(L-R Natasha Tran, Thomas Palompelli, Allison Constable)

MFour has hired three team members in Product Marketing and Sales who will help bring innovative online and offline mobile data products to market and help businesses use them to support smart decision-making.

Thomas Palompelli is Director of Product Marketing, a new position that plays  a key role in defining, developing and launching MFour’s data products. He brings extensive experience in advertising and ad tech, most recently as Director of Product Marketing at FreeWheel, a Comcast company. At MFour, Tom’s portfolio encompasses a wide range of product offerings for brands and retailers who need quality consumer data in all its dimensions. He holds a Master’s degree from Fordham University in Business Administration, Management and Marketing, and a dual-major Bachelor’s degree in Marketing Management and Information Systems and Operations from Fairfield University. Having grown up, attended college and spent his career until now in the Greater New York City area, Tom is beginning a new chapter as a Southern Californian. He enjoys riding a motorcycle and will now face a big decision: to lane-split or not to lane-split. It’s illegal back in New York.

Allison Constable joins the Sales team as a Senior Solutions Executive, advising brands, media companies and agencies on how to harness MFour’s groundbreaking products to drive better insights into advertising effectiveness. She brings considerable experience to addressing clients’ challenges in testing and measuring the impact of their advertising. Allison’s previous positions include Business Development Director for Media & Content at Kantar, Ad Effectiveness Analyst for Buzzfeed and Client Supervisor for Millward Brown Digital.  She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Communication at Elon University. Outside of work, she likes reading and listening to podcasts about human behavior and emotion, CrossFit, yoga, petting every dog she sees, spending time outside, cooking and hosting dinner parties for her friends.

Natasha Tran arrives as a Senior Solutions Development Representative, educating prospective clients about MFour products, including always-on tracking of consumers’ offline and online buying journeys. She previously was a Sales Executive for real estate data company Zillow Group, specializing in driving new business for its advertising platform. Natasha also gained a first-hand perspective on the needs of businesses and their customers in an earlier job as an Assistant Manager for Enterprise Rent-a-Car. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Riverside, majoring in Media and Cultural Studies, with a minor in Business Administration. Her outside interests include snowboarding and enjoying time with her dog.

Stranded at Home by the Polar Vortex? Univision's TV morning show, "¡Despierta America!," and lifestyle reporter Erick Cuesta recently advised their Spanish-speaking audience to download MFour's Surveys On The Go^® market research app to spend that time profitably by earning cash taking consumer surveys.

Brands are keen to understand the preferences and opinions of Hispanic consumers, who are a continually growing force in the marketplace. And, as the recognition by "¡Despierta America!" attests, SOTG is an ideal conduit for connecting with them.

"No dejes que tu dinero se congele: apps para hacer un dinerito extra si estás atrapado en casa por la nieve,” was the Jan. 31 segment’s caption – “Don’t let your money freeze: apps to make a little extra money if you’re stuck at home by the snow.”

“We’re thrilled to be showcased on the popular award-winning morning show ‘¡Despierta América!’” said Chris St. Hilaire, MFour's CEO and co-founder.  “With 2.5 million users of Surveys On The Go^® we can connect leading brands with America’s Spanish-speaking population, which other research companies consider ‘hard to reach.’”

MFour is a go-to choice for brands and advertisers who need insights into the preferences, opinions and online and offline buying journeys of all segments of the American population, including crucial Hispanic consumers.

While the market research industry has tagged Hispanics as “hard to reach” when it comes to participating in consumer surveys, MFour provides full representation of the U.S. Hispanic population. They constitute 20% of the validated, first-party consumer panel whose members use Surveys On The Go^®, closely matching the U.S. Census Bureau's estimate that Hispanics make up 18% of the population. MFour also captures the diversity within the Hispanic consumer demographic by segmenting them into three sub-categories: Acculturated (65%), Bicultural (33%) and Unacculturated (5%).

Watch the “¡Despierta América!” feature at https://bit.ly/2SarMxT

For more on Surveys On The Go^®, click here.

(L-R: Tara Chawla, Yvette Gonzalez, Fang Zhang)

MFour announces the hiring of three team members in Technology, Research Operations and Administration.

Fang Zhang joins the technology team as a Senior Software Engineer. Past positions include Senior Software Engineer at Levyx, Inc. and Staff Seismic Image Analyst for CCG Oil & Gas Services, where his work included developing software for converting digital representations of sound waves into visual imagery to aid drilling decisions. Zhang holds multiple academic degrees – a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Connecticut, Master’s degrees from the Chinese Academy of Science (in Mathematics) and the University of California, Irvine (in Computer Science), and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Peking University. Fang is a soccer fan and enjoys reading in his free time.

Yvette Gonzalez comes to MFour as Director of Fulfillment, bringing 14 years of market research experience to her role, which includes reviewing and optimizing internal processes that drive efficient, consistent, on-time delivery of quality consumer data. She’s had extensive experience as a team leader in past positions, including supervising projects for Fortune 500 clients at MarketCast, where she was Director of Online Fieldwork, and as a Sample Strategist Manager at Ipsos Interactive Services. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice from California State University, Long Beach. Outside of work, Yvette enjoys trying new restaurants and brewing her own beer.

Tara Chawla joins MFour as an Accounting Specialist in Administration. Previous jobs include working for Worthe Real Estate Group as a property accountant, and as a staff accountant for restaurant chain Tender Greens. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, with a concentration in Finance, from California State University, Fullerton, and is pursuing a certificate in accounting from the University of California, Los Angeles. Tara’s outside pursuits include freelance blogging for health and wellness websites.

Unique Location Solution Provides More Accurate and Comprehensive Understanding of Consumption Behavior in Bars and Restaurants Nationwide

CHICAGO and IRVINE, Calif. — Jan. 30, 2019 — IRI®, one of the global leaders in innovative solutions and services for consumer, retail and media companies, and MFour, the leader in mobile market research, today announced their partnership to launch the IRI OnSights™ solution. The new solution leverages MFour’s first-party GPS location information to collect verified data on hundreds of thousands of consenting mobile panelists’ visits to U.S. bars and restaurants. This location information adds a powerful new dimension to the vast consumer behavior data and insights available on the industry-leading IRI Liquid Data® platform.

“On-premise consumption and purchasing are becoming increasingly important to the consumer packaged goods industry,” said Robert I. Tomei, president of Consumer and Shopper Marketing for IRI. “Providing IRI clients with measurement and insights on this activity is critically important to ensure that they have an accurate view of both consumption (share of stomach) and purchasing (share of wallet) as they design campaigns. Until now, marketers’ understanding of consumer purchasing and consumption behavior at restaurants and bars has been largely anecdotal, which is often inaccurate and limits marketers’ ability to build comprehensive insights that include both on- and off-premise activity.”

“MFour’s leading location platform collects millions of weekly retail visits from hundreds of thousands of our validated Surveys On The Go® app panelists, providing unparalleled accuracy of on-premise consumer behavior insights,” said Chris St. Hilaire, co-founder and chief executive officer of MFour. “Combining observed passive insights — which show where mobile consumers go — with active insights from survey data capturing the ‘why’ behind their visits is a holy grail for market research. We’re so pleased to join forces with IRI to develop one of the most important advances in mobile research.”

IRI OnSights leverages consumer insights from more than 1 million verified MFour app users who have chosen to provide their locations and de-identified demographic information. The data from MFour’s voluntary and verified users provides IRI clients with both passive tracking insights and actively collected survey information to improve marketers’ understanding of consumer behavior in U.S. bars and restaurants:

• Passive Insights: GPS location data collected from MFour has tracked more than 3.8 million visits to bars and restaurants since spring 2018, and the number of tracked visits will continue to grow weekly. MFour provides accurate measurements of how frequently establishments are visited, and how much time consumers spend at each. For example, IRI OnSights uncovered that the fast-growing brew pub/bar and grill segment represents 5 percent of all U.S. bar and restaurant visits and has a strong Midwest skew, especially in Green Bay, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Cleveland.
• Active Insights: The solution also incorporates data from custom and syndicated consumer panelist survey responses collected through the MFour mobile app, providing valuable insight into the motivators of a restaurant or bar visit, what was consumed and visitor demographics. According to a recent study of on-premise data, 39 percent of visitors aged 21 and over consumed an alcoholic beverage during their last visit to a bar or restaurant (excluding quick-serve restaurants), 54 percent of those drank beer, and nearly half of beer drinkers chose a domestic craft beer.

Using these two data collection methods, the OnSights solution delivers robust insights that marketers may analyze to better understand their customers, deliver more appropriately targeted marketing communications, design more effective promotional campaigns or uncover unmet consumer needs.

“IRI is thrilled to partner with MFour to deliver this powerful new solution,” said Carl Edstrom, senior vice president and principal of Survey and Segmentation for IRI. “Layering verified data that measures on-premise consumer behavior into IRI’s expansive collection of point-of-sale, loyalty card and consumer panel data assets adds a new level of granularity for more powerful insights that drive growth for IRI clients.”

About the IRI Partner Ecosystem

IRI fundamentally believes that delivering differentiated growth for clients requires deep, highly integrated partnering with a variety of best-of-breed companies. With this in mind, IRI works closely with a broad range of industry leaders across multiple industries and sectors to create innovative joint solutions, services and access to capabilities to help its clients more effectively collaborate and compete in their various markets and exceed their growth objectives. IRI is committed to its partnership philosophy and continues to actively enhance its open ecosystem of partners through alliances, joint ventures, acquisitions and affiliations. The IRI Partner Ecosystem includes such leading companies as 84.51°, Adobe, The Boston Consulting Group, Clavis Insights, comScore, Data Plus Math, Edison, Experian, GfK, Gigwalk, Google, Ipsos, Jumpshot, Mastercard Advisors, MaxPoint, Omnicom, One Click Retail, Oracle, Pinterest, Research Now/SSI, Simulmedia, SPINS, Univision, Viant and others.

About IRI

IRI is a leading provider of big data, predictive analytics and forward-looking insights that help CPG, OTC health care organizations, retailers, financial services and media companies grow their businesses. A confluence of major external events — a change in consumer buying habits, big data coming into its own, advanced analytics and personalized consumer activation — is leading to a seismic shift in drivers of success in all industries. With the largest repository of purchase, media, social, causal and loyalty data, all integrated on an on-demand, cloud-based technology platform, IRI is empowering the personalization revolution, helping to guide its more than 5,000 clients around the world in their quests to remain relentlessly relevant, capture market share, connect with consumers, collaborate with key constituents and deliver market-leading growth. For more information, visit www.iriworldwide.com.

About MFour

MFour serves major brands, advertisers and market research firms with the technology and unrivaled consumer connections required for reliable insights and smart decision-making in the Smartphone Era. The company’s groundbreaking Path-2-Purchase® Platform is the first integrated research suite to combine observational data and survey data, enabling clients to track opted-in consumers’ daily location journeys and then target them for mobile surveys based on the places they’ve visited. Insights professionals get a unified view of the “what,” “where” and “when” of consumer behavior, together with the crucial “why.” MFour introduced its signature Surveys On The Go® mobile research app in 2011, and began attracting a growing first-party, one-source U.S. consumer panel that now numbers more than 2.5 million. Respondents’ deep engagement drives fast, same-day responses and unique capabilities such as rapid, real-time surveys conducted during and immediately after store visits. The result for clients is insights free from recall bias and captured at the Point-of-Emotion® where buying decisions are made. Learn more at mfour.com.

# # #

IRI Contact:
Shelley Hughes
Phone: +1 312.474.3675

MFour Contact:
Mike Boehm
Director of Communications
Phone: +1 714.754.1234

What might retail and restaurant brands learn from tens of thousands of first-party U.S. mobile consumers who not only have been GeoValidated^® as their customers, but whose profiles fit the specific consumer types the brand considers most important to understand?

Building a custom panel of profiled, known visitors makes it possible to conduct plug-and-play tracking studies in which the questionnaire can be repeated for each wave of customized, non-duplicated consumer panelists.

In one case, a client who customized its audience saved time and money by designing and fielding its own tracking study on MFourDIY^®, the only all-mobile DIYsurvey-building platform. The opportunity for accurate segmentation is a key feature: as new members sign up for the consumer panel that participates via MFour’s Surveys On The Go^® mobile research app, those who fit the required profiles are automatically funneled into the custom panel, ensuring ongoing representation and consistency for the tracking study. 

Over time, the client in question has seen completion rates of 80%, and drop-off rates under 2% from respondents who fit its consumer profiles and have been geolocated in one of its locations. The tracker focuses on questions about lifestyle and attitudes that impact how its validated customers view eating and health. Among the findings: 

• 60% of respondents agreed completely or very strongly that “the state of my health is largely in my control." 

• 25% stated agreed completely or strongly that “I consider myself to be fit and in shape.” 17% said just the opposite. ”

• Life is hectic out there: 40% of respondents agreed completely or strongly that “I’m always busy and on the go.” Only 8% were completely or strongly certain that “busy and on the go” does not describe their lifestyle. 

• The accelerated speed of life often dictates decisions about meals: 36% strongly or completely agreed that they opt for speed even though they feel that on-the-go restaurant meals can be unhealthy.

• Consumers want to fill up when they eat out, with 40% of respondents agreeing strongly or completely that good value depends on “more food for the money.” 

• At the opposite end of the spectrum, only 7% were convinced that quantity is not essential to good value in restaurant food.

• When it comes to where the rubber meets the road – or the meal meets the mouth  – a substantial majority of the client's validated customers confessed that they sometimes put pleasure over discipline: the statement, “I love rewarding myself with indulgent food or beverages,” elicited strong or complete agreement from 42% of participants, and an additional 36% said they were “somewhat” in agreement that they love indulging themselves.  

• Just 9% of respondents indicated a strong or complete rejection of indulging themselves when they eat.To that 9% we can only say, “well, if you’re not going to eat those fries, just pass them over to us.”

Can market researchers score special consumer insights by watching people who watch the Super Bowl? Answers may lie in the already observed behaviors of validated, first-party consumers on the days of two recent buzzed-about football games. These big days for football fans coincided with big days for carry-out pizza.

Major quick-serve pizza brands feasted on two key game days: the Monday, Nov. 19 pro football contest between Kansas City and Los Angeles, which attracted 16.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and the Monday, Jan. 7 college football championship between Clemson and Alabama, seen by 24.3 million.

To see how delicious these two Mondays were for pizza-sellers, we checked mobile location data available on MFour’s Path-2-Purchase™ Platform. It’s collected by observing the daily journeys of first-party mobile consumers across more than 12.5 million U.S. retail and restaurant locations. Brands get a unique opportunity to watch fluctuations in the ongoing visitation patterns of these validated, pre-profiled members of the largest all-mobile consumer panel. Observed participants have opted in to have their daily journeys tracked via their smartphones. The data shows not only where they go, but how often, on which days of the week, which times of day, and how long they stay. Valuable in itself, location data becomes even more useful when it’s used as a segmentation tool that identifies just the right people to approach for a subsequent survey.

In our glance at pizza consumption on the days of the two big Monday football telecasts, we looked at visits to Domino’s Pizza, Little Caesars and Pizza Hut.

• On the day of the celebrated, high-scoring game between Kansas City and LA, who both had league-best 9-1 records when they met, the three pizza chains enjoyed a combined 7% increase in visits above their average Monday. 

• The only other Monday that saw a bigger gain was Dec. 24 – Christmas Eve, when tracked consumers’ visits to the three pizza chains were 11% above the Monday average.

• The Jan. 7 college championship game saw combined visits to the three pizza outlets rise 5.5% above the average Monday. 

• Pizza Hut was the biggest beneficiary, scoring 11% above its average Monday visitation on each of the two big Monday game days.

• Domino’s was up 7% for the Monday night pro game and 3% for the college championship.

• Little Caesars saw game-day gains of 4% and 2%, respectively.

Armed with this location data, researchers would gain an advantage in exploring questions such as these:

Should competing QSR categories attempt counter-measures to maximize their own share of takeout orders on big sports-viewing days other than the Super Bowl?

Should advertisers consider using special, football-themed creative content and timed ad buys to take advantage of specific games that have a special buzz about them?

Answering these questions, and many others, requires direct input from consumers. What you lean by observing where they go will position you to identify exactly the right consumers for a mobile survey focused on the motivations behind those journeys.

For example, did a person who’d never been observed at a Pizza Hut stop at one on the evening of a big game? Why? Anything to do with watching the game? And how satisfied was this consumer with the experience of buying and eating Pizza Hut’s food?  

The odds of coming away with valuable insights improve drastically when you can first observe validated, pre-profiled consumers’ journeys to locations relevant to the research project at hand, and then survey the same consumers to discover the “why” behind the buy.

Think of this opportunity in football terms. Winning teams need the right personnel, and strong communication to develop a game plan and carry it out on the field. To win in today’s market research, observing location journeys lets you identify the right personnel – the consumers whose visits and demographic profiles identify them as the people you most want to know more about. Having identified the respondents you need, you communicate with them via a mobile survey to find out what motivates them, and how they experience shopping for and consuming a product.

Does this sound like a playbook for supplying relevant and reliable data and providing decision-makers with analysis and recommendations grounded in proven reality? For a hands-on experience, you can play with the free Path-2-Purchase demo tool by clicking here.

MFour Introduces Digital Brand Studies for Validated, Non-Inferred Advertising Metrics

Finally, a Mobile-First Digital Ad Measurement Solution Built for the Smartphone Era

Irvine, CA: MFour Mobile Research, the recognized leader in GPS survey technology and consumer data, introduces Digital Brand Studies, bringing a much-needed mobile-first approach to ad-effectiveness measurement for digital advertising.

Mobile advertising now accounts for 70% of all digital spending, per eMarketer. Digital Brand Studies obtain fast survey feedback from actual, exposed mobile consumers, enabling brands and agencies to assess lift, awareness and intent to buy using deterministic data, not probabilistic modeling.

The difference-maker is MFour’s carefully-profiled, first-party consumer panel – 2.5 million U.S. consumers who use the Surveys On The Go® mobile research app. They provide reliable representation of key mobile audiences digital advertising campaigns need to reach, including Millennials, GenZ, Hispanics and African-Americans.

“Until now, digital ad measurement has been directional at best, focused on desktops rather than smartphones despite consumers' massive shift to mobile,” said Chris St. Hilaire, MFour’s co-founder and CEO. “Brands are shifting ad spend to mobile because they know that’s where consumers are. Digital Brand Studies don't just guess. They provide accurate, validated metrics. Measuring ad effectiveness doesn’t have to be like reading tea leaves anymore.”

Here’s what users of Digital Brand Studies can expect:

• MFour’s all-mobile panel and cross-platform approach registers mobile ad exposures and desktop exposures.

• Interview two demographically matched audiences of at least 100 consumers each: an exposed test group and an unexposed control group.

• Real-time reporting enables in-flight optimizations of ad campaigns.

(more)

• Choose a turnkey solution that includes impact analysis, or a custom solution for more in-depth analysis and attribution.

 Digital Brand Studies cost $5,000 for the standard option and $12,000 for a Plus option adding crosstabs, data analysis and custom attribution metrics. To learn more, contact solutions@mfour.com.

Surveys On The Go^®, MFour’s trail-blazing mobile research app, continues to ride high with consumers and tech tastemakers alike, eight years after its launch. SOTG’s latest distinction is making CNET Magazine/Download.com's list of the “8 best moneymaking apps to earn cash in 2019.”

Tech writer Joshua Rotter made the picks, so kudos to him for recognizing excellence. We also appreciate his emphasis on data privacy. Rotter noted that in addition to providing an engaging way to earn money while being heard by Fortune 1000 companies as they hone the creation, refinement and marketing of products and services, SOTG users enjoy a guarantee to protect and never sell their Personal Identifying Information (PII).

In fact, a key distinction of SOTG versus many other sources of consumer data is an assurance that app-users’ identities and demographic information will be protected and used only in aggregated form, combined with survey answers from all other participants in a given survey.

We should note that while individual experts’ opinions of Surveys On The Go^® carry weight, the aggregated opinions of multitudes of app users count the most. On that score, SOTG has long been the top mobile survey app, with average all-time ratings of 4.6 stars out of 5 on Google Play and 4.5 at the Apple iOS App Store. 

Why does it matter? The quality of the data depends on the quality of the survey experience and the size of the consumer panel available to take surveys. We always work hard to give the 2.5 million U.S. consumers who have downloaded SOTG the best experience, and we’re always grateful for their participation and support. The best in market research depends on them.

If you’ve been late to the party in adopting advanced mobile market research, you have perhaps two more years to get on board with today’s unique mobile data solutions – or else. The longer you remain in a state of inertia by clinging to the online studies that have been a steady standby since at least the early 2000s, the less representative your data will be. Online representation of U.S. consumers is crumbling at an accelerated pace, and in two years it will be a memory.

Call it the threat and the opportunity of a rising G-force.

In physics,  G stands for “gravitational” and represents the amount of resistance encountered by objects in motion. “Because of the stresses and strains on objects, sufficiently large g-forces… can be highly destructive,” says gforces.net.

“Stress,” “strain” and “highly destructive” are unavoidable conditions for researchers and brands that ignore the inexorable effect of a different kind of G-force in which G is for “generation” – the term communications technologists have coined to describe advances in the speed and efficiency with which successive generations of smartphones process mobile data.

This “G” spells great opportunity for market research that’s committed to meeting today’s consumers in the mobile sphere where they live. But it’s  disastrous for those who remain slow to adapt to the new reality.  Online consumers continue to morph into mobile-only consumers, and for the vast majority of U.S. residents, smartphones already are the dominant means of receiving, sharing and creating information. Now online is about to suffer a death blow from the next G-force in communications: the advent of 5G mobile access to the internet.

• The dawn of 5G smartphones is rapidly approaching. 5G adoption is expected to take off as soon as 2020, thanks to data speeds 10 to 100 times faster than the current mobile standard, 4G.

• “5G networks are the next generation of mobile internet connectivity, offering faster speeds and more reliable connections on smartphones and other devices than ever before,” reports techrader.com, with United States mobile providers leading the way. “Many companies are busy making sure their networks and devices are '5G ready' in time for 2020, meaning some networks may launch before then.”

A recent rundown from Business Insider summarizes what the onslaught of 5G will mean for consumers as mobile data races ahead of online data.

• “Mobile 5G networks will be able to transfer data at speeds that are 10-100 times faster than on 4G…making mobile internet activities…more seamless and enjoyable on smartphones….

• “Mobile 5G will provide consumers with internet speeds even faster than their current home internet speeds.”

• “For instance, AT&T's impending mobile 5G network will have peak download speeds of 400 Mbps,” quadrupling the average speed of current home broadband connections.

In fact, the destruction of online consumer research representation already has crossed beyond the point of reversal.

• Pew Research Center, which tracks Americans’ internet access, reported earlier in 2018 that fully 20% of U.S. adults rely solely on mobile and have abandoned traditional online broadband access to the internet. That’s up 67% from just two years earlier.

• The number of these “smartphone dependent” adults who lack home broadband rises to 29% for 18- to 29-year-olds, and 24% for those ages 30 to 49. If you’re not reaching these key, mobile-only consumers, your research representation already stands 20% or more below the threshold of reliability. There’s no trusting data that comes from such a narrow bandwidth of the public.

The takeaway isn’t hard to see: if you’re not already studying consumers with advanced in-app mobile location-tracking and surveys, you’re digging for data in all the wrong places. 

The good news is that it’s not hard to play a rapid game of catch-up. Scores of leading brands and market research firms partner with MFour for mobile-app research technology and the fully-representative first-party, all-mobile consumer panel MFour has cultivated around its groundbreaking Surveys On The Go^® mobile research app. Among MFour’s offerings are mobile brand tracking studies whose data is of-the-moment, but can be integrated with historical online tracking data to avoid a sharp break with your existing data sets.  

Those who fail to integrate mobile successfully into their trackers will have a woeful time getting quality data. It’s just one of the ways in which winter is coming for online market research.