Mobile Market Research - Is it really the Next Big Thing?
I'm attending the Market Research in the Mobile World (MRMW) European Conference next week in London - http://bit.ly/15jYcB5 - as a Panel Member discussing new mobile gadgets and their impact on Insights.
David Zakariaie
David ZakariaieDavid Zakariaie, CEO of Glassic will be there alongside me, talking presumably about Google Glass. Ray Poynter of Vision Critical will be chairing the discussion, Kantar's Innovation Group Direotor, Alex Johnson, will also be part of the line-up. I'm looking forward to it immensely.
I had the opportunity to try out the Google Glass technology a couple of weeks ago in Munich. It was a fascinating if slightly strange experience - seeing a second visual layer imposed on my actual vision, talking commands, but at the same time having to tap the side of the contraption to go up or down. Nothing like anything I had experienced before at all.
What became clear to me that mobile technology in some shape or form - Google Glass is just one type of new mobile gadget - is very likely to become more and more part of our lives in future, even if right now it may seem a bit like something out of Star Trek. Mobile will - if we want - measure our pulses, our body temperature, who knows even our eyes' pupils movements and more besides.
As the applications for mobile technologies become clearer, more relevant and more widely adopted - moving beyond Medicine and Sport into many other areas of our lives - the relevance for Research and Analytics becomes huge. Here are some of the areas I find interesting.
Is Research lagging Real Life?
For most of us, I suspect it's true that we pretty much live with our mobiles, checking emails, looking things up, sending SMS, checking the weather, sports results, taking photos, posting mobile on Social Media....
If we compare this with the percentage of our overall current Research activity actually dedicated to Mobile, it's probably relatively small. Has Research got catch-up work to do? Which types of Research are actually using mobile to what extent? Shopper insights work I would think is an area where mobile adaption is moving ahead apace, and areas of qualitative too, mobile ethnography is surely growing. Same for research amongst teenagers, young adults.
But trackers, satisfaction studies, concept tests, U&As? How many of these are mobile-attuned, ie shorter, with a more intuitive interface, no grids, very few open enders? Where are legacy arguments - calibration, continuity - winning out over enhanced authenticity?
If anyone has data on this, I'd love to see it.
Mobile as Centre Piece for Multi-Modal Studies
The potential for mobile to help us enrich our understanding of people's lives - contextually, visually, aurally even - is huge. However, many of the types of work we currently engage in - concept tests, for example - are not necessarily contextually enriched, we don't know much about the lives the people reacting to our ideas.
Mobile could change this - assuming the added value arguments are craftly carefully to budget-aware Marketing folks.
Measuring More with Mobile
Mobile devices - as I am sure I will find out next week - measure all sorts of things: not just what we do on the web, but how our bodies react when we engage in different physical activities.
Just imagine if mobile devices could help us measure a package of reactions in a marketing context - over time, individually - which would be enriched by self-reports on prompted questions such as "take a snap shot of the shelf" or "take a picture of the problem you just encountered".
Research would help Marketing to be geniunely user-centric.
My sense is that the future of Research will be multi-modal, with mobile playing an increasingly central role. I'm certainly looking forward to the discussions next week.
Curious, as ever, as to others' views.
David Zakariaie
David Zakariaie
David Zakariaie