Posted by
Eric Bell on Tue, Nov 22, 2011 @ 09:56 PM
It’s called Immersive Research and it might just redefine your expectations for qualitative research.
THE REVELATION PROJECT
In this edition of the MRGA Social Advisory we spoke to Steve August, Founder & CEO of Portland, Oregon based Revelation - market research industry innovators. MRGA: Tell us about Revelation’s Company History. SA: Revelation grew out of the design research consultancy KDA Research. At KDA Research, we started playing with blogs, replacing the paper diaries we sent out prior to in-home visits. We found that not only did the blogs do a great job replacing paper diaries, but the sustained interaction actually provided incredible access to the day-to-day key moments of consumers – Immersive Research. We started speaking at conferences regarding our work and people started coming up to us asking, “Hey that’s so cool, can we use your tool?” This was 2004-2005 and we were working with blog systems that were not very researcher friendly. The only other choices were bulletin board systems which didn’t really fit what we were trying to do, so we decided to build a tool that was built from the ground up for Immersive Research.MRGA: For our members that don’t know what Immersive Research is, can you give us an idea of what that means to a market researcher that might find this solution useful?SA: Immersive Research is a framework for web and mobile qual that seeks to capture consumer behaviors, experiences, and emotions in context as they occur. Rather than replicating the question/answer of traditional research, it relies on activities that engage participants - photo diaries, video mini-documentaries, image metaphor exercises, and other projective activities. It produces incredibly rich ethnographic-level insights.
MRGA: What set Revelation apart from online qualitative services? SA: I think what Revelation does that sets apart – our core product competencies – is the ability to fuse methodology and technology in a way that makes for a great research experience. There is a tendency in the MR world to take any new technology and then simply graft the methodology onto the new technology. So focus groups become online focus groups. But that’s a really limiting approach. Revelation has always taken a mission-based approach to applying technology to research. We always start by asking what is the opportunity for the technology to help us with our fundamental MR mission – understanding people to answer business questions. That starting point produces a very different end point. I think that’s why our clients do business with us. We are able to articulate a vision of not just what opportunities the technology affords us, but how to adapt methods to get the most out of it. We do a lot of teaching and education, and ultimately that’s the highest form of marketing. We take this point of view inside of our company as well. We always strive to understand a vision of the future we want to create – whether it’s a new tool or our work environment – and then work tirelessly to make it happen. I think this is why our people are so motivated to create a great research experience. Our mantra is “create delight.” Revelation Project and Revelation Mobile (our iPhone and Android smart phone apps) combine a simple interface that conceals a smart back end that makes sifting through the insights as simple as telling Revelation to “Show Me” a participant, activity, segment, or combinations thereof. MRGA: Do you have any industry observations you would like to share and discuss? SA: I think this is a transformational time for the MR industry. Technology – and technology people – are driving traditional MR to change in key ways. Thinking about fundamental research principles, efficiency and business models are all in play. It’s an exciting time and Revelation is happy to be part of this transformational wave.MRGA: How do you think Revelation will contribute to this transformational wave? SA: When I founded Revelation, a big part of what I wanted to do was push research methods and technology forward, to share a vision of what the future for qual research could be. I think Revelation has a great start on this with the offerings we have brought to market. Additionally, we are always knowledge sharing - we host the Great Research Thinking webinar series to bring the latest thinking out of the conferences, as well as a number of practical application webinars and articles. We have some great stuff in the works - we are just getting started. MRGA: Does your company offer any case studies or white papers you can offer to our readers? SA: Our web site offers a number of case studies and white papers that speak to different aspects of Immersive Research.
MRGA: Does your company offer any type of demonstration, training, or trial around your product offerings? SA: We offer a live demo every Wednesday at 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern. We also offer trial evaluations. Webinar Registration:
MRGA: If our members would like to connect and do business with your firm or learn more about industry best practices for specialized segments your company offers what is the best way connect with your firm? SA: The best place to start is our web site www.revelationglobal.com.
MRGA: Thank you for the time you took to share with the MRGA and its members what Revelation is doing to innovate qualitative market research.
A pioneer in online qualitative research, Steve is considered a thought leader in the market research industry. He has hosted ESOMAR workshops, presented to ESOMAR’s Online Conference, the Market Research Association, the American Marketing Association, and the Qualitative Research Consultants Association. Steve has published articles in Quirk's Market Research Review, QRCA Views, and Research World. From 2007 through 2008, Steve also served as editor of the Journal of Online Research, and served on the program committee of ESOMAR's Qualitative 2008 conference.
Steve’s passion for innovation keeps Revelation on the cutting edge of online and mobile qualitative research techniques and tools.
About Revelation
Revelation uses aspects of the technology and philosophy behind the social web to give researchers the tools and methodologies to truly understand their consumers.
There is no better way to conduct online research than using Immersive Research: it’s honest, fast, and cost-effective.
Posted by
Eric Bell on Thu, Oct 27, 2011 @ 10:48 PM
In this week's interview I spoke with Will Oberman, Chief Technology Officer of CIVICSCIENCE. Pay close attention to this company, they have the potential to be the industry's next polling giant based on a simple idea: human nature, and addictive simplicity.
Will Oberman, Chief Technology Officer
Will is a veteran engineer and software architect with experience in several start-up ventures including Vivisimo and BodyMedia in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A graduate of the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, Will has managed complex technology teams and product roll-outs. His work on high-volume customer data collection and analysis, combined with his expertise in consumer-facing web applications, uniquely positioned him to lead the technological architecture and build-out of CivicScience.
EB: How did did CIVICSCIENCE get started?
WO: Our CEO John Dick started the company in a local technology incubator in Pittsburgh in January of 2008. I joined a couple months later as the Chief Technology Officer to help build out the technology products and engineering team. Most of the company's core technology and current team stemmed from various programs at Carnegie Mellon University.
EB: It’s interesting to hear about the anatomy of a start-up, what does CIVICSCIENCE do?
WO: We have two categories of products. The first is a distributed, scalable web application and database engine we developed to enable web publishers to deliver highly-efficient and optimized polls to their users.
EB: I have had the opportunity to try out the CIVICSCIENCE web application and I must say it’s a highly addictive system. The brilliance that CIVICSCIENCE uses is its simplicity, only asking you one question at a time. The platform compares your answers instantly across the CIVICSCIENCE network by offering a simple user experience with highly efficient data driven instantly. The company provides its sample universe instant incentive after each survey answer the respondent compares his or her answers to the rest of the community. I also like how the CIVICSCIENCE system automatically selects questions for you as you answer specific questions based on your interests. The platform also let’s you search for your favorite topics.
WO: The second service CIVICSCIENCE offers is aggregating data across the large networks of sites using our software to produce insight and market prediction products for marketing researchers, investment researchers, and political organizations.
EB: What kind of data are you able to provide for the specific segments mentioned above?
WO: We do a lot of real-time tracking of consumer sentiment, helping our clients understand how new ads are working or how a new product is going to sell. Our finance sector clients look to us to inform their investment decisions, based for example, on trends in consumer purchase intent.
EB: Why is this process better or more innovative than traditional survey predecessors?
WO: First of all, we don't have the fixed costs associated with traditional surveys. People answer our polls because they're fun or because they get some intrinsic value from it. This means we can collect a lot more data per day. Secondly, because we obsess about making the survey experience more enjoyable for people, we get more types of people to participate, reducing biases and creating more opportunities for analysis.
EB: Why do your clients do business with you?
WO: Consumer attitudes today are changing constantly, so companies can't just rely on a survey every few months to stay on top of things. We help our customers understand consumer sentiment in real-time while making it very affordable.
EB: That’s a very interesting point, so you mentioned that you can provide instant data and a more cost effective price. Can you give us an example of how some of your clients are maximizing your services and keeping their bottom line greener at the same time?
WO: We just finished an interesting project for an investment bank, helping them predict the attrition rate of Netflix subscribers based on their recent price increase. To do this right, we needed to survey lots of subscribers every couple of days to understand the trajectory of sentiment leading up to Netflix's earnings report. Collecting this kind of information, at this frequency, would be be cost-prohibitive through most data collection methods.
EB: Thank you for that example, and of course it goes without saying that it’s impossible to have a great product without great employees. Why do your employees work for you?
WO: There is a real sense of purpose at CIVICSCIENCE and everyone believes in it. We have a team of really smart people that also like to have fun. You can't find a good balance like that everywhere.
EB: How is CIVICSCIENCE innovating the core market research segment of online surveying and data collection?
WO: We are developing very powerful technology that is helping to solve systemic problems in attitudinal research. Because we can extract so much value out of a single poll question or two, we don't place a lot of burden on people who engage with us, which means more people participate without any need to compensate them. This allows us to collect huge volumes of real-time survey data at a very low cost.
EB: I think this is a brilliant model, that’s simple, easy to do, and highly addictive. I speak from my own experience of course, but what I find interesting is I’m not the only one that is proving this model. Anyone reading this should give this platform a try it out by following these simple steps:
1. Visits www.civicscicence.com
2. Type in your own search term or one of these that I found fun: “Market Research”, “Phones” or inspired by the Pacific Northwest “Coffee”...
3. Answer a question and see the instant results.
4. Warning: this is a highly addictive polling system!
EB: Do you have any industry observations you would like to share and discuss?
WO: As a team of software engineers, we're surprised at how many people in the marketing research industry seem to be afraid of innovation. Innovation doesn't always have to imply wholesale changes to the way things are done. In our case, we are taking a tried and true research method, the survey, and finding ways to make it more efficient in a new media paradigm. Most of the core principles of methodology, question design, and sampling discipline are still as important as ever.
EB: Well stated Will. I’ve experienced this observation myself with how slow our industry seems to adopt services and technology. It almost appears that our industry is around 2-5 years behind the rest of the marketing world. I have observed that our industry is starting to explode with new methods, services and processes with advent of social and mobile marketing. I noticed CIVICSCIENCE is highly entrenched with connecting these dots as well. I look forward to seeing what else comes from your team!
EB: Does your company have any new technology or innovation releases that your team would like to share with the Market Research Global Alliance?
WO: We're really excited about the consumer-facing website we launched in September. We think it's important to let people know what kind of information we're collecting, what we do with it, and how they can learn from it. We're not just obsessive about privacy. We want people to have access to and control over the information they share.
EB: Can you outline how you're doing this?
WO: Sure, you'll notice when you visit CIVICSCIENCE.com that your entire Voting History is available there, whether you answered questions on our site or through and of our hundreds of web applications. Users there can access their previous answers, change them, or opt out altogether.
EB: Does your company offer any case studies or white papers you can offer to our readers?
WO: Yes, we have many case studies and white papers developed from both a technical and applied research perspective available for download on our website by clicking here:
EB: Does your company offer any type of demonstration, training or trial around your product offerings?
WO: Of course. I usually leave that up to our sales team but we're always willing to let people take our technology for a test drive please contact our Senior VP of Sales, John Clifford at jclifford@civicscience.com
EB: If our members would like to connect and do business with your firm or learn more about industry best practices for specialized segments your company offers what is the best way connect with your firm?
WO: It's always easiest to start at our website, http://civicscience.com. Or you can email us at contact@civicscience.com.
EB: Will, thank you for making the time for us - I’m pleased to be covering this story. I think the ability CIVICSCIENCE offers to get real world feedback will be a game changer in online trends, statistics, sampling and omnibus services.
CIVICSCIENCE is a digital polling and market prediction company. We gather and organize the world's opinions through short polls delivered all over the web and social sphere. Our Intelligent Question Engine™ captures and digitizes consumer opinion, creating real-time insights for advertisers, investors, and civic leaders.
Posted by
Eric Bell on Mon, Oct 17, 2011 @ 09:59 PM
Leading The Way In Mobile Feedback Solutions
There is no question that mobile feedback is one of the hottest new methods of market research that in-house researchers are using and that full-service firms are deploying to attract new customers. The ability to capture emotional reactions to client products in real time is extremely useful in gaining consumer insight.
Last month Confirmit, an industry leader in feedback and multi-mode survey analytics, announced the acquisition of Techneos, a global leader in mobile market research.
I had the opportunity to interview both Henning Hansen the CEO of Confirmit, and Dave King the former Founder and President of newly aquired mobile feedback experts Techneos Systems, now King will lead Confirmit's Mobile Feedback division as Executive Vice President of Confirmit Mobile Solutions. Here is what they had to say...
EB: Why the merger between Techneos and Confirmit?
HH: The acquisition adds a comprehensive, feature-rich mobile component to our multi-channel Horizons technology platform and positions us for expansion in the fast-growing mobile engagement channel. We have been following the mobile space for some years and several of our clients spoke highly of Techneos. I personally met Dave for the first time back in December 2009 and was very impressed with the company and its highly-skilled people.
DK: Confirmit and Techneos very much complement each other and our relationship with Confirmit grew organically over time. We are both constantly seeking the best solutions for our customers so bringing together these two best in-class technologies makes sense from a business and customer perspective.
EB: It’s very interesting to watch the landscape transition as companies merge and partner. Last year’s trend and this year’s trend involved the largest online sample providers merging – it appears, that market research solution providers that can quickly adopt and figure out the mobile research landscape and how it applies to client needs will lead the way in 2012 innovation. Will the companies operate separately or integrate?
HH: The newly combined business will operate as Confirmit, putting best-in-breed end-to-end feedback and market research capabilities in the hands of organizations that seek to improve business processes.
Our intent is to turn Vancouver into a center of excellence for mobile development for Confirmit worldwide. Companies looking to deploy comprehensive, multi-channel programs will be able to benefit from the combined power of these best-of-breed technology platforms, enabling customers to take full advantage of the mobile channel and engage with respondents in a highly intuitive and immediate manner.
EB: Will Confirmit use the Vancouver facility as a lab or best practices hub for training its client base or is there a plan to teach the industry best practices in Mobile Research Surveying?
DK: Vancouver will be the center of excellence for all mobile initiatives within Confirmit. The core mobile research and development team for mobile will reside in Vancouver with access to the significant development resources in Russia and Oslo. With over 100 developers we have the largest development team in the industry – we will leverage that to move mobile initiatives forward. Confirmit has a robust, global training and support organization that addresses the needs of customers in more 50 Countries and users in more than 100 countries. We will scale the mobile training and support model to leverage this capability. We have also identified mobile point specialists around the world that will have the mandate to promote and share mobile best practices with the industry.
EB: How does your team think that the merger will affect the Market Research industry? What does this opportunity mean for the Mobile Research segment?
HH: Every day the mobile channel takes another step toward the forefront of feedback collection and market research. People aren’t always at their computers, but most of them won’t go anywhere without their mobile phones. As companies compete to gain deeper, more relevant insights about customers, they will increasingly invest in the mobile channel for gathering real-time, locationally-aware customer feedback.
Market Research is constantly evolving so mobile is another way of adapting to that change. With mobile research, you must excite, involve, listen and entertain if you want to maintain engagement — mobile users will disengage faster than from any other medium. We intend for mobile to be personal, relevant and timely or consumers won’t be engaged.
DK: Mobile has transitioned from a ‘would like to have’ to a ‘must have’ channel in any progressive, comprehensive voice of the customer strategy and now we need to focus on design and implementation that is specific to that channel.
The powerful combination of Techneos with Confirmit’s robust market-leading solution promises to advance the mobile engagement market. Confirmit’s end-to-end platform will set a new standard for scalable multi-channel enterprise-class customer feedback and market research programs that drive business process improvement.
EB: Can you give us some insight into the unified product offering?
HH: Confirmit provides a comprehensive yet simple way to gather and integrate feedback from employees, customers and market research panels at the point of experience. With Techneos technology, customers use mobile apps to pose relevant, real-time questions in a respondent’s preferred environment. Using mobile survey, feedback, panel, ethnography, face-to-face and digital diary solutions on any mobile devices, they can gather data about peoples’ expectations, motivations and intentions in over 200 languages.
DK: Confirmit’s new unified product offering will design customer engagement strategies to exploit what mobile will offer by taking advantage of capture and display of photo, video and audio. It will include GPS capabilities with location based services, barcode capture and be able to report and compile all of this information into one streamlined platform.
EB: It’s clear to me that Confirmit has thought out mobile strategy. I will be interested to see how your strategy plays out against innovating technology like OnePoint Mobile Surveys and Kinesis Survey Technology. I predict that Confirmit will be the dominating mobile force in the market research industry in 2012. Either way it will be interesting to see how accurate this prediction is this time next year.
Are there any new technology or innovation releases that your team would like to share?
HH: The first phase of integrating the two product lines are well underway and we are making Confirmit’s well established and very feature rich reporting and dashboard tool, Confirmit Reportal, fully integrated with the mobile offerings that we now have in place.
DK: We have a well deserved reputation for advancing the mobile data collection landscape for market research and corporate clients. You can be assured that the combined companies will even more aggressively make industry leading advances. We have a number of interesting developments, beyond integration that we will introduce in the coming months – stay tuned.
EB: Will the Confirmit mobile product set be in the cloud or software based?
DK: Current offerings include SMS – mobile browser and application based offerings. These solutions are delivered through both license and cloud based software as a service offerings. We will continue to offer a complete set of offerings for all platforms; all mobile modes and both license and cloud.
EB: If our members would like to connect with Confirmit or learn more about industry best practices for mobile surveying what is the best way connect with your firm?
HH: Our office in Vancouver will be the center of excellence for development and Dave King will be heading up our Mobile division. He will also be responsible for making sure that the great experience that we now have in mobile surveying is shared and transferred to our eight other offices.
DK: I’m delighted to build out the mobile capabilities within Confirmit and to establish leading best practices for the industry. I will continue to be available and can also draw on other subject matter experts.
EB: Henning and Dave, thank you for your time. It was an honor to interview both of you.
About Confirmit
Confirmit provides software that enables organizations to conduct Customer Feedback, Employee Feedback, and Market Research programs. Find out more about our management team, how to contact us, and how you can join us.