InSites Blog

InSites Consulting launches “eScape”. eScape is a free research service offered in more than 30 countries to online publishers and advertising networks. By use of on-site questionnaires, profiles of websites are created. The assembled data can be used for real-time analysis through use of a user friendly and intuitive online reporting tool. eScape is a free business model and is unique because of the fast installment and the depth of the reported data. These data deliver relevant insights to different target audiences: online publishers, advertising networks and media agencies.
“By using eScape, our partners can innovate on domains like sales, marketing  and media planning. Up till now, the online advertising market uses targeting solely based on socio-demographic variables on site-centric level. eScape allows partners to innovate by broadening these site-centric targeting possibities, and adding brand- and industry related variables. This opens doors to more targeted advertising and can help convince advertisers to use online advertising,” says Shahways Romani, responsible for the eScape service at InSites Consulting. For a full overview of all the targeting themes, visit http://escape.insites.eu/portal/demos.aspx.

For more information, contact Shahways on shahways.romani@insites.eu or +32(0)9 269 14 05.

MOBILE RESEARCH CONFERENCE ‘09 – London, 16 & 17 February

One thing is for sure, mobile research is one of the youngest domains in market research and a common language to discuss issues is still a bit lacking. However, in this article I will give an overview of the different possibilities and sub methods that are available right now. Next to that, I tried to summarize the pro’s and con’s of this ‘new’ methodology. For sure there are opportunities to take research forward, but we need to be critical to ourselves and not use the method because it’s new and fancy. In the near future we (at InSites Consulting ForwaR&D Lab) will start-up some pilot projects to explore the advantages and possible benefits of mobile surveys, discussions and observations. Of course I will keep you posted on this!

Let’s jump into the content…

No such thing as a free lunch…

There are different sub methods within the mobile research category: CATI among mobile-only consumers (which is not really ‘new’ of course), spoken surveys with voice recording (very niche), SMS enabled mobile surveys and mobile web enabled mobile surveys. I will tell you more about the last two.

First of all, when looking at mobile surveys you need to take into account that only a limited number of questions can be asked. Up to 5 for SMS enabled surveys (because it’s only one question per SMS that can be answered) and not more than 15 when it comes to mobile web questionnaires. Moreover, open-ended questions can only be asked once or twice in a project because of the drop-out this type of questions cause when applied to mobile.

If it comes to barriers for participants to take part in mobile surveys, the two main dimensions – besides having a mobile device that enables the needed functionalities (and software like Java) – are the ‘cost’ for taking part (the SMS communication or the cost for up- and downloading bites in the case of web enabled mobile surveys) and having the ‘skills’ to work with the mobile device easily, so the ability to fill out such a survey.

Also in terms of sampling you need to be careful. 55+ is under represented among mobile surfers and even (but less) among SMS users. Especially youngsters are heavy users of SMS and mobile web has a higher penetration among business people. Of course, this are two hard to reach target groups for which mobile surveying could be a great alternative.

If we compare both methods (SMS and mobile web surveys), we can definitely say that for participants it is far easier to take an SMS questionnaire than a mobile web one. Drop-out in mobile web surveys sometimes even reaches up to 85% (one third of this participants because it was the first time they used the web functionality on their phone). But the biggest issue with mobile web is that the penetration is very low at this point in time, which makes it a rather niche application at this point. It could, for example, be interesting for researching youngsters. But only, if you provide them with the device and give them a free mobile contract during the period of the project. ‘Free’ that’s the keyword, because even in the case of SMS surveys participants do not want to pay, although loads of people participate in TV voting at much higher cost.

New opportunities… and challenges!

An opportunity for mobile research lies in the fact that the majority of today’s mobile phones give respondents the ability to take and send through pictures and even videos about specific moments in their life and this almost in real time. This enables auto-ethnography and… ‘day-in-a-life’ studies become richer due to the detailed time stamp.

In terms of sampling, using online panel members seems to be the most common practice next to using client databases. One of the future challenges will be to convince online panel members to subscribe for a mobile panel too!

Current applications of mobile research

Over looking all the practical cases presented, we may conclude that mobile research is especially useful when conducting ‘moment of truth research’: researching behavior, feelings and context during ‘shopping for’ or ‘consuming/using a’ specific product or service. Some examples: measuring customer experience during an event or festival, capturing felt emotions while watching a TV show,… Another application is brand awareness tracking of the sponsoring of brands directly after – for example – a soccer play. Research results of comparisons with online surveys show that awareness is far more accurate if you conduct the research directly after the match. The ability to catch emotions and behavior in the moment is the biggest USP of mobile research (more than 2/3 of the responses are gathered within 3 hours). Next to that there is the ability to capture to moment in a picture and send it to the researchers. But still, traditional online research of extended profiles of panel members are needed to have all the necessary data (age, gender,… and extra questions).

Geography Research!?

Google recently launched its location based mobile conversations software ‘Latitude’. One of the cases presented by an Estonian professor used a similar technique to follow participants’ movements and draw conclusions from that. Next to it, they used location based mobile ‘push’ surveys and triggered ‘pull’ questionnaires to collect additional information from the respondent: what he or she is doing at the moment, with whom, what are the emotions felt, which conversations are going on,… The question is of course how respondents will react to these kind of (new) practices!

The future is bright, the future is ‘fusion’!

Another vision that came across several times was that the future will be about integrating mobile into larger online research platforms like dedicated community platforms. Despite this, easy to use and set-up mixed mode platforms like Twitter (mobile and web) seems to be rather unexplored at this moment in time, although penetration is booming and the fact that it could give an extra qualitative flavor to mobile research.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating

One of the keynote speakers was Liz Nelson, 70 years old and to put it short the founding N in TNS and now one of the pioneers in mobile market research with here company QInsights. Next, to a visionary and passionate speech on the future of our industry (in which she definitely showed to be very up-to-date with the latest trends in the market) she asked us to dare and to dive into this domain of market research to explore it. In order to make it a mature methodology as soon as possible. And that is exactly what we will do from tomorrow on J.

By Dado Van Peteghem and Wim de Wever.

Last week, on the 5^th of February, we headed to the centre of Amsterdam for a social media congress with a strong content focus on communities. The event took place in a creative workspace called the ‘Westerunie’, an old gas plant, where about 300 people gathered for the 3^rd Social Strategy Talk. Due to some train connection delays we missed the appetizers, but we managed to arrive right on time for the content part, hooray for the taxidriver!

Only a few minutes after we found a place the first speaker, Peter Kentie (Marketing Manager at PSV) was given the floor after a small introduction of the organizing team.
Peter Kentie gave interesting viewpoints on the strategy of PSV and how they’re using cross medial tools to connect with their different target groups. Every new technology/medium that rises can turn out to be a new opportunity for the most famous football club from Eindhoven. These different, self managed, (online, mobile) media however, are strongly rooted in the offline world. Moreover the brand influence in the success of these communities plays an important role.

Peter Kentie: “Football players and coaches are passing by, the real power comes from the brand PSV”

It is obvious that not every community member (read: supporter) is at the same level in terms of involvement, and therefore, PSV wants its members to push upwards in their self-created ‘participation ladder’.

The second speaker, Ruud Smeulders from Rabobank, threw a light on the online initiatives of Rabobank and crowd sourced the public with the open ended question: ‘How should Rabobank make use of communities?’ Some interesting ideas, like P2P loaning, came up during the following discussion and provided a lot of inspiration for Ruud Smeulders. The most interesting point of his speech for the audience was the insight that the difference between the employee and customer is actually fading away. But the best was yet to come…

The most inspiring speech on the usage of new Media & Technologies in community building was held by Roderick Vanhögen, better known as the Podcast Priest. Every morning Father Roderick brings his daily breakfast-podcast to the online spheres, inspiring people and followers around the globe. In a kind of daring way, he succeeds in turning an outdated looking ‘product’, being the church, into an attractive environment. He’s bringing together kindred spirits in a virtual church with a massive turnout. Keeping at the back of one’s mind the necessary and enduring connection between the community members, being the same religious message.

The last speaker of the day, Kirsten Verdel, shared her experiences on communities from a campaigning point of view. As a vital link in the campaigning team of Barack Obama, she told a story of preparation for years to win the presidential elections in the USA. Mission, Man and Money were key in the Democratic campaign, but patently obvious, the first of the 3 M’s was essential. Obama (and his grassroots support) is a Man who can bring the Mission in such a convincing way that only few would be able to match. Financial support of the electorate was necessary to spread the Mission to the public, but both Man and Money are only restoratives of the central message.Crucial in the strategy of the Democrats was not only to bind possible voters, but to go further and really convince the community of their joining. From that point, voters would not be simply voters anymore, but real messengers, towards other potential electorate. Offering the necessary tools in order to facilitate this process was indispensable.

Afterwards we had a nice chat with Carl Lens, one of the organizers of the event, about online communities and research aims with interesting food for thought.

Conclusion:

We’ve seen a growing interest for communities in a large variety of business sectors, both for off- and online purposes and hence the opportunities and difficulties to merge both worlds.

Although it was a rainy day, we gathered some bright inspirations for the future !

Closing up our Smartees of 2008, we present you the last rerun in 2009 and this in a special edition, combining our Customer Experience and Innovation insights on 19th of February.

We begin the afternoon with our findings of the ‘Relationship Monitor 2008’-study. This study covers 6 sectors: Finance, Automotive, Telecom, Air Travel, Tour Operators and Retail and gives you a review of your customer experience strategy through benchmarking.

After the coffee break our guest speaker, Johan Van Langenbick from CREAX will demonstrate how the CREAX methodology works through real case examples. Filip De Boeck, Director Innovation Research will reveal the innovative InSites approach and the challenges in terms of the selection of the specific profiles, the tools used to connect with consumers and the stimulation of creativity in an online setting.

Check out the full program and register online.

InSites Consulting is launching TalkToChange, a survey panel that is now being transformed into an online community. TalkToChange used to be known as the InSites Panel. In this new initiative, members of a survey panel are seen more as participants in a survey project. Surveys amongst members have shown that they want more information on the survey results and more interaction and variation in the survey tools. The TalkToChange community wishes to meet these needs by using innovative tools on the site www.talktochange.com and other survey tools. If the client approves, information on the survey results is also shared. The TalkToChange community consists of more than 2 million members in 35 countries. “It’s’ important that when people participate in a survey, they really have the feeling that their opinion counts,” says Sam Berteloot, Managing Partner at InSites Consulting. “That is also what they tell us themselves: ‘I think it’s excellent that I have finally found a website where I can give my honest opinion and feel that it is actually really important”.
For more information, visit www.talktochange.com or Sam Berteloot at sam.berteloot@insites.eu or +32 (0)9 269 16 05.
Read the full press release :pressreleaseinsitestalktochange_en

Joeri van den Bergh, director of ON SNEAKERS, InSites Consulting’s Kids and Youth research centre, visited the ‘Children: seen and heard’ conference organised by MRS (the British market research federation) in London last Thursday. Five speakers at this conference on researching next generation family, kids and youth left an impression on him.

James Thickett, Director of Market Research of Ofcom, updated a number of figures regarding the use of new media used by children and youngsters in the UK. It provided interesting benchmarking material for the ON SCREEN_study, which InSites will publish towards the end of February about the Belgian situation. Only 16% in the 8-11 age category uses social network sites in the UK, and 52% in the 12-15 age category. In the oldest group, Bebo is the most popular social website (69% of social network site users), making it more popular than Facebook (37%), MySpace (36%) and Piczo (12%). In the 8-11 age category, Club Penguin (37%) of the British publishing group has just pipped Bebo at the post (36%). Girls seem to worry more about privacy issues than boys. 49% of girls aged between 12 and 15 are afraid that strangers will find personal details about them on the Internet compared to only 27% of boys. 40% of boys does not protect their profile on a social network at all, whereas for girls this percentage is only 25%. All research data is available for free on Ofcom’s website.

For researchers it is always great to see that a multinational such as Unilever uses consumer research to create an emotional bond with its brands in product categories with a low involvement. Dove’s “Campaign for Beauty” is a good example of this. However, Unilever’s “Dirt is Good” campaign for Omo/Persil has also reached the target group of mothers with children between 0 and 12. International research involving 2400 mothers with children in this age category in 16 countries showed Unilever that mothers feel that children are no longer allowed to be children and have less opportunities to play outside and learn by experiment. Through the “Dirt is good” campaign, Unilever wanted to encourage parents to let their children be children again. In addition to the scientific white papers, the research and the Roboboy TV campaign and printed advertising, a CSR programme was developed in Asia which according to research has the biggest lack of outdoor play areas.

Together with the government, Unilever sponsored 500 play areas in Vietnam and 100 in Pakistan. However, apart from the cultural impact, the campaign also achieved the necessary business results: the market share of Unilever washing powders jumped in the principal countries and the target group of mothers with children aged 0 to 12 was more willing to pay a price supplement. Both the brand loyalty and the recognition of Unilever washing powder brands went up everywhere.

By far the most inspiring presentation at the conference was by Bryan Urbick, CEO of Consumer Knowledge Center, and the unsurpassed Magnus Scheving, the Icelandic father of LazyTown and one of the most energetic and charismatic people I have ever met in my life. Magnus not only thought up LazyTown, he also plays the leading part of Sportacus who can do everything and helps children in difficulties thanks to the energy in a sporty sweet (fruit or vegetables). But first Bryan Urbick touched on the very interesting concept of “Neophobia”, i.e. the fear of everything new (brands, people, experience, …), which according to Urbick has important consequences for children research. He does not believe in short research sessions with children, because they would never get beyond the initial unfamiliarity with new products, concepts, campaigns, etc. After all, for children familiarity and liking are synonyms. In other words, Urbick advocates long half day sessions with children and he is one of the few children research experts who is not afraid to do research sessions with children from 18 months. He also gave an example of a visual scale for product research with children aged barely three: a mummy cuddly toy stands for too soft, a daddy cuddly toy for too hard and a baby cuddly toy for too small.

And then Magnus Scheving took the floor and he had everyone’s attention. In the space of less than 9 months Magnus managed to get Lazytown on television in 109 countries. According to him it is the only children’s brand that is directly associated with sports and health. With his energy points system (a savings system with tokens which is very similar to the Supernanny parenting systems) he was responsible for a 22% hike in the sale of fruit and vegetables by mothers with children. Magnus tells it all with a flair and charisma which only the greats such as Richard Branson possess. “I spoke to 160 writers to write scenarios for LazyTown, none of them had children, only dogs”. That is why 16 years ago he wrote the book Go, Go Lazytown which is at the basis of the successful children’s series for 4 to 7 year olds. Magnus was an athlete and fitness expert and in his speeches all over the world he discovered there were no health role models for children. “The only role model was Popeye but he smokes and hates people”. He accepted the challenge to convey a healthy lifestyle in an entertaining way to children through two classic children’s story elements, i.e. reconciling emotional elements and the battle between heroes and baddies in one concept. “Parents and children are practically the same all over the world: children seek excitement, movement and respect (not be treated as a child), parents want safety and education, a healthy lifestyle for their children, they want their children to follow rules and not to hurt other children, they want their children to share and not lie or cheat. LazyTown meets these demands and, apart from a TV series, has also become a merchandising brand in various fields with live shows which has already sold more than 1 million tickets. Magnus is most proud of the letter he received from the Icelandic president in which he thanked him for tackling the obesity problem of children in Iceland. He ended in true Sportacus style with a push up demonstration using 1 arm and a number of rotations leaving a perplexed audience…

Slightly more serious but therefore not less interesting was the presentation by Obi Felten, head of consumer marketing at Google. Something is happening in British secondary schools. 15 years from now they will be completely differently. Instead of the classic row of school desks, classrooms will be landscape office environments where every student has his own island with his/her own computer. Many classes already have interactive whiteboards with a direct link to the Internet. All schools must also have a VLE, a Virtual Learning Environment, which allows teachers to share sources and equipment with their colleagues, students are able to post homework online and are able to co-operate online on projects and assignments. In other words, over the coming years teachers will have to develop new skills. Google’s ambitious company mission is: “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” In this context Google wanted to study how its products such as search, maps, earth and sketchup (a 3D sketching tool) could play a relevant role in schools. In a study among teachers Google discovered that in spite of the fact that all teachers use Google search intensively, they don’t know the other Google products and had a relatively low level of knowledge and trust in Google. They believe that students who use Google are encouraged to “cut & paste” their homework. Moreover they can work much faster with Google search than the teachers themselves which is a reason for concern. In response to this study Google launched a specific site in the UK for teachers, i.e. google.co.uk/schools with ideas and handy teaching lesson plans for history, geography lessons, etc. They also printed classroom posters with tips for faster and more efficient use of the search engine. And finally they supported the idea of a teacher and Google Earth fan who is travelling around the country to teach geography teachers how they can use Google Earth and Google Maps in their lessons. (cf. Digital explorer – bringing the World to the classroom-).