(L-R Brandon, Brittany, Theresa, Troy)
Brandon Bishop joins the MFour Sales team as a Solutions Development Representative who will act as the first point of contact when speaking to clients, as well as, conduct outreach to secure meetings for our sales team. He looks forward to supporting the solutions executives by maintaining client communication, feasibility, and pricing requests, and any additional work needed from him. In his previous sales roles, Brandon has shown his work ethic and determination by continuously hitting his sales quota and always supporting his team's daily needs. Brandon holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of California, Riverside and an MBA in International Business from the EU Business School in Geneva, Switzerland. When he’s not in the office, he enjoys spending his weekends watching football with his friends and spending time at the beach when the weather is nice.

MFour is also excited to announce Brittany Hanna as a valued member of the operations team as a Senior Project Manager. In her new role, she will be leading projects through the various phases, ensuring timing and client objectives are always being met. She brings 5 years of Market Research experience where she understands the research process and will be able to communicate the different processes to various teams and clients, which will lead to a seamless workflow and satisfying client relationships. Brittany holds a degree in Communications Studies and a Masters degree in Health & Strategic Communications from Chapman University. When she’s not in the office, Brittany teaches yoga, DJs for events and enjoys all things Halloween related. 

Theresa Bui joins MFour’s operations team with a degree in Psychology from the University of San Francisco and a Masters's degree in Applied Psychology from the University of Southern California. In her role, she will program surveys on MFour research platform, manage and analyze survey datasets, perform quality checks, and provide feedback for potential improvements. Theresa brings valuable experience working with SPSS, Qualtrics and all Microsoft applications. We are lucky to have someone like her who values organization and attention to detail. Theresa is a big foodie and loves eating, cooking, and baking whenever she has the time. She is also passionate about music where some of her favorite genres are EDM, alternative, and indie music. 

Troy Harrington joins the MFour team as our new Senior Digital Marketing Manager where he will be leading strategy and execution of all digital marketing. He has spent the last 8 years building highly-successful digital marketing strategies leading teams at small businesses, start-ups, agencies, and large global technology companies. He is excited to use his years of experience to optimize media performance based on trends and insights. Troy has 17 certifications in marketing, copywriting, web development and media buying, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from California State University, Long Beach. When he’s not in the office, Troy likes to spend time with his wife and 1-year-old baby and cheer for his favorite football team, the Lions. 

Diary studies can help you dig deep into hidden details. 

Since diary studies are extremely immersive, they tend to yield insights that can’t be found by using other “one-and-done” popular market research methods.

Here are 3 major benefits of conducting a diary study:

1. They allow you to test the repeated use of a product or service.
   
   For a product or service that is consumed over a period of time, it makes sense to measure the consumer experience over time as well. This is especially true as that experience may very well be quite different from the first time a product is used versus the tenth time.
   
   
2. Participants are in a natural environment for product consumption.
   
   As market researchers, we’re always trying to reduce the amount of influence on participants for our research. Diary studies have the unique advantage to provide unfiltered consumer insights for two reasons:
    
   1. They’re in a situation where they’d normally consume your product.
   2. Participants aren’t being influenced by a moderator and don’t feel like they’re being watched or swayed in one way or another. This is true even if you’re asking for photos and videos of their consumption. It’s done on their own time, and not monitored.
      
      
3. Participant are not subject to recall bias.
   
   Recall bias can wreak substantial havoc on the outcome of research. Fortunately, participants in a diary study are recording their actual actions in-the-moment and not just trying to remember what they thought about previously.

At the end of the day, the best part about a diary study is that it lets you feel like you are actually “walking a mile” in your consumer’s shoes. Learn all about it in our Definitive Guide to Diary Studies.

Market research fuels business. 

By doing market research, you can explore what your market needs, test ideas before investing heavily, track success over time, and adjust your strategy to lift your sales.

Here are 5 great reasons to consider doing a research project with us.

1. You want to create a new product or service
    
   Ever seen a new product flop, hard? It’s not a pretty picture.
    
   Strangely enough, it happens all the time, even at the enterprise level. At MFour, we see this as a missed opportunity. When you understand the true needs of potential customers and existing clients, you don’t fail. The answer is to conduct thorough research ahead of time to capitalize on sales and revenue.
    
2. You want to enter a new market
    
   When a new location, it’s helpful to know what the future looks like. Surveying the market ahead of time is a great indicator for what the health of that opportunity is. For example, if your business is looking into selling in other states, surveying consumers in those states can help you know how well you’ll do. You can also get a sneak peek at the competition, by talking to consumers who frequent your competitors’ locations. It’s great intel.
    
3. You want to target a new type of buyer
    
   It’s hard to know your existing buyers like the back of your hand (what’s that spot?!).
    
   This is even more true with new buyers. Going after a new consumer means accurately understanding their wants and needs, and learning how to speak their language. A survey offers welcome relief. It’s actual feedback from the people you want to reach. And it’s easy to do, you can get the data you need by surveying a consumer panel with hundreds of demographic data points. Let them tell you want they want.
    
4. You want to run a large Out-of-Home advertisement
    
   Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising has the strongest ROI of any media source, if you can measure it. However, understanding ad effectiveness in OOH is more challenging than other channels, because it’s not digital.
    
   Good market researchers can understand the impact of their OOH campaigns by researching what consumers are thinking in the moment the see their signs. Using a consumer group, and sending a survey when they pass you billboard offers real, unfiltered, and accurate feedback.
    
5. You want to beef up your customer service department
    
   Customer service is a higher priority than ever. For retail locations, they’re your biggest key to sales. If your organization wants to win on customer service, it’s important to uncover the issues to solve within the department. Again, we can help you design the right market research survey to figure this out.

Of course, there are many other reasons to do market research. If you’re interested in learning more about our market research solutions, click here. If you’d like to learn about the 7 step process to conducting market research, click here.

Nearly 30% of 21- to 64-year-olds who responded to a survey by MFour Mobile Research said they have filled in a tournament bracket for the NCAA men’s basketball championships, and 14% are betting on the annual March sports ritual.

The study surveyed 4,200 U.S. residents nationwide, including 1,800 NCAA basketball tournament fans and 2,400 non-fans. Fans were defined as those who said they’re planning to watch the tournament.

Betting Behavior

• Among those watching the tournament, 32% said they’re also betting.
• Among those who said they’re betting, 26% reported using online betting services.
• 14% of bettors said they’ll place wagers in person at a casino sports books.
• 56% of those making bets said they were informal wagers with family or friends.
• 68% of people watching the games said they had filled out a tournament bracket.
• But 53% of bracket-players said it was just for fun, no money involved.

 Amounts Wagered

• 18% of bettors surveyed expected to wager $100 or more.
• 21% said they would bet $50 to $99.
• 25% planned to wager $20 to $49.
• 37% said they would wager less than $20.

Viewing characteristics:

• 17% of tournament-watchers said they’d be watching at work.
• 67% of at-work watchers said it’s OK with their supervisors.
• 33% said it’s against the rules, but they’ll watch at work anyway and try not to get caught.
• Of those with permission to watch in the workplace, 56% will do it on a shared office TV screen.

Methodology:

The eight-question survey was fielded March 21-24 to U.S. consumers ages 21 to 64. All respondents use Surveys On The Go^®, MFour’s mobile market research app, to take surveys on their smartphones or tablets. MFour received initial responses from 4,214 consumers who were representative by region. To indicate interest in the tournament, they were initially asked whether they planned to watch tournament games. The 1,810 respondents who indicated they were watching the tournament went on to complete the survey, providing answers about their plans for wagering and viewing.

Pew Research Center’s recently published series of deep dives into the demographic characteristics and social views of American Post-Millennials (also commonly known as Gen Z) is worth a look for consumer insights professionals. With the oldest Gen Zers moving into post-adolescence, they most certainly are on marketers’ and market researchers’ radar as a key cohort of consumers whose characteristics, lifestyles and attitudes demand understanding right now and on into the future. Among other things, Pew notes, this is the most racially and ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history.

The oldest Post-Millennials, who are turning 22 this year, are getting college educations and/or have begun to enter the work force.  Also, the Gen Z multitudes who are still in their childhood are driving a great deal of purchasing by their Millennial (ages 23 to 38) and Gen X (39 to 54) parents. Pew’s studies continue to compile data documenting similarities and differences between these generations.

The defining demographic reality of the late 2010s, in which the oldest Gen Zers and the youngest Millennials are coming into their own as young, independent consumers, is the dominance of smartphones as the pervasive tool consumers of all ages use to learn about products and services, buy products and services, and express and widely circulate their opinions about products and services.

But almost incredibly, only 54% of consumer insights professionals who responded to GreenBook’s most recent GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) report said they are using “mobile first” surveys to obtain consumer data. What’s worse, “mobile first” is not the kind of mobile research the industry should embrace. It fails to reach consumers in their true comfort zone, which is the mobile app. As eMarketer has documented, mobile consumers prefer the app environment by six to one over accessing and exchanging information on the mobile web,” which is where “mobile first” research takes place.

Although the GRIT report barely mentions mobile-app research, forward-looking marketing and consumer insights professionals at major brands, market research firms and advertising agencies are increasingly aware of and on board with the mobile-app research methodology. They recognize the speed, timeliness and quality of data collected from a first-party consumer panel of mobile app-users, and can see that it’s the pathway to research success in the Smartphone Era.

Scores of major brands and firms partner with MFour, often with the specific aim of reaching Millennial and Post-Millennial consumers, the leading adopters of mobile app activites (although Generation X and Baby Boomers are also rapidly making up any generational gaps in mobile app use).

Look at this visualization of MFour’s panel characteristics and judge for yourself the kind of coverage and engagement you can expect when you need to reach consumers in the key 18- to 49-year-old age groups. Pew notes that Gen Z is the most racially and ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history – 52% Caucasian, 25% Hispanic, 14% African-American, 6% Asian and 4% other.  When it comes to consumer panel diversity across Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z, MFour an Surveys On The Go^®are already there.

In the 2010s it has become a watchword among most consumer insights professionals that Millennials, Hispanics and African-Americans are “hard to reach” for market research. But if you’re smart enough to connect with them through an advanced mobile research app, that simply isn’t so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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