Innovating via today’s technologies for tomorrow’s research
The market research industry is going through a profound period of change, inspiring companies to capitalize on this opportunity by rolling out new tools and methodologies for research. As technology advances, and as more and more products are being introduced, researchers must evaluate and welcome these new innovations in order to stay ahead of the curve.
In an effort to help researchers sift through all the fluff, we partnered with CivicScience, Survey Analytics and Thumbspeak to host this month’s webinar on Innovative Technologies for Fall 2010. Each of these companies shared in detail their innovative research offerings and how it will change the game in market research. Below we have condensed the hour long webinar into a few important facts on each new product, as well as each panelist’s answer to the following question: What industry problem does your platform aim to solve?
Who is CivicScience?
CivicScience has developed proprietary software for conducting consumer market research, data mining and online polling. They are a marketing research utility that gathers and organizes opinion data by engaging respondents via various web sources and applications from all over the world. Through its suite of online products, CivicScience provides quick and extensive respondent data to a variety of clients including brand managers, marketers and advertisers.
Problem solved?
Real-time. CivicScience has the ability to capture attitudinal data, digitize consumer opinion, and create insights in real-time. Their platform currently polls over 500,000 consumers worldwide – aged 13 to 29 – everyday. By engaging with consumers while they are online, CivicScience is able to reach millions of people and collect data almost immediately. Additionally, all of this is done without introducing an incentive program, thus providing a very cost effective way to gather consumer insight.
Who is Survey Analytics?
Survey Analytics specializes in Discrete Choice *Conjoint Analysis and offers a Marketing Segmentation Simulator as well, claiming to give researchers the ability to “predict” the market share of new products and concepts that may not exist today. The goal of any conjoint study is to determine what combination of attributes is most influential on a buyer when making purchase decisions. Armed with this knowledge, marketers can focus on the most important features of products/services, and design messages that will most likely strike a chord with target buyers.
*Conjoint analysis is a statistical technique used to determine how people value different features that make up an individual product or service.
Problem solved?
Cost-effectiveness. As straightforward as that may be, being cost effective is important in a time of recession; robust platforms such as these offer to be a more cost effective way to access consumers for research. Survey Analytics maintains that their platform is cheaper than the Sawtooth Software, offering a flexible monthly pricing plan, and that it is usable on a project by project basis. Survey Analytics emphasizes the powerful insight that can be achieved via conjoint analysis even though it is an under-utilized tool in the market research industry. The company encourages researchers to take another look at conjoint analysis because it is not the same complicated tool that it used to be, also claiming to employ the most user-friendly version of all conjoint tools.
Who is Thumbspeak?
Thumbspeak is a Mobile Opinion Measurement (MOM) tool, allowing users to take surveys via their mobile phone; currently available only for Iphone users with Blackberry and Android apps launching in September. As soon as the application is downloaded, eight questions are asked which are then used to profile each user. Once finished, they are ready to participate in surveys at their leisure. For now, the survey interface shows all available surveys and later, Thumbspeak claims to be able to target specific demographics and send surveys to that select group of users that are in their database.
Problem solved?
Targeting. Thumbspeak can connect researchers with respondents who are typically hard to reach; claiming to have a large database of males aged 18-32. It opens up surveys to a fresh group while creating a new demographic of mobile respondents. Thumbspeak also pays primarily close attention to keeping its user experience positive: 1) all surveys are no more than 20 questions; 2) survey results are shared; and 3) users are incentivized with a monetary reward.
Thumbspeak can potentially change how respondents perceive survey taking (especially from a convenience standpoint) ultimately boosting survey response rates to reach a larger portion of the population. Through its innovative mobile platform, market researchers are empowered to acquire respondent data with a unique form of engagement and from any point in time of a respondent’s day offering a very intriguing method.
The State of Innovation for Market Research
Most of the industry is fascinated by new and innovative ideas, with a particularly increased interest for unlocking the vast potential lying in mobile research. Unveiling the innovative research gem that is both relevant and forward-thinking is refreshing in an industry that is typically reluctant to adapt to new methods — especially those in the social media space. Referring back to a recent article by Alastair Gordon, he says:
“We love to discuss all the latest technologies, techniques and re-packaged jargon, so we flit like butterflies from one new idea to another, never quite developing their potential or integrating the new techniques with old ones.”
Emphasizing that implementation is the real innovation challenge for market research (and while some of these products may prove to be revolutionary and some may not), the key takeaway for us as researchers is that we stay ahead of the curve rather than trying to catch up with it.
About the Author
Sean Case, SVP, Peanut Labs, Inc. Sean leads the market research division of Peanut Labs, Inc. This includes managing both Peanut Labs’ sales team and client services team, designing and implementing product improvements, marketing oversight and ensuring adherence to Peanut Labs’ high quality standards. He has over 15 years of experience in sales, management and operational development both inside and outside the market research industry and brings over six years of experience within online market research.
