Kantar's Profiles Blog

Spring is in the air! The grass is greener, trees are sprouting leaves and the flowers are beginning to bloom. For some, the season marks a time of new beginnings, but to others, it’s the start of cut grass and intense pollen. In 2015, 8.2% of American adults were diagnosed with hay fever, an allergy most commonly caused by pollen or dust, resulting in symptoms such as a runny nose, itchy eyes, scratchy throat and coughing. And in 2010, 11.1 million visits to a physician’s office resulted in a primary diagnosis of hay fever. 

Smart speakers are dramatically affecting consumers’ daily lives. According to Quartz blog, “These devices give companies access to a trove of user data in the form of every command a user asks of their device.” Today, 34 percent of Americans own a smart speaker and a new wave of devices are now hitting the consumer market.

With less than two week to go, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. But what does this look like to Australian consumers?

‘Tis the season to be jolly but it is also the season to know your consumer…even better than the rest of year, that is! We asked our Australian mobile and tablet respondents about a few of their plans for the festive period. Here’s what they told us.

Does the Atlantic hurricane season seem more intense this year than it has in recent years?

Note: This post was originally published on greenbookblog.com

From the moment I get up in the morning to the last thing at night I am immersed in information gathering.

News was something I used to read once a day. Ever since having a smart phone, my propensity to consume news has slowly increased month by month, and with the ever increasing proliferation of news aggregation apps, it’s becoming something I dip into almost every spare moment during the day. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning and last thing I do at night before switching off my phone is check the “news.” It has become a total addiction. In addition to news there is social media, which I consume with equal levels of hunger, be it Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. When I run out of new information from these sources to consume, I switch to doing things like looking through pictures on Instagram or virtual shopping on eBay. 

A study recently conducted by Lightspeed GMI, a leading global online research provider, shows only 54.4% of Australians plan to mark ANZAC Day this year.

Although this is a lower than expected percentage, for those that mark ANZAC day they do so with deep reverence. For 83.6% the day means remembering fallen soldiers, of which 33.3% specifically remember a loved one who fought for Australia and 23.0% remember a loved one who served in the military somewhere else. Just 12.9% see it as a day off work.

Recently Lightspeed GMI added verified voter data to our list of panel profilers. We did this by partnering with a political data provider who maintains a national database of more than 190 million voting records, including past behavior in state and federal elections. By matching our U.S. panel against this database and making the results of those matches available for sampling, our clients benefit from improved targeting for political research. For example, with our panel it’s now much simpler to ask political questions to past or prospective voters: