GRIT now available - GreenBook Research Industry Trends

The 9^th edition of the GreenBook Research Industry Trends Survey & Report, is now available at their website:

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Research-live.com on Mobile Research timing

Jay Pluhar is vice president of strategic accounts at MarketTools, which provides software and services for research and feedback management. He wrote a very informative Blog about the evolution of mobile research, and here are some highlights:

• The world has gone mobile, and so has the web - According to IDC there are currently 4.6 billion mobile devices in use worldwide, and that number is estimated to increase to 5.9 billion in 2013. The global population is 6.9 billion.
• Mobile connects us to consumers in new ways - Traditional research is an ‘appointment-based’ interaction, with participants expected to take time out of their days to participate in studies. Today, more than ever, people are more likely to avoid committing to appointments in their busy lives.
• Tablet devices like the iPad provide researchers with tools that make research easier and more effective. Examples:
  • MarketTools has used iPads to conduct on-site interviews for a major CPG company.
  • A wireless connection allows researchers to segment customers in the grocery store aisle in real time, delivering a highly customised interview process.
  • The user-friendly iPad, together with a highly focused survey experience, makes the research process more interesting for respondents, improving the quality of participant engagement.
• Mobile lets you learn as you go - As companies discover new ways to measure and collect feedback through mobile, new business insights and opportunities will follow.

Full article.

Greenbook covers Social Media and Qualitative Research

Greenbook has had a numbers of articles on the trending of Qualitative Research to digital and social media platforms. Here is their latest article:

"Why (and How) the Growth of Social Media has Created Opportunities for Market Research"

The article by Paul Rubenstein of Accelerant Research social media usage has developed and become widespread very quickly. Social media marketing has reacted to this trend showing its own growth on a similar trajectory. What are the opportunities for online methodology in qualitative research? It is a long article with a strong bias towards online research, and the highlights include:

Social media marketing has reacted to this trend showing its own growth on a similar trajectory.  Research indicates that spending on social media and conversational marketing will outpace that of traditional marketing by 2012, according to a study conducted by TWI Surveys, Inc. on behalf of the Society for New Communications Research.  Forrester, too, echoes this claim in its own research findings in a recent study.

The Opportunity for Online Methodology in Qualitative Research

Now compare these blogging activities to those involved in qualitative research in which a moderator poses questions to study participants and receives answers to those questions from them.  A discussion ensues between the moderator and participant fueled by a series of questions and responses between parties.  Sometimes the moderator shows participants some “things” and has them provide their attitudes and opinions. Other times the moderator might require the participants to provide “things” to be seen, heard, and/or discussed.  Thus, there is parity between the typical activities involved in blogging and in qualitative research, and nowadays, the personal computer and Internet can facilitate the activities involved in qualitative research.

Imagine a shift from the traditional, face-to-face (F2F) methodology, which has dominated qualitative research for decades, to the Internet.  This shift should be a safe one given people’s general comfort level communicating within this medium.  But, would some part of the human condition be lost in the process?

Strengths and Weaknesses of In-person Qualitative Research

However, these tried-and-true qualitative methods, while effective for what they are designed to produce, do have their inherent flaws.  They are artificial and contrived because they require the respondent to be removed from the actual consumer behavior during interviewing, i.e., data are collected in a de-contextualized setting.  As such, this common byproduct of standard qualitative research designs attenuates the researcher’s ability to gather data in a natural setting.

The distinct advantages of the online method of qualitative research over in-person include:

• Computer-mediated interactions foster candidness, thoughtfulness, and essay-type responses
• Time is used efficiently and more data are collected
• Biasing effects due to the physical presence of others are eliminated
• Data can be collected in a naturalistic setting and at the time of the event under study
• Multi-media and text-based data are collected and integrated
• Data is better organized and easily sortable for subgroup analyses
• Automatic transcription
• Logistics are minimized
• Less expensive
• No travel, no time out of the office

There are still many limitations from not seeing your consumer live, but it is an interesting analysis of the direction if not the final direction of the qualitative research market.

More GreenBook - Mobilizing Market Research

This is another excellent article by Carrie Robbins on Mobilizing Market Research: The state-of-the-art, future evolution and implications of mobile data collection methods in the field of market research. She gets right to the core of the problem when she states:

"The main limitation of mobile research is the short length of mobile surveys. Hobson explains, “The promise of immediacy is somewhat balanced by the challenge of the small screen and the fact that somebody doesn’t want to be sitting with their mobile phone for two hours answering a survey.” However, Luck sees the short nature of mobile questionnaires as an opportunity for more thoughtful research."

Another evolution expected by the interviewees is that the overlap between market research and marketing on mobile devices will expand. These changes would fundamentally alter the market research landscape, leading to the convergence of the market research field with marketing, advertising, and other industries.

See the full article at GreenBook.

OutsideIn Strategies is going mobile.....

The world is going mobile and so is OutsideIn Strategies. This is a very interesting series by Carrie Robbins @ Greenbook on the changing research market in a mobile world:

"The 2010 Globalpark industry survey predicts self-completion using mobile devices to be the fastest growing methodology in 2011, which is the first time since 2004 that the study has not predicted the web to be the fastest growing methodology (Macer & Wilson, 2011). The recently published 2011 GRIT[3] report supports this, predicting an increase in the use of mobile methods over the next year. 54% of those surveyed reported they would conduct mobile surveys, 31% would conduct mobile qualitative research and 29% would conduct mobile ethnographic research over the next year (Murphy, 2011: 26). In a predictive market exercise, mobile surveys ranked 2^nd after social media analytics among emerging methods that will gain the most market share over the next year (Murphy, 2011: 28). These figures are quite promising for the future of mobile.

The benefits of mobile research are reported to be convenience for participants, improved participation rates, getting closer to the ‘moment of truth,’ reaching more of the population, obtaining faster turnaround time, capturing geolocation data, increasing accuracy of data collected, reducing costs, and allowing for more personal ways of reaching participants (Macer & Wilson, 2009b). Interestingly, the most popular benefits of mobile research have to do with increasing the quality of research and are based on the respondents’ point of view, rather than focusing on the needs of the market research firms. A respondents’ positive experience during a research project is now the main concern."

In the near future penetration levels will rise and the process behind mobile methods will become increasingly seamless and standardized. Next Blog post will look at Radian6 and how their social media monitoring tool applies to Qualitative Research.