There's an app for that: Mobile-based app surveys hold great potential for polling
by Glen Bolger & Trip Mullen / Jan 07 2014
As Americans increasingly turn to mobile phones as their primary platform of communication, survey researchers must adapt with new methodologies to reach audiences no longer connected to landline telephones.
The latest numbers from the National Health Interview Survey show just how quickly households are becoming cellphone-only. According to the survey, 38.2 percent of American homes have only wireless telephones, and even 15.9 percent of households with landlines still receive all or most of their calls on wireless phones.
Political researchers have responded to this growing trend by increasing the number of interviews being conducted via cellphones in their surveys. But thanks to the current legal restrictions on the dialing of cellphones, including more mobile phones in survey research significantly increases the cost of conducting a poll.
So where do we go next? At Public Opinion Strategies, we've been experimenting with mobile surveys. App-based mobile survey research is at the forefront of new technology for reaching both consumers and voters. Conducting research through a mobile app offers an interactive experience for the respondent that's not possible over the phone or even through
online research. The application allows survey researchers to harness mobile device capabilities like touch screens, built-in cameras, and GPS positioning.
In conjunction with MFour Mobile Research, we recently conducted the first ever national political survey hosted entirely on mobile phones and tablets using MFour's Surveys on the Go application. Surveys on the Go is a mobile app that allows users on iOS, Droid, or Mobile Web devices to respond to surveys sent directly to their devices.
Using this platform, Public Opinion Strategies interviewed 800 adults over the span of two days on a wide range of political topics from perceptions of the two major parties to
immigration to the presidential aspirations of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The major advantages of app-based mobile survey research are threefold. First, it presents researchers with a new tool for interviewing harder to reach groups like younger voters and minority voters more quickly and more cost effectively.
Push notification abilities allow the app to collect hundreds of interviews over the span of a few hours, giving fast moving campaigns the ability to quickly gather important data. And since the app does not require an interviewer to individually dial a respondent's mobile phone number this data collection comes at a fraction of the cost of standard mobile survey research.
The second major benefit of app-based mobile research lies in the technology. Researchers can collect datasets on this platform that can't be collected via traditional polling. Among the application's abilities: audio clip playback, audio recording, picture and video capture, heat map displays, and moment-to-moment video capture that performs in a manner similar to traditional video dials.
During our national mobile survey we applied heat map technology to photos of Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail. The app allowed respondents to select the areas of the photograph that most caught their attention. Respondents were able to react viscerally and emotionally to a visual prompt, and it brought the most important aspects of the image into focus for analysis.
In another section of the survey we asked respondents to take a photo of a nearby item that most reminded them of the Republican Party, and then one that most reminded them of the Democratic Party. As one might expect, the majority of the images for each party had negative connotations-there were toilets and trash cans. But respondents in this section also demonstrated a high level of creativity. One photographed a Star Wars DVD cover. The message: Republicans represent the Dark Side. Another respondent submitted a picture of a vise and commented that Democrats are "squeezing the middle class."
The third positive of the mobile survey application, and probably the area of biggest potential for political campaigns, is the ability to test various media formats across a statistically valid audience. Most campaign media is currently tested in qualitative focus group-style settings during which a handful of participants are asked to perform dial tests or evaluate print media. Using a mobile survey application you can test these same ads across hundreds of respondents and have hard quantitative data for analysis.
The potential exists to test print ads, mailers, campaign spokespeople, logos, radio ads, and video ads with hundreds of respondents before they are released. The multimedia advantages in particular set this tool apart from traditional telephone survey research.
Is mobile-based application survey research perfect? No. As one would expect from a survey conducted over smartphones and tablets, the audience skews younger than the normal likely voter population. Reaching older voters on a survey application is challenging, and like online research, you are limited to the panel of the application provider instead of a truly random sample.
However, these panels are rapidly expanding, and as Americans increasingly integrate their smartphones into all areas of their lives, the mobile survey application audience will only continue to grow.
For political researchers, the mobile survey application must be viewed as a new tool to supplement the current research being performed in the U.S. Is it the best methodology to take a quick snapshot of the ballot in a Congressional or Senate race? It's not, but it does expand what researchers can offer in terms of media testing and reaching younger voters faster and more cost effectively than ever before.
Glen Bolger is a partner and cofounder of Public Opinion Strategies. A full report on the survey is available on the firm's TQIA Blog.
For more about MFour Mobile Research and an in-depth look at the app solution, visit us at mfour.com.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Monday, November 25, 2013
“Influencer Surveys,” Gauging those who Engage the Rest of Us
Here’s an interesting statistic. Of the nearly 2,000 Surveys On
The Go app downloads and smartphone accounts created on our platform
every single day, more than 40% of them are making the choice to log-in
via Facebook.
How many Facebook friends do you have? Do you have more than 1,000? Well, because our respondents allow us to view their profiles including friends, we can target the most active and popular “Facebookers” out there and get to the most influential respondents on the web today.
“Non-Buyer,” Studies. Why didn’t Consumers Buy?
In a recent GPS location study we conducted, more than half of the 1,000 respondents leaving a popular retail-clothing store after spending more than 15 minutes in the store didn’t buy the item that they went in for. Why? We can’t tell you…but we certainly gave our client the answer.
GPS and our patent pending technology allows us to target shoppers as they enter a location, as they leave a location and anytime in between. And for the first time in history, it is giving researchers the ability to accurately gauge the opinions of buyers and non-buyers alike.
“Competitive Shopping” Studies – How Do I Stack up to the Competition?
Understanding your competition is every bit as important as understanding yourselves. Last month we wrapped us a competitive study comparing experiences of 2,000 fast food shoppers at three different chains – in location – and in less than two days.
Call us to talk about your needs and ways to design your next mobile study. Please contact Andrew Fang at 714.754.1234 or afang@mfour.com
For more about MFour Mobile Research and an in-depth look at the app solution, visit us at mfour.com.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Your Platform, Our Mobile-Only Panel
The shift to mobile is accelerating as Americans continue to abandon desktops and laptops for Internet access through mobile devices. This means traditional online research projects that fail to account for the growing "mobile only" demographic are relying on an increasing increasingly skewed universe.
The difficulty for many research firms is that they've invested thousands, if not millions, of dollars into custom online platforms, making the shift to mobile seem daunting.
MFour Mobile Research can help. Our Surveys on the Go® (SOTG) panel includes more than 400,000 mobile-only U.S. consumers, and includes some of the most hard-to-reach online panelists - such as teens, 18- to 34-year-olds and minorities.
Online research platforms optimized for mobile can now filter directly into the SOTG system and panel so that SOTG panelists can complete surveys directly on your platform. All of the SOTG panelists were recruited on and participate via mobile devices, so you can be sure your sample reaches where traditional online can't.
The SOTG system also provides you with access to the power of smartphones, such as location-based survey research as well as picture, video and audio capture.
Finally, as mobile experts, we can provide consultation support on the art of designing surveys for mobile screen real estate to ensure you are delivering a survey design that works.
If you would like to know how you can get your platform accessing the Surveys on the Go® mobile panel, please contact Rick Wilson at 714.754.1234 or rwilson@mfour.com.
For more about MFour Mobile Research and an in-depth look at the app solution, visit us at mfour.com.
The difficulty for many research firms is that they've invested thousands, if not millions, of dollars into custom online platforms, making the shift to mobile seem daunting.
MFour Mobile Research can help. Our Surveys on the Go® (SOTG) panel includes more than 400,000 mobile-only U.S. consumers, and includes some of the most hard-to-reach online panelists - such as teens, 18- to 34-year-olds and minorities.
Online research platforms optimized for mobile can now filter directly into the SOTG system and panel so that SOTG panelists can complete surveys directly on your platform. All of the SOTG panelists were recruited on and participate via mobile devices, so you can be sure your sample reaches where traditional online can't.
The SOTG system also provides you with access to the power of smartphones, such as location-based survey research as well as picture, video and audio capture.
Finally, as mobile experts, we can provide consultation support on the art of designing surveys for mobile screen real estate to ensure you are delivering a survey design that works.
If you would like to know how you can get your platform accessing the Surveys on the Go® mobile panel, please contact Rick Wilson at 714.754.1234 or rwilson@mfour.com.
For more about MFour Mobile Research and an in-depth look at the app solution, visit us at mfour.com.
Monday, September 23, 2013
How Mobile Research is Reinventing Mystery Shopping
What really drives a consumer to choose one company’s
brand over its competitor? The number one reason people pick one
product over another is due to recommendations from people they know.
A study of service industry consumers shows “one unhappy customer will tell eight to 10 people of their bad experience.” Each of those 10 people, the report shows, will tell five more customers about the original bad experience.
This means up to 60 potential customers are actively turned away when one customer receives subpar service. Along the same lines, each happy customer can steer dozens of new ones your way.
The key is ensuring your customers receive a consistent, outstanding
experience every time they come in contact with your company. The ideal
method to determine whether your customers are receiving this
experience is to collect data through mobile secret shoppers –
delivering real visibility into the inner workings of your organization
at the moment consumers experience your brand.
Whether you want to measure employee’s suggestive selling and adherence to company policy or the overall focus on guest/customer satisfaction – secret shopping through Surveys on the Go will deliver timely and unbiased data from any location nationwide. This can ultimately give you the ability to measure execution against intent and pinpoint areas of improvement.
Furthermore, with the introduction of mobile research, not only can you get data from secret shoppers, you’ll be able to track thousands of your customers’ natural shopping behavior as they shop your brand…and your competitors’. A recent MFour study utilizing the Surveys on the Go platform found consumers from the ages of 18 to 49 visit, on average, three retail locations per day. By combining mystery-shopping methodologies with mobile GPS capabilities on the phone, Surveys on the Go can track your customer’s behavior and opinions with unprecedented accuracy.
For more about MFour Mobile Research and an in-depth look at the app solution, visit us at mfour.com.
A study of service industry consumers shows “one unhappy customer will tell eight to 10 people of their bad experience.” Each of those 10 people, the report shows, will tell five more customers about the original bad experience.
This means up to 60 potential customers are actively turned away when one customer receives subpar service. Along the same lines, each happy customer can steer dozens of new ones your way.
So how do you know if you’re turning customers into advocates for your brand?
Whether you want to measure employee’s suggestive selling and adherence to company policy or the overall focus on guest/customer satisfaction – secret shopping through Surveys on the Go will deliver timely and unbiased data from any location nationwide. This can ultimately give you the ability to measure execution against intent and pinpoint areas of improvement.
Furthermore, with the introduction of mobile research, not only can you get data from secret shoppers, you’ll be able to track thousands of your customers’ natural shopping behavior as they shop your brand…and your competitors’. A recent MFour study utilizing the Surveys on the Go platform found consumers from the ages of 18 to 49 visit, on average, three retail locations per day. By combining mystery-shopping methodologies with mobile GPS capabilities on the phone, Surveys on the Go can track your customer’s behavior and opinions with unprecedented accuracy.
For more about MFour Mobile Research and an in-depth look at the app solution, visit us at mfour.com.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
San Francisco Chronicle: Smartphones revolutionizing political polling
Smartphones revolutionizing political polling
By Carla Marinucci
7/24/13
Claudia Gibson remembers when pollsters from the Field Poll called her on a landline - "dumb phones," she calls them - to ask her views on political campaigns and elections.
Today, Gibson, 67, has an iPhone and she's still giving her opinions.
She's part of a revolution in public opinion research - one of 300,000 Americans and 36,000 Californians who are regularly tapped on their smartphones. Gibson gives her views on everything from "What kinds of foods I eat" to "Where do I shop" to "Do I drink beer?" she said.
A family law court supervisor who lives in Marin and works in San Francisco, Gibson signed up for an app called Surveys on the Go, which pays respondents from a few cents to as much as $30 for taking part in marketing and political research.
"I'm always blunt," she said Tuesday. "It's interesting to see what are the trends people are talking about ... and I feel my opinion matters."
Smartphones, which have revolutionized the way Americans of all ages communicate, listen to music and shop, are taking an increasingly important role in political research, helping to track voters' views on issues, ads and candidates.
Immediate feedback
Veteran GOP Sacramento consultant Rick Claussen, who has been involved in dozens of ballot issues and political campaigns, said measuring public opinion has traditionally been time consuming because it involves speaking directly to people - by landlines at their homes or by convening focus groups.
Claussen is among the political consultants and strategists relying on new technology such as Surveys on the Go, which allows him to use mobile-phone research that harnesses GPS and to get immediate feedback from targeted voter groups.
Shortened time frame
"We can do things in 24 hours that used to take a week," said Claussen, who has used mobile-phone research to track Californians' responses to political messaging in ads and campaigns. "It's revolutionary stuff."
With the Surveys on the Go app, consumers with mobile technology and smartphones volunteer to take part in public opinion research on topics that interest them - but only when they want.
The firm pays for the opinions, promising that on average, the surveys will pay $1 to a participant and take a few minutes - with respondents paid via PayPal once their account has reached $10.
Chris St. Hilaire, a former political director to an Assembly minority leader and president and CEO of MFour Mobile Research, an Orange County firm that introduced the surveying app, said "the template for running a political campaign has dramatically changed over the last 10 years."
St. Hilaire said the tens of thousands of Californians who, like Gibson, have signed up for Surveys on the Go are part of a growing army that allows pollsters and researchers to "survey by state, by city, by block, by house, by doorstep."
Thanks to GPS tracking, St. Hilaire said, "I can ask you when you've walked by a billboard and what you liked and didn't like about it."
Mark DiCamillo, director of Field Research in San Francisco and producer of the nonpartisan Field Poll that has measured California public opinion since 1947, reaches voters on both landlines and mobile phones.
He said the new wave of mobile research is intriguing and promises "great innovation" in targeting specific populations. But to date, he cautions, such technology is "not broad enough" by itself to provide a random sample and to produce a reliable snapshot of public opinion in election and political research.
That's especially true in California, with its diverse electorate of 18 million voters, he said.
The future is mobile
Still, the work done by St. Hilaire's firm has won fans from political operatives and business people.
"Technology is completely defining how we measure public opinion," said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable who also used St. Hilaire's firm when he was political director of the California Chamber of Commerce.
Lapsley said that the technology allowed him to do a "cutting-edge" survey series of public views on ballot issues last year and that the accuracy of the studies convinced him that the future for policy research will very soon rest with mobile research.
Increasingly, "landlines are dead" in consumer research, Lapsley said, adding that he is convinced that for political polling, "this is the way it will be done - all of it - in the next few years."
Democratic pollster Ben Tulchin of San Francisco, who has worked with St. Hilaire's firm on traditional political polling, said "the coolest thing about their technology is doing real-time testing of consumer stuff ... and ad testing."
Under old methods, "you used to have to grab (consumers) and get them to fill out a questionnaire," such as in a shopping mall, he said. But with GPS trackers, researchers can know when "you go into a Gap, and they can hit you with a survey" to gauge immediate reaction.
Tulchin acknowledges that traditional methods of political polling remain "the gold standard." But with mobile phones in the hands of millions of Americans, "this is the future of our industry," he said. "And the future is probably closer than many of us think."
View story online here.
Carla Marinucci is The San Francisco Chronicle's senior political writer.
E-mail: cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com
Twitter: @cmarinucci
By Carla Marinucci
7/24/13
Claudia Gibson remembers when pollsters from the Field Poll called her on a landline - "dumb phones," she calls them - to ask her views on political campaigns and elections.
Today, Gibson, 67, has an iPhone and she's still giving her opinions.
She's part of a revolution in public opinion research - one of 300,000 Americans and 36,000 Californians who are regularly tapped on their smartphones. Gibson gives her views on everything from "What kinds of foods I eat" to "Where do I shop" to "Do I drink beer?" she said.
A family law court supervisor who lives in Marin and works in San Francisco, Gibson signed up for an app called Surveys on the Go, which pays respondents from a few cents to as much as $30 for taking part in marketing and political research.
"I'm always blunt," she said Tuesday. "It's interesting to see what are the trends people are talking about ... and I feel my opinion matters."
Smartphones, which have revolutionized the way Americans of all ages communicate, listen to music and shop, are taking an increasingly important role in political research, helping to track voters' views on issues, ads and candidates.
Immediate feedback
Veteran GOP Sacramento consultant Rick Claussen, who has been involved in dozens of ballot issues and political campaigns, said measuring public opinion has traditionally been time consuming because it involves speaking directly to people - by landlines at their homes or by convening focus groups.
Claussen is among the political consultants and strategists relying on new technology such as Surveys on the Go, which allows him to use mobile-phone research that harnesses GPS and to get immediate feedback from targeted voter groups.
Shortened time frame
"We can do things in 24 hours that used to take a week," said Claussen, who has used mobile-phone research to track Californians' responses to political messaging in ads and campaigns. "It's revolutionary stuff."
With the Surveys on the Go app, consumers with mobile technology and smartphones volunteer to take part in public opinion research on topics that interest them - but only when they want.
The firm pays for the opinions, promising that on average, the surveys will pay $1 to a participant and take a few minutes - with respondents paid via PayPal once their account has reached $10.
Chris St. Hilaire, a former political director to an Assembly minority leader and president and CEO of MFour Mobile Research, an Orange County firm that introduced the surveying app, said "the template for running a political campaign has dramatically changed over the last 10 years."
St. Hilaire said the tens of thousands of Californians who, like Gibson, have signed up for Surveys on the Go are part of a growing army that allows pollsters and researchers to "survey by state, by city, by block, by house, by doorstep."
Thanks to GPS tracking, St. Hilaire said, "I can ask you when you've walked by a billboard and what you liked and didn't like about it."
Mark DiCamillo, director of Field Research in San Francisco and producer of the nonpartisan Field Poll that has measured California public opinion since 1947, reaches voters on both landlines and mobile phones.
He said the new wave of mobile research is intriguing and promises "great innovation" in targeting specific populations. But to date, he cautions, such technology is "not broad enough" by itself to provide a random sample and to produce a reliable snapshot of public opinion in election and political research.
That's especially true in California, with its diverse electorate of 18 million voters, he said.
The future is mobile
Still, the work done by St. Hilaire's firm has won fans from political operatives and business people.
"Technology is completely defining how we measure public opinion," said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable who also used St. Hilaire's firm when he was political director of the California Chamber of Commerce.
Lapsley said that the technology allowed him to do a "cutting-edge" survey series of public views on ballot issues last year and that the accuracy of the studies convinced him that the future for policy research will very soon rest with mobile research.
Increasingly, "landlines are dead" in consumer research, Lapsley said, adding that he is convinced that for political polling, "this is the way it will be done - all of it - in the next few years."
Democratic pollster Ben Tulchin of San Francisco, who has worked with St. Hilaire's firm on traditional political polling, said "the coolest thing about their technology is doing real-time testing of consumer stuff ... and ad testing."
Under old methods, "you used to have to grab (consumers) and get them to fill out a questionnaire," such as in a shopping mall, he said. But with GPS trackers, researchers can know when "you go into a Gap, and they can hit you with a survey" to gauge immediate reaction.
Tulchin acknowledges that traditional methods of political polling remain "the gold standard." But with mobile phones in the hands of millions of Americans, "this is the future of our industry," he said. "And the future is probably closer than many of us think."
View story online here.
Carla Marinucci is The San Francisco Chronicle's senior political writer.
E-mail: cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com
Twitter: @cmarinucci
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Going Mobile? "Optimized" is Not a Solution!
In May I was at the Orlando MRA conference where I listened intently to a large panel company representative explaining why they got into mobile. The answer was that "we had to...because 25% of the responses were coming in via mobile anyway."
As tepid as that response was, one thing was clear...the need to be "mobile" is finally dawning upon panel providers and so they all claim to have a mobile solution. But what is their "solution?" To "optimize" website-based surveys for smartphones and tablets.
The fact is mobile-web based "optimized" solutions merely squeeze a platform built for desktop computers onto a mobile device - benefiting the survey platform provider, not the on-the-go consumer. And that is not a good way to start your data collection.
Mobile "optimized" solutions rely on fleeting Wi-Fi connections and notoriously overburdened cell phone carriers, leaving the respondent with a frustratingly slow and inconsistent survey experience.
If researchers truly want to interview the modern consumer, they must do so using tools that work for on-the-go consumer, meaning native smartphone applications. The respondent can focus on the survey questions and answers; push notification invitations that gain immediate attention; and a custom questionnaire layout that fits the uniqueness of their device.
Let's compare the statistics regarding panelist engagement between online "optimized" and a native app solution:
In fact, the completion rate for native app respondents is 98% - meaning 98 out of every 100 respondents complete the survey once they start. This stat holds with survey lengths of up to 15 minutes.
When you put the two methods side-by-side it becomes clear - a native app offers a faster, more robust experience for respondents, leading to more representative completes and quality data. In addition, the native app unlocks the power of the smartphone to bring researchers the ability to show and capture audio, video, images, as well as scan barcodes, and harness the power of GPS technology.
We are a mobile only, app based solution...and with more than 300,000 active respondents with their GPS "on", we can field surveys better, faster and more efficiently.
For more of an in-depth look at the app solution, visit us at mfour.com.
As tepid as that response was, one thing was clear...the need to be "mobile" is finally dawning upon panel providers and so they all claim to have a mobile solution. But what is their "solution?" To "optimize" website-based surveys for smartphones and tablets.
The fact is mobile-web based "optimized" solutions merely squeeze a platform built for desktop computers onto a mobile device - benefiting the survey platform provider, not the on-the-go consumer. And that is not a good way to start your data collection.
Mobile "optimized" solutions rely on fleeting Wi-Fi connections and notoriously overburdened cell phone carriers, leaving the respondent with a frustratingly slow and inconsistent survey experience.
If researchers truly want to interview the modern consumer, they must do so using tools that work for on-the-go consumer, meaning native smartphone applications. The respondent can focus on the survey questions and answers; push notification invitations that gain immediate attention; and a custom questionnaire layout that fits the uniqueness of their device.
Let's compare the statistics regarding panelist engagement between online "optimized" and a native app solution:
In fact, the completion rate for native app respondents is 98% - meaning 98 out of every 100 respondents complete the survey once they start. This stat holds with survey lengths of up to 15 minutes.
When you put the two methods side-by-side it becomes clear - a native app offers a faster, more robust experience for respondents, leading to more representative completes and quality data. In addition, the native app unlocks the power of the smartphone to bring researchers the ability to show and capture audio, video, images, as well as scan barcodes, and harness the power of GPS technology.
We are a mobile only, app based solution...and with more than 300,000 active respondents with their GPS "on", we can field surveys better, faster and more efficiently.
For more of an in-depth look at the app solution, visit us at mfour.com.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
GPS (Global Positioning, Sort Of)
Everyone in the research industry is talking about it - GPS and the ability to target consumers, before, during and after their shopping experience. The possibilities are endless.
Done right, researchers can survey consumers as they walk into a retail location, gather initial impressions and capture product perspectives from the critical consumer point of decision. Most exciting, researchers can finally talk to "non-buyers" and find what drove their final decision not to purchase the product they walked in for.
But be careful. Not all GPS mapping is created equal, and many companies claiming their mobile product has pinpoint location-targeting capabilities are stretching the truth.
The fact is, many research providers can only target down to city level. And many of those claiming specific GPS location-targeting capabilities are simply overlaying basic mapping tools that are not even close to the location you are actually looking to survey.
Take a look at where one of the popular mapping applications placed the GPS coordinates for this McDonald's in Fenton, Missouri. See anything interesting?
McDonald's GPS coordinates based on Foursquare location mapping.
The pinpoint isn't anywhere near the door, meaning respondents driving by will be notified - whether or not they are even visiting the restaurant.
Now take a look at the Best Buy below in Salt Lake City, Utah. Because the pinpoint was randomly placed in the parking lot, many respondents entering the store would never even be notified that a survey was available.
Best Buy GPS location based on Foursquare location mapping.
Does that mean that we should give up on GPS-based surveys? Of course not.
MFour Mobile Research has been busy using our proprietary "geo-verification" techniques to authenticate more than 500,000 retail locations in the United States to make sure our clients' "hot spots" are pinpointed to the door - not across the parking lot or in the middle of the street.
Best Buy correctly mapped after MFour GeoValidation process.
As you might have read recently in Quirks Magazine, we are busy developing best practices for GPS pinpointing and the new mobile device research market in general. Send us an email if you would like to talk about mobile research and the best practices for your next project.
Done right, researchers can survey consumers as they walk into a retail location, gather initial impressions and capture product perspectives from the critical consumer point of decision. Most exciting, researchers can finally talk to "non-buyers" and find what drove their final decision not to purchase the product they walked in for.
But be careful. Not all GPS mapping is created equal, and many companies claiming their mobile product has pinpoint location-targeting capabilities are stretching the truth.
The fact is, many research providers can only target down to city level. And many of those claiming specific GPS location-targeting capabilities are simply overlaying basic mapping tools that are not even close to the location you are actually looking to survey.
Take a look at where one of the popular mapping applications placed the GPS coordinates for this McDonald's in Fenton, Missouri. See anything interesting?
McDonald's GPS coordinates based on Foursquare location mapping.
The pinpoint isn't anywhere near the door, meaning respondents driving by will be notified - whether or not they are even visiting the restaurant.
Now take a look at the Best Buy below in Salt Lake City, Utah. Because the pinpoint was randomly placed in the parking lot, many respondents entering the store would never even be notified that a survey was available.
Best Buy GPS location based on Foursquare location mapping.
Does that mean that we should give up on GPS-based surveys? Of course not.
MFour Mobile Research has been busy using our proprietary "geo-verification" techniques to authenticate more than 500,000 retail locations in the United States to make sure our clients' "hot spots" are pinpointed to the door - not across the parking lot or in the middle of the street.
Best Buy correctly mapped after MFour GeoValidation process.
As you might have read recently in Quirks Magazine, we are busy developing best practices for GPS pinpointing and the new mobile device research market in general. Send us an email if you would like to talk about mobile research and the best practices for your next project.
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