We promised you we’d break MR’s sound barrier, but we went way beyond that and reached escape velocity, soaring beyond the previously-known atmospheric limits of market research.

 

Two-hundred quality completes in five hours was our goal for Wednesday’s geolocation-driven speed test of MFourDIY, the first and only all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey creation platform. When we closed the books at 5 p.m., Pacific, completes stood at 580.

 

We thought we had a Learjet; it turned out we had an X-15.

 

The point of the exercise was to show the MR community what a properly-conceived, all-mobile research approach can accomplish.

We’ve been saying for years that all-mobile research is not just inevitable, but better than the online, PC-based method that smartphones are supplanting.

 

“Researchers who care about quality will be thrilled that mobile data is quicker, verified and in-the-moment,” Chris St. Hilaire, MFour’s cofounder and CEO, commented during Wednesday’s successful test. “We’re still hopeful that researchers wedded to online will see the light soon.”

 

We’re confident that our 7-Eleven showcase will persuade researchers that we’ve been on the right track all along – and that now, more than ever, they need to join us. MFour’s all-mobile technology and panel don’t just produce data that’s faster; it’s also more accurate and far more demographically representative than what online surveys taken on a laptop or PC can deliver in this smartphone age. Wednesday’s results prove it.

 

To recap:

 

At noon, Pacific, we began geolocating people in our million-member active panel as they shopped at 7-Elevens around the nation. We pushed a five-minute survey to their mobile devices, just as they left the store (MFourDIY easily can handle lengthy surveys, too -- with a 15-minute LOI, you’ll get a 90% completion rate ). 

 

We asked respondents about their shopping experience at 7-Eleven and got data that could not be more reliable -- given that we were asking about a store visit  that was absolutely fresh in mind.

 

The survey was a combination of single-answer, short-answer and intensity scale questions. Here’s what we found:

 

Our ability to reach Millennials was off the charts – 30% of respondents were 18-24. An additional 64% were 25 to 44 (older Millennials and GenX). So we have the age groups marketers covet most  completely covered.

 

Our survey's share of minorities also far exceeded online research norms. Hispanics accounted for 19.6% of the completes; African-Americans, 10.1% and Asians, 6%.

 

The main reasons respondents gave for their shopping trip to 7-Eleven were:

• Buy a non-alcoholic beverage – 28.5%

• Buy gasoline – 27.3%

• Buy hot or cold food or bakery goods – 16.8%

• Buy tobacco products – 11.5%

Asked to answer on a scale of one to ten how likely they were to shop again at 7-Eleven, 86.2% fell in the “very likely” range of eight to ten.

 

Apparently they got what they came for. Try MFourDIY, and you will, too.

 

Yes, we did what we promised we’d do, live and in full view of the market research industry. Breaking “MR’s equivalent of the sound barrier,” as we somewhat facetiously had put it when we announced today’s little showcase of our MFourDIY^®.  

Starting today at noon, Pacific, we geolocated members of our million-member all-mobile active panel just as they left 7-Elevens across the nation, and sent them a short survey about their shopping experience.

It took just 2 hours and 19 minutes to land the 200 completed surveys we vowed to fetch in no more than five hours – or suffer public humiliation. We did it with MFourDIY, the first all-mobile do-it-yourself survey platform. Many thanks to those who signed up to watch the data come in on the study's real-time project tracker.

As you’ll see in the chart below, we drew this rapid data from a demographically diverse group that included nationally representative proportions of Hispanics/Latinos, African-Americans and other racial and ethnic groups. And we were particularly successful in collecting interviews from Millennials, a smartphone-centric consumer demo that only all-mobile research can reliably reach.

Today's test was a 5-minute survey, but MFourDIY^® can handle lengthy ones, too. With a 15-minute LOI, you can expect a completion rate of 90%.  

But the point of this exercise wasn’t for MFour Mobile Research to puff out its chest over the unique, proprietary research technology and uniquely responsive market research panel that enabled us to pass the test. It’s to show the market research industry that we’ve entered a new, all-mobile age, and that embracing that fact is the solution to the documented problems of traditional online surveys in recruiting enough participants to collect quality, demographically representative data.

 

Click here to learn more about MFourDIY^®.

 

 

 

 

Join in: See live demo -- 200 speedy all-mobile completes from 7-Elevens

We're not chickening out!

We announced this week that we'd push an all-mobile survey to panelists as they leave 7-Elevens nationwide, starting at noon, Pacific today -- and land 200 quality completes in less than five hours.

 Or die trying (of humiliation, that is).

 Well, we aren't backing out. We're that confident in our new MFourDIY survey-building platform, the first all-mobile do-it-yourself market research tool, that we want you to see it in action for yourselves.

 Watch the results come in in real time on the same MFourDIY project tracker you'll be using for your own research as the all-mobile era unfolds. And keep in mind that MFourDIY easily handles lengthy surveys -- 15 minute LOI surveys with a 90% completion rate.

 Are we the masters of all-mobile research that we say we are? Or a bunch of blowhards due for their comeuppance?

To watch, please email us at diy@mfour.com and ask to register for  the MFourDIY 7-Eleven Showcase.  Please provide your full name and company in the  request.

How would you like to field a survey to people walking out of 7-Elevens and get 200 quality interviews within five hours? You’re thinking that you’d love it to death – if only it could be done.

To prove the power of all-mobile research, we’re going to show you how -- and we’ll do it in death-defying real time in front of the whole market research industry.

Tune in Wednesday at 12 noon Pacific to watch MFour’s groundbreaking new all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey-building platform, MFourDIY, go for broke to break MR’s equivalent of the sound barrier. We’ll field a five-minute survey to members of our nationwide panel who we’ll geo-locate on their smartphones as they leave 7-Eleven stores in all 50 states. We’ll land an incomparably fast 200 completes about their shopping experience in five hours – or come off looking like utter fools.

Sound risky? Well, maybe – but when we’re done you’ll know we’re not fooling around. And you’ll have witnessed just a fraction of what MFour’s custom technology and MFour’s superior, million-member, all-mobile active panel can do for you. For instance, if you need 1,000 completes, you’ll get them within 24 hours – easy.

You’ll see our real-time results from 7-Elevens on the same project tracker you’ll be using when you, too, jump on MFourDIY, the fastest set of wheels in do-it-yourself market research. In the meantime, click here to kick our zoom machine’s tires before the big race.

Starting time is Wednesday at 12 p.m., Pacific. The checkered flag waves at 5 p.m., whether we’ve hit 200 completes or not. Be There!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’re coming to “The New Face of Consumer Insights” conference in Marina del Rey, stop by the MFour Mobile Research exhibit for some friendly chat – and for insights into how our all-mobile approach will take you to the best destinations in the new era that conferees will be discussing.

We’ll be there all three days, manning the MFour exhibit Monday to Wednesday at the Ritz Carlton. Look for the green backdrop that flies the company colors -- and for a big monitor that’s not just for promo videos (although we’ll have some of those).

A key feature of our exhibit is giving you the chance to test-drive MFour’s new all-mobile do-it-yourself survey-building platform, MFourDIY. You’ll get under the hood and see the display on our screen as you build a test survey – just as you will on your own screens when you start fielding surveys on MFourDIY.

We’ll also have special discount DIY offers for conference attendees who want to put the system to work.

The conference’s theme dovetails with MFour’s mission, says Alex Colao (pictured), who’s heading up our conference delegation. “People are going to be talking about how consumer research is changing and how companies are changing their research approaches to take advantage of new processes. We’re there to consult on their business challenges and provide solutions in real time.”

Joining Alex on Monday and Tuesday will be fellow senior solutions  executives Jeannette Ceballos (Monday and Tuesday) and Ashleigh Mann (Wednesday). We’ll also have senior  operations staffers at the conference to acquaint you more deeply with how we help clients create surveys that tap into the vast capabilities of today’s mobile technology, including geo-location and multimedia. Jenny Shi, assistant director of research, will be on hand Monday and senior project manager Alec Schaefer on Tuesday.

Stop by and you'll get something that's old-school mobile to bring home to the kids in your life: little rubber-band-powered helicopters that really can fly – but perhaps not as high as the cutting-edge mobile  research opportunities we’ll be sharing with you.

People traditionally have carried purchasing power in their pockets and purses, but that habit has a new dimension. Smartphones have joined – and may soon supersede - credit cards, cash and checkbooks as essential monetary take-alongs.

Recent research by GlobalWebIndex, a tracker of Internet trends, found that 30% of U.S. smartphone users are making purchases with their mobile devices at least once a month.

“Mobile commerce continues its ascent in importance,” according to the U.K.-based firm’s biannual report on Internet commerce.

This leap in mobile shopping and buying is one more exhibit in the ever-rising mountain of evidence that the age of the personal computer is winding down as the Mobile era takes over. If you don’t believe it, just look in your own pocket or purse.

As we keep saying, the market research industry needs to adjust accordingly. Sticking with email survey notifications and online panels no longer makes  sense in a new age in which texting and smartphone apps predominate. Only custom, all-mobile technology and specially cultivated mobile online panels will do the job properly – and that has been MFour Mobile Research’s mission and competitive advantage since the 2011 debut of its all-mobile native app, Surveys On The Go®.

Here are some other interesting findings from GlobalWebIndex’s surveys of 103,000  Internet users ages 16 to 64:

• Worldwide, monthly use of mobile shopping apps shot up 50% from mid-2014 to late 2015.

• Among Millennials, the rising generational cohort that is shaping commerce for the 21^st century, 80% make monthly online purchases.

• The average amount of time Millennials spend online with a mobile device grew 76.4% from 2012 to 2015, to more than three hours per day.

Among the conclusions GWI draws from its data:

• “The increasing centrality of smartphones to the digital habits of Internet users means that every aspect of the purchase journey is being influenced by mobiles."

• “Mobiles are on course to capture more daily time than all other devices put together – emphasizing just how dominant the smartphone has become within the daily lives of this trend-setting [Millennial] audience.”

This just in, by the way, from the techcrunch blog, reporting on new research by brand consultant Influence Central: “The average age for [children] getting their first smartphone is now 10.3 years.”

In other words, this trend isn’t going away.

For a full analysis of why market research needs to go mobile, check out this op-ed that Chris St. Hilaire, MFour’s cofounder and CEO, recently wrote for RW Connect.

 

MFour Mobile Research is pleased to have added Daniel Baker to its operations team as a Project Manager.

Baker previously was a product analyst for two divisions of the Walt Disney Co., Disney Interactive and Disney Consumer Products. His work there on Disney Infinity video games and Playmation toys gives him a close acquaintance with Mickey Mouse, the Incredible Hulk and many other illustrious personages. Daniel arrives with an academic background in computer science at Orange Coast College.

By Chris St. Hilaire, cofounder and CEO of MFour Mobile Research, Inc.

The window is closing on consumer surveys fielded online to personal computers, but a new era for market research is opening wide on smartphones.

The evidence is in the numbers for anyone in the industry who’s willing to see.

• As of late 2014, 15% of Americans 18-29 had cut the PC cord entirely and were “heavily dependent” on mobile alone for Internet access.
• Ownership of laptop or desktop computers is slumping, from 80% of U.S. adults in 2012 to 73% in 2015 – the lowest market saturation for PCs since before the Great Recession.

If these statistics compiled by the Pew Research Center don’t convince you that the PC’s sun is setting, how about Intel’s recent announcement that it’s de-emphasizing the memory chips for PCs that made it a corporate giant? The company that literally knows PCs from the inside realizes that the future lies elsewhere – with mobile devices and the cloud, not laptops and desktops.

Intel announced its shift on April 19, a day after my company debuted MFourDIY, the nation’s first do-it yourself survey platform designed strictly for smartphones.

Mobile DIY will usher many more researchers into mobile by making it fast, easy and cost effective to create sophisticated mobile surveys with the simple-to-use tools now available. Adopters will harness the vast capabilities of smartphones as transmitters of survey data that’s instant and reliable. In a nutshell, 2016 is a 1776 moment for this industry – a revolutionary moment that marks the democratization of mobile market research.

The American Revolution unshackled a new country from an outmoded form of government. The mobile revolution will unshackle market research from the demographic and technological constraints of the outmoded online studies that are choking off access to fast, accurate and representative data. Taxation without representation was wrong in the 1770s. Claiming today that online market research data is representative and accurate when it can’t reach vital, rising consumer demographics such as Hispanics and the Millennials who practically live on their smartphones – that’ not only wrong, but a deluded blueprint for failure.

MFour’s sole business since 2011 has been developing a self-contained all-mobile strategy. That has meant addressing both ends of the research equation: creating survey software that taps into the vast computing power and multimedia capacities of today’s smartphones, and developing a demographically diverse panel whose members stay engaged because display and performance are tailored to the devices that have become a fifth appendage.

An all-mobile approach that uses the best technology and best practices can revitalize the survey-fielding process at every step, from panel recruitment to data return.

Recruitment becomes fast and efficient. With all-mobile, panelists get a “push” alert – a text message that there’s a survey to take. This solves an inherent problem of  online surveys’ standard email notification – they’re very easy to miss or ignore. For recruiting Millennials, who opt for texting over email, the gap in effectiveness between texted pushes and email notifications becomes even greater.

A common misconception about mobile surveys is that they’re easily dropped when the respondent can’t get a good enough signal to speed the survey along, or can’t access WiFi.

With state-of-the-art mobile research there’s no such issue. Panelists sign up for surveys by downloading a “native” app that loads the entire sequence of questions instantly into their phones – including pictures and audio/video content. This allows respondents to answer while they are off-line – no signal or WiFi needed, and no frustration from slow loading or dropped Internet connections that can turn non-native mobile survey-taking into frustration. With a native app there’s also no longer a need to restrict LOI to five minutes on mobile because of connection issues.

Submitting the completed survey is also instantaneous; less advanced mobile technologies require a separate, one-at-a-time online interchange and load-in for each question and answer.  Again, that leaves the lesser mobile approaches vulnerable to poor signal quality leading to slowness, frustration, and drops short of completion. But remember -- this is not where mobile’s capability is really at.

Mobile  also puts smartphones’ geolocation and multimedia features at a researcher’s disposal. First pinpoint panel members at locations that are relevant to a study, such as a retail chain store or a cinema. Then field a survey on the spot, or soon after respondents have left. The result is vivid, quick responses, generating data that won’t be skewed by faulty recall.

Multimedia components in mobile surveys dovetail with smartphone users’ delight in their devices’ cameras and audio-video recording and playback functions. They’re perfectly willing to receive questions based on pictures or clips sent to their phones with survey questions  – or to create and submit their own multimedia content to enhance an answer.

\To sum up, all-mobile surveys give market research a new, two-way street to success. For respondents the experience is easier, more flexible, more engaging. For researchers, mobile drives faster, more efficient access to more reliable data, and opens new avenues into consumers’ in-the-moment thoughts and emotions.

This is how the world is moving. It’s movement in a direction that could revitalize market research -- if only market research would move with it.

This commentary first appeared in RW Connect.

 

When it comes to market research, the all-mobile approach lets you have your cake and eat it, too.

We’re sharing the very best recipe for success in our weekly webinars, introducing the research community to MFourDIY, the industry’s first and only all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey-building platform. Next up: "MFourDIY: Getting Started," Wednesday, May 18 at 11 a.m., Pacific.

The cake is speedy data acquisition, which makes your work timely and cost-effective. The eating is in the quality of the data, which determines whether your research will yield accurate insights that can lead to tangible payoffs in the marketplace.

Here's just one fact  to consider: your surveys will be received, completed and submitted by our million-member active panel, with the whole process carried out strictly on the respondents’ smartphones. We pair this diverse, engaged group with software and app design that’s beyond anything else in the mobile field. As a result, you can expect a 50% response rate within 24 hours.

Sign up for a webinar and get all the facts. Once you do, we think you'll want to roll over your research to MFourDIY.

Here’s what's scheduled:

MFourDIY: Getting Started                                                                                      

Wednesday, May 18, 11 a.m., Pacific                                                                                

Click here to register

Getting Responses from "Non-Buyers": Creating an After-Visit Survey 

Tuesday, May 24, 12 noon, Pacific                                                                                     

Click here to register

MFourDIY: Getting Started      

Wednesday, June 1, 12 noon, Pacific                                                                              

Click here to register

 

You can connect instantly with 175,000 Netflix watchers -- just choose MFour Mobile Research's App Tracker feature. It's the fastest, most precise , most efficient way to find just the respondents you need, based on the apps they use.

Our tracker identifies all the apps that members of MFour’s million-member, all-mobile active panel have downloaded to Android smartphones. Passive tracking automatically identifies and verifies the apps they use. In the case of Netflix, 175,000 people on the Android half of our panel have it on their phones.  

We’ll direct your survey to them – or to any other app-specific group you'd like to reach. 

Besides asking Netflix watchers about what they're watching, MFour lets you watch them. Using  our multimedia capability, you can ask respondents to create video clips to enhance their answers -- for instance, telling you in their own spoken words what they think of Netflix. You also can include multimedia elements to go with your survey questions. 

Contact us now, and get started using the App Tracker to find exactly the respondents you need.