Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research™

NGMR Disruptive Innovation Winners Sean Conry & AJ Johnson

Today I’m posting the final set of interviews with the 2010 NGMR Disruptive Innovation Award Winners. AJ Johnson of IPSOS and Sean Conry of Technoes both received the Individual category award for their collaboration in the area of mobile research.

For a look at some of their work see the interview and videos below. For those interested in submitting nominations for the 2011 NGMR Awards, I’ll be making an official announcement about the process here on the blog soon. This years awards are planned to be held at the The Market Research Event (TMRE) in Orlando Florida this October.

[TA] Great having you on the blog! This interview has been a long time coming. First off, can you tell us a little bit about the work you submitted to the NGMR Disruptive Innovation award committee? I believe you also have a video or two you can share?

[AJ] Thanks Tom! We were thrilled to be selected by the committee. We thought we had a unique story to share because of three elements…

First, it was a mobile app based study, which combined quantitative elements with rich qualitative data collection. The study was done across multiple mobile OS platforms, and we think it was one of the first times this approach was taken solely using Research Apps. A large majority of mobile users in the UK are smart phone owners, so the capabilities and common use of mobile made sense. We recruited smart phone owners from Ipsos UK’s online panel

Second, with just 38 people, we generated significant volumes of structured and unstructured data, including text, photographs and GPS coordinates.
The volume of data we received was significant because it validated that respondents are comfortable using apps to share fairly personal insights. We were pleased to receive completely legible open text feedback, which surprised us, because we frankly were expecting “text message speak”.
We also took the communication method into account when designing the study. It was inspired by the way consumers are interacting with social media, and so it was very open, with only some structure to make sure we got usable results for the “quanty” components. We let respondents tell us about what was important to them and when it was important to them, as opposing to asking about what we thought was important to us on some artificial prescribed schedule.
Third, much of the analysis on the resulting data was done through various enterprise-grade, yet no-cost (two terms that rarely co-exist), off-the-shelf technologies to provide new and dynamic views of the resulting data.

Videos? You bet! Here is a video which tracks the data from one of our respondents.

Note the section from 1:02 to 1:20 where the respondent’s text claims about location and activity can be confirmed through the GPS coordinate and photos.

In addition, below is a video showing the combination of photographic data with traditional survey data and metadata (date/time etc.) being dynamically sorted in real time to search for themes.

[TA] How did your collaboration come about?

[SC] AJ’s mandate is to be a mobile knowledge and best practices leader within Ipsos/OTX, and we’ve had a relationship with Ipsos UK for many years. By nature, researchers are a reserved and cautious bunch, so it takes a brave attitude to be the first one to try a new approach. Lots of people thought the technology sounded cool, but Ipsos was the first to really run with mobile apps as a technique for helping their clients make better business decisions

[TA] I would think either GPS tracking or photos and videos on their own would be considered a little intrusive by many. Your study utilized both. Did you have any resistance from panelists?

[AJ] We saw a LOT of enthusiasm for providing photos. We knew from prior research that 55% of people in the UK regularly take photos with their mobile phones, and that people were sharing photographs on social media channels like Facebook and Flickr. In this study we wanted to test whether or not people would share photographs just as eagerly for market research.
As for GPS, Ipsos did a follow up study with participants and 8 of the 37 who completed the follow up study reported some concern with having their location tracked. This stratification also showed up in the diary data - we found that people who shared at least 1 coordinate with us tended to share a coordinate for almost every survey. Not many people shared just 1 or 2 coordinates. It tended to be all-or-nothing.

We believe a best practice is to make media and location sharing optional. When our participants have control over this, they seem to participate more keenly overall.

[TA] What was the client reaction?

[AJ] This particular project was a “research on research” effort. However, since this study proved the value of this method early last year, more projects have been completed and clients have been very excited about the rich information shared by respondents. It’s being used primarily in consumer goods, with focus on snacking, health and beauty products) and retail, though we’ve ventured into B2B, too. Clients love to see what their customers are actually doing, in their natural environment and without fail we always have “a-ha” moment in review of the data. Brands have also been using the results to gain an understanding of their customer experience, for innovation and ideation, to understand and enter new geographic markets, and for marketing and messaging planning.

[TA] What more traditional methodologies do you see these types of studies replacing, if at all?

[SC] When a client can’t afford a full ethnography, this technique can help provide similar insights on a broader scale, so we’re seeing ROI and speed arguments. In my opinion, it should be replacing just about any paper diary. Sometimes it’s also a better choice where a typical online study would previously have been the only choice. But otherwise, it’s being utilized mostly as a complementary technique in the researcher’s toolkit.
Techneos uses the Acronym RICH to help assess if the method should be used. The guiding elements are:
• Relevant:
A. To the category (does the product get used in varied environments); or
B. To your audience (are they an inherently mobile population?)
• In the moment: Would being there “at the point of experience” help you gain a deeper understanding?
• Capture: Would capturing GPS, photo, video, barcode or other environmental or situational factors help answer the research question?
• Holistic: Do you need a holistic view of the consumer? Apps are a natural fit for diaries and longitudinal studies.

[TA] What do you think is next?

[SC] The three main areas are in 1) capture 2) participation, and C) reporting. 1) In Capture -, we’ve since added video capture and barcode capture capabilities to round out the options. We also do some work connecting to other devices by Bluetooth, for example, to capture biodata in combination with survey data. The great thing about Apps is that they give you capabilities to integrate with the sophisticated functions on the device. So whatever tools handset makers add to the device, we’ll look to incorporate for research purposes.

2) In Participation - Geo-fencing (sometimes called location-based surveys) hold promise, and social media tie-ins will be a natural evolution, but the research community will have to do it in a way that is interesting, non-intrusive, and provides real value to our participants.

3) With respect to reporting - we collect up to 500,000 photos on some of our largest projects. It’s challenging to make sense of such vast amounts of qualitative data. You can’t just run a cross-tabulation to spit out the significant photos. Rather, the value is in trend spotting, storytelling, and other techniques for analyzing qualitative data on a quantitative scale. As we plan for more massive efforts like this, new tools to automate these tasks are also on the horizon.

Thank you Sean and AJ for helping to make traditional research more Next Gen, more innovative, more fun!

@TomHCAnderson

[Click here to see the interview with Client Side NGMR Disruptive Innovation Award Winner 3M. Click here to see interview with agency side NGMR Disruptive Innovation Award Winner Communispace]