Accurate consumer insights on Millennials will continue to be essential for decades. MFour Client ROTH Capital Partners (ROTH) has taken the challenge seriously, undertaking an in-depth study of 2,500 Millennial men and women in partnership with MFour.

You can check out ROTH’s announcement of its 2018-2019 Millennial Study by clicking here.

The survey encompassed 181 questions and had an average Length of Interview of more than 28 minutes, confirming respondents’ willingness to engage with longer, in-depth surveys if they’re conducted in the mobile-app environment that has become the most natural habitat for today’s consumers.

Among the study’s findings:

• Two thirds of Millennials prefer to research significant purchases online, but 57% still prefer to carry out transactions in-store.

• Virtual Reality shopping has become a fact, with 15% of Millennials saying they have used VR to evaluate furniture, while 16% have used “virtual mirrors” to see how they’ll actually look in cosmetics or clothes they’re considering.

• Nike’s marketing gamble on Colin Kaepernick has paid off with Millennials – 34% said they’re more likely to purchase Nike products following the ad campaign featuring the controversial NFL quarterback, compared to 15% who said the ads made them less likely to purchase Nike goods.

Mobile studies such as the one by ROTH dispel two main myths of market research:

• That Millennials are a generation that’s especially “hard to reach." 

• And that mobile surveys are only effective for quick-hit surveys with short, simple questionnaires.

Increasingly, consumer insights professionals are realizing that Millennials are well in reach and can be understood in-depth if you reach out to them in the mobile-app space where they’re most comfortable.

Benjamin Franklin said that “games lubricate the body and the mind,” and you could probably generate a lively debate as to whether the founding father’s wisdom applies to video games.

There’s no debating the importance of video games to a huge audience of players. Which means that there’s no debating the need for market research professionals to turn their gaze and consumer insights expertise toward understanding gamers– not just as game-players, but as fully-contextualized consumers.

As we’ll point out, mobile game apps aren’t just a gateway to fun for their users and a river of potential profits for their creators, but also a pipeline for all kinds of consumer insights into how gamers fit into a larger universe of shopping and buying.

Newzoo, a marketing and analytics consultant that tracks the gaming and esports industries, estimates the North American video games market at more than $34 billion in 2018, up 14% from 2017. It recently reported that there are 2.3 billion gamers worldwide, who it estimates will spend $138 billion this year, including $70 billion spent by mobile gamers. It’s the first time mobile will have accounted for more than half of annual worldwide gaming revenues.

Market researchers who want to get to know those many mobile gamers are in luck. Thanks to mobile-app targeting, they can be reached with 100% accuracy. You can design a survey that blankets users of the top five gaming apps, or just a single app.  You can ask about their gaming preferences – or their snack and beverage preferences. Mobile app-targeting from MFour gives you a 100% Incidence Rate for connecting with consumers by the apps they use. We simply match the apps you want to target against the apps used by the validated, first-party mobile consumers who’ve downloaded our Surveys On The Go^® research app. 

For example, back when the Pokémon Go craze broke out, mobile app targeting enabled us to be the first organization to conduct a systematic survey of Pokémon Go players. Within a single day, we got 1,000 completed responses from 100% validated players. It wasn’t just proof of Pokémon Go’s popularity, but of Surveys On The Go^®'s effectiveness, thanks to its own popularity among 2.5 million U.S. consumers who have downloaded it and are beyond-willing to participate in your research.   

If you’re looking for insights into what players think of various video games, app-targeting obviously gives you a fast, direct connection. But it will be just as useful for understanding consumers ages 13 and over for whom playing video games is just part of who they are.  They’ll readily engage with you about products and services across any consumer sectors. Remember, your IR is 100% – a big first step toward getting insights on a fast-turn deadline.

Of course, the same kind of targeting can be done with consumers who use banking apps, news apps, or streaming apps for sports and entertainment. You can focus on their satisfaction with the apps themselves, or just use the connection to get feedback on the snacks these app-users buy, the other forms of entertainment they consume, which electronics stores they frequent, and any other subject that may or may not have to do with their gaming.

You can even ask them if they agree with Ben Franklin that games are good for the mind and body. 

As promised, here’s a look at our study of 1,000 Pokémon Go players, completed in a singled  day just after the game’s July, 2016 debut in the U.S. Just click here.

(Left to right) Renee Curtis, Tatiana Santos and Monica Lee

MFour announces the hiring of three team members who will play major roles in developing new mobile market research products and executing clients’ survey-based projects.

Tatiana Santos joins the staff as a Senior Project Manager who will shepherd clients’ projects from conception through data reporting. She previously was a Senior Project Manager for Ipsos. She worked in banking and investment management before branching into market research. Tatiana earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of California, Riverside, and a Master’s degree in Communication Management from the University of Southern California. Outside of work she enjoys yoga, reading, biking and listening to podcasts.

Monica Lee has been hired as Lead of the Fielding and Panel team, responsible for driving quality and consistency in core functions of the survey process. She arrives from comScore, where she was an Insights Analyst. Monica also previously has worked at Kantar Millward Brown, and she was one of the key research leads for the 2016 edition of the American Marketing Association’s annual Gold Report on the market research industry. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Marketing and a Master's in Marketing Research, both from Michigan State University.

Renee Curtis, Senior Product Manager, will help develop innovative new mobile research products and enhance existing ones. She arrives from Broadbean Technology, where she was a team leader and oversaw the launch of a successful job distribution and record keeping software product used by government contractors. She is working toward a Bachelor’s degree in Technological Entrepreneurship and Management at Orange Coast College. Outside of work, Renee likes hiking and is a fine-dining enthusiast; she’s also serious about improving her German and then visiting Berlin.

Welcome aboard, Tatiana, Monica and Renee!

It comes as little surprise that candy is the topmost item on Halloween shoppers’ lists. But it takes the right kind of mobile market research to get to the “why” behind the buy, and MFour’s recent survey of 1,800 U.S. consumers who plan to celebrate Halloween illuminates what really counts: even when the candy is presumably for little trick-or-treaters, adults are most likely to buy what tickles their own palates.

Fielded in mid-October, with the Halloween shopping season surging toward its Oct. 31 climax, the study located demographically representative natural shoppers in big box stores. All belong to the only all-mobile, first-party consumer panel, whose members participate via their smartphones, using the pioneering mobile research app, Surveys On the Go^®.  

Results showed that 71% of respondents had bought Halloween candy within the previous 48 hours. But for many, candy-shopping was hardly over: 36% of respondents said they expected to buy more candy before the holiday arrived. As to the "why" behind the buy:

• Among all respondents, 29% said their own personal preference is the most important factor in deciding which kind of candy to buy.

• Other leading factors were “price,” cited as most important by 24% of respondents, and “value,” cited by 19%.

• 16% said quality was most important.

• Among parents, 20% said they primarily select their own favorite candy, and 20% said their kids’ tastes come first, and they pick the Halloween candy their children like best.

• Among respondents who are not parents, 40% said they went for their personal favorite. Such are the sacrifices of parenthood, and the little indulgences that come with not having to placate one’s own little angels and monsters.

In all, 64% of the mid-October respondents said they still had some Halloween shopping to do in the remaining days before Oct. 31. That presents bountiful opportunities across several product categories – and a continuing advantage for retailers and brands that can quickly grab consumer insights that speak to Halloween shoppers’ preferences and motivations.

Among the most useful quick-turnaround approaches are mobile in-store surveys, such as the one MFour conducted to get those 1,800 fast completes over a single mid-October weekend.

In addition to the kinds of data exemplified by this study, marketers and consumer insights professionals can get a uniquely rich understanding of holiday shoppers and product-intenders by locating them in-store and then following them through the aisles.

Let them be your brand’s or your store's auditors, telling and showing you whether your products are shelved in the right places to maximize sales. Also, are in-store displays set up properly and having the desired impact? Are these validated shoppers satisfied with the store's layout, cleanliness and service?

Smartphone photo and video capabilities give you ironclad validation of what shoppers are encountering in the aisles. And by asking respondents to make “video selfies,” you’ll get the most vivid, in-their-own-words testimony to reveal the emotional context behind the “why.”

Mobile-app location studies are also your best safeguard against the recall decay that erodes the quality of online consumer research. Questions that begin with phrases such as  “thinking back on your last visit to a store…” are inherently at risk of failure due to distorted memories. The answers are far more reliable when you know exactly where and when that visit occurred, and gather responses during or just after the visit, before recall bias sets in.

In our Halloween survey, respondents received push notifications of a survey opportunity after they had been located as they entered a Target or Walmart store. They were required to answer within 48 hours to ensure against recall bias.

Among respondents who said they still had Halloween shopping to do during the coming two weeks:

• As noted, 36% expected to buy candy.

• 30% were still looking for costumes.

• 24% intended to shop for pumpkins.

• 22% were still shopping for decorations.

• 16% were looking to buy materials for homemade decorations.

• 10% were going to buy materials needed to make their own costumes.

• 13% intended to buy alcoholic beverages for their Halloween celebrations.

Consumers in this group are not necessarily procrastinators. 84% of those who said they still had more holiday shopping to do also said they had, in fact, made a Halloween purchase during the same store visit in which they received the survey invitation. 70% said they had bought candy during that visit, 49% had bought decorations, 33% had bought costumes, and 31% had purchased pumpkins. Again, by requiring responses within 48 hours, the study decisively minimized recall bias. Typically, mobile surveys fielded via SOTG have a 25% response rate within an hour, and 50% within 24 hours. The result is data you can trust.

Asked where they intend to shop for those upcoming Halloween purchases, most favored big box retailers across the major Halloween product categories. 60% said they would shop big boxes such as Target or Walmart for candy, 58% for decorations, and 34% for costumes. 

The next most-favored stores were grocery stores for candy (12%), party stores for decorations (13%), and Halloween specialty stores for costumes (22%). Online shopping figured prominently for costumes (20% of respondents), but less so for decorations (6%). Only 3% of respondents said they most often buy Halloween candy from an online store.

We’ll throw in a few more fun facts from the survey:

• About half of the survey participants said they planned to wear a costume as part of their Halloween celebration.

• Witches of various kinds were the most popular (5%).

• Next came cats (3.6%) and characters from the “Batman” franchise – Batman, the Joker, the Riddler and Cat Woman (3.5%).

• Other favorites were vampires, zombies and pirates (2.4% each), and skeletons (2.2%).

Ten respondents said they would dress as current celebrities, including two each for Donald Trump and Britney Spears. Taylor Swift, Cher, Tom Cruise, Conor McGregor, Mike Ditka and children’s TV stars the Kratt Brothers also can expect to have doppelgangers moving about on Halloween.

To learn more about how to dress your research for success and end your reliance on data that's just masquerading as reality, just get in touch by clicking here. 

Here’s a consumer insights finding from the world of quick-service restaurants (QSRs) that should resonate with marketers and researchers in other industries as well: it’s not just their wallets or taste buds that are driving consumers' choices. It's their emotions.

MFour fielded a mobile geolocation study and collected survey data from more than 2,000 GeoValidated^® QSR customers of seven leading national brands. The results underscore how important it is for brands to understand the role emotion plays in propelling buying decisions.

Located and surveyed just after they'd left a QSR, respondents were asked their single most important reason for choosing that brand on that day. They were given 18 possible motivations, and picked just one. Having a “craving” for their choice's offerings – a completely emotional experience – was the highest-ranking answer. 

• 23% chose “I was craving” [the brand].

• 18% chose “it was the most convenient for me today.”

• 15% chose “[the brand] is affordable.”

Respondents had been drawn almost equally from among the seven QSR brands, and were geolocated at a store. They were required to complete the questionnaire within 24 hours. 

Unlocking the emotional component of buying decisions – the cravings, sense of excitement, urgency, or other feelings that loom so large – requires these three indispensable inputs:

• GPS-powered mobile geolocation technology that’s a unique capability of smartphones

• An all-mobile, first-party consumer panel whose members can be located in the right places at the right time so they can respond to mobile surveys while emotions are still fresh.

• A state-of-the art mobile survey app.

The Surveys On The Go^® app gives you all three. If you’re ready right now to talk about how in-app mobile research capabilities can put you in touch with shoppers' emotions to gain the fullest understanding and achieve your brands' business goals, just click here. And if you'd like to take a deeper-dive into how it works, read on. 

A validated, representative mobile consumer panel is paramount.  More than 2.5 million U.S. consumers have download Surveys On The Go^® (SOTG), motivated by the opportunity to take part in research while earning cash rewards. In-app mobile surveys gratify respondents' entrenched desire to have seamlessly engaging experiences on their smartphones.

• Once they’ve downloaded SOTG, users give their informed permission to let the app access to their phones’ location services, so they can be tracked through all their buying journeys and qualify for location-specific studies.

• Location studies such as the QSR survey track consumers' natural store visits and identify them as soon as they have arrived at a place that’s relevant to the research project at hand. 

• Once detected in a desired location, consumers receive an in-app push notification alerting them to a survey opportunity.

• The push can arrive while they're still in the store, or just after they've left; in-store surveys document the shopping experience prior to purchase, and after-visit surveys also capture the purchase itself.

• Either way, researchers are reaching respondents at the Point of Emotion^® at which buying decisions come to a head.

• Expect response rates of 25% within an hour, and 50% within 24 hours -- compared to the industry norm of 1% to 5%. The differentiator is the unique mobile-app experience.

In the case of the QSR preferences study, respondents were required to complete the survey within 24 hours of their visit. There’s little point in asking a QSR customer the most important reason for his or her visit more than 24 hours after the fact. By then, the Point of Emotion^® is long gone, and any response will be rife with recall bias. Ask yourself whether you can remember your most recent visit to a QSR, and state your most important reason for choosing it. If you're not an extremely loyal, extremely frequent customer of a particular brand, you might struggle to answer.

To sum up:

The only way to get a fully-recalled, emotionally-informed understanding of consumers’ preferences and motivations is in-app mobile research with an engaged, first-party mobile panel.

If you have a craving for this kind of data, let's talk. Just click here.

If you're a Fantasy Football player, you probably have been researching yards gained, touchdowns scored and interceptions thrown in your breaks from your main research agenda as a consumer insights pro. Assuming that your Fantasy League hasn't taken over as your main research agenda.

Chances are that one of the research questions you faced was how to evaluate aging stars against emerging young guns. Are Tom Brady, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning still Fantasy-worthy, their advancing age?

Or would you be better off suiting up one of the new guys -- Sam Darnold, Deshaun Watson or Josh Allen, for example?

Believe it or not, you face similar choice when you're wearing your market research hat instead of your Fantasy Football GM's cap. Can you eke out another project with legacy data from online surveys? Or is it time to recognize that your longtime warhorse has worn out, and its time to jump to the speed, range and versatility of mobile data? If you make the wrong decision, you won't just lose a Fantasy League membership fee. You'll bring in suspect data that could undermine multi-million dollar business decisions.

Our advice as you decide whether to stick to comfortably familiar online studies is to consider Bret Favre, who was one of the greatest -- until he hung on just a bit too long to get the job done. There's no sentimentality in business, so you need to be sure about the data quality you're getting.

Favre had an epic career that lasted 20 seasons – including more than 17 straight seasons in which he set an all-time NFL record by playing in 321 consecutive games (playoffs included). No quarterback in pro football history threw the ball more (10,960 attempts) or completed more passes (6,781). Along the way, Favre won three straight Most Valuable Player awards in the 1990s, and quarterbacked his Green Bay Packers to two Super Bowls, winning one.

Online research also has had its time of glory. For about two decades it was the most prolific survey mode in the consumer data game, and it provided many most-valuable insights. But as was the case with Brett Favre -- and just about every other great athlete -- time and change take their toll. Online research is in its twilight now, its performance and capabilities greatly diminished from its prime.

The statistics show that Favre hung on one year too many: in 2010, his last season, he threw nearly twice as many interceptions as touchdowns, had the worst quarterback rating of his career (69.9, down from peak years when he was always above 90), and suffered a sprained shoulder and a concussion that kept him out of three games, ending that mighty streak of consecutive games played. Meanwhile, the Packers had moved on, trading Favre to clear the way for Aaron Rodgers, who quickly established himself as a great, Super Bowl-winning quarterback for a new generation.

And so it is with online research as it stands today. Quality completes are harder to come by, projects are being routinely intercepted by fraudulent survey bots, and doubts have set in about online’s ability to deliver a demographically representative consumer panel. Increasingly, we see online providers resorting to Hail Mary tactics such as routing, river sample, and multi-source panel-blending -- and sometimes even claiming that approach is a virtue. But the result is compromised data and widespread discontent with project results. 

Meanwhile, the game has moved on to its next dominant player, in-app mobile research conducted with a validated, first-party consumer panel. Brands and major market research firms are becoming increasingly aware of what it can accomplish. To have a productive conversation about how in-app mobile can help you effectively tackle your projects' specific needs, just click here.

Steely Dan has spun many a memorable tune in a pop music career that earned it a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and one of them is right on target for every marketing and consumer insights pro who's gearing up for the big Thanksgiving shopping weekend: “When Black Friday comes, I’m gonna stake my claim.”

Steely Dan released its song, “Black Friday,” in 1975, when the title evoked disaster, not the biggest shopping day of the year. When Black Friday comes, brands and retailers need to claim as much market share as they can, and that means high stakes for the researchers whose data and analysis feeds product and marketing strategies.

A new report from Salesforce underscores why it’s especially important to make your research fast and flexible to obtain data day-by day-during the holiday shopping season. The key takeaway is that consumers will be using their smartphones moment-by-moment to shop and buy, just as they use them moment-by-moment for nearly everything else related to accessing, creating, and exchanging the information that drives most aspects of most mobile citizens’ economic and personal lives. Among the findings:

• 71% of consumers will use mobile devices while shopping in a brick-and-mortar store this holiday season, according to Salesforce.

• That’s a significant increase over the 62% who used phones in-store in 2017.

• In-store smartphone use will rise to 83% for consumers in the key 18- to 44-year-old age demographic.

Those uses will vary – from buying on mobile for future delivery, rather than plucking a product from a shelf or rack and taking it to the checkout stand, to researching products, to calling mom for advice on whether striped or solid is the way to go for dad’s new shirt.

To keep up with today’s fast and flexible mobile consumers, consumer insights pros need to be fast and flexible themselves.

Think of shopping as a process that used to run on a monorail from physical store to physical store, but now runs on two train tracks, mobile shopping and brick-and-mortar stores, that continually overlap. To maximize success on Black Friday through Christmas Eve, retailers and brands need to keep close watch on consumers’ movements along both tracks. And to fill that need, MFour created Path-2-Purchase® Platform.

For the first time, clients are observing mobile consumers’ physical journeys through 12.5 million U.S. locations, including all stores of the top 1,000 retailers and restaurant chains. At the same time, they’re aligning seamlessly with the new reality of smartphones as consumers’ most important shopping tool at every step along the path to purchase, whether in-store or lying on the living room couch.

• With Path-2-Purchase® you’ll target the consumers you need to understand, you’ll track their movements from store to store, and you’ll survey them at critical moments during or after a shopping visit. You also can reconnect with validated natural purchasers for in-home product use-tests. 

• You’ll also gain unique context by appending extensive historical data that reveals your targeted consumers’ location journeys stretching back in time.

• Besides knowing exactly where they’ve gone, you’ll get a head start on knowing who they are, thanks to extensive profiling surveys that the 2 million-plus consumers who have downloaded the Surveys On The Go® mobile consumer research app have answered. You’ll see who fits the consumer profiles you need to understand, and target your research accordingly.

• For example, to prepare for Black Friday, you could start by identifying validated, first-party consumers who are observed regular visitors to your stores. No need to ask them whether and when they have visited relevant locations, because with Path-2-Purchase® you’ll have seen where they’ve been and know who they are.

• When consumers in your chosen audience enter or exit any of your relevant research locations, they’ll be identified through mobile GeoValidation® and you’ll push them a survey notification on the spot.

• If you need speedy data, you can expect a 25% response rate in one hour and 50% within 24 hours. Or you can stagger fielding if that’s the way to go, assured that the completes will arrive on schedule.

• Ask about the shopping experience your consumers are having right now, or just had. Ask about their plans for Black Friday shopping. Ask whether they plan to shop for a shirt for dad, or any other product or category that’s relevant to your research.

• Are your respondents already making a list and devising a strategy for holiday gift shopping? Who’s discount-oriented and planning to batter down doors or tap and scroll starting at 12:01 a.m. on Black Friday? Who hates fighting crowds and would rather shop when it’s less hectic, even if it costs more? If price isn’t their foremost motivator, then what is?

• Now field a location-based survey asking the same kinds of questions – except this time targeting your competitors’ observed shoppers. Knowing them gives you your best chance of prying them away from the competition.

• Once the holiday shopping season begins, you can keep a finger on consumers’ pulses by using quick-turnaround research options that will help you spot trends or address shopper-satisfaction issues in time for your stakeholders and decision-makers to press an advantage or correct a problem on the fly.

• You can visualize and identify audiences for your study with Path-2-Purchase®, then execute a quick-turnaround project with MFourDIY®, the only all-mobile do-it-yourself research platform (and the only one where “DIY” is a bit of a misnomer, because you can count on prompt, live support when you need it, from an MFour staff specialist).

For more ideas on fast-turnaround research that connects you to validated, first-party mobile consumers in the mobile and physical spaces they inhabit, and in time to make a real difference in sales, you can take a look at a holiday-specific case study by clicking here.

And for a productive talk about how Path-2-Purchase® Platform and other mobile-app research tools can power your specific projects, just click here.

When Black Friday comes, you’ll stake your claim to the advanced, fast-reflex mobile research approaches you need to understand consumers whose mobile and physical worlds haven’t just collided, but melded into one.

What killed off the dinosaurs, and what does that have to do with market research and your job as a consumer insights professional?

The question is prompted by a recent magazine cover story in The Atlantic. Headlined "The Nastiest Feud in Science,” it’s a fascinating account of an ongoing battle between paleontologists who stick to the long-accepted theory that T-Rex and company were done in by the climate effects of a huge asteroid crashing into the ocean just off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, and rivals who say that the catastrophe was brought on by repeated volcanic eruptions in India.

The connection with your job as a marketer or market researcher is that you need to be prepared to carry out high-speed crisis research, because there’s always a risk that some unforeseen, unfortunate happenstance will come crashing down on your brand. When it happens, corporate higher-ups will be looking to you for ultra-fast consumer data. Without knowing the actual and potential damage, hour by hour, the chances of suffering extinction, or at least a significant loss of market share, will continue to mount. Without fast, accurate data, there can be no timely, effective action plan to prevent or reverse a slide in consumers’ esteem for an embattled business. 

A public relations industry news source, Bulldog Reporter Daily, gives a brief rundown on what to do if that figurative asteroid hits and jeopardizes a business. The article, “5 tips for dealing with a crisis from a PR perspective,” emphasizes preparedness and the ability to reach out in an instant to understand what consumers think of your brand in light of a potentially harmful event.

One of the five tips is “Listen to feedback from others.” As writer Jeremy Sutter advises, “listen to what the public is telling you…you can tell what they are thinking if you literally just ask them what is on their mind.”

And that’s where advanced mobile market research capabilities come in. There’s no faster way to get a read on consumer opinion than to field a mobile survey to measure an eruption’s impact – not just on the general public, but on the most relevant segments whose reactions can help a suddenly challenged business navigate to safety. 

Our tip for researchers is to connect with Path-2-Purchase^® Platform for regular, day-to-day fast data. It'll relieve deadline pressure that can seem like a daily crisis, even if it's part of your routine. And it will mean you're prepared in case bad stuff happens. Being connected to consumers through Path-2-Purchase® gives you the rapid deployment research capability you'll need to advise stakeholders during a crisis as they rush to prevent or minimize damage to your brand. Here, briefly, is how Path-2-Purchase^® works:

• Members of the largest all-mobile consumer panel have consented to have their daily buying journeys tracked, creating a detailed record of first-party consumer visits to 12.5 million U.S. locations, including the top 1,000 retailers and restaurant chains.

• If a crisis hits, a quick look at the platform lets you identify your consumers in an instant – including loyalists who visit regularly, and brand-agnostics who, in a crisis, could be high risks to become your brand-rejectors and your competitors' brand loyalists.

• If it’s a specific product that has come under fire, the brand can similarly locate consumers at major retailers where it’s sold, and send out a survey to consumers in the product’s category, and to those who have purchased the product in the past.

• Survey notifications go out in an instant, reaching consumers while they’re still in a store, or just after they’ve left.

• Additionally, you can cast a wider net with a general population survey, which would be extremely useful to understanding awareness and brand perceptions among the public at large. 

• How fast is crisis-mode fast? You can expect response rates of 25% in an hour and 50% in a day for any advanced, in-app mobile study, compared to industry averages under 5% for online surveys. Path-2-Purchase^® is built to give you the highest speed and data quality in any research situation, whether it's routine or a red alert.

A classic instance of a brand responding quickly and effectively to a crisis was Johnson & Johnson’s handling of a nightmarish episode in 1982, in which an unknown killer caused deaths by injecting poison into boxes of Tylenol capsules on store shelves. As this detailed account  from Fortune magazine shows, consumer opinion surveys played a key role in helping J&J executives understand the dimensions of the crisis and formulate strategies for resolving it and building the brand back up.

Today, Path-2-Purchase^® Platform is the rapid-response data solution for any circumstance. Let’s have a productive conversation about how it can meet your current projects’ specific needs, while providing a security blanket that frees you from having to worry about how to respond to consumer data needs during a crisis. To schedule a close discussion of your needs and MFour's solutions, just click here.

The good news for professional football and the networks and advertisers who invest heavily in the games is that its viewing audience is extremely loyal. A survey of 600 fans who watched at least once during last weekend’s season-opening round of games found that 80% plan to follow pro football regularly, compared to 20% who said they’ll only watch occasionally.

A less reassuring data point for the pro football industry is that the younger the fan, the less likely they are to be a regular viewer. The 21- to 24-year-old bracket expressed the least loyalty, with 72% saying they’d watch regularly, compared to 82% among 25- to 34-year-olds and 85% for ages 35 to 44.

Still, among fans who watched during the opening weekend, 41% of all respondents said they expect to watch more pro football this season than they did in 2017, and only 4% said they’ll watch less often – with younger viewers matching the overall averages.

Amid widespread speculation that pro football’s command on American sports fans is slipping a bit, as reflected in TV ratings, MFour fielded a survey the morning after the season’s first long weekend had ended. The respondents were the sport's core demographic - males nationwide, ages 21 to 44.

One major change affecting sports viewership is the advent of streaming services that are seizing a share of the audience from cable, satellite and terrestrial carriers.

• 15% of the fans surveyed said they were streaming NFL games instead of using a legacy viewing platform.

• The average football streamer reported using two different services; the favorites were YouTube (41%), the NFL App (37%), Amazon Prime (30%), and Hulu with Live TV (21%).

The television set hasn’t lost its hold on viewers, with 90% reporting that they watched a game on a TV. But survey results underscored how we’re living in an age of multiple devices for individual consumers – and that the younger they are, the more device-diversified they are likely to be.

Here’s a comparison of 21- to 24-year-olds vs. the primarily Gen X audience in the 35 to 44 age bracket. Figures for the younger adults, including 21-year-olds who the U.S. Census Bureau categorizes as the leading edge of Gen Z, are stated first:

• TV screens: 89% vs. 93%
• Mobile phones: 36% vs. 23%
• PCs: 32% vs.12%
• Game consoles: 22% vs. 8%.

The older the respondent, the more likely he’d be watching at home: 87% of the Gen Xers, 76% of Millennials ages 25 to 34, and 69% in the younger-adult group. The inverse was true of watching games in a bar or restaurant, frequented by 13% of fans under 35, and 7% among those 35 to 44.

Watching football was a solitary pursuit for 21% of respondents; at the other end of the spectrum, 13% said they’d watched with 7 or more other people; 38% watched in groups of two or three.

Also of interest:

• Nearly half the fans (46%) said they had fantasy football wagers riding on players’ performances. 

• 61% of the fantasy players said they were enrolled in two or more leagues.

• 12% are playing in at least four leagues.

Pro football Sundays (and Thursdays and Mondays) provide excitement for providers of food and drinks as well as the fans who consume them.

• 72% of respondents said they had snack foods such as chips and dips during a game, 62% ate hot food, and 53% imbibed alcoholic drinks.

• Beer and football go together like touchdowns and points after: 87% of those who drank said they’d had a beer.

• 45% downed liquor or mixed drinks, 16% went for flavored malt beverages, 10% sipped wine, and 9% had hard cider. So there was a whole lotta mixin’ going on. The survey did not query respondents about post-game stomach distress. 

• The most-favored beer brands were Bud Light (consumed by 35% of the survey's beer-drinkers), Corona (28%), Coors Light (21%), Budweiser (21%), Miler Lite (19%), Blue Moon (19%) and Heineken (17%).

As for the Super Bowl, the biggest event of the season for watching and consuming, 31 of the 32 NFL teams got votes when asked who would win. 

• The Tennessee Titans (no votes), Arizona Cardinals, Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers were voted the least likely to succeed, each picked by fewer than 1% of respondents.

• If you believe in the wisdom of crowds (which, after all, is the fundamental tenet of consumer research), the smart money, as usual, is on the Patriots (17%), followed by the Rams (11%), Packers (9%) and Eagles (8%).

Methodology: The 24-question survey was fielded Tuesday, Sept. 11 to U.S. males ages 21 to 44 who use MFour's proprietary mobile research app, Surveys On The Go^®. 600 completes were collected within 3 hours. Qualifying respondents stated they are interested in the NFL and had watched at least one televised or streamed game during its opening weekend. 

Interested in on how you can achieve fast, accurate and representative quick-turnaround research data of your own? Just get in touch by clicking here.

Gas stations are perhaps the most common ground for American consumers. The U.S. was home to 222 million licensed drivers as of 2016, according to the Census Bureau. They all need to buy gas, and any brand on the market will take them where they need to go.

However, gasoline consumers’ income can have a big impact on where they buy. There is a gap between ARCO, known for low prices and for not accepting credit cards, and Costco, which also features low prices, but requires a $60 membership fee.

• During the 90-day stretch from early June through Labor Day, consumers who earned less than $35,000 per year accounted for 49% of ARCO stations’ traffic.

• The same income bracket made up just 27% of Costco’s gasoline business.

• At the other end of the income spectrum, Costco drew 37% of its gasoline business from consumers earning $75,000 or more.

• Only 18% of ARCO’s visits during the summer driving season came from people whose household incomes topped $75,000.

It’s not just a matter of price differential. According to a report from Business Insider, Costco was the least expensive gasoline option, per gallon, in 17 states. And in California, which has the greatest number of ARCO stations, anecdotal evidence suggests that Costco competes well on price, although there are far more ARCO stations – six times as many in the Los Angeles DMA, for example.

• How heavily does that $60 membership fee figure into Costco’s consumer profiles?

• Is the membership fee the biggest hurdle keeping lower-income drivers from making Costco their brand?

• Or, for drivers in DMAs where ARCO and Costco compete, is the convenience of having more stations available a stronger factor in lower-income drivers' preference for ARCO?

The data on gas station visits, and on who those visitors are based on income, age and many more demographic characteristics, comes instantly into view for users of MFour’s Path-2-Purchase^® Platform. You’ll observe and track the daily journeys of validated, first-party consumer panel members who have opted in to participate in location-based research.

Knowing precisely who they are, and exactly where they go, gives you unprecedented opportunities to identify in an instant the population segments you need to study and understand.

But Path-2-Purchase^® isn’t just for collecting data from known audiences. It takes you a step further by arming you with instant data visualizations that help you identify new, research-relevant audiences to approach, and new questions to ask.

Studies based on Path-2-Purchase^® segmentation and targeting will get you fast responses from real consumers whose characteristics you’ll know before you even field your survey. You’ll come away with a real understanding based on observing and talking to real people who'll tell you the "why" behind the observational data you already have.

With the launch of Path-2-Purchase^® you finally have a choice. You can continue to depend on third-party data and settle for inferences and assumptions rather than direct knowledge as to who consumers actually are and what really motivates them. Or step up to validated, first-party opinions that reveal the motivations and emotions of actual, carefully-profiled mobile consumers. 

There’s lots more to explore on your way to premium data and high-octane consumer insights that dispense with inferences and put you in touch with direct reality.  To check out the Path-2-Purchase^® dashboard, just click here. And for a productive discussion about how the platform can power your projects’ specific needs, get in touch by clicking here.