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 to a slight schedule shake up, Diane Hessan of Communispace presented “Online Communities: Mistakes, Misuses and Challenges” back-to-back with Felix Koch of Promise Communities, who presented “What’s Next? Five Predictions About the Future of Online Co-Creation.” This proved to be an ideal change because the two presentations offered a lot of synergy regarding how successful research communities operate today, and how they should evolve over the next few years.

During her presentation, Hessan shared some community best practice recommendations, as honed by Communispace’s extensive experience in running online communities for its clients. Some of her key takeaways were:

• Bigger is not always better – an ideal community size is 300-500 members, because as the number of members goes up, participation rates go down
• Communities should never be used simply as a means of delivering surveys – engagement is better sustained with multiple activities (an ideal split would be one third surveys / one third discussions / one third “other” activities)
• Researchers must remain focused on real listening instead of trying to create brand advocates – members want to feel invited to share their true opinions rather than be coerced into adopting ours, and they can always tell the difference (this argument could certainly apply beyond online communities to all research activities)

Next up, Koch offered his five predictions as to how online co-creation, which often occurs via research and social media communities, will change in the near future. He said co-creation will become more:

• Mobile – communities will have to support mobile interaction due to the escalation of mobile device use
• Engaging – competition for people’s online time will only get tougher and therefore communities must ensure they can attract and sustain attention
• Rewarding – as more participants become digitally literate and aware of the value they contribute, new incentive models will be constructed
• Playful – social games appeal to the online masses and are not limited to “gamers” anymore, therefore research gamification will continue to escalate
• Hybrid – communities will begin to combine both online and offline methods of communication to further enhance co-creation

The vast majority of the content from these two presentations aligns with Kinesis’ views as to the present and future of online research communities, and validates the future-proof functionality we built have into our new Kinesis Community™ solution. While market research online communities should not be utilized for all types of research, they do spur co-creation and provide insights that other research mediums cannot. Healthy and thriving communities are sustained by utilizing a community platform that is device-flexible, engaging, and highly advanced.

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 that successful panel management is tougher than it looks. Smaller research companies and brands often lack some of the skill sets that are crucial for maintaining a thriving panel. Larger organizations may very well have all of the necessary skill sets to manage their panels internally, but those skill sets reside in many different employees across several departments, and thus significant collaboration is required to achieve success.

For any research company or brand that is attempting in-house panel management, a full assessment of the required skill sets and communication channels should occur. Does your business have the resources and defined processes in place to ensure value is realized? Here is a high-level summary to consider.

Like all customer-facing business initiatives, research panels require a project manager to provide the general direction, define recruitment and engagement practices, oversee all components of the panel, and drive its success. A technical person with a keen sense of aesthetics/design skills is needed to develop the panelist website, integrate all required functionality, and thoroughly test for usability. Like all websites, a panel website requires continual attention to ensure dynamic content and remain memorable to panelists.  A compliance manager is necessary to ensure that personal and financial data is adequately secured, and that privacy policies and terms of use statements are available and up-to-date. Additional resources may be needed to manage the panelist authentication process, and perform ongoing list management/conversion tasks such as email-to-address matching and de-duplication. Customer support personnel are required to address any panelist support issues in a timely fashion. Recruitment expertise may be necessary if river or social media sample is to be introduced, if customer lists are to be augmented with external sources, or if multiple sources and modes are being managed. If the panel website allows for any discussion forums and/or content upload, a moderator should also be in place to regularly review activity and keep discussions flowing. And naturally, employees with market research know-how are essential to develop the surveys, manage invitation design and delivery (effective invitation design and delivery is an art unto itself, requiring knowledge of spam scoring, email deliverability, and subject line writing), provide incentive fulfillment, and interpret the data to deliver meaningful insights.

Often research companies and brands believe they can save money and maintain better control of the panel if it is managed in-house, and in many cases they are right.  But sometimes companies utilizing in-house management ignore ongoing development and personnel costs, and/or the cost of panel atrophy, which can occur from lack of adequate panel attention.  A panel should be thought of as a core business asset and should be monitored for performance on a regular basis.  While some companies find success, many others fail because they press on with in-house management when they lack the necessary skill sets and resources, and/or because critical cross-department collaboration does not occur.

Research panels provide immeasurable valuable when implemented and fostered correctly. Each organization must evaluate its capabilities with an honest assessment, and for those that lack any of the crucial panel management components, outsourcing can save not only time and money, but ensure panel health as well. An additional route to consider is a hybrid solution in which the research firm or brand maintains responsibility for certain aspects of panel management, while outsourcing others that require more specialized skills and knowledge. Many vendors, including Kinesis, allow for panel management services to be customized, and can even assist in the evaluation process of your internal resource capabilities.

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 compelling content, desirable incentives, and ease of use so that panelists remain engaged.

Another component of MROC success – and one often overlooked – is device compatibility. So often we as researchers look only to fulfill our research objectives, but communities, in order to be successful, must also fulfill the objectives of its members. Today one of the quickest ways to frustrate (and potentially lose) panelists is by not supporting a mobile version of your MROC website. With the extremely faced-paced growth of smartphone and tablet sales, all applications should now be designed to support users regardless of the device that they choose to utilize, and research panels and communities are no different. A Compuware study published in July indicated that consumers are increasingly growing impatient with websites that do not provide a satisfactory mobile experience. Some of the study’s key findings included:

• Mobile users’ expectations for mobile website speed continue to increase. 71% of global mobile web users expect websites to load as quickly, almost as quickly or faster on their mobile phone compared to the computer they use at home — up from 58% in 2009.
• More than 80% of mobile web users would access websites more often from their phone if the experience was as fast and reliable.
• A bad experience on a mobile website leaves mobile web users much less likely to return to, or recommend, a particular website. Nearly half of mobile web users are unlikely to return to a website that they had trouble accessing from their phone, and 57% are unlikely to recommend the site.

Given these consumer expectations, and knowing that researchers are increasingly competing for panelists, does it make any sense to have MROCs that support only certain types of browsers? Unequivocally, no. Furthermore, mobile users seem to be a group of potential panelists that are especially ideal for MROC recruitment. Statistics from some of the largest online communities indicate that a significant percentage of their members already engage with these communities via mobile devices. Consider that one third of Facebook’s 750 million users regularly access the application from their mobile phone, and 43% of Twitter users do. This means that a large segment of individuals who participate in online communities desire to do so using a mobile device.

Researchers who plan to launch a new MROC, and also those whose existing MROC is currently limited to computer browser interaction, need to immediately take steps to ensure mobile device compatibility. Failure to do so seriously undermines the potential of the MROC, and ultimately the quality of your research.

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 code implementation is not yet a widespread practice among our clients, nor among the greater market research industry, Kinesis is certainly ready when they are. Considering some recently released QR code usage statistics, it looks as if consumers – particularly those in younger demographics – are ready as well. Last week Comscore reported that 14 million Americans scanned a QR code using their mobile phones in June (representing 6.2 percent of the total mobile audience and 53.4 percent of users ages 18-34). In July, Mobio indicated that QR code scanning grew 9,840 percent in North America in Q2 2011 on a year-over-year basis.

What does this mean for market research? It means that there is a significant opportunity for the industry to get ahead of this mobile technology’s rapid adoption and capitalize on the benefits it affords our projects and clients. It means there is a less expensive and just-as-easy-to-use alternative to SMS short codes for general intercept research.  While short codes are currently the most commonly utilized method for recruiting respondents to provide feedback at retail stores, restaurants and other consumer-targeted locations, they are an expensive invitation delivery option. The client must incur a fee every time a potential respondent submits the short code – or worse – the respondent is charged for initiating the text. Here is the big “in” for QR codes – free for both parties!

QR codes can be displayed on promotional media just like SMS short codes, yet there is virtually no cost associated with their use.  While photographing a QR code first requires that a QR code reader application (app) is installed on the mobile device, several free and nominal cost apps are available for download on a variety of mobile devices. Additionally, as QR code usage continues to grow and becomes commonplace among mobile users, it is highly likely that smartphone OS providers will begin including QR code functionality as part of the standard mobile operating system, and thus eliminate the need for users to search for and download an app on their own.

For now, Kinesis recommends that all researchers who utilize short codes as an invitation delivery method also provide a QR code option. Using both in tandem provides potential respondents with greater flexibility and offers a choice that is free of charge. In the future, as QR code knowledge and usage continues to grow among consumers, QR codes will very likely supplant SMS short codes, unless the fee structure of SMS usage is radically changed.

The market research industry has an opportunity to lead mobile marketers to greater QR code adoption and assist them to reduce the research costs for many general intercept projects. Won’t you join us?