Kantar's Profiles Blog

A recent blog from Lisa Wilding-Brown likened panels to “the polar icecaps of the industry.” It referenced grabbing an ice cold beverage for the read and this was spot on - I found the article refreshing.

Why? Because another panel leader bluntly and accurately outlined the key issue for panels today - that surveys are no longer fit for purpose. We know more than 50 percent of panellists are engaging via their mobile devices, yet they complete only 2 percent of studies on these devices. What’s more, there is nearly double the drop off rate compared to PC users.

Combining Video and Mobile Responses for Cultural Insights

To explore cultural perceptions of the 2016 Lunar New Year, Lightspeed GMI recently conducted a mobile survey across China, Hong Kong and Singapore. By exploring new ways to augment data collection, we were able to gather in-depth responses through a combination of our mobile platform and VoxPopMe’s video component.

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:

On Monday, the best of UK’s marketing research industry gathered for the prestigious and glamorous 2015 Market Research Society (MRS) Awards. This annual ceremony acknowledges the insights and innovation behind each research success story - highlighting that ‘evidence matters.’ With three separate nominations this year, Lightspeed GMI stepped into a new world.   

Mobile diary panels consist of respondents documenting their behavior patterns in real time – they tell us what they eat, who they talk to, where they shop, what they buy and how many times. You can leverage these projects to assess brand loyalty, test product strategies and evaluate customer demographics.

To ensure your respondents are successfully logging accurate behaviors, the topic of your mobile diary project should be relevant to your respondents, not just your clients. More importantly, it should be simple and short. Eye-catching (i.e., fancy or pretty) question types make the survey interesting to look at, but when it is taken multiple times (in a diary study), it loses its luster. Keeping it simple and short (KISS) makes it easier for respondents to partake quickly.

Marketing research blends its rich history of data collection with technology-driven methodologies. The ultimate industry goal? To listen and to learn; to create a ‘story’ for our consumers.  

Stories create structure for understanding our world and ourselves. Kristin Luck’s story is unique. With a reputation for innovation, she is recognized as one of the pioneers of multi-media online research. Navigating through a male-dominated industry; Kristin launched Women in Research (WIRe) in 2007. In our two-part series, we talk with Kristin about WIRe, the future of marketing research and her thoughts on gender equality.

As market researchers we like to classify people and in particular we like to classify how people make decisions, but we have a dreadful habit of thinking that there are different types of people who think and make decision in these different ways. We define segments like loyalist and switchers, impulse vs. considered shoppers.

A dozen years ago, while working for Nielsen, I had the good fortune to work on the development of a service with YAHOO! Inc. that helped improve ad targeting on its main website. This was a very successful early Big Data research service that used purchase panel data in conjunction with YAHOO! surfing behavior. The surfing activity of a group defined from Nielsen’s purchase data was then scored against all YAHOO! visitors to improve ad placement on the site. Additionally, Nielsen offered a test and control approach to assess the ROI of the campaign. This was an innovative research service that provided inputs that made marketing activities more efficient.