Mind the mobile gap

Data published from the most recent GRIT survey in Q4 2013 confirms this sense of an industry in catch-up mode. Global mobile penetration rates far outstrip MR use levels.

Why is that?

Are we particularly conservative as a professional group, extremely reluctant to embrace innovation until every last nagging methodological doubt has been removed? Or is it more that the types of research we often engage in – especially online quant. – are often ill-suited to the demands of the far smaller screens of a smart or mobile phone? Or is all the excitement around mobile essentially PR and marketing hype, characterised by hyperbole and unrealistic projections?

I have talked to a range of mobile MR practitioners over the past few months – established players, tech companies operating in the mobile MR space, qual specialists, ethnographers – to get a sense of what mobile can and can’t do, and to figure why mobile is still relatively insignificant in overall data collection.

Here are some of my thoughts:

• Mobile does add something unique to the MR toolkit; don’t just disregard it as hype. Mobile allows more contextual understanding, brings researchers closer to the time of something meaningful happening and the data is often enriched with tagged or commented photos. Triangulation is simpler to execute; self-ethnography too.
• The different format does require a design re-think: shorter, more playful, no grids, fewer open-enders. It does require more effort.
• The reward for being mobile-attuned in our questionnaire designs – more succinct, shortened lists, irrelevant questions eradicated, no duplication – can be a higher response quality. Shorter surveys can, according to validation work executed by TNS, have higher predictive validity than longer ones.
• Mobile works well when integrated into a multi-modal design, seldom as a stand-alone tool. It works well for a range of studies in both quant and qual – diaries, shopper insights, consumer decision journeys.
• Shifting to mobile as a data collection mode needs careful stakeholder management, the data patterns may well be different to those generated by a traditional online survey.

My overall take out was that mobile is indeed a mega-trend – sustainable, global, impacting across society and business – and is far too central to so many different areas and industries to be treated as ‘just another data collection mode’. Executing mobile is also eminently affordable.

So why are we, perhaps, treating mobile as publishers would have treated the e-book about 10 years ago?

Maybe mobile is pushing us harder than we like to re-shape many of our legacy research approaches. It would effectively mean us having to push back on overly long questionnaires, repetitive questions, grids – often to budget stakeholders, with the potential risk of losing a piece of business or perceived authority. Engaging with mobile also drags us into areas that haven’t necessarily demonstrated a huge business impact in MR – social media, for example, and arguably gamification too – but do require us to engage differently in our insights quest. Mobile is a playful, fleeting, visual medium – effective mobile research needs to respect that, mimic behaviour as it evolves, rather than just taking a survey that was designed for a laptop and drop it onto a mobile device.

I sense that mobile is beginning to reach a critical mass (with complete levels of about 20%, 30% predicted to be reached within the next two to three years) at a time where there are many more disruptive forces moving through our industry such as DIY software.

Added to that, there’s increasingly little that seems controversial about mobile; validation is continuing apace, so it’s easy to shrug one’s shoulders, accept its role, rehearse the arguments about getting nearer ‘the moment’, overcome potential memory gaps, improve data quality, but not see it as hugely disruptive. Alternatively, and I think more likely, mobile could be something more radical – a Trojan horse, forcing us to change the way we approach research design –embrace the micro-survey, ask fewer questions, triangulate more regularly through multiple data sources.

Predicting the future is often a fool’s game. However, given how central mobile is to so much of new communications and technology innovations – just think how the combination of smart phones and NFC will transform the retail environment – it would be foolish not to assume that mobile in one shape or other will radically re-shape our approach to how we engage with research participants.

We need to be prepared: by having a mobile mindset whenever we approach a research design; asking the question, how can mobile help? It’s likely to be the way more consumers will wish to engage with us in future.

In the Moment by Edward Appleton is available in paperback, and can be ordered online at lulu.com at a cost of £17.50.