Last summer Kinesis offered up our Top 10 Predictions as to how mobile technology will significantly transform market research over the next few years. Included on the list was a prediction that “apps will be a mostly transitional phenomena in the industry.” This prediction likely did not sit well with the market research software providers [...]

When Apple first announced the iPad two years ago this month, it was received with very mixed reviews among the technology gurus and press. While some immediately saw its value, many others predicted that it would fail. Leading tech reporters deemed the iPad “disappointing,” and its utility as “awfully thin.” Fast forward to now, and [...]

To date, sampling costs for mobile respondents have been higher than those for traditional web respondents. This reality has left many market researchers hesitant to recommend mobile (or mixed-mode) survey projects to their clients. It is true that mobile research methods can be more expensive during initial implementations, but this is primarily because mobile is [...]

Earlier this month Adobe – creator of Flash technology – announced that it will no longer develop out Flash for smartphone and tablet devices and will only continue providing security updates and patches. When it comes to mobile support, Adobe is instead getting on the HTML5 bandwagon with Apple, Google, Microsoft, and RIM. Regardless of [...]

SoLoMo is the new acronym on the block, according to the presenters at last week’s Geo-Loco Conference held in San Francisco. Executives from Google, Facebook, and Starbucks were among those who discussed the convergence of the Social, Local and Mobile platforms and how the marketplace is being transformed through this synergy.  Many of the sessions [...]

Today is the Main Stage segment of the second annual NewMR Virtual Festival, and many highly insightful sessions on various market research topics have occurred thus far. Since Kinesis recently introduced our new multi-mode online community solution, the presentations on this topic were of particular interest to us, and these sessions did not disappoint. Due [...]

  Peter Harrison of BrainJuicer UK presented “The Researchification of Games” at ESOMAR 3D today. BrainJuicer believes that incorporating gaming into market research may solve the most basic crisis of our industry …the fact that we ask research participants (via surveys and communities) to answer questions in a purely theoretical context, while people’s basic, everyday [...]

  There are many resources available, including several from Kinesis, that detail best practices for mobile surveys. Harder to find are best practice recommendations specific to mobile survey invitations; while there are actually numerous invitation options to consider, little information is available to the MR industry as to which are most effective for any given [...]

With tight budgets and shrinking revenues in the face of a weak economy, more market research firms and brands are electing to bring management of their panels in-house. Self-management can offer greater control over the panel’s processes, features and usage, and provide a means to monetize other assets, such as website visitors. The problem is [...]

ESOMAR Congress 2011 took place last week in Amsterdam, and as usual, it did not disappoint in providing thought-provoking sessions. Some very interesting and entertaining presentations were given on new and emerging research techniques – most notably gamification and behavioral economics – and the overall tone of the event was one of renewed creativity. Whereas [...]

Launching and sustaining a thriving market research online community (MROC) website is a critical component of panel-based research, yet doing so can be a significant challenge even in the best of circumstances. With the vast number of websites and social media tools competing for panelists’ online time, researchers need to ensure that our MROCs offer [...]

Earlier this year Kinesis unveiled QR code support for Kinesis Survey™ so that clients could automatically generate a QR code for any mobile or multimode survey. Just last month we introduced the most advanced MROC portal, Kinesis Community™, which also can utilize QR codes as a means to drive recruitment of new panelists. While QR [...]

The Survey Geek recently posted a highly sarcastic (and highly entertaining) blog entitled How to write a mobile research pitch piece. It labels mobile research as largely “hype,” questions the significance and usefulness of mobile as a data collection platform, and postulates that most researchers who pitch mobile to their clients lack proof of its [...]

Watch this video to learn about Kinesis Survey‘s extensive mobile survey capabilities and see cutting-edge mobile research technologies in action. Video by: Raven Productions  

Merlien Institute’s Market Research in the Mobile World conference took place earlier this week and was a resounding success. The varied sessions offered the best mobile research content of any conference this year, and attendees were highly engaged and inspired. The conference offered four topical modules over two days, with numerous speakers and expert roundtables. [...]

Increasingly research projects are conducted across geographic regions, thereby requiring that surveys be available to respondents in multiple languages. Often researchers attempt to program multilingual surveys by cutting and pasting from one or more word processing documents, and the results of this method can sometimes be painful. Translated versions may not contain all of the [...]

Recently our president Leslie Townsend presented sessions focusing on mobile market research at both the CASRO Technology and MRA Annual conferences. Each session had time for Q&A at the end, and the CASRO presentation produced a very interesting question on the topic of “jailbreaking.” The attendee was curious as to how the market research industry [...]

All researchers are continually seeking creative ways to build dynamic surveys that keep respondents engaged. Use of embedded video is an excellent option to achieve this goal, as multimedia can often communicate at a deeper level than words and images alone. As the leading survey software solution, Kinesis Survey™ fully supports embedded video usage so [...]

The AAPOR Annual Conference short course entitled “Designing Surveys for Mobile Devices,” presented May 11th by Mario Callegaro of Google and Tim Macer of Meaning Ltd., was the best-attended mobile session that we have seen so far. The first half of the tutorial focused upon statistics that impact the survey research industries.  Callegaro presented data [...]

As a continuation from our last post on least-filled quotas, let’s resume exploring the various programming options available for rotating response alternatives within a survey question. There are of course multiple ways to rotate the order in which response alternatives display to respondents, and while each is implemented with the common goal of eliminating potential [...]

Virtually all researchers are aware that survey responses can be significantly impacted by the way the questions are designed. Language choice, level of detail, and the number of response alternatives can all influence the respondents’ selection. Most also understand that the ordering of response alternatives can likewise have a serious effect on survey results, and [...]

The March issue of Research Magazine includes a detailed review of Kinesis Survey™ by Tim Macer. We certainly like what he had to say. Some highlights: “Offers a feature set as advanced as any of the established major players” “…Kinesis has already enticed an impressive list of high-profile research companies in the USA away from [...]

The Kinesis team is just back from exhibiting at the ARF Re:think 2011 Convention in New York. What was HOT for Kinesis at ARF?  QR codes. Kinesis recently unveiled built-in support for QR code generation that enables respondents to take a picture of a displayed QR code with their camera phone and immediately trigger a [...]

Last October we published a blog post that called for A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action Please concerning the most pressing issues in market research for 2011. This was an informal appeal to the industry to move away from conceptual and theory-based presentations and papers about why market research practices must evolve, and [...]

Good news for market research fans in the US! ESOMAR decided to condense the best presentations from its previous events with an ESOMAR Best Of road tour – coming to a location near you. The kick-off was this week in New York, with more US cities to be added, and possibly other international destinations as [...]

The market research industry is currently facing some big challenges. New technologies such as mobile and social media are being rapidly adopted by research participants, and therefore dramatic changes to our processes and methodologies are required. At the same time, research budgets and project timelines are shrinking, making it difficult to quickly and effectively implement [...]

You have probably seen one of the Esurance commercials with this tagline: “Technology when you need it. People when you don’t™.” This line does a good job of communicating what today’s consumers want out of customer service. Sometimes we want the speed and anonymity that technology provides us – no human interaction needed or desired. [...]

Here comes another new year, so inevitably it is time to make those New Year’s resolutions. Many of us will make personal resolutions – probably to get healthier or to spend more quality time with loved ones. But what about professional resolutions? The market research industry is undergoing a full-fledged revolution, and now is the [...]

In our previous blog, Kinesis detailed the essential considerations for mobile survey design. The development of effective, engaging and succinct mobile surveys is crucial as the industry moves to adopt mobile research, and hopefully you found our best practices recommendations useful. Now let’s turn the attention to mobile panels – an equally critical factor in [...]

For the MR industry, the time to capitalize on mobile research is now. According to an eMarketer report, U.S. mobile Internet usage is projected to increase to more than 101.1 million users (32.3% of the population) in 2011, and similar growth is occurring around the world. This group represents a huge and largely untapped respondent [...]

The growth of social media has dramatically changed the way people share personal information with each other. Social networking websites allow individuals to provide a wealth of data about themselves, from basic demographic facts to highly personal information and images. These sites also offer their members/users a platform to express opinions on activities, events, brands [...]

Throughout the past 20 years, the market research industry has seen a dramatic shift in the way research is collected, analyzed, and reported. Researchers are no longer merely collecting and processing data for individual paper or CATI research projects; they are now integrating information across multiple studies, collecting information from any and all electronic devices [...]

For the market research industry 2010 can arguably be called the year of change – or perhaps more accurately – the year of discussing change. The predominant theme at all of the conferences, and on all of the blogs and forums, has been about identifying the new technologies and methodologies that are impacting market research. [...]

The recent ESOMAR Congress in Athens delved into many new research techniques including mobile research, social media, and communities, as well as some of the more traditional research methodologies.  One particularly interesting theme was Semiotics.  The topic of semiotics seems especially appropriate at events such as ESOMAR Congress, where the audience – from exhibitors to [...]

One of the most powerful tools in modern market research is the online community portal. It enables one-stop access to all community information for panelists, and provides a comprehensive method for soliciting and collecting feedback for researchers. But while creating an online community is fairly easy, maintaining a successful online community often proves challenging. In [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The market research industry has spent much time and effort on the issue of data quality in recent years. With the rise of online research, the need to identify suspicious respondent behaviors (duplications, speed-through completions, unauthorized access locations, etc.) has become crucial to data credibility. In search of a resolution, many articles have been written, [...]

Most in the market research industry are aware of Gartner’s report from earlier this year that predicts that mobile phones will surpass PCs as the most commonly used web access device in 2013. Even if this prediction proves inaccurate, no one disputes that mobile browsing is growing year after year at an unprecedented rate, and [...]

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