AUSTIN, TX (August 31, 2010) – Kinesis Survey Technologies LLC (Kinesis), the industry leader for robust and scalable survey software and panel management software solutions, today announces the release of a new case study featuring its client Research Concepts and their utilization of the Kinesis Panel™ solution.

Research Concepts is a full-service market research company that specializes in custom research projects. After using another panel management solution for several years, Research Concepts elected to search for a new product that could better support its research objectives.  Following an intensive evaluation of eight vendors’ panel management solutions, Research Concepts chose Kinesis Panel™. The case study focuses on Research Concepts’ selection criteria, and why Kinesis best fulfills its panel needs.

“Kinesis Panel™ provides all of the advanced functionality we desired, packaged with a very user-friendly interface, and at a highly competitive price,” said Ann MacKay, Managing Partner at Research Concepts. “It offers the best value, and is ultimately the best overall solution.”

In addition to Kinesis Panel™, Research Concepts also utilizes the Kinesis Survey™ and Kinesis Community Portal™ solutions to maximize its research capabilities and panelist communications. The Kinesis product suite provides a fully integrated platform for developing, executing and analyzing research projects of all sizes.  The case study details how Research Concepts utilizes each Kinesis solution to achieve its research objectives.

“Research Concepts is highly skilled at executing complex research projects for a wide array of clients,” said Jason Ehler-James, VP of Client Services at Kinesis. “We are delighted that Kinesis Panel™ is enabling Research Concepts to realize its panel management goals, and we look forward to a continued collaboration.”

Read the full Research Concepts Case Study

About Kinesis Survey Technologies
Kinesis Survey Technologies, LLC provides a comprehensive survey and panel management product suite to advance innovation in both wireless and web-based market research. Delivering easy-to-use, intuitive applications, Kinesis software products can be effectively utilized without deep programming knowledge yet are robust enough to perform the most complex of survey and panel functions. Headquartered in Austin, TX, Kinesis offers product versions for both the market research industry and enterprise business organizations, and proudly supports next generation research applications worldwide.

About Research Concepts
Research Concepts, LLC is a full-service market research company that specializes in custom research projects. With more than fifteen years of experience, Research Concepts conducts both quantitative and qualitative research for clients from a variety of industries. Utilizing innovative research methodologies to develop customized projects, Research Concepts skillfully assists its client achieve their research objectives. For more information visit www.research-concepts.com.

THE FUTURE is the predominant theme right now for the market research industry. With recent and upcoming conference and session titles such as The Changing Face of Market Research, Charting the Future of Research, and The New Insights Toolbox: Transitioning to a New Era, significant energy is being devoted to defining the future of market research. Clearly the industry feels as if a major shift in research tools and methodologies is about to take place.

Of course one of the hottest topics relevant to the future of research is mobile technology. Mobile is among the primary game changers in the research world – and it is already making a significant impact, particularly as smartphone market share continues its meteoric growth. Mobile is, in fact, why Kinesis was founded in 2003 – to capitalize on wireless technologies’ ability to expand the reach of market research – so clearly Kinesis sees mobile as a substantial component of the industry’s future.

Along with mobile, another widely discussed topic is the future role of the research survey. Will the survey continue to be the leading method of quantitative data collection? Or will the rise of social media and new data mining tools render the survey obsolete? Obviously this is another debate that is of great significance to Kinesis, since survey software is the company’s core business solution.

Like mobile device usage, social media sites are growing fast. Social media is an immediate and vast platform for customer feedback, providing real-time monitoring of brand awareness and product/service reputation like nothing before. And by mining social media data for demographic information, classic segmentations can be defined and analyzed. So, as social media usage grows, and data mining tools become more sophisticated, the question arises: will the survey die? The answer is: of course not.

The survey will continue to be a highly valuable research tool because it is still the only way to obtain data that is structured to the researcher’s intentions. Social media does not provide sufficient means to control response rates nor does it always adequately qualify sample. But social media does offer a strong engagement factor, and the marrying of the two provides respondents with powerful options – to respond in the manner that they choose and to engage with brands and products via new channels.

The rise of social media actually enhances the survey in new ways. Surveys now have more launch options – in addition to email invitations, text messages, or links on websites, surveys can be launched via the social media sites themselves, and links can embedded within social media online and downloadable applications. Also, social media sites and applications allow for new information to be passed in and out of the survey dataset – gathering more data in a way that is invisible to the respondent.

The survey isn’t dying, rather it is evolving. Surveys of the future need to be shorter and more succinct to engage a public whose patience level and attention span is shrinking. Surveys of the future need to be more targeted to provide balance to the diversity found in the social media realm. And surveys of the future must be multi-device enabled – desktop, laptop, mobile phone, wireless PDA, TV, etc. – since respondents have so many web access options to choose from, and researchers cannot control that choice.

It would be irresponsible of the market research industry to ignore the growing implications of mobile and social media, just as it would be irresponsible not to plan for the other research shifts that are coming. As Richard C. Cushing said, “Always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.” As the industry that both predicts and drives the future, market research has to keep an eye on its own horizon. Some new and very powerful tools are being incorporated in our research practices. Yet some familiar and highly effective tools, like the survey, will most certainly remain.

One of the hottest industry topics this year has been the adoption of mobile research. There is consensus that the impact of mobile will be substantial, and that a major shift is already well underway. The industry continues to expound on the possibilities of this new frontier, and fret about the problems posed by wide scale implementation.

A significant issue is how to best support the wide array of cell phones (with greatly differing capabilities) that are used by mobile respondents. Providing surveys that are visually compelling on smartphones, yet straightforward enough to display on feature phones, can certainly be a challenge.

An even greater challenge is ensuring that the entire mobile experience is a positive one for panelists. Mobile research encompasses more than simply rendering surveys on cell phones – unless panelists can also access a mobile portal (to keep track of their available and completed surveys, update user information, redeem incentives, etc.), the likelihood of frustration is high. For instance, if a panelist receives a survey invitation while checking email on their cell phone and takes the survey, but then attempts to redeem incentives by accessing a website that is not optimized for mobile, their frustration will be even greater than if they had not been able to access the mobile survey at all. Researchers must offer a complete mobile experience, and ensure that their surveys and panels are optimized for any and every phone that a panelist might use.

The shift toward smartphones is happening fast. According to Nielsen, smartphones accounted for 14% of U.S. mobile devices at the end of 2008, and it predicts that smartphone penetration will exceed 50% by the end of 2011. Unquestionably this is impressive growth. Still, these numbers also indicate that feature phones will continue to have a prominent place in the mobile market for the foreseeable future.

While several vendors have launched new mobile solutions in the last couple of years, their predominant focus has been on smartphones, and many lack the technology for successful implementation on feature phones. Issues including device detection, scaling abilities (to fit the various screen sizes) and color configuration need to be addressed.

The best way to guarantee comprehensive device support is to select a mobile platform that is both proven and advanced. With CAMI®, Kinesis offers the best of both worlds. It provides one of the most robust device detection libraries with built-in support for over 2500 mobile devices in over 8000 different configurations, thereby ensuring that information will display correctly regardless of the phone type. It also offers the most advanced smartphone capabilities including revolutionary touchscreen support to optimize visibility and interaction on the newest and most dynamic phones. Plus, Kinesis has been developing and refining its mobile technology for much longer than the competition, having launched its first mobile market research platform in 2003.

Mobile offers a wealth of new possibilities for the market research industry, but only if the execution doesn’t alienate respondents. Utilizing a solution that is both cutting-edge and highly flexible is the key to success.