Moving targets

Knowing someone’s location is clearly valuable for any researcher – it is well known that people react differently depending on where they are. One of the challenges for location-based market research is that the technology that enables precise location identification – GPS – is far from ubiquitous. Most newer, higher-spec phone handsets can handle it, but a considerable percentage of the mobile population still use older handsets whose location cannot be identified with such accuracy.

This presents a problem for applications where the research firm would need to equip people with suitable handsets. But this barrier will erode over time according to AJ Johnson, vice president of global operations at Ipsos. “Location services are going to be central to mobile technology going forward so even the most cost-effective handsets will be capable,” he says.

Another technology obstacle, adds Sven Scherrer, mobile research consultant at Globalpark, is that phone users frequently switch off their GPS module because it drains the battery. He reckons location-based research might be more accepted by companies that provide their own apps, which can define a position via GPS and serve as a channel for distributing a survey.

Scherrer believes there is a danger that the market for location-based research will become fragmented. “A reliable location identification is normally done with an app and GPS location, but there are so many different apps on the market. So it is important to rely on a solution that is independent of any specific platform,” he said.

Then there is the issue of whether the researcher actually needs to be able to track survey respondents with military precision. GPS was created by the US Department of Defense in the early 1970s and until about 10 years ago the highest levels of accuracy were only available to military personnel.

In many cases sufficient information on location can be derived from lower-tech approaches, such as asking respondents to provide a postcode or the name of their location in the case of a shopping centre, for example.

“With brands increasingly looking for ‘in the moment’ research, location is a key factor for ethnographic research firms”

Living for the moment
With brands increasingly looking for ‘in the moment’ research, location is a key factor for ethnographic research firms such as Everyday Lives, explains founder Siamack Salari. ‘Our app has been designed for both practitioners and consumers, for instance research respondents keeping ethno-diaries. We created it to allow for live collaboration and the ability to speed our process up.’

He also acknowledges that using mobiles for research limits the diversity of respondents, as certain demographic groups are more comfortable with mobile technology than others. This, he says, is why the company developed a platform that allows respondents to upload content without the need for smart phones.

Getting people engaged
According to Ipsos’s Johnson, making research more engaging - for example by combining location with taking photos and videos and socialising research applications - will help to make location gathering more acceptable to participants, although this will also increase the workload on research firms who have to analyse pictures and videos that may be sent back to accompany location information.

Ged Egan, research specialist at TNS Technology, says video is already a feature on one of the company’s research apps and can be used for testing ads in combination with location at specific times of day to generate real-time feedback.

He suggests that ‘geofencing’ (virtual perimeters) and ‘nearfield’ technology (which enables data transfer when a device passes within a very short distance) also have a role to play in prompting surveys, for example if someone passes a billboard. “Again, the technology is not ubiquitous but some manufacturers are looking to build it into their handsets,” he explains.

Johnson predicts an increase in technology that collates location information with survey, sales and other streams of data, and says this technology will have to be integrated into existing platforms.

Fly Research director Liam Corcoran is blasé about concerns over people’s willingness or otherwise to reveal details of their location. “Market research has been asking people for location since it began, so the data itself is nothing new, although it is a bit more accurate now,” he says, describing location-based data as “often interesting but not always relevant”.

This point was taken up by Fiona Blades, CEO of Mesh Planning, who says the volume of data to be analysed is one reason why her company has not started gathering precise location data. Her firm, she says, is answering a lot of major questions before the client gets as far as asking whether its media works better on one street than another.

Brands can use location information proactively - for example in deciding where to locate a shop or advertisement according to data collected from survey respondents. For this to happen, Blades reckons, data mining will become increasingly important in how location information is used to answer business questions.

The road ahead
Looking down the line, Scherrer claims there are still reservations about the use of location based services, in part because of the wide range of devices being used and also the limitations of WiFi technology.

Another reason for limited adoption is researchers’ ability to obtain a degree of location information from supplementary text questions. Phil Martin, managing director of The 3rd Degree, says his firm has yet to complete any projects in this area “although we have had a lot of enquiries”.

The situation is much the same in the US where Joy Liuzzo, senior director of marketing and mobile research at InsightExpress, reckons no more than a handful of market research firms are using location-based technology.

On the issue of diversity, she says that while mobile is becoming more diverse every day, as with any methodology researchers will have to evaluate the trade-offs and decide if a potentially skewed sample is worth the benefits of immediate feedback.

Tim Snaith, chief research officer at OnePoint Surveys suggests the immediacy of location technology should precipitate a change in the way people are rewarded for participating in surveys. “Perhaps we need to offer incentives that can be redeemed immediately and reflect what the person is interested in rather than what we can do cheaply such as points that never get redeemed or vouchers than can only be used online.” He also believes it is essential that members of research panels be given the opportunity to switch off any application that resides on their phone.

Technology will lead changes in the way surveys are initiated, with smarter behavioural databases triggering surveys based on combinations of preferences, locations and rules to make them more personal and targeted. But Snaith also makes the point that technology for technology’s sake is not the way forward.

“We don’t ask questions we don’t need to just because we can, so if we don’t need location we don’t capture it. It is a particularly sensitive area that needs to be used sensibly, within guidelines that require continual scrutiny and improvement.”

Everything has its place
Liuzzo is another who does not support the view that all mobile market research projects will eventually use location-based data. “Just as not all market research projects use discrete choice, not all mobile market research projects will require location-based data,” she says.

Johnson is more upbeat, suggesting that location information will be central to the success of mobile research as it plays a vital part in capturing feedback at the point of experience. The mobile industry will see an explosion of mobile applications over the next three years and market research will be able to benefit, he concludes.

“There are some obvious access opportunities amongst the younger demographic (you may not get them any other way) and the latest mobile techniques are likely to be adopted first by the younger generation. But they will allow the management of the fieldwork process to be greatly improved through allocation of research projects based on location of interviewers, improved validation and the ability to instantly alert interviewers to survey opportunities.”

Paul Golden is a freelance journalist