James Cook (L) and Tracy Visconti 

 

Tracy Visconti and James Cook are the latest additions to the growing MFour team, with Tracy dedicated to helping clients launch successful projects as a Research Manager for Client Solutions, and James providing internal efficiency and consistency as System Administrator.  Both bring veteran expertise to the company.

 

Tracy arrives with more than 20 years’ experience in market research. At MFour he’s working with clients to ensure survey feasibility, quality programming and consistent fulfillment of sample requirements. He also is coordinating teamwork throughout the process of building and executing clients’ research. Tracy’s past positions include Director of Strategic Insights & Research for the entertainment company, Viacom, and conducting travel and hospitality research for The Venetian/The Palazzo resorts in Las Vegas. He holds an MBA degree from Hofstra University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Psychology from Ithaca College. Tracy keeps fit playing tennis and running, and asserts his mental agility as a Scrabble devotee.

 

James brings nearly 15 years’ experience in a wide range of roles in IT support and system administration for companies in variety of industries, including Direct TV and Porsche. At MFour he’ll apply this wide-angle knowledge to ensure consistent top-functionality of internal tools that allow MFour teams to bring quality, consistency and innovation to clients’ projects. Playing the electric guitar and being a dad are James's passions. Outside work, he shreds with a heavy metal band named Titanskull, and spends lots of time in fun activities with his son. He’s also a connoisseur of vegan cuisine.

 

Welcome aboard, Tracy and James!

Mexican beers occupy an important slice of the U.S. market, and in the spring of 2016 Anheuser-Busch decided to go after a share by marketing the Mexican brand Estrella Jalisco. It chose the Los Angeles area for its pilot launch. Ben Cline, a Manager of Behavioral Insights for Anheuser, needed data and insights into how Estrella was faring in its limited initial rollout, to guide decisions about how Anheuser should proceed with a wider launch.

 

It was especially important to get insights into convenience store shoppers. In the company’s research experience, it could expect to obtain only about 10% of its survey responses from c-store buyers – barely a fifth of the proven real traffic. Anheuser needed to explore the convenience store channel far more accurately in order to maximize its chances for success as it introduced Estrella Jalisco to U.S. beer shoppers.

 

Click on the video to see Cline talk about the Estrella c-store study, and other advantages Anheuser has gained from its ongoing working relationship with MFour. To contextualize the video, here’s an overview of how the mobile geolocation c-store beer study was conducted.

 

METHODOLOGY

• MFour already had geofenced hundreds of convenience stores in the Los Angeles area where Estrella was being launched.

• Members of the proprietary panel who use MFour’s Surveys On The Go® mobile research app were geolocated as they entered and exited any of the c-stores under study.

• Just as they left the store, these consumers received push notifications asking them to take a survey on their phones. MFour geolocation studies typically elicit a 50% response rate in one day.

RESULTS

• Anheuser-Busch obtained in-the-moment insights into how its new brand and those of its competitors were perceived by beer shoppers at convenience stores.

• Mobile data arrived much faster and closer to the shopping experience than any other survey method would allow.

• With recall bias all but eliminated, Anheuser was able to proceed with confidence in the data that would inform important decisions about the new beer brand’s wider rollout.

For a productive talk about how advanced mobile app survey technology combined with an engaged, highly consistent panel can fit your own specific research needs, just get in touch at solutions@mfour.com.

And for an entertaining video introduction to in-app mobile research, just click here.

 

 

 

Todd Costello (L) and Blake Skorich

 

Marketers, retailers and advertising professionals are gathering this week for the Path to Purchase Institute’s P2PX Event outside Chicago in Rosemont, IL. As the Institute describe it, “P2PX is where solution providers showcase the latest tools to reach shoppers and demonstrate the breadth of what's available in the industry.”

 

More specifically, the event promises “vigorous education,” and an opportunity  for marketing and advertising professionals to “discover best practices that benchmark their programs against the industry and find ways to drive change within organizations.”

 

All of which makes Todd Costello and Blake Skorich men with a purpose. When attendees get to the MFour booth at P2PX, they can expect a warm greeting from the two Solutions Executives, followed by vigorous education on what natural mobile solutions can do, and a dialogue on best practices in the mobile research realm.

 

Especially important is understanding the role of smartphone apps to the digital shopping experience. Consumers' reliance on apps for digital experiences, including shopping, makes it crucial to deploy app-based mobile solutions that let you track and understand the digital shopper along the entire path to purchase.

 

Among the topics you can learn about at MFour's booth are how to capture data from verified shoppers by following their digital tracks on their phones. And then how to take it a step further by surveying them when it matters most -- while they're in a store shopping, or just after they've left with a basket of purchases.

 

"Marketing leaders are in need of quick, reliable intelligence on how consumers are approaching digital commerce," says Todd -- and that intelligence is best scouted at the very source, the phones on which shoppers are researching purchases in advance and in the store aisles.

 

Blake is eager to share details on how advanced mobile research can give brands a faster, more cost-effective, more reliable and less biased update of traditional in-person shop-alongs and clipboard-and-pen exit interviews. “I’m going to ask how they’re talking to shoppers in-store, and if they’re not, we’ve got a solution,” he said.

 

If you’re just starting to learn how mobile research works, Blake and Todd would love to acquaint you with the three “geos” – geofencing, geolocation, and GeoValidation® – that make in-store mobile intercepts and after-visit interviews ideal for tracking the final steps along the path to purchase with dead-on immediacy and accuracy. Respondents are validated by location, and mobile lets you validate purchasers by asking them for photos of their receipts and the relevant products they've bought.

 

If you’re an advertiser focused on the entrance to the funnel, MFour’s duo can walk you through smartphone-powered digital ad measurement and ad testing possibilities, including matching consumers with their phones' Ad IDs and Social Media Ad Testing. With Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter figuring so prominently in marketing strategies, Social Ad Testing provides crucial, pre-launch insights into whether concepts and creative are ready to go and make a big impact, or if they require some retooling before they’re ready to meet consumers during their social media journeys.

 

“Natural” is perhaps the most important word  you’ll be hearing from Blake and Todd. Social Media Ad Testing is natural because it injects those test ads right into mobile panelists’ personal newsfeeds, where they can experience them as actual, active ads, with no biasing awareness that these are just tests. It’s a goldmine for behavioral data on how recipients interact with the test ads, and also an opportunity to follow up with a survey interview for evaluative responses and insights about concepts and creative.

 

The in-store research Blake wants to tell conferees about is itself a natural process. The  smartphone lets you locate shoppers while they’re thinking and feeling the very thoughts and emotions you need to understand, with no advance notice that they’re going to be part of a market research study. You’re finding them unawares, until they get a push notification on their phones telling them that they have an opportunity to share the shopping experience they’re having right now – or have just finished having. For them, the mobile clipboard is a nice surprise, not an unwelcome intrusion – that’s why they signed up in the first place for Surveys on the Go® -- the advanced mobile survey app that supports the most representative all-mobile panel of U.S. shoppers and consumers, whose engagement is reflected in the app’s consistent user rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 at the iOS and Android app stores.

 

Whether you’re interested in an introduction to the basics of app-based mobile research, or if you just want to get down to pragmatic specifics about how smartphone-powered research will bring home your next project better than the online or non-app mobile solutions you’ve been using, just come on by.

 

Of course, you can have the same kind of one-on-one talk about how mobile app research panel and the power of their smartphones can be put to work to meet your specific data needs without heading to Chicago. For a productive conversation, just get in touch by clicking here.

 

And for a humorous look at mobile, click here.

 

 

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile. Just click and read!

 

Getting To Know Gen Z Means Meeting Them on Mobile

 

Exactly Who Is a Millennial, Gen X or Gen Z? The Experts Disagree.

 

With Online Surveys, Nobody Knows You're a Dog - Or A Bot

 

And here's a Friday tune to get you rolling into the weekend.

 

 

After 20 years or so of trying to understand what Millennial consumers want, ready or not – here comes Gen Z. The generation whose oldest members are now of college age is shaping up as another generation that’s bringing far more change than continuity. And that’s a challenge for marketers and market researchers.

 

The National Retail Federation (NRF), is trying to help, by sponsoring a series of reports about Gen Z consumers, based on a worldwide survey of 13- to 21-year-olds carried out by the IBM Institute of Business Value.

 

Early research snapshots of this group reveal them as even more immersed in technology than even the famously tech-focused Millennials. Instant information and the devices for accessing it are Gen Z’s birthright. After all, as the NRF puts it, they’re “the first true digital natives.” And a core generational characteristic is how exacting and demanding its members are when it comes to the technology they use. Experiences won’t satisfy if they are not technically problem-free, so getting technology right is crucial for engaging Zers as consumers and research panelists. Here are a few of the NRF/IBM study’s findings:

• 75% of Gen Z members said they use a smartphone – more than double the 30% who use desktops, and a consumer landslide over the 45% who use laptops.

• “Technology has provided a vehicle for Gen Zers to interact with brands on their own terms…their familiarity with technology means they are not easily fooled.”

• “The fluidity and speed with which Gen Z cycles through media platforms and apps potentially make them more challenging to target….”

• “They are less likely than other generations to be brand loyal as traditionally defined. If brands are slow to engage or [if they] break their promises, then Gen Zers will quickly switch to a competitor.”

• “If a product, service or experience does not live up to expectations, they will take their business and their influence elsewhere.”

• “Many iconic brands will need to challenge long-standing business practices and marketing strategies to remain relevant to Gen Zers and meet their experience expectations.”

• “Gen Zers expect brands to be on their channels and to interact with them on a personal level, just as they engage with their peers….. static marketing planning and execution are simply not enough with this generation.”

• “To help win the hearts and minds of today’s youngest generation of consumers, brands should….be there when they want you; meet them where they want.”

One of the most important statistics to keep in mind in planning an approach to Gen Z is that they aren’t just growing up mobile, but as users of mobile apps. As it stands, even without Gen Z, 92% of adults’ time spent on mobile is spent inside a mobile app, according to Flurry Analytics.  Research methodology must adjust accordingly if it’s to meet consumers where and when they want to be reached – or else not reach them at all. We’re all living in the Smartphone Era, in which there’s no real engagement without mobile-app engagement. To learn how to get on track quickly with innovative mobile-app survey solutions to fit your own research needs,  just get in touch at solutions@mfour.com.

 

 

“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” is the caption of the most-reproduced cartoon in the history of The New Yorker magazine, which is famed for its wryly humorous graphic jokes.

 

“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” is the caption of the most-reproduced cartoon in the history of The New Yorker magazine, which is famed for its wryly humorous drawings.

 

The cartoon by artist Peter Steiner appeared in 1993, at the dawn of the internet. A dog sits on a chair in front of a desktop computer, one paw on the keyboard. He turns to a canine buddy and explains how it lets him infiltrate human society undetected: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Here’s a Washington Post article that shows the cartoon.

 

A few years after the cartoon ran, market research began to gravitate toward the internet with the introduction of online surveys. They arrived just in time to solve the problem of dwindling response rates and prohibitive costs of telephone surveys. Online research was a sensible and effective compromise – a way to stay in touch with consumers at a reasonable cost. But panelists’ ability to remain incognito online, like the dog in the cartoon, has spelled trouble for data accuracy and reliability ever since.

 

The biggest threat comes from survey bots, computer programs that zip through surveys while cleverly mimicking human respondents – all to pocket the incentives panel providers pay in return for supposedly honest answers. An update of the classic New Yorker cartoon might replace the dogs with evil-looking robots, above a caption that reads, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a fraud.”

 

Online research providers are starting to openly acknowledge the bot problem, and they’re trying to assure their clients that they’re on the case with various validation processes designed to detect and root out online panel fraud. That may be fine as far as it goes. But as any decent military strategist would tell you, the key to winning a battle is to seize the high ground so you won’t have to charge uphill, and to arm yourself with weapons that really work.

 

The high ground in the fight for data quality is the smartphone. The weapon that will defeat fraud and keep data accurate and clean is the mobile survey app. Only a real, human panelist can own a phone and download an app to it. Only an app can load an entire survey into a phone, so each panelist can answer it offline, in a secured space that’s removed from the online realm where survey bots hunt their prey. There’s more to tell –about the data-validation qualities inherent in each smartphone’s unique device ID, for example, and how a survey app that delivers great user functionality becomes an engagement magnet. The result is a consistent panel that can fill research quotas without desperation tactics such as river sample and multi-sourcing.

 

For starters, all you need to remember is this: when your panelists participate in advanced, app-centered mobile research, everybody knows they’re human. For a productive conversation about how bot-proof in-app mobile can meet your specific research needs, just get in touch at solutions@mfour.com.

 

And for a fast, entertaining video introduction, just click here.

 

 

 

So who are we really talking about when we’re talking about consumer generations?

 

A great deal of brainstorming and research goes into understanding consumers' generational tendencies. It's crucial to learning how to tailor messages, products, and marketing approaches to each age group as precisely as possible. But when it comes to generations, there's hardly any precise agreement on as basic a question as where each one begins and ends.  If you ask the U.S. Census Bureau who Millennials are, for example, you’ll get a different answer than if you ask the respected, nonprofit and nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

 

With that in mind, here’s how some experts are tracking America’s important but apparently moving generational targets.

 

Millennials:

• The Census Bureau says they were born between 1982 and 2000, meaning that as of Dec. 31, 2017 they'll all be 17 to 35.

• A Pew Millennial is older than a Census Bureau Millennial – Pew says this generation was born between 1981 and 1997, making its members 20 to 36 years old.

• Jean Twenge, a professor at California State University, San Diego (and author of books profiling Millennials and the younger Gen Z) thinks the Millennials are older still – born between 1980 and 1994, making them 23 to 37 this year.

Gen Z

• The Census Bureau thinks they’ve been born since 2001, making the oldest Zers 16 years old.

• Pew identifies them as 19 and under.

• Twenge, who calls them iGen because they’re the first generation that’s come to awareness in the Smartphone Era and can’t remember a time before the internet, pegs them as the cohort born between 1995 and 2012, making them 5 to 22.

Gen X

• The Census Bureau says they’re 36 to 52 this year; Pew classifies them as 37 to 52, and Twenge says 38 to 52.

Baby Boom

• The three experts agree on the Boomers: they are 53 to 71 this year, having been born between 1946 and 1964. Those years are clear historical markers: 1946 saw veterans of World War II returning from the fighting and eagerly getting on with family life, and 1964 was the year of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that escalated U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War – just as the oldest Boomers were turning 18 and thus eligible to be drafted to fight in it.

 

If merely defining the generations by their birth years is an uncertain business, what does that say about the challenges of understanding them as consumers? One way to start is by embracing the vast research potential of the technology that brings all four major consumer generations together: their smartphones. Getting mobile research right becomes increasingly important as each generation grows increasingly tethered to this century’s definitive technology. More than 90% of Americans who are approximately 20 to 30 have smartphones or tablets; the Gen Zers coming up behind them are all but inseparable from their phones, making the smartphone their primary window on the world.

 

Knowing today’s consumers requires realizing that the ground is shifting, and that going forward it will take a full immersion in mobile research to identify and interpret shifts in how the generations are living, thinking, behaving, shopping and buying. For a productive conversation about how you can get ahead of the curve and meet your specific projects’ needs with a proprietary U.S. panel gathered eagerly around a mobile research app, just contact us at solutions@mfour.com.

 

 

 

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile. Just click and read!

 

MFour's Hurricane Survivors Survey: "We Lost Everything"

 

Why the New iPhones Are Another Stake Through Online's Heart

 

Watch: Vistar Media Goes Mobile To Get Ad Measurement Right

 

And here's a Friday tune to get you rolling into the weekend.

 

 

 

One out of four respondents to a new survey of residents of Houston and South Florida said they have no insurance coverage for property damage sustained in Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and many more are unsure whether they’re covered or not.

 

In the Houston area, 29.4% of respondents who’d suffered hurricane damage said they had no insurance coverage, and 29.4% said they were covered for all or a portion of their losses.

 

In Florida, 20.7% said they had no coverage for storm damage, and 31.9% said they were covered. 41.2% in Houston and 47.4% in Florida said they were unsure whether they had insurance to offset their losses.

 

The findings are from a survey by MFour Mobile Research of 250 respondents who were in Harvey’s path and 250 who experienced Irma. Respondents also were asked to put their hurricane experiences in their own words. Some examples:

• “It was terrifying and I and my family are all traumatized by this event....The thought of us losing everything we worked hard for was heartbreaking.” – Houston respondent.

• “It was horrible. Took 17 hours to get to Atlanta, then 14 to come back home. When I came back my house was destroyed. We lost everything. Everything.” – South Florida.

• “We drove to a suburb, Cypress, Texas, and we thought it would be fine. We were proven wrong when about five tornadoes touched down and houses around us experienced horrific damage.”

• “We lost everything. We saw pictures on Facebook. It was completely under water. We did not have flood insurance, so now we have to completely start over.” – Houston

• “I evacuated 3 days before and all was very well. I evacuated cuz I wanted to care for my family, that’s all. I don't want them to get hurt.” – South Florida

• “I chose not to evacuate because I didn’t have enough common sense to leave. I will not stay again.” – Houston

Among other findings:

• Scarred by their experiences in Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, 8.8% of survey respondents in Houston and 7.9% in South Florida said they are highly likely to uproot and leave their areas permanently within the coming year.

• A large majority of Houston area respondents said Hurricane Harvey was not just a hardship, but a nasty surprise – with 72.4% of those surveyed saying the hurricane damage was worse than they expected.

• In contrast, only 14.4% of people surveyed in South Florida said the damage from Irma turned out worse than expected – perhaps an indication that Texans were caught unawares, and their experience informed Floridians’ greater fears.

• In Houston, 44.8% reported feeling endangered at some point during the Hurricane, compared to 33.2% in South Florida.

• Asked about their chief concerns or uncertainties in the hurricanes’ wake, 48.4% in Houston listed friends’ and families’ personal well-being or their own personal health as the top concern, and 34.4% listed damage to property – their own or friends’ and families.’  For 16.4%, jobs or education were the chief concern.

• For Florida respondents, 32% were most concerned about family and friends’ well-being or their own health; property concerns were foremost for 27.6%, and 22% cited disruption to their jobs or education.

• In Houston, 25.2% of respondents said they had put themselves “in harm’s way” to help others during the hurricane, and 21.2% said others had done the same to help them or their families.

• In Florida, 20% reported having put themselves in potential danger to help others, and 2% said others had done the same for them.

• Government rescue efforts were almost twice as likely to be rated excellent by South Florida respondents (48.8%) compared to Texans (26.8%). As for charities’ hurricane responses: 58.4% in Houston found them excellent, compared to 37.6% in South Florida.

• Factoring in those who rated responses as “good,” government agencies got a positive grade from 69.6% in Houston and 78.8% in Florida. For charities, it was Houston, 81.6% and Florida, 68.4%.

• 4.4% in Florida and 6.8% in Texas said the government aid response was poor; 4% in Florida and 5.2% in Houston felt charities responded poorly.

For a summary of key data in chart form, just click here: Hurricane Irma & Harvey Topline 

 

For questions, interview  requests and more detailed data from the study, please contact Allison Fletcher at afletcher@mfour.com or 714-400-7323.

 

Methodology:

MFour Mobile Research surveyed members of its Surveys On The Go® research panel ages 18 to 64 in areas most affected by Hurricanes Irma & Harvey, including the Houston DMA and the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale and Tampa-St. Petersburg DMAs. The survey was conducted Wednesday, Sept. 13. The data provide a snapshot drawn from the first 500 completed responses received, 250 each from the Harvey and Irma affected regions. The data should not be taken as statistically representative of the regions' overall demographics.

 

 

 

The big tech news this week is, of course, Apple’s introduction of two new iPhone models that put more computing power than ever into consumers’ hands. It’s one more step forward for mobile, and one more step toward obsolescence for desktops/laptops.

 

“The New iPhone and its Competitors Hope To Make Laptops Obsolete” is how the Los Angeles Times headlined the rollout’s impact – you can click here for the full article.

 

Here are a few of its highlights:

• "The new phone’s main selling point, aside from being sleeker and shinier than iPhones past, will be the breadth of its capabilities."

• “I know a lot of people who prefer to do everything on their phone. They almost don’t want a computer anymore,” said Lindsay Sakraid, director of content marketing at consumer deals site DealNews.com.

• “The next big horizon is doing more with your smartphone than just checking Facebook and email. It’s about allowing us to do what we’ve been doing with our desktop PCs for the last 25 years, but in a smaller form factor,” said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

• Annette Lin, a 28-year-old arts writer and designer, told the Times that “If I could type better on a phone, I’d probably go everywhere without a computer.”

Meanwhile, Pew Research Center reports that a significant and growing segment of the U.S. public is cutting the cord with home broadband.

• 77% of American adults owned smartphones as of 2016.

• 12% had abandoned home connections to the internet and rely on smartphones alone.

• That rises to 17% for Americans ages 18 to 29.

Of course, many people who also own laptops and desktops turn to their phones first as device of choice. Taken together, the picture is one of a rapid shift toward mobile – with tech giants such as Apple and Samsung gung ho about accelerating the progression to a new reality centered on smartphones and mobile apps. The Smartphone Era has vast implications for consumer research, because, as the Los Angeles Times article suggests, mobile is where businesses and the researchers who help them keep up with consumer preferences must go to meet those consumers.

 

For a productive conversation about how advanced mobile research can meet your own specific insights needs, just get in touch at solutions@mfour.com.

 

And for a quick, entertaining intro to app-powered mobile research, just click here.