Get Movin' With Mobile

Regardless of market or product category, clients desire a front row seat to the consumer as a means for garnering colourful and contextual insight beyond survey data. They also desire speed, enabling them to make smarter decisions faster married with geographic and cultural accessibility. At the same time, consumers are more connected to the world and to each other via their mobile phones and tablets.

Mobile research is not just about getting a survey on a phone or a tablet. It's about connecting with people that are living and functioning in a mobile environment.

Recently, my colleague, Maureen Evans, hosted a presentation during which she offered a strategic perspective on how Ipsos is designing and executing mobile research efficiently around the globe. No doubt, attendees quickly realized why and how mobile can be utilized as an alternative medium for reaching and engaging your consumers. Here are a few highlights from Maureen's presentation.

Key Take-Away #1

Mobile technology truly is the one innovation that has forever impacted consumer behaviour. By incorporating it into our research methodologies, we are able to engage with consumers when it matters most - when they are actually in the moment - as a means for obtaining richer, more discriminating data and for garnering contextual insights beyond what most traditional surveys can provide. But when it comes to mobile, we need to change the way that we think, especially when it comes to research. The question is not `how do I get a 30-minute survey onto mobile?' - because the answer is you simply don't. We need to understand that mobile is about connecting; it's about connecting with people in the context of the life that they're living today, in a manner that's convenient and familiar for them, and also that is engaging and easy.

Key Take-Away #2

While most would agree that they need or want to incorporate mobile research, many of our clients are not sure how to introduce and use mobile within their respective organizations. So the question is, why mobile? It comes down to three primary benefits: reach, engagement and efficiency.

1. Mobile penetration has surpassed online penetration, meaning we can now reach consumers in virtually every emerging and developed market: at any age demographic, segment and language.
2. The mobile medium also enables your teams to engage in decision making more quickly, thus accelerating your stage gate process and possibly eliminating steps along the way, setting a new pace for driving innovation across your product or service categories.
3. The medium itself is efficient, requiring us to constrain our surveys to 7-8 minutes with no more than 12-15 questions. We now focus on what really matters; what we absolutely need to learn in order to make a sound decision. That said, the scales themselves also need to be engaging. Whether its sliders or graphics, the user interface needs to feel familiar and the survey language needs to map to your sample group.

Key Take-Away #3

For mobile to work, it has to be convenient for the respondent and it has to be convenient for your organization.

• It simply must be convenient for the consumer. We must engage them in real-time, while in the moment, on a device they're comfortable with.
• Ipsos' mobile platform also makes it convenient for you. Whether it's through our mobile web survey or via our mobile app, we flex our mobile tools to meet your research needs.

Key Take-Away #4

We know that with the increased proliferation of mobile phones, consumers in general are steadily becoming hard to reach via traditional online panels. We also know that you need to reach your consumers faster, yet it's getting increasingly difficult trying to access hard to reach segments such as young males, teens, some ethnic populations and even B2B samples.

Our unique mobile sampling technology utilizes a "blended" sampling approach, which pulls from both traditional panels as well as direct from mobile river traffic. The result: qualified respondents who are engaged and motivated to participate.

Key Take-Away #5

Mobile surveys are not meant to replace traditional strategic research. Mobile surveys are generally short, with small sample sizes. They are ideal for a quick gut check or a last minute disaster check, enabling you to make smarter decisions faster. They are ideal when you need in the moment context, or even over time via longitudinal diaries. Use them to capture feedback in the respondent's words or profiling behaviours and experiences based on geo-location.

To listen to Maureen's full webinar which features three case studies, please click here.