Using Smart Phones for Market Research
June 30, 2010
OK, so maybe the cartoon is a little over the top but it suggests numerous trends that cause me to get excited about the idea of using smart phones for market research.
Here is my Top 10 list of exciting things about smart phone market research:
- Smart phones are becoming ubiquitous, at least among a certain demographic in our society. Instead of providing the market research infrastructure via facilities or online hosting or teleconference services you are using a tool that is already in the hands of your participants.
- You can use smart phones anywhere in the “real” world before, during and after a “real-life” experience.
- You can “push” or “pull” communications – meaning that you can interrupt the flow of a participant’s day by sending messages or participants can respond in the moment, when they have something relevant to say.
- Smart phones are new enough that they are fun and cool and a way of reporting experiences and opinions that participants might enjoy, which potentially increases their willingness to communicate.
- The short and immediate nature of emails or text messaging encourages quick and concise replies. If questions are well crafted, the data will be focused and potentially easy to analyze.
- You can potentially “enhance” text responses with photos and even videos.
- With creative “recruiting” techniques you can gather a large volume of data from “average” respondents and then follow up to get more depth with those that are most relevant to the study objectives. You can qualify these more relevant participants based on their responses to your questions. This setup is a natural for developing ongoing panels, MROC’s (market research online communities), or for finding the right participants for follow-up qualitative methodologies.
- You can scale this type of study from a very small sample, say 20 to 50 participants to gigantic, perhaps 20 to 50 thousand. Anyone game for a big one?
- Speaking of games… there is potential for making the participant’s experience “game-like”, for example a “treasure hunt”. This idea has tremendous potential for a creative team.
- This is a “new frontier”. The technical capabilities to support this type of research are developing and a forward thinking company can potentially exploit the possibilities to their advantage.
If these ideas trigger any of your own, please leave a comment or contact me to talk about it. I am very interested in, and actively working on new ideas in this realm.
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4 Comments
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Great article. As someone who lives and breathes mobile technologies these days, I would like to add phone specific applications and also the mobile web to your list.
The iPhone, Blackberry and Android based phones have made it possible for the creation of applications that allow participants to take pictures, record audio or video and share those almost immediately allowing the researcher (and their clients) to see and react to.
The ability to surf the mobile web, allows participants to not even need to login to a website for an online study – simply use their phone to view a mobile optimized website.
In the near future, I am sure you will be writing articles about devices like the Apple iPad, Dell Streak, HP Slate and other various devices. Looking forward to that!
Great post Dave! I work for an online research company who have developed a mobile application for the iPhone that lets people take surveys (check out the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj7DZGY2xBI).
I agree that this is a new fun way for people to take part in research. We increased our panel base by 30,000 people in the UK when word got around. Our research has also shown us that a lot of these people have never joined an online panel before.
Also, this method of research is making it easier for us to survey higher earners and well educated people. This method of research is more suitable for people with busy lives.
Another benefit is the speed with which large studies can be undertaken – people are constantly on their phone so its easy to receive instant reaction from large groups of people.
I am really interested in your idea of making the experience “game like” – people love collecting points on their mobile device as Foursquare has proven.