MFour made a big bet at start of this decade that mobile technology would revolutionize consumer surveys, just as it would dominate other realms in communications and information exchange. Everything that’s happened since has confirmed that wager.

More evidence of mobile’s impact on society arrives in the Pew Research Center’s recently-released report on the “State of the News Media 2016.”

Tracking statistics from 110 leading U.S. media outlets, the report found that “mobile traffic continues to gain prominence over desktop traffic across media sectors.” In 2015, the year studied, 99 of those 110 sites received more visits from mobile devices than any other method of access.

• Newspapers: of the 50 top newspaper websites, all but six drew more unique visitors on mobile than on desktops (including laptops, since Pew classifies all personal computers as desktops).

• News magazines: nine of 12 in the study had more visits from mobile users than PC users.

• National television outlet websites: all eight sites in the study had more mobile visitors.

• Digital-only news publications (Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Salon, etc.): 38 of 40 had more mobile visitors.

Probing a bit deeper, Pew found that of the 40 digital-only news organizations it studied, 33 saw gains in mobile traffic over the previous year, while 27 experienced drops in visits via personal computers. The mobile increases were large (defined as 10% or more) for 28 of the sites. Twenty-three digital news sites had large declines in PC traffic.

What does this mean for the market research industry as it grapples with whether to move from still-prevalent but increasingly outdated online/PC methods to new mobile opportunities?

Good news if it embraces the accelerating shift to mobile that the Pew Center documents in the media, and which MFour epitomizes in the realm of market research.  Bad news if it doesn’t.

“After all…tomorrow is another day,” is probably the most famous line ever uttered by a fictitious person in Atlanta -- Scarlett O’Hara, in her tearful finale in “Gone With the Wind.”

MFour’s representatives to the recent IIeX market research conference in Atlanta say they heard something similar from speakers who were trying to pitch outdated online panel methods to the conferees.

By now it’s pretty clear that online methods belong to yesterday, and tomorrow brings them closer to their inevitable eclipse by the advanced, state-of-the-art mobile research that MFour offers.

Ours reps’ takeaway from IIeX is that the market research industry increasingly grasps that fact. People are looking for something better than increasingly ineffective online panels that are dismal on demographics and snail-like in data-acquisition. It’s sinking in that the only smart and sensible choice is to reach respondents where they live – on their smartphones, instead of on the laptops and PCs where fewer and fewer people are hanging out to take consumer surveys. 

At IIeX, said Andrew Fang, MFour’s Vice President of Sales, the idea that online panels remain effective continued to circulate in various presentations. But they seemed to be gaining less traction. Evidence is mounting that new approaches are needed – witness  the most recent Greenbook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) report, which pointedly and emphatically said that panel-quality problems have reached crisis proportions and need to be addressed with a sense of innovation and openness to new and better methods.

Andrew and Jeannette Ceballos, the MFour Senior Sales Executive who joined him in Atlanta, said that the market research clients who came by our company’s exhibit were clearly beginning to understand the importance of jumping aboard mobile, and wanted to learn more.

“It was so much better” than at past conferences, Andrew said. He no longer needed to explain what mobile research is, but spent his time talking to visitors who already knew about mobile methods when the conversations began, and were able to ask informed questions about MFour’s specific approach.

Andrew said that presentations of MFourDIY, the first all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey-building tool, went over especially well.

“Everyone looked at our DIY platform and said, `You can do things with it that you can’t do with other platforms,’” he recalled. “They said they liked it because of its complex abilities, and because it’s intuitive and easy to program.”

We can tell you a lot more as we move farther on down the market research conference trail. MFour will have representatives at OmniShopper, July 11-13 in Chicago, and MRMW North America, July 18-19 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Senior Solutions Executives Alex Colao and Scott Worthge will be our  men in Chicago; in Fort Worth we’ll be giving a how-to workshop on MFourDIY, with DIY Product Manager Andreas Hoelting and Sales V.P. Fang presiding.

In the meantime, if anybody tries to persuade you that online research has a future, we invite you to borrow two other famous sayings from “Gone With the Wind.”

Just tell them “Fiddle-dee-dee!” and “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Continuing its rapid expansion, MFour Mobile Research, Inc., has hired Rebecca Young as Project Manager for MFourDIY, the first all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey-building tool.

Rebecca is helping clients take full advantage of the recently-launched MFourDIY, where users access highly-sophisticated research features, while enjoying cost-effective design functions that are simple and intuitive to use. Rebecca previously worked as an associate buyer for Houzz, an online resource for home-design and home-improvement companies and their prospective clients. She is a graduate of Chapman University who loves birds and plays the piano.

MFour began pioneering all-mobile research in 2011 when it launched Surveys on the Go®, the first app for consumer surveys conducted solely on smartphones and other mobile devices. The Irvine, CA-based MFour recently announced plans to double its staff to more than 100 by early 2017.

MFour Mobile Research, Inc. has added two new software engineers to its Labs & Engineering department in a move that will increase automation and make delivery of data to clients even faster and more efficient.

One of the assignments new hires Brandon Davis and Dennis Nguyen will tackle will be bringing more automation – and therefore more speed – to data transfers, said Chris Monahan, MFour’s Chief Technology Officer.

The goal, Monahan said, “is giving clients access to the data even sooner” as it comes in from respondents in MFour’s million-member active panel – the nation’s only panel that receives and responds to surveys solely on mobile devices.

Brandon arrives from Entrepreneur, Inc., where he devised software that improved content-production functions and optimized digital display of Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously he was at Luxion, Inc., where his duties included developing new features for its Cloud service, KeyShot Cloud.

Dennis comes to MFour from LU Electric, where he was a software developer working on a variety of project management and internal information processing functions. Dennis has a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles.

There, while doing Bioinformatics research, he realized he had a passion for the tech and software-creation aspects of his work. Now Dennis will apply his distinctive background to creating market research software.

Brandon and Dennis are part of an ongoing expansion that will double MFour’s full-time staff to more than 100 by early 2017.

Here’s another reason why it’s important for market researchers to talk to Millennials via a smartphone app instead of trying to get them to open email invitations and take surveys online. 

GlobalWebIndex, which studies trends in communications, social media, and device use, reports that almost 25% of younger Millennials – ages 16 to 24 – are using mobile apps for a crucial aspect of consumer behavior: researching products they’re interested in buying.

That exceeded the overall rate of 18% for respondents of all ages. Only 5% of those over 54 reported using apps to check out product information, according to a survey GWI conducted during the first quarter of 2016. 

Although Google and other search engines remain the most popular conduits for accessing info about products, the study found that their lead is narrowing, with younger respondents, especially, increasingly favoring apps and social networks.

“As search behaviors on networks and apps continue to strengthen, it’s not hard to see why many consumers would prefer one intuitive platform or app in which they can interact with an array of brands rather than having to install and use a separate one for each company,” GWI noted in a summary of a new study on trends in social networking.

In the market research realm, MFour’s business is exactly that – providing a single app through which any number of companies with products and services to sell can communicate with the marketplace to conduct survey-based research.

Pioneering and perfecting all-mobile research is our game. In fact, we invented that game and have played it at a uniquely high level since 2011, when we introduced Surveys on the Go®, our proprietary app that makes the best mobile research happen. It’s obvious that smartphones are the way to reach Millennials – who now represent America’s largest population bloc, according the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent estimate.

Combined with the million-member, all-mobile active panel of respondents who’ve downloaded the app, Surveys on the Go® keeps MFour on the leading edge in satisfying market researchers’ thirst for reliable, sophisticated data about any demographic's consumer preferences. It particularly excels with the Millennials, Hispanics and African Americans who get left out of conventional online samples because they've gravitated so heavily to smartphones.

The alternative for the market research industry is to stick with the fading approach of recruiting panels with email instead of pushes to a smartphone survey app, and then expecting the few who've clicked on the email to complete surveys that are prone to being slow, cumbersome and frustrating for respondents whenever their phones'  connections to the internet become less than optimal.

Although these restyled online surveys often get passed off as "mobile" because they can be taken on smartphones, usually with LOIs of no more than five minutes, it's important to draw distinctions. Surveys fielded with Surveys on the Go® are instantly embedded inside panelists phones, allowing them to complete the questions offline. That equates to much longer LOIs -- up to more than 20 minutes -- without interruption or frustration. 

To learn more about how all-mobile works, we invite you to explore this website and its sister site, MFourDI, home of the first all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey creation platform.

Ramp-up comes amid company’s drive to transform MR industry with all-mobile

Doubling down on its bid to transform the market research industry by bringing it into the age of the smartphone, MFour Mobile Research, Inc. announced today that it is doubling its staff to more than 100 in the coming nine months.

The hiring surge comes as Irvine, CA.-based MFour reaches critical mass with the applied-technology chain reaction it ignited five years ago.

“This is a revolutionary moment,” said Chris St. Hilaire, MFour’s cofounder and CEO. “We’re allowing the market research industry to harness the vast capabilities of smartphones as tools to conduct consumer surveys and generate the kinds of data and insights today’s corporations and brands demand.”

MFour, a privately-held tech venture, made its first impact in 2011 with Surveys on the Go®, the first and still only survey app tailored strictly for optimal function and display on mobile devices.

In April, MFour launched MFourDIY, the first all-mobile do-it-yourself survey-creating platform.

MFour increased its staff significantly in 2015; now the pace is accelerating with six new arrivals in the coming weeks. The ongoing hiring push will allow MFour to extend its technological lead and push the market research field past the tipping point at which hesitation gives way to a full-on embrace of the all-mobile methods MFour has pioneered. The result: a new norm for gathering the consumer data businesses need to thrive.

The hiring wave includes three new software developers who’ll help widen MFour’s technological lead. Two additional sales representatives and an account executive will educate market research firms and corporate research departments about all-mobile methods and bring them on board, expanding a client list of early all-mobile adopters that includes leading consumer brands and entertainment companies, as well as market research firms that already have seen that the best new survey technology and advice on how to use it will help them continue to excel in serving their clients.

“The mobile revolution will unshackle market research from the demographic and technological constraints of the outmoded online studies that are choking off access to fast, accurate and representative data,” St. Hilaire said. “Our lead will continue to widen and our growth escalate as we close in on our goal: to define and dominate mobile research.”

It’s fitting that “The New Face of Consumer Insights,” this week’s conference on the future of market research, took place in the lovely Southern California oceanside community of Marina del Rey.

Members of MFour’s delegation to the conference say the most consistent message they took away is that the industry now recognizes that the tide is going out on MR approaches that no longer work, and coming in strong for new methods. And the best new method – all-mobile research tailored to and optimized for a new mobile era dominated by smartphones – is not only MFour’s distinctive product, but its sole business commitment, its reason to exist.

“You could see people at the conference were open to new approaches. They were talking about new tools they need to meet their challenges and be successful. That’s obviously a great fit for us,” said Alex Colao, who headed up MFour’s contingent of three senior solutions executives.

MFour’s Ashleigh Mann said she was particularly impressed by a talk called “Creating a Research Innovation Ecosystem,” delivered by Marie Wolfe, Consumer & Market Insights Director of Research Innovation at Unilever.

“Her whole speech centered on `if you’re standing still you’re basically moving backwards,’” Ashleigh related. “You need to not be afraid of new techniques, you need to welcome them and understand them. Don’t be afraid to change with the marketplace, or you’ll get steamrolled.”

Next up is the CASRO Technology & Innovation Event, June 6-7 in New York City. We’d like to welcome you in advance to MFour’s exhibit. Let’s talk about how we fit into your future.

The CASRO event’s overview statement makes it clear the conversation we heard in Marina del Rey will be continuing in New York:

 “As survey participation rates plummet to alarming levels, we need to stop talking around the problem and address it head on…We seek to change the trajectory of this disturbing trend…We’ll learn how innovation and technology will provide solutions and lead us down alternate paths to engage the empowered consumer.”

To repeat what Alex, our team leader at the conference in Marina del Rey, said about the ready-for-change vibe that’s in the air: “It’s  obviously a great fit for us.”

In the meantime, see just why that’s the case: spend some time on this website and on MFourDIY.com, the sibling site for the nation’s first and only all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey-creation platform. The solutions you’ll see don’t just beat what the old online approaches can offer – they deliver data that’s faster and better than what online research was able to produce, even in its heyday.

Join in: See live demo -- 200 speedy all-mobile completes from 7-Elevens

We're not chickening out!

We announced this week that we'd push an all-mobile survey to panelists as they leave 7-Elevens nationwide, starting at noon, Pacific today -- and land 200 quality completes in less than five hours.

 Or die trying (of humiliation, that is).

 Well, we aren't backing out. We're that confident in our new MFourDIY survey-building platform, the first all-mobile do-it-yourself market research tool, that we want you to see it in action for yourselves.

 Watch the results come in in real time on the same MFourDIY project tracker you'll be using for your own research as the all-mobile era unfolds. And keep in mind that MFourDIY easily handles lengthy surveys -- 15 minute LOI surveys with a 90% completion rate.

 Are we the masters of all-mobile research that we say we are? Or a bunch of blowhards due for their comeuppance?

To watch, please email us at diy@mfour.com and ask to register for  the MFourDIY 7-Eleven Showcase.  Please provide your full name and company in the  request.

If you’re coming to “The New Face of Consumer Insights” conference in Marina del Rey, stop by the MFour Mobile Research exhibit for some friendly chat – and for insights into how our all-mobile approach will take you to the best destinations in the new era that conferees will be discussing.

We’ll be there all three days, manning the MFour exhibit Monday to Wednesday at the Ritz Carlton. Look for the green backdrop that flies the company colors -- and for a big monitor that’s not just for promo videos (although we’ll have some of those).

A key feature of our exhibit is giving you the chance to test-drive MFour’s new all-mobile do-it-yourself survey-building platform, MFourDIY. You’ll get under the hood and see the display on our screen as you build a test survey – just as you will on your own screens when you start fielding surveys on MFourDIY.

We’ll also have special discount DIY offers for conference attendees who want to put the system to work.

The conference’s theme dovetails with MFour’s mission, says Alex Colao (pictured), who’s heading up our conference delegation. “People are going to be talking about how consumer research is changing and how companies are changing their research approaches to take advantage of new processes. We’re there to consult on their business challenges and provide solutions in real time.”

Joining Alex on Monday and Tuesday will be fellow senior solutions  executives Jeannette Ceballos (Monday and Tuesday) and Ashleigh Mann (Wednesday). We’ll also have senior  operations staffers at the conference to acquaint you more deeply with how we help clients create surveys that tap into the vast capabilities of today’s mobile technology, including geo-location and multimedia. Jenny Shi, assistant director of research, will be on hand Monday and senior project manager Alec Schaefer on Tuesday.

Stop by and you'll get something that's old-school mobile to bring home to the kids in your life: little rubber-band-powered helicopters that really can fly – but perhaps not as high as the cutting-edge mobile  research opportunities we’ll be sharing with you.

People traditionally have carried purchasing power in their pockets and purses, but that habit has a new dimension. Smartphones have joined – and may soon supersede - credit cards, cash and checkbooks as essential monetary take-alongs.

Recent research by GlobalWebIndex, a tracker of Internet trends, found that 30% of U.S. smartphone users are making purchases with their mobile devices at least once a month.

“Mobile commerce continues its ascent in importance,” according to the U.K.-based firm’s biannual report on Internet commerce.

This leap in mobile shopping and buying is one more exhibit in the ever-rising mountain of evidence that the age of the personal computer is winding down as the Mobile era takes over. If you don’t believe it, just look in your own pocket or purse.

As we keep saying, the market research industry needs to adjust accordingly. Sticking with email survey notifications and online panels no longer makes  sense in a new age in which texting and smartphone apps predominate. Only custom, all-mobile technology and specially cultivated mobile online panels will do the job properly – and that has been MFour Mobile Research’s mission and competitive advantage since the 2011 debut of its all-mobile native app, Surveys On The Go®.

Here are some other interesting findings from GlobalWebIndex’s surveys of 103,000  Internet users ages 16 to 64:

• Worldwide, monthly use of mobile shopping apps shot up 50% from mid-2014 to late 2015.

• Among Millennials, the rising generational cohort that is shaping commerce for the 21^st century, 80% make monthly online purchases.

• The average amount of time Millennials spend online with a mobile device grew 76.4% from 2012 to 2015, to more than three hours per day.

Among the conclusions GWI draws from its data:

• “The increasing centrality of smartphones to the digital habits of Internet users means that every aspect of the purchase journey is being influenced by mobiles."

• “Mobiles are on course to capture more daily time than all other devices put together – emphasizing just how dominant the smartphone has become within the daily lives of this trend-setting [Millennial] audience.”

This just in, by the way, from the techcrunch blog, reporting on new research by brand consultant Influence Central: “The average age for [children] getting their first smartphone is now 10.3 years.”

In other words, this trend isn’t going away.

For a full analysis of why market research needs to go mobile, check out this op-ed that Chris St. Hilaire, MFour’s cofounder and CEO, recently wrote for RW Connect.