Written By: Diane Wagner
Dateline: Cincinnati July 18-19, 2012
As we anticipated, the Market Research in the Mobile World Conference in Cincinnati was a blast. First off, we had fun with food.
Speaker (Cambiar's Beth Rounds) On Cake - via @LoveStats
Well, that may be a bit of a stretch … snacks were pretty sparse. That said, dessert rocked – as LoveStats’ Annie Pettit so eloquently pointed out in her blog “Market Researchers On Cake”. Annie, not only did you, by far, provide the most #MRMW Tweets during the conference but, I’d argue, absolutely among the best (though I’m probably partial to your post since I, too, “selected only three pieces of cake [from the dessert buffet table] to take back to my spot”).
Speaker (pureprofile's David Brudenell) On Snickers - via
@LoveStats
Or maybe it was Adam Warner’s tweet, “The cakeification of research” that put it over the top. Like me, you may also follow this perceptively pithy #MRX maverick @ajcwarner.
But the conference wasn’t all fun and cake. One of the best event summaries is by MRMW Conference Chair Lenny Murphy with his Top 10 Takeaways From Market Research in the Mobile World.
One of Lenny’s Top 10 (#5 – New competitors are leading the new industry conversation) is right on target. As he noted, there were tons of “tech-focused” companies at this conference (easily more than I’ve seen at any other MR event) with Google, Wayin, Shopkick, DScout, Netbase and many more presenting. Dscout’s presentation, “Keeping It Real” by CEO Michael Winnick made some great points. Who, for example, wants to be a “panelist”? Michael argued that the industry should rethink its nomenclature to better engage people. At Dscout, they call participants “scouts” who, they say, go on “missions”. Asking people to do boring research will get you boring results, Michael relayed. Agreed, Michael. Engage, engage, engage!
Another talk "Capturing Customer Experience in the Mobile World … Instantly" (by Justin Wheeler and Allen Vartazarian of uSamp) also highlighted how tech applications are changing the MR landscape. uSamp discussed their Mobile Panel App which allows clients to gauge customer experience as it’s happening … with the Geo-Validation feature ensuring respondents get access to surveys that make sense based on their physical location. This, of course, led to questions such as "How do you manage privacy and security?" and "How do you ensure the panelists that their data will be secure?" To this, uSamp felt it is most important to be up-front about privacy policies, clear that the data is used solely for research, and to always give respondents the ability to opt out.
Another Lenny Top 10 (#7: We’re all qualies now) also resonated. It’s clear that mobile and social media are ushering in, as he said, a ‘new golden age’ of Qualitative Research. "Small Leaps, Big Purchase Moments: Using Digital Qual to Understand Key Moments in Product Transitions" by Steve August (Revelation) and Andrew Sauer (P&G) epitomized this point. This case study covered how P&G conducted a MROC about diapers to find out why they were losing market share when Moms decided to change the size of their baby's diapers. The key concept of the MROC was to let Moms post comments and photos in their "natural place" instead of requiring them to post at a certain time. As a result, instead of the pricing or product quality issues they initially set as a hypothesis, they were able to see that, at a certain point of their baby's age, certain brands just fit better. Given the size of the $10B baby diaper market in the US, this was a really interesting case study.
Picture: MRMW North America2012
Tag: #MRMW #MRX #Mobile #Mobileresearch
When RPA first established an office in the US two years ago, we chose Woodland Hills, CA. Then, one year later, we moved down to Manhattan Beach. And now, we are excited to share that have moved our US Headquarters’ office to Century City, in the heart of West Los Angeles. The third location is the charm, right?