MFour is pleased to announce new hire Kevin Yonzon as project manager. Kevin graduated from University of California, Irvine and previously worked at UBL Interactive as a product quality specialist. His project manager role at MFour will entail assisting with the creation and programming of surveys for our mobile application. Welcome to the team, Kevin!

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August is a busy month for MFour, with new hires, rollout of MediaMatch 360° technology, and news of our impending expansion to Newport Beach. Here are some of MFour's recent press mentions below, including coverage by Quirks, Research-Live, and Daily Research News Online.

New Hires

MFour welcomed Andrea Han to the team as Senior Research Consultant. Han comes with 16 years of quantitative market research experience, click here to see press coverage by Research-Live

MediaMatch 360° Rollout

MediaMatch 360° launched, a product that integrates media matching technology, validates consumer behavior, and tests recall & behavior with a real-time view of consumers. Click here to see press coverage by: Quirks, by Research-Live, and by Daily Research News Online

MFour Expansion News

MFour is moving to a 14,000 square foot office in Newport Beach , effective November 1, to accommodate the growth of the company and its staff. Click here to see press coverage by Quirks and Daily Research News Online

“Company doubling research and development staff in 2015”

National mobile market research company MFour Mobile Research is tripling its office space and relocating to larger offices to support the rapid growth of the business and its staff. The move will be effective November 1, 2015 to Newport Beach Gateway, where the offices will overlook Newport Beach’s Upper Back Bay Preserve.

MFour will occupy more than 14,000 square feet of space in its new building, compared to the 3,800 square feet it occupies at its current space. When asked about the move, MFour CEO Chris St. Hilaire explained, “it is important to get our growing staff on one floor so we remain collaborative as we continue to establish best practices for mobile market research designs and fielding.”

The larger space reflects the collaborative nature of the company and its core values, featuring an open floor plan, 3 conference rooms, quiet rooms for sales staff, along with work-life amenities such as an on-site gym and bistro.

MFour Mobile Research is the mobile market research industry leader. With its native app, Surveys on the Go® and the largest mobile panel in the industry, MFour leverages the advanced technologies found in todays mobile devices to acquire more accurate research data and reach the hardest-to-find demographic groups.

For more information about MFour Mobile Research, please visit mfour.com or call 714.754.1234 and ask for Allison Fletcher.

“Largest U.S. Mobile Panel Integrates Media Matching Technology for Breakthrough Media Measurement Tool”

COSTA MESA, Calif. - MFour Mobile Research, the mobile market research industry leader, recently announced MediaMatch 360°™. This new product validates consumer exposure, tests recall & behavior with the first 24/7 real-time view of consumers, on the nation’s largest all-mobile Smartphone panel. Clients see total ad exposures and survey panelists in real-time.

• AdMatch™: Validate exposure by region, age, gender, measure ad recall & overall appeal, monitor behavior shifts & report data in real-time dashboards.

• VideoMatch™: Measure source and video content exposure, gauge effectiveness against competitors & view immediate dashboard reporting in real-time.

• RadioMatch™: Gauge on-air talent with follow-up surveys, validate music exposure by region, age, gender & measure drive-time media consumption against competition by MSA/markets.

Measure the world around you through your mobile device.

For more information about MFour Mobile Research, please visit www.mfour.com or call 714-754-1234 and ask for Allison Fletcher.

MFour Abandons All-Mobile Panel in Favor of "Beeper Technology."

Stating emphatically, "Mobile is dead...the return of the beeper is near," MFour CEO Chris St. Hilaire announced today the company will immediately close its 600,000 active person, mobile panel in favor of beeper-respondants wearing "super cool" belt clips.

While recent statistics indicate that more than 75% of Americans carry smartphones and that more people access the internet through smartphones than online desktop computers, even more Americans own belts, and there's hardly anything to attach to them, according to St. Hilaire.

"I own one smartphone and four belts. I have a blue one, two blacks ones and a reversible one that I grew out of after the kids were born and I stopped having time to work out...but that's not important right now," said St. Hilaire.

The new four-step methodology is brilliant in its design: First, respondent attaches a beeper to their belt and waits for a "beep beep." Second, they hear a "beep beep" and immediately head to the nearest phone booth. Third, they insert a quarter and dial the number back. Fourth, they take the survey.

MFour expects the technology to take hold even quicker than online panels are dying. For questions about our super cool beepers, open your rolodex, look up our number, head to a phone booth and give us a call. Either that or fax us. Happy April 1st everyone.

This study was a joint effort by Marketcast and MFour Mobile Research leveraging MFour's mobile survey platform. The topic of study was what gamers expect (and want) from digital distribution.

Compared to around 2/3 of movies watched at home that are bought digitally, less than 1 in 5 console games purchased is a digital download. The majority are still bought via traditional physical discs.

Major publishers report that while their digital revenue is growing substantially, full game downloads make up a much smaller portion of this than subscriptions and add-on downloadable content.

Most coverage in the press focuses on the industry impact, and especially on the overall growth of digital revenue, of which game sales are still a small part. Instead, we decided to talk directly to gamers and find out how they feel about the digital shift in gaming compared to other forms of entertainment, and what they want from this shift.

Using MFour's native app, Surveys On The Go, respondents were asked to use their front facing cameras to capture deeper insights. Here is what they had to say:

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Current-generation console owners are more likely to be buying games digitally than previous-gen gamers, where only 2 in 5 gamers have bought a game digitally in the past year.

Gamers who subscribe to their console’s premium tier – Xbox Live Gold, PlayStation Plus – are also more likely to be buying games digitally than those who just belong to the free tier.

And gamers who play on both console and PC may be accustomed to downloading games on their computers via Steam, but being a regular Steam user doesn’t carry that download-know-how over to console usage; playing games on Steam has no impact on gamers’ willingness to download games on console.

Among HD console owners, men are a bit more likely to download games, but women are not too far behind. The gap between men and women downloaders is fairly similar to the gap between men and women gamers overall.

And, although teens might be hooked on digital-everything, older millennials and parents are actually more likely to be downloaders.

All of these console owners tend to have Netflix subscriptions, and they use their cable’s video on demand about equally. But downloaders – along with older millennials and parents – are big on spending their entertainment dollars at home, so not only are they buying games digitally, they’re also subscribing to more digital platforms like Amazon, Hulu, and HBO Go.

Compared to non-downloaders, gamers who buy games digitally spend 15-20% more on last-gen games for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 overall. And they spend 30-40% more on games for current gen consoles.

Even though most still prefer physical copies, gamers admit that they’re personally driving this shift toward digital forward. Almost no one says that they expect to be downloading FEWER games in the future.

A majority of both downloaders and non-downloaders all agree that digital distribution is the direction that we’re headed in for video game purchasing.

Downloaders are more likely to say they’re pleased that digital downloading is the future of gaming, but even they are not 100% ready. Non-downloaders still mostly think that downloading is the inevitable future, but they’re more likely to say they aren’t happy about that.

This is true regardless of what group you look at. Males and females, teens and adults all prefer physical copies. So do those who pay to subscribe to premium tiers like Xbox Live Gold and PlayStation Plus. Even downloaders prefer physical copies over digital when it comes down to it.

The act of having a physical disc feels more real and as a result tangible value becomes intangible value. Physicality creates a perception of more value; having something tangible is important on its own. But also, down the road, it becomes a form of currency.

Those two forms of value – the tangible use of games as currency, and the intangible feeling of ownership, make up the main reasons why gamers keep purchasing physical rather than digital. The other side of physical purchasing is mostly made up of a sense of security: people fear that they will be prevented from keeping their purchases because of hard drive space, consoles crashing, or gaming companies changing the rules.

Gamers are actually very satisfied with the functional experience of downloading. Aside from storage space, the tech is not a problem.

They personally feel that not having to interact with store employees, along with not even having to go to the store, is one of the advantages of downloading over buying physical copies.

Virtually everyone wins except for the physical retailers. Gamers are optimistic that they will benefit from a digital shift in the long run, and they expect brick-and-mortar stores to be the only ones who really suffer.

In the world of movies, the retailers played a part in encouraging the digital shift along. Big-box stores promoted DVDs and Blu-Rays as loss-leaders, with heavy markdowns and those big boxes of random DVDs to dig through. This helped make the physical product seem less valuable, and consumers placed less premium on owning the discs, which primed the market for a digital shift.

That’s not likely to happen in the gaming world. Games are sold with a comparatively higher volume out of gaming-specialty stores rather than big-box stores, and gaming-specific retailers are unlikely to turn their main product into a loss leader by cutting down the base price.

And what do respondents think about the long run for downloading games?

Or, instead of downloading full games, consumers are open to the gaming industry taking a fully different route and following directly after the footsteps of movies and music, to offer something like a streaming service membership. This is still in its infancy, but services like PlayStation Now are trying to redefine digital gaming with streaming possibilities. And gamers are definitely open to that.

In fact, a monthly subscription is more appealing than a future console with all digital downloads… with the exception of one that makes games cost less overall.

While some gamers note that the file size and the need for zero lag will be a hurdle to overcome for streaming games, they like the idea especially because it overcomes the fear of getting stuck with a dud that you can’t return or sell back.

For more information on MFour's mobile solutions, click on the solutions tab at the top, or fill out the form below.

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Want 20+ Minute Mobile LOI's?
 You'll Have to Do Better Than This

What you see above is something that literally drives survey respondents to distraction -- a deeply flawed mobile survey format that's guaranteed to frustrate and alienate. Not only does it look bad, but the technology that's being employed leads to even more frustration and alienation. Basically, it's forcing mobile respondents to use their smartphones in a banal, unsatisfying way: connecting to a website to take an online survey.

The poor display you see above, coupled with outdated survey technology, f is responsible for one of market research's biggest myths: that mobile surveys have to be kept very short.

Truth is, mobile respondents are perfectly willing to engage for 20 minutes or more, if you give them the kind of rewarding smartphone experience they enjoy and expect. It's all about the user experience: if it's clunky, respondents give up. If it's fluid, they finish -- even at LOIs of 20 minutes or more.

Accomplishing longer, deep-dive research projects is well within reach. The key is using the right technological platform for the Smartphone Era. It's now possible to embed surveys instantly in panelists' phones by using a native app. Respondents love apps, and in-app surveys ensure that they won't have to depend on a cell signal or wifi, which are vulnerable to interruption and slow load-ins of survey questions.

To illustrate the point, here's the data  from a comparative study that tested engagement with  a 20-minute survey launched in three separate mobile formats: Native App, Mobile Optimized and Mobile Friendly.

Source: 2,139 surveys, 713 on each platform. Each survey ranges between 200 - 1,500 responses. Surveys conducted March 2014 - December 2014.

As you can see,  native app engagement eclipses "mobile optimized," to the tune of five times fewer drop-offs. And drop-offs were 14 times higher for the "mobile friendly" approach. To learn more about advanced, in-app mobile survey technology and the research solutions it provides,  just click sales@mfour.com.

Driving this holiday season? MFour's latest market research shows that half of American car owners have experienced damage to their vehicle as a result of potholes. Poor road conditions have cost consumers and the insurance industry at least $27 billion over the last five years. Winter weather months can create conditions that lead to accidents which may impact car owners' insurance rates, as premiums are determined by past claims, accidents and driving violations.

Our research found

• 31% of car owners who reported pothole damage filed a claim with their insurance company.
• 65% of respondents who needed repairs said they (or a third party) paid out of pocket for the vehicle to be fixed
• Only 3% said local authorities stepped in to foot the bill
• 40% of respondents said that their bill was more then $500

To read more visit http://businessclarksville.com/news/holiday-travel-kicks-off-treacherous-winter-driving-season/2014/12/20/69253