OPINION21 April 2011
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OPINION21 April 2011
Chairing the second day of the third Mobile Research Conference I set myself the task of presenting a round-up of the new ideas at the end of the day. Here’s a write-up of what I verbalised at the close of a fascinating day. It shows that mobile research is growing up up fast.
Globalpark, organisers of the 2011 Mobile Research Conference asked me to chair day two of the event. I decided, rather ambitiously, to close the conference with a round-up of all the presentations that day. Here, in prose, is what I verbalised at the end of long day of very interesting presentations.
Don’t be surprised if you don’t recognise many of the names here. It is true to say that the early adopters of this method are not necessarily the usual suspects – there were some familiar firms present – but as the industry as a whole continues to see only problems with mobile research, it was illuminating to hear from those who are not only convinced of the value of mobile research, but are developing expertise, best practice and clients hungry for more.
In a few sentences for each session, here is what came up:
Bruce Hoang (Orange Advertising Network) presented a multi-country study of mobile media consumption by mobile data users in the UK, France, Spain and Poland – countries with marked differences in adoption and usage. He has concluded that web-optimised sites are more popular with consumers in mature markets than using apps to access content. “The web browser in the mobile device is the killer app” according to Bruce. He advocates sticking to web browser-based surveys on the mobile as it most closely aligns with respondents’ preferences and experiences.
Guy Rolfe (Kantar Operations) asserted that mobile apps for surveys definitely have their place. Kantar finds participants are willing to download survey apps, which can enrich their survey experience. In parallel with this, many consumer product manufacturers and retailers are now creating lifestyle apps that capture a lot of useful data which are proving to be very popular with consumers – they don’t have a research purpose at their heart but the data they collect they could be very useful to researchers if they can get their hands on it.
Jeroen de Rooij (ValueWait) presented a lifestyle case study that proved it’s possible to use mobile research to ask 60-question surveys with modest incentives if you do it with care. The survey also asked respondents to email in pictures after completing the survey and a very high proportion were willing to go to this effort.
Peter Lynn (University of Essex) explained that from a social science and statistical perspective, the focus of scientific survey literature has tended to emphasise the negative – seeing mobile samples as a problem. This needs to be questioned. If you take a Total Quality perspective, there are many areas in which mobile samples are no better or worse than others – coverage may be better, in fact. There is also a one-to-one relationship between respondent and phone unlike landlines. Other sources of error are reduced, e.g. people are more willing to answer some kinds of questions, it avoids recall error by taking place ‘in the moment’, and overall, the responses are not otherwise fundamentally different from other modes. It’s strength surely lies in complementing other modes.
Michael Bosnjak (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano) and Sven Scherrer (Globalpark) took us through some early results of a study on how useful voice capture and voice recognition might be in overcoming the Achilles’ Heel of mobile research – capturing lengthy verbatim responses. Low response and high drop-off is often observed in mobile surveys when these questions get asked. The study pitched standard touch-screen entry with voice capture and voice recognition. From the preliminary results presented, voice did not come out well from a respondent perception point of view. Touch screen entry was preferred over voice entry – voice recognition was the least preferred and the spread of responses indicated a divergence of opinions here. Interestingly, respondents seemed to warm to those methods, particularly voice capture, when asked about it five days later. The actual effect on the data has not been measured yet: those results are due out soon.
Justin Bailey (The Nielsen Company) presented a case study on using BlackBerry Curve devices with a recruited panel of South Africans during the period of the World Cup which showed the extent to which low response really does not need to be a feature of survey-based research. The study was monitoring media and advertising consumption and some brand recognition over the period of the World Cup. Very high response rates were sustained throughout an extended survey. Pictures were collected too, and Nielsen ended with a library of 60,000 submitted pictures. The case study offered a real feel-good moment for mobile research.
Thaddeus Fulford Jones (Locately) has created a panel of mobile phone users in the US who are willing to allow the firm to capture location data and use this to model actual behavior. You can learn about the extent to which consumers go to some outlets and often will drive past rivals in order to reach them. Raw location data is used to identify locations such as retailers, leisure destinations and other important consumer touchpoints. It tends to be most powerful when combined with other data to provide context. Location data also reveals useful temporal data – e.g. how long people have really spent in a store or waiting at the checkout.
Hannu Verkasalo (Zokem) spoke of “on-device measurement” or using the mobile phone for passive data gathering. What came out was just how much you can measure passively – free from the response bias of a survey – when using a mobile device, from sites accessed, search terms entered and time spent on different activities to location data: what was accessed at home, at work or on the road. He also revealed the very different ways that people consume mobile content on mobile devices compared to the web, and again the different profile of apps versus browsers in the content that people access. Hannu’s prognosis is that the mobile app is in the ascendant – which contradicted Bruce Hoang’s earlier analysis.
AJ. Johnson (Ipsos Mori) chaired a panel session entitled “Debunking the myths of mobile research” and asserted that research needs to treat mobile very differently. People will be engaged if you approach them via mobile research, but as researchers we have to be very transparent, open and honest with respondents.
Paul Berney (Mobile Marketing Association) challenged research to take a greater interest in mobile research. Mobile is the natural home of the digital native – the under 30s who have grown up knowing nothing other than the internet and the mobile phone. It’s already changing the way that retailers are working and it fundamentally changes the engagement model for brands. It is a mistake to think that mobile is about the technology – it’s about people. Mobile is a two-way channel and if we don’t go there with our research, then others will.
To round up, a few common themes emerged:
1 Comment
John Weisberg
14 years ago
Thanks for the summary, Tim. It's nice to see the MR industry finally taking mobile techniques seriously enough for there to a variety of investigations into implementation. A comment on mobile survey length - my belief is that number of questions is the wrong measure. It's the level of respondent engagement and available time that should be examined to determine appropriate length in minutes. A highly engaged respondent with time available will participate in a much longer survey than someone whose interest or time are quite limited. Mobile techniques will avoid some of the problems encountered with other modes if design takes the respondent's viewpoint as the primary consideration. Perhaps the personal and immediate nature of mobile technologies will make it more natural to adopt that viewpoint.
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