It's decision time for your stakeholders.

The nation's largest first-party panel, Surveys On The Go®, showed U.S. foot traffic had already dropped 92%; even before lockdowns started. 

Consumers are in quarantine. Budgets are cut. Production is halted. So, what’s next, and how do we stay afloat? 

You have questions. Here are answers...

After speaking with 100’s of our clients since March 11th, we found a pattern in our conversations... 3 questions... asked over and over. We wanted to help, so...

Here is our effort to answer them.

Top Covid-19 Research Question #1:

How do we get digital insights from consumers... right now?

California, New York, and Illinois are already on lockdown.

This throws a wrench into many traditional forms of market research. 

Yet, consumers haven't stopped spending. They’ve shifted their focus online and to apps that allow them to still buy, such as Amazon, UberEats, Netflix and more. 

Now is the time to be looking at consumers’ digital path to purchase, so you can impact sales and improve revenue. 

Answer: Survey consumers who shop with you (or your competitors) digitally.

We know your consumers' app behaviors. 

Here’s how. 

Surveys On The Go, can see all of the apps on consumers' phones. It's given permission, by the people who download it, to do so. When they download a new app, or access one, you'll have access to see their digital data.

This helps your company remain digitally connected. For example... If you’re in the restaurant space, you can reach out to your consumers who have:

1. The UberEats or GrubHub app installed on their phone
2. Recently been to your restaurant or a competitor's restaurant

You can then survey on a variety of things. Ask questions to improve channels, messaging, and product strategy for the digital path to purchase. It's still possible to access sales, if the business can be nimble and adapt to a more digital model.

Learn how to get digital event surveys.

Top Covid-19 Research Question #2:

How do we protect sales, with consumers stuck at home?

Your business has likely felt an impact.

Regardless of what you produce, the economic climate has changed. The result has been the split of two main categories:

1. Essentials, such as household supplies are up in sales.
2. Non-Essentials, such as casual dining are down in sales.

It’s left researchers with questions, such as:

• Will these trends continue?
• For how long, and how much will we be impacted?
• How can we increase sales under these circumstances?

Answer: Double down on social media ads and social media ad testing.

Consumers are spending more time on their smartphones than before the outbreak. Online shopping is up 46% (in categories such as clothing and home decor), but the biggest uptick is in time spent on social media platforms.

To reach consumers, and increase sales, try their social streams.

With advertising budgets cut across the nation, the cost of running ads on social media is actually down right now, which makes it a great opportunity.

Since social media is the best way to reach your consumers (for the foreseeable future, at least), it makes sense that you’ll need to test messaging and concepts and get real validated opinions and feedback from your consumers, in real-time.

How social ad testing works...

You can choose your audience from 10 million daily consumer journeys. These are panelists who use Surveys on the Go®, the highest-rated app for market research.

Then, launch and collect passive data on your social media ad. You’ll see:

• Visibility time and reach
• Time spent viewing the ad
• If they liked and/or clicked on it
• Whether they tapped to expand the display
• If they turned on the audio or viewed on mute

After you’ve collected passive behavior, you can do a survey to understand their motivation. Take your target audience through the following questions:

• Do they remember the ad?
• What brands do they recall seeing?
• Is the content likable? distinctive? memorable?
• Does the ad create favorable impressions of your brand and push a purchase?

If the ad’s a hit, then you’ve got a proven, scalable campaign. Or, if it needs to be revised, there's now direct feedback and a way to retest the ad for primetime.

Learn more about social ad testing.

Top Covid-19 Research Question #3:

How can we monitor consumer behavior if it's changing daily?

Consumer behavior has changed.

And, it’s evolving, from week to week. Behavior will continue to change as conditions worsen (or better), as different states take certain precautions, and as major competitors change the way they market.

So, how can you monitor behavior, if it’s constantly changing?

Answer: A mobile tracker (that captures location and digital behaviors).

You need a way to keep in touch with your consumers every move.

What you're looking for, is a way to:

• See where consumers are going in real-time
  (and compare be able to measure it against historically logged locations)
  
  
• See what apps consumers are accessing in real-time
  (and which apps they have installed and which new ones they’re downloading)
  
  
• Target and survey based on mixed location or digital behaviors.

In a time like this, visibility is everything. 

A mobile tracker looks at consumer behavior over time, and eliminates the noise that comes with constant changes. It shares brand perception, and uses a validated, first-party panel to show your market’s digital behaviors and mobile behaviors.

Learn more about always-on mobile trackers.

Start impacting digital sales

Our market research team is here to brainstorm with you. 

If you’re facing a challenge, chances are, we’ve seen it – and can help. We’ve helped the largest brands and market research companies in the world.  

Call us at (714) 754-1234, or send us an email: solutions@mfour.com. 

We’re here to help.

Start a new market research project

Big-Box retail is up 32%. Restaurants are down 121%.

The economy demands we take Coronavirus seriously.

Here’s why. On March 10, the Dow dropped 1,200 points. This came a day after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Coronavirus a global pandemic.

So, what does that mean?

Coronavirus is sickening the stock market. And we need to get out ahead of it in order to protect ourselves from a recession. Protect yourself from a rapid decrease in consumer spending. Use research.

Be looking at buying behavior, and how to influence it in your favor.

Consumer spend is dying

We tracked real consumers for 30 days. In one month, they dramatically decreased shopping and being social. Figure 1 below shows how much they’ve changed due to the virus.

Figure 1: High-Traffic Visits: February vs. March 2020

Figure 1: percent change was used to calculate increase/decrease from February to March waves.

These same people are now limiting time with friends and family by 92% and 74% are working remotely. When consumer spending is 73% of the economy, that’s a big problem.

Are your products sold in-stores?

Focus on what you can control.

If you sell clothing, or home décor, your in-store revenue will shrink.

We saw in-store home décor purchases among our consumer group drop 31%. Clothes fell 32%. But, hope isn’t lost. That same group is now buying online, where there’s a 46% increase in visits. They’re changing behavior: saying “no” to stores, but “yes” to online.

Take advantage of what they’re telling you. They’re still willing to buy, but they want to do it from the perceived safety and comfort of their own home. Act on what they’re asking for.

Do you sell food or home supplies?

Business is doing well here.

We tracked consumer visits to Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club and Costco using the Surveys On The Go® app. All visits were down in January and most of February. But then, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced Coronavirus is a global pandemic¹ the week of February 20^th.

An instant jump in Figure 2 below. Consumers are stocking up for a potential quarantine.

Figure 2: Tracked Visits to Big Box Retailers from 1/1/20 to 3/4/20

Figure 2: percent change was used to calculate increase/decrease from week over week from 1/1 through 2/26.

Methodology

Survey sent to 1,133 US consumers, male (48%) and female (52%) aged 18-44 years old. Participants were screened on knowledge of Coronavirus and a retailer visit within 30 days. Percent change was used to calculate increase/decrease from week over week from 1/1 to 2/26. Qualified respondents received a 13-question survey. Location-based behavioral data was collected via the Surveys On The Go® app through GPS permissions, examining with a visit between January 1^st and March 4^th, 2020.

What they're buying

Immediately, there’s a demand for hand sanitizer (80%), household supplies (65%), nonperishable foods (49%), and face masks (35%).

And because consumers are preparing for two to four weeks, we’re seeing the buying shift at big box retailers, where they can buy in bulk. So, if you’re in the market to sell any of these items, now is the time to pull the levers on your supply chain to make more – and quickly.

What’s next?

No one knows.

Prepare by tracking consumers over time, so you’re not caught off guard. The economic situation is changing quickly. You want to stay ahead of the competition – as well as a potential recession. Take time to think through the questions you need answered, by your consumers, and then ask them.

Research is more important than ever. This is the time to take stock of your market position.

Need help?

We’re researching the impact of COVID-19 now for clients. If you want to know the impact on your marketplace, let’s look at it together. For the full research report, or for assistance, email solutions@mfour.com.

For a Full Copy of the Research Report click here to contact MFour.

References:

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/dow-futures-point-to-a-loss-of-more-than-400-points-after-tuesdays-surge.html

Elaina, O'Mahoney, VP of Product at MFour Mobile Research, is nominated for OC Women in Business Award, through OC Business Journal

MFour's Elaina O’Mahoney, VP of Product, has been nominated for the OC Business Journal Women in Business (WIB) Awards.

Featuring the top businesswomen in Orange County, the WIB Awards is a distinct recognition for O’Mahoney, who brings more than a decade of experience leading product teams in the technology sector.

Under her leadership, the product team has seen a 35% gain in productivity. Elaina is also actively managing the redesign of one of the App Stores’ most successful apps, Surveys On The Go® which ranks in the top 100 apps in the Lifestyle Section.

O’Mahoney holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Colorado State University and is working on a Master's in Business Administration at Maryville University. Apart from work, Elaina loves to travel and spend at-home time with family. We are excited to see Elaina nominated for her fantastic work!

Coronavirus is a consumervirus.

It’s as deadly to the economy, as it is to people.

In less than two months, COVID-19¹ has ravaged the U.S. economy, savagly infecting consumer behavior as it spreads around the world. And, according to Oxford Economics, it’s estimated the virus will likely lead to $1 trillion in global losses² before it’s stopped.

Here’s why that matters.

Consumer spending in the U.S. accounts for about 70%³ of the economy. That’s a massive amount of balance precariously placed on the health of consumer behavior. Any move in the wrong direction, and we find ourselves in a very painful predicament.

Our economy depends on China. A lot.

The U.S. supply chain is very closely tied to China. And the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai has found that 78% of American companies don’t have enough staff to resume full production⁴. Nearly half said the shutdowns are impacting their global supply chains.

On Feb. 1, Apple closed all of its retail stores, and offices in China ⁵.

The impact on consumerism is clear, especially in technology. China makes roughly half of the world’s LCD panels for TVs, laptops, and computer monitors. Its economic impact⁶ is expected The longer Coronavirus is in play, the greater the impact will be.to be worse than:

• 2003 outbreak of SARS
• 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster
• 2011 Thailand floods

What we found in researching consumers

“We’re seeing the early impact on consumer behavior,” says Jeff Harrelson, COO at MFour. “Eighty-six percent of our consumer panel is limiting social interaction. Travel is social. So, we’d expect other high-traffic businesses to feel the effects³, as the outbreak continues.”

Research highlights from the Surveys On The Go® consumer panel:

• 38% airport decline was observed through GPS tracking on panelists’ smartphones
• 72% of panelists expected the concern of Coronavirus to last more than two months
• 86% planned to limit social interactions, or visits to public places, as a preventive step

This means COVID-19 caused a 38% drop in U.S. consumer behavior.

In early January, the first death⁷ linked to COVID-19 was reported. Consumers took notice. Two weeks later, MFour traced its consumer panel’s visitation to the top 10 U.S. airports. Using the market research app, Surveys On The Go®, the company found a 38% decline in airport visits. The drop correlates to the first reported Coronavirus case in the U.S⁸.

The behavioral data tells us travel was much more impacted than what was stated in the surveys we ran. This is why watching what consumers do is more important than just surveying. As we tracked people, we saw up to a 38% dip in travel, compared to the 23% that was stated in surveys. That’s a 15% shift in behavior, observed by tracking their locations.

Research was conducted comparing visitation to top 10 US airports by MFour's consumer panel.  Examined Jan - Feb 2019 vs. same period 2020.  

For a full copy of the Research Reports click here to contact MFour.

References:

1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html
2. https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/my-oxford/publications/537166
3. https://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/consumer-spending-and-the-economy/
4. https://www.amcham-shanghai.org/en/article/supply-chains-and-factory-openings-amcham-shanghai-mini-survey
5. https://qz.com/1800540/how-coronavirus-is-upending-the-tech-industrys-supply-chain/
6. https://www.wsj.com/articles/commentary-supply-chain-risks-from-the-coronavirus-demand-immediate-action-11582054704
7. https://apnews.com/c0e87e089a89fa5579e1c63acded7d46
8. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0121-novel-coronavirus-travel-case.html

Have you seen the article?

Surveys On The Go® is the #2 side hustle app for consumers.

That's why we get 50% completes on your surveys. They're paid cash for their input. And they're only too happy to give you photos and videos of their feedback on your brand.

Got a brand question? Our consumer panel will answer it.

And it only gets better.

Surveys On The Go® is now the nation's largest consumer panel. With that big of a panel, and a 50% return on your completes, there isn't a survey or a data project, we can't help you with.

So, why not try it out?

In many cases, we turn around research in less than 24 hours.

That’s accurate, validated consumer data - in a day.

And because we use an app, the feedback is in real-time. Your consumers are responding to surveys while they’re still experiencing your brand. It doesn’t get any better than that: freshly sourced data - straight from their smartphone.

So, if you’re asking:

• How can we better meet buyers’ needs?
• What do buyers think of the brand/product?
• What’s the market look like for the brand/product?

Get the answers.

We’ll deliver the data you need. Contact us.

Hint: Size isn't everything. Panel performance is.

When it comes to market research, we look at panel size for feasibility.

Right?

Wrong. What we want are the right people to take our surveys. See, what matters most when we're trying to conduct research is reaching our target audience. We want to know the number of completes we're going to get. 

I'll show you what I mean. 

Say you engage with a vendor who has a panel of 10 million people. They’re going to have a great response rate. Right? Not so fast. This panel only gets a 1% response rate.

10,000,000 x 1% = 100,000.

Uh oh.

That’s pretty small.

And it means that size isn't everything. Activity is.

So what is an active panelist? The AAPOR defines an active panelist as having participated in at least one survey or updated his/her profile in the last year. As such, panel size depends greatly on the status of a member.

This means that when it comes to panel size, consumer engagement is what counts. That's why the days of online panel groups are numbered (read the eBook) and why mobile research is where the value is. The secret is to work with a panel who wants to give you feedback, not a consumer who thinks they're ignoring email spam.

See, consumers who want to take your survey, and are incentivized to do so – they engage and become active.

That engagement can mean 100,000 completes or more.

Surveys On The Go®,  the nation's largest, first-party consumer panel, pays people to take surveys. These are consumers you need. They're representative and engaged, because they are paid to be.  Surveys On The Go® is a market research app, so we see where consumers shop, what phones they own, and what they do on their phones.

Look at who's in the app:

And they're ready to give you data. To the tune of 50% completes in under 24 hours of sending a survey.

You’re a lot more likely to reach the completes you need with an engaged panel. So, the next time you’re getting ready to field a survey, think about who you want to reach. Do you want a representative sample?

Surveys On The Go® is the largest, first-party panel in the US. The surveys are sent directly to the app on their phones. And because consumers are paid cash to share their data, they are happy to do so. Clients get a representative sample. Consumers get cash.

Everyone wins.

To learn more about our consumer panel, or see where they're shopping right now, visit our path to purchase page: www.mfour.com/consumer-panel. 

The average US adult spends 2 hours 55 minutes a day on their phone.

About 90% of that time is spent in apps. So, why is market research still done online? An online customer survey in today's smartphone world is a beach in the dead of winter: cold, quiet, and deserted.

Consumers have migrated.

They're not waiting for a survey to hit their inbox. Right now, they're on a smartphone in an app, and sharing feedback with companies who are willing to listen to what they have to say. Want to reach them? Follow these tips:

Tip #1: Be timely

People are busy. 

Customer surveys are often irrelevant - taking place long after an event occurs. Today's consumer expects instant results. Our surveys should be the same and sent out within 24 hours of a purchase. Let's take an example:

Shelly goes to Walmart.

She has a grocery list. It doesn't include diet coke. She walks out with a case anyway. If you're Coca-Cola, you'd probably like to know what prompted her to buy a diet coke. Should this survey be sent next week?

No.

By the time next week rolls around, Shelly can't remember when, and maybe even why, she bought the coke. By sending Shelly a customer survey within 24 hours of her purchase, she remembers her shopping trip, any ads she may have seen, and can now retrace her path to purchase.

Tip #2: Get personal

It's happened to all of us.

You're called by a wrong name, or see your name misspelled. It's impersonal, and it sucks. The same can be said for sending blanket customer surveys. The average survey response rate is 33%. That's a pretty low number, and it's likely because we're taking a shotgun approach: trying to talk to everyone the same way, at the same time. 

Market research must evolve. We have the technology now to marry surveys and data. You can see who passed your location, what they bought, and why they didn't choose a competitor. Use that technology to get personal with your consumers. Segment them and reach out accordingly, and you're likely to see a big difference.

Tip #3: Make it easy

Meet consumers where they are.

If adults spend 90% of their phone time on an app, consider connecting there. You may want to look into using a mobile consumer panel to field your customer surveys. These are consumers who have opted in to share their opinion and are being paid to do so. They want to give input, and will allow you to see their online shopping and buying journeys.

As behaviors change, market research needs to adapt.

To be accurate and trustworthy, customer surveys must be fast, flexible and multi-faceted. The goal is to make it simple for consumers to provide reliable input you can use today to adjust advertising spend and ROI. See how companies like Walmart, Warner Bros. Pictures, and PepsiCo are adjusting their approach to customer surveys.

MFour partnered with leading research firm IRI for IRI’s “New Cannabis Attitude and Usage Study,” surveying legal adult cannabis users to understand their attitudes and motivations, and what further legalization might mean in the marketplace. Among the key findings:

• Cannabis consumers defy stereotypes.

• Cannabis products replace purchases of over-the-counter medications.

• But snack-food manufacturers stand to benefit as legalization spreads.

To read IRI’s press release announcing the cannabis study’s results, click here.

Related: IRI and MFour Partner To Launch IRI OnSights™. 

How important is it to collect fast, accurate data about customer experiences? In one history-making case, a single bad customer experience may have destroyed an industry. 

According to Netflix’s origin myth, company founder Reed Hastings first conceived the idea of a mail-order subscription video service after being slammed with a large late fee because he was tardy in returning a videocassette of the movie, “Apollo 13” to the store he’d rented it from.

You can read this Quartz.com report about how Netflix came to be. While it’s possible that the late-fee incident has been embellished somewhat in its frequent retelling, there’s no question that Hastings wasn’t satisfied with his own video rental experiences and took them as a cue for groundbreaking entrepreneurship. The result has had immense consequences for the distribution and consumption (and more recently, the creation) of video entertainment.

According to estimates from the Digital Entertainment Group, brick-and-mortar video rental stores grossed $393 million in 2017, compared to $11.5 billion for streaming services and video on demand. Meanwhile, the number of video stores fell from nearly 30,000 in 2000 to just over 2,000 in 2017, according to a USA Today feature on America’s fastest-dying industries.

While industries typically can’t trace their collapse to a single failure to provide a satisfying customer experience, poor encounters with brands and retailers inevitably erode their earnings and chase consumers to their competitors. Negative sentiment takes wing in an instant on the internet, and if those perceptions take hold they will threaten revenues and profits.

So staying continually on top of what consumers think and feel about a brand should be a day-by-day priority, verging on an obsession, for market research. Now, thanks to GPS location studies conducted through a mobile research app, it’s an obsession that’s easy to satisfy.

The best time to assess the quality of consumers’ shopping experiences is while the experiences are actually happening, or just after. In-store and after-visit mobile geolocation studies get that job done. Store atmosphere, service quality, pricing, the ease or difficulty shoppers have in navigating the aisles to find the products they want – all can be best assessed at the Point-of-Emotion^®. It’s the spot on the place/time continuum where responses from consumers are most vivid and come closest to the whole truth about what they are experiencing, how they feel about it, and how those experiences influence their buying decisions and overall satisfaction.

Of course, GPS location studies will only be as good as who you’re locating and how engaged they are with your research. Unless you want heaps of well-documented trouble associated with the quality of online consumer surveys, the crucial “who” has to be a first-party, single-source consumer panel of validated actual shoppers. MFour’s consumers are gathered around Surveys On The Go^®, the most highly-developed, highest-rated mobile research app.

The satisfaction of 2.5 million U.S. consumers who have downloaded SOTG is the big difference maker. They’re engaged, carefully profiled mobile research participants who doubly opt in to have their location journeys tracked, in exchange for increased opportunities to receive surveys they complete quickly on their smartphones. That’s how you’ll identify them in-store and survey them when it matters most.

Expect 25% response rates within an hour, and 50% within 24 hours. And if you want to follow them beyond the moments of shopping and purchasing, and understand their satisfaction at the moment they’re actually using or consuming a product, that’s also an easy “get” for in-app mobile. Expect response rates of 85% for In-Home User Tests conducted up to two weeks after a purchase.

Reed Hastings realized he could transform the movie-rental experience (and the future of rental revenues) by using technology to make it easy on the consumer. You can do the same for yourself. Market research conducted with the state-of-the-art GPS location and consumer-panel quality unique to in-app mobile research will be more satisfying to you as a consumer of market research tools. If the online consumer data you’ve been collecting isn’t giving you what you need, maybe it’s time for some innovative thinking and action of your own.  

Toddlers do it incessantly. So why can’t virtually all of the location-research providers who’ve been trying to sell the market research industry on their ability to track consumers’ store visits?

We’re talking about being able to ask the fundamental question, “why?” As anyone who’s spent much time with little kids can attest, it’s never far from their tongues.

Why?

Because “for children, `why’ questions help them make sense of the world around them….These `why’ questions also help spur and accelerate learning,” says Rebecca Palacios, one of America’s most respected experts on early childhood education, in a Huffington Post article titled “Why Do Children Ask Why?”

So here’s our own “why” question of the day:

Why can’t those location-research tech and analytics providers let you do as a consumer insights pro what you did almost nonstop when you were knee high to a Great Dane?

Why won’t they let you ask the “why” behind the buy?

Here’s why: technology and data analytics providers don’t really know market research.

They know how to find undifferentiated people, and tell you how many of them have gone to a given location. They’re able to collect footprints, but they can’t help you connect with the actual human beings who are leaving them. They can’t help you ask “why,” the most important question when it comes to understanding and influencing consumer behavior.

Yes, footprint data can be illuminating to an extent as a standalone, but its most advanced use is to point you in the right direction in your quest to truly connect with consumers and understand the many whys behind where they go – and what they think, feel, see and do while they’re there.

MFour creates location technology, but we do it in the specific context of perfecting it for the sake of market research. We pioneered building location capabilities for market research, and we’re the only company to have simultaneously built an all-mobile, validated first-party panel for that technology to track.  (with their double opt-in informed consent).

You’re in the business of obtaining a 360-degree view of consumer behavior, and so are we. Not just the “where,” but the “why.”

• Why did a consumer we located as he passed in view of a billboard for Target visit a Target store three days later? 

• Was it attributable to the ad exposure, or just a coincidence?

• Why do some consumers alternate frequently between Target and Walmart – as reflected in their location footprints?

• Why are some big box shoppers loyal to one while completely rejecting the other?

The moral of this post is that you should never let any market research provider sell you short by not permitting you to unleash your inner three-year-old. Don’t settle for footprints and algorithmic models that can’t begin to give you the “why” to questions like the ones above.

Always insist on the “the why” behind the buy.

Why?  Because you can’t afford not to.

To learn more about how to target, track and survey mobile consumers by using MFour's Path-2-Purchase^® Platform, just click here.