Radiance Blog

Surveys have been conducted door-to-door, by phone and mail, and more recently on the Internet. Researchers are already looking to what’s next.

At the AMA‘s market research conference in Denver earlier this year, Hugh Davis, from Greenfield presented the future of market research – mobile phones. You can check out his presentation here. The software and technology is still in development and testing for the most part, but mobile research is today where online research was 10-15 years ago, and with the rate of technological adoption, I don’t think we’ll have to wait long before mobile surveys become common place in our research tools.

What most intrigued me about mobile research though are the new opportunities it creates. Mobile technology probably won’t completely replace other survey modes (he gives several reasons why), but it can give you access to people when you traditionally wouldn’t have access, and maybe just as important, it gives people access to you when they normally couldn’t.

Hugh gives several possible uses of mobile research; some of my favorites include:

• Location based research (having people respond to a text while they are still at a location or event instead of asking them later through another survey form)
• Sending pictures via their phone (what’s in your kitchen pantry right now?)
• “Filling the gaps in your day” surveys (asking people to take short surveys while they’re waiting to do other tasks … e.g., commercial breaks, waiting for the train, etc.).

Hugh also notes the potential for “mobile diary” usage of this medium. Among other things, this could be a great way to collect travel patterns information, where people can enter brief updates as they commute around throughout the day. It can also be used to track progress on purchasing decisions or any other attitudinal or behavioral issue by asking for brief updates at the same time every day for a period of time.

I think another powerful use may come in the future as more and more phones can identify where you are (as opposed to having to identify your location by a text). He does mention this as well for surveying people while they are still at a location or shortly thereafter. You could ask someone to be a secret shopper when you know they’re already at the store, and tourism departments could survey people when they’re traveling. This could also be used to pre-recruit participants for future studies. Since mobile surveys are limited in length, the user could be identified to participate in a more in-depth survey later. For instance, if you dine at a certain restaurant or go to a show, you may receive a survey the next morning asking about your night out (still pretty close to the actual event). And if the mobile user is also on the research provider’s online panel, they wouldn’t even have to answer questions via their phone – who wants to be surveyed while at dinner anyway.