Wednesday, July 14, 2010

The Power of Mobile Market Research

As advertising to the public via mobile phones becomes more widespread, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for other marketing activities – including market research. Market research will need to keep pace with location-based marketing services like FourSquare, wantANDfound, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, Placecast and many others. Emerging as the latest medium for reaching consumers, how can mobile research technologies be utilized to gain deeper and richer insights into behavior and drive innovation? Think about it, what if customers could give feedback anytime, anywhere to improve products and services – right when the issue happens or the idea arises!

A relatively new tool we have come across is QualAnywhere from 20/20 Research, Inc. QualAnywhere allows you to build panels or do one-off recruiting and then interact with respondent via their mobile phone for surveys or qualitative chat. A few examples 20/20 Research gives as ways to utilize this methodology includes:

• Conducting studies about eating habits DURING the lunch hour
• Conducting studies on shopping WHILE participants are likely to be at the grocery store

Interacting with respondents at the POD (Point-Of-Decision) is a rarity, but when available adds to the research validity and actionability. How do you conduct research at the POD? I would love to hear about it and how it helped your research.