is on the road it displays only the regular license number. But once a car bearing an rPlate is parked, passersby will see a commercial message.

Reviver, the rPlate’s creator, says the plates will debut this year in California and Florida, where legislators already have approved them. We’ll leave it to you to imagine what kinds of ads might begin to crop up in those states’ parking lots, driveways, and curbsides. One thing is certain: where there’s messaging, there’s a need to test the message to measure its effectiveness. With MFourDIY™ you’ll get true-mobile DIY solutions for the full gamut of ad testing and ad measurement needs:

• TV and radio commercials
• Mobile ads
• Print advertising
• Movie trailers
• Billboards, transit ads and other out-of-home signage
• And, soon enough, license plates.

Please click here for full details on MFourDIY™ -- or contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com.

January takes its name from the Roman god Janus, who had two faces, one looking backward to the year just past, and one forward to the year ahead. Janus was the god of time, change, and transitions – reminding believers that it’s reckless to move forward without a firm grounding in the insights we’ve gained from past experience.

You don’t have to be a historian to appreciate the wisdom the Romans attributed to Janus. If you’re a market research professional, you can’t afford to do without it.

With a new year bringing new goals for collecting data and insights in the months ahead -- and new budget allocations with which to achieve them – it’s important to look backward to assess your confidence in the data and data-collection methods you used in the year just past.

That’s especially true for tracking studies, which depend on maintaining accuracy and consistency between the data you obtained last year and the data you’ll obtain in 2017. Are you confident that the panels you used in 2016 accurately reflected the consumer demographics you needed? Did your methodology let you reach the right consumers at the right time, with survey methods that kept respondents focused and honestly engaged? And did your data cohere with observed market realities?

 If the answers are not a hearty, resounding “yes,” then it’s probably time to take a cue from Janus. If what you see looking backward makes you uneasy, then an important lesson for January in 2017 is that a reflexive repetition of the past will keep you from making the changes you need to open up a better future.

Online survey data is a feature of market researchers’ past that is becoming unreliable in the present and future. Online methods are no longer in sync with how consumers live today – with smartphones in hand and mobile-apps as their favorite way to use them.

We invite you to click here to see how you can change gradually and prudently as you integrate insights from a true-mobile panel with the portions of your online tracking data that remain worth preserving. A quick and cost-effective way to introduce yourself to true-mobile’s research capabilities is with MFourDIY™ – the only all-mobile do-it-yourself research tool.

For full details, contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com.

Ten years ago this week, Steve Jobs announced the imminent debut of Apple’s first iPhone. A decade later, the average American adult spends more than 10 ½ hours a day looking at electronic screens. It’s estimated that about a third of that time is spent on smartphones. Only TV screens command more of our attention; PCs have fallen into third place. This poses both a challenge and an opportunity for market research in 2017:

• Is it possible to engage consumers long enough to get them to give you some insights into what’s going on behind all those eyes that are glued to screens?

• And is it possible to turn the phones consumers are obsessed with into tools for better research?

The answers are “yes” and “definitely” – but there are two caveats to consider.

Yes, you can get consumers to carve out some minutes in those 10 ½ hours of daily screen time to engage fully in taking your surveys. But the caveat is that you have to choose the right screen – the smartphones that virtually all consumers hold in their hands.

And you definitely can put consumers’ phones to great research use – the caveat being that you’d better make sure you’re using advanced, true-mobile technology to field your surveys. Smartphone users – especially Millennials and the rising Generation Z – love great experiences on their devices, but find few things more unforgivably off-putting than apps that are clunky and slow. In other words, you need to get it right.

So what should you be doing in this milestone year for smartphones? You should be learning how to win with them. And the best way to begin is to leverage the power of MFourDIY™– the nation’s only true-mobile, do-it-yourself survey building platform. So take a moment to immerse yourself in the DIY experience by clicking here.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com.