Have you ramped up your market research yet for Halloween? Trick or treating commences in just two months, so it’s time to review whether you’re equipped with solutions for harvesting accurate, reliable and representative consumer insights on candy and costumes, pumpkins and decorations, and the season’s scary movies. After all, quoth the Raven, the early bird gets the revenue.

• The National Retail Federation estimated that 179 million Americans of all ages celebrated Halloween in 2017, spending $9.1 billion, or $86 per household. And 30% of those the NRF surveyed said they had begun their Halloween shopping in September, with an additional 6% starting even earlier.

• The NRF estimated last year that about 37% of consumers expected to do their shopping at a Halloween specialty store, second only to discount stores (47%) and ahead of grocery stores (25%) and online shopping (22%).

• The NRF study found that 35% of consumers planned to search online to get ideas for their Halloween purchases and celebrations. 30% would do reconnaissance in-store, and that 10% to 18% would look for ideas on social media, depending on the platform.

With those stakes in mind, here are some ideas for marketers and market researchers who are gearing up to collect consumer insights leading up to Halloween.

In-Store Shopper Experience and Satisfaction (Have You Been Tricked?)

Your research data will be nothing but empty calories If you rely on stated answers from surveys taken days or weeks after a shopping experience. In market research, recall bias spoils the candy, producing dubious data that’s unfit for consumption by your stakeholders and clients. Here are some of the questions for which you need consumers to answer with certainty, not guesses.

• Are Halloween product displays at groceries, party-supply stores and crafts stores capturing shoppers’ attention?

• Are displays and promotions having the desired, in-the-moment effect by driving spending from in-store consumers who hadn’t even intended to make any Halloween purchases?

• Is the holiday candy aisle enticing shoppers? Or is it a mess that makes it hard for them to find what they want?

Now Here's Your Treat

In-store and after-visit mobile location studies are the way to go to understand the shopper experience. It’s the only cost-effective way to know what’s driving them at the Point-of-Emotion^® where buying decisions are made.

• Follow your audience into a store by using mobile geolocation. Survey them right there, or wait until just after they’ve left. In either case, the data is fast, fresh and free from recall bias.

• Mobile respondents also will use their phones to create stills and videos on the spot, showing you exactly what they see while they tell you exactly what they think about displays, placement, service quality, store environment, and whatever else you need -- including whether you’ve stocked big enough pumpkins.

• Media captures also give you ironclad validation of visits and purchases. When already validated members of a first-party consumer panel photograph purchase receipts or store displays, there can be no doubt as to data quality.

Advertising Effectiveness (Have You Been Tricked?)

Advertisers and agencies suffer frustration year-round when it comes to finding real, dependable metrics for awareness, lift, and attribution across all media.

• The lack of actual data from real, ad-exposed consumers is downright scary for anyone who has an advertising budget to allocate.

• Until now, there’s been no choice but to resort to voodoo: trying to dress up location data from unvalidated consumers by adding mere inferences about who they might be. Algorithms that sift through third-party data spit out a profile, but can you trust it? You need actual data from known, first-party consumers.

Now Here's Your Treat:

Intelligent-OOH™ is the new market research product that finally provides a way to talk with real, first-party consumer panel members who actually have been exposed to out-of-home advertising.

• First you validate their exposure via advanced mobile geolocation.

• Then you survey them to understand how well the OOH campaign has succeeded.

• Ascertain their brand and product awareness versus an unexposed control group.

• Learn whether they intend to buy.

• Then track their subsequent location visits and send a survey after they’ve been to a store that carries the advertised product. Do they cite the billboard or other OOH signage when you ask why they bought a product?

Entertainment Industry (Have You Been Tricked?)

Halloween is synonymous with horror at the multiplex, but theater chains need to be sure their customers are experiencing movies as a treat. There has been no good way to get reliable data on how moviegoers view their experiences with concessions, lobby displays and on-screen advertising. To get people into those seats, film studios need to create effective trailers, and test them on the target audience for each film.

Now Here's Your Treat:

• In-store and after-visit location studies put cinema owners in touch with validated moviegoers, for fast insights into their experience of the movie and of the theater’s amenities. If something’s not right on opening weekend, you’ll correct it by the next.

• MFour is the acknowledged leader in mobile film-trailer and television episode testing.

• Special smartphone technology enables entertainment clients to show clips or entire trailers on the same smartphones most consumers use to scout movies and decide which ones to see.

• Security is crucial in trailer testing, and MFour’s system prevents respondents from downloading or sharing test images or video clips. In other words, no unauthorized spoilers.

Whether your research needs are in advertising effectiveness, shopper experience, or path to purchase, let’s talk about how mobile research solutions can satisfy your projects’ specific needs. Just click here.