Measuring First Impressions | BTalk Australia

(11min 16) Researching a customer’s views might be a test on the respondent’s memory. Are you asking them to think back to something they’ve seen or tasted, possibly days or weeks ago?

Mobile market research can enable you to get over this problem, but isn’t that going to be expensive and highly intrusive?

Today on BTalk Australia Phil Dobbie talks to Terry Wiley, the APAC MD for Lightspeed Research about instances where mobile market research might be the way to go.

Add you own research experiences or other comments in the Talkback section at the end of this post.

View all BTalk Australia podcasts here.

Subscribe to BTalk Australia on iTunes.

• Today’s Transcript

Phil Dobbie: Hello I’m Phil Dobbie and welcome to BTalk Australia. Today, market research for people on the move.

Well over the years researchers have caught us in all sorts of places. In fact, I’ve stood on street corners myself many eons ago upsetting passing pedestrians. Then, of course, there’s the home phone survey. Then online surveys that pop up increasingly on websites so why not the mobile phone? Terry Wiley thinks there are many advantages to getting people to complete surveys on their mobile or on their cell phone, if you happen to be listening to us in the United States. Terry is the CEO for APAC for Lightspeed research and he’s on the phone. Terry, a lot of people would say that surveys on mobile phones can be very intrusive. You know, we’re fearful of spam on our mobiles so couldn’t this really be just getting a lot of people off side?

Wiley: In our case no because we only do mobile surveys for those people that have actually agreed to take them by their mobile handset so in our case it’s not so much of an issue.

Dobbie: So it’s like panel type research that we’re talking about here.

Wiley: It’s exactly panel research, but those that have mobile phones and are willing to take research questionnaires.

Dobbie: So what sort of application does it have? What sort of surveys lend themselves to this sort of research?

Wiley: Any that really requires a quick response or a quick turnaround of the actual results is ideal. So a couple of good applications would be event-based research, specifically looking at sponsorship awareness, for instance. So if you’re a sponsor and if you’re sponsoring the Olympic games, is a good example, and you want to send a questionnaire out via people that are actually watching those Olympic games to get effectiveness of that sponsorship you can get it immediately. So it’s a really good application there. Other good applications are things like shop analysis or point of sale material in retail. So again, you can have your phone and you can actually complete questionnaires and indeed if your mobile has a camera facility actually send back photographs of what you’re looking at as well.

Dobbie: Alright

Wiley: Another perfect application is customer satisfaction. So if you’re buying a product or a service quite often you’re giving people your phone number these days and they can actually survey you pretty much immediately via your handset.

Dobbie: What are the advantages of that immediacy? I imagine you would get a very different result, wouldn’t you, asking a question about something which has just happened versus something that might have happened a day or two ago, but they’re both valid things to measure, aren’t they really because someone might have thought they got really bad customer service but have calmed down a day later and that might be a meaningful thing to measure too.

Wiley: In a way yes, but really in terms of the value of the results you want people’s opinions at that point in time as opposed to being diluted even for the better or worse over a period of time. So that immediate aspect is quite important to a lot of marketers.

Dobbie: Right and how are these actually physically being conducted? I mean this is just through like a web enabled page on mobile so it’s just like an online survey but you’re using your mobile phone.

Wiley: Exactly that’s right so this can only work by phones that have WAC enable technology or internet via the handset. So you get an SMS message inviting you and there’s a link so there’s a URL as part of that message. Simply click on it and it will take you to, effectively, a work page but is by your mobile as opposed to a PC.

Dobbie: So there are limitations on what you can do. I imagine that it’s harder, isn’t it, completing questions like this on a mobile phone because you’ve got a much smaller screen so I imagine the length of the survey or even the length of the questions you’re asking would have to be somewhat restricted.

Wiley: Very much so, yes there are limitations to this. You know we certainly don’t want to be doing long surveys with complex questions by your mobile. So we normally put some restrictions around that. For instance, it’s a maximum of eight questions and no complex greets or long debating type questions as well. So you have to be quite conscious about that. It’s not going to give you a lot of data but the speed of responses in someway makes up for it.

Dobbie: Is it working? Are response rates good compared to, for example, online surveys or other media that you might use?

Wiley: The response rates are fantastic actually. It’s probably down to a novelty. A lot of new methodologies do enjoy good response rates. An example is in countries like Japan where mobiles are widely used for a lot of things we’re getting high ratings and response rates. But even in Australia we’re getting around 60, 65 percent response rates where traditionally it would be around the 20, 25 percent so in terms of getting information not only is it quick you tend to get a lot of people responding.

Dobbie: And we talked a little bit, a few moments ago, about the immediacy about it and how you might get a different answer. Are you seeing very different results using this approach?

Wiley: Not so much different results, no. A really good example to give you is the live events that took place last year simultaneously across the world. We performed a number of mobile studies throughout that event. The PR machine got working very quickly and were able to turn what was effectively in a sponsorship and research, through the PR to the main stream press, within 24 hours. Now that has a major impact from a marketing point of view. So that’s really the key thing. There’s no great difference in data quality at all.

Dobbie: It would be great to know where people are all the time, wouldn’t it, as well? You’ve talked about events and if you know about the event then that’s great, but if you’re dealing with panels I guess you’ve got more than ability to control it but it adds that extra dimension knowing where the person is when they’re completing the survey, doesn’t it?

Wiley: Very much so. We’ve done a couple of beer studies for instance where going through major events we’ve understood where people are actually watching it. Are they home or at friends houses or indeed down at the pub? So that is very useful data as well for the marketing people.

Dobbie: You talked about it having novelty value, do you think it is going to become a mainstream medium for researchers?

Wiley: It’s certainly a good viable option. I don’t think for one minute it’s going to supersede the traditional methodologies because it does have limitations. This is not a replacement, this is an additional type of service really. So it is a good valuable product and it’s here for some time yet but it’s also a very good way of getting hold of and access to certain demographics that are traditionally quite hard to get. Young people for instance are always on the mobile and they would prefer doing surveys through a handset as opposed to any other methodology.

Dobbie: And I imagine it’s quite limited actually in terms of the audience. I mean you probably are just getting young people. I would imagine older people would be more reluctant to take part in this sort of survey.

Wiley: Response rates for the older demographic are certainly lower than the younger demographic. But the importance of having panel-based research is that you can make it as representative as some of the other methodologies. So it’s not so much of a challenge but we have to be mindful when we’re doing studies of that.

Dobbie: I wonder whether it’s also opened to a little bit of abuse. Is there perhaps a culture amongst the most savvy mobile phone users that might enjoy giving the wrong answers to questions, for example?

Wiley: Well I think that’s a possible criticism across the board in research, but we’re not experiencing that yet anyway and the important thing with any study is to make sure that the panellists are answering openly and honestly and we have to test that regularly to ensure that they maintain that right approach.

Dobbie: Now you’re doing it as a panel approach, how are you recruiting customers for these or samples for these panels? I imagine that’s the hardest part of it all, isn’t it?

Wiley: In a way, I mean we have online panels and offline panels as well, as a lot of research companies do so we utilise those to recruit for our mobile panels but if we do need additional people then we literally do mainstream advertising. And there are always people willing to give their opinions about things. So we haven’t had too many challenges just yet.

Dobbie: And do you think companies can do this for themselves? Do they need to call in experts, if they’ve got a customer database for example that they want to research? Is that something that companies can get into?

Wiley: It’s not that easy. There is technology involved in this and also a certain amount of expertise in understanding research and the scripting of the questionnaires so despite the fact that a lot of companies do have their own client database there is a lot more to it than that so most tend to outsource that.

Dobbie: Right and is it an expensive exercise compared to other research methods?

Wiley: Not at all. No, it’s actually comparable to online and certainly cheaper than offline. The one factor with this is that a lot of people would be required to pay for the use of that internet service via the handset. The incentive scheme needs to factor that in, which is different to internet which is a flat fee however often they use it.

Dobbie: Well all that is changing. Very, very quickly I think we might find that there’s more flat rate plans in 2009 for data, in fact there already was towards the tail end of last year. So I guess that gets over the obstacle.

Wiley: Absolutely and we’re certainly about to. We’re well behind other countries with that regard so we’ll see the use of internet via the handset increasing hopefully and again that will help causes like research.

Dobbie: So anybody who’s trying to measure a point of sale it sounds like it’s the medium to use, isn’t it really?

Wiley: It’s certainly a good alternative.

Dobbie: OK thanks so much for your time today.

Wiley: It’s my absolute pleasure.