The Mobile Players in 2014 & Mobile MR – Navin Williams

Posted by Navin Wlliams, CEO MobileMeasure Consultancy Ltd, Shanghai, China. Editors note: Navin is known as a leading expert of mobile market research and has been posting his forecasts for a few years and kindly shared his 2014 forecast with us. 2013 was a year of consolidation of the market in the mobile space. With Android settling into its leadership position and Apple’s iOS having a relatively good year too. The other operating systems have largely fallen by the wayside. With mobile finally settling the fight with online and finally being recognized as a tour de force too, it’s a good time to put on my soothsayer hat and share my vision of how 2014 is going to pan out. Source: Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, via CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57616679-37/iphone-market-share-shrinks-as-android-windows-phone-grow/ Winner Takes All – Android In last year’s post I talked about Android dominating the mobile landscape and eventually by getting prices down to a sub US$100 mark make analysts relook at the Feature phone and Smartphone definition by the end of 2013. This has not really happened as we still have these definitions widely in use. However no one is obsessing over these definitions as it is well recognized that the formerly […]

Does this summarise mobile qual for you?

As part of the book on mobile market research that Sue York, Navin Williams and I are writing we need to give an overview of mobile qual, before going into depth. Do you think the image below helps? Thoughts? What are we missing? What would you change? What about the titles for the segments? By WE-research we mean projects where participants are recruited to capture a variety of qualitative data about their lives. They might be asked to capture images of waste, or videos of travel problems, or audio comments about the school run, for example. The term WE-research was introduced by Mark Earls and John Kearnon a few years ago. But, do you have a better term for this type of research? We are planning on three chapters on qualitative research, indeed we have written three chapters, an overview which covers all four segments above, followed by chapters specifically on the top two segments. Our view on techniques like passive tracking, Google Glass etc is that there is simply not enough material yet to have a chapter on it, there is too little experience around. If you’d like to help by reviewing one or more of these three chapters, […]

Do you have mobile RoR or case studies you’d like to share in our new book?

Ray Poynter, Navin Williams, and Sue York are writing a book on mobile market research, which will be published in August/September by Wiley, with the support of ESOMAR. The book has been provisionally titled, The Handbook of Mobile Market Research, and is a companion to The Handbook of Online and Social Media Research. Are you or one of your colleagues, or your organisation, interested in helping us in any of the following ways? 1. Reviewing one or more chapters and letting us have your thoughts and suggestions? 2. Supplying case studies or Research on Research to help illustrate points in the book? Ideally, material that has already been published on your website, at a conference, or in articles. We will, of course, fully cite and credit any help you and your organisation are able to offer. Timelines are horrendous, of course! We’ve finished the first draft of the book and sent it to the publisher. This draft is very rough, if you have a look at any of the chapters you will spot errors and notes to ourselves in the text. The final text is being sent to the publisher 31st January, so we’d need any feedback or help before […]

Answers to Frequently Asked Mobile Market Research Questions

In collaboration with other authors we have produced an initial draft of the chapter on Mobile Market Research, for the ESOMAR book Answers to Contemporary Market Research Questions, and we are seeking feedback. The video below shows Sue York’s presentation at the recent NewMR Training Day and you can download a PDF of the current draft. Remember, the Contemporary Answers book is intended for people new to research or new to a topic – it is not supposed to be the definitive or comprehensive answer. We have already received some feedback (following the Training Day), but we’d love to hear more. So, please add your comments to this post using the comments facility. The mobile chapter, along with new chapters on International Research and Polling will be added in 2014.  

When and why to conduct mobile only studies?

Following the discussion on tablets in mobile market research, this post addresses the wider issue of why somebody would want to conduct a study that is mobile only. Having spoken to a wide cross section of clients and researcher, typical reasons for a mobile only study seem to include: Because the data needs to be collected, or is better if collected, ‘in the moment’. Where ‘in the moment’ typically means as people are making a decision, whilst using something, or immediately after using something. To collect passive data, as people go about their everyday lives. Because mobile gives a more appropriate sample than other similar methods. For example, in a country where 80% of economically active adults have a phone and 50% have internet access, mobile can provide the better sample. In order to change CAPI to mCAPI, re-energising CAPI. To add items like photos and videos to traditional survey responses. Where the mobile device can assist or improve data logging and collection. Research on the mobile ecosystem, for example of mobile advertising and campaigns. To research mobile data collection, part of what researchers call RoR, research-on-research. Another example of point 3, a more appropriate sample, is provided by French […]

What are the Key Debates in Mobile Market Research?

I am involved in a new book, which we hope will be published early in 2014. As with The Handbook of Online and Social Media Research, I will be sharing the project with the #NewMR community and would hope to receive as much help and support as I received last time (all those who contributed are listed in the book). We should be able to publicise the publisher and the team shortly (final negotiations are taking place at the moment). The book will be informed by the work I have done with Navin William and Reg Baker to create a mobile marketing research course for the University of Georgia’s Principles of Marketing Research course – which will be available shortly. The first question So, here is our first question to the market research community. What are the key debates about mobile market research? My feeling is that the key debates in mobile market research are: How do clients move 20 to 30 minute tracking studies onto mobile devices? Closely followed by, what is the maximum length of a mobile interview? What sorts of techniques can’t be completed on a phone? Closely followed, by how do we adapt techniques that don’t […]

How many ways is mobile being used in Qual?

As mentioned before (here and here), Navin William, Reg Baker, and I are producing a mobile marketing research module for the University of Georgia’s Principles of Marketing Research course. I have bounced some ideas off the readers of this blog, and here is another topic where I’d love to hear your views. Some of the most interesting work, to date, in terms of MMR (mobile market research) has been in the area of qualitative research and this is a key point for students of MMR to be aware of. The key areas of qualitative MMR: My feeling is that the key uses of mobile in qualitative research are: Smartphone Ethnography, recruiting participants to capture slices of the own lives and the lives of people around them to produce ethnographic data and in some cases to engage citizens in mass or auto ethnography. Mobile blogging, where participants use their mobile device (which can be as basic as SMS) to record or comment on some aspect of their lives. This can also include asking the participants to record their own vox pops. Mobile focus groups, where participants can use a mobile device to take part in focus groups. At one extreme this […]

Is your mobile market research ethical?

As I have mentioned before, Navin Williams, Reg Baker, and I are producing a course on mobile marketing research for the University of Georgia’s Principles of Marketing Research course. As the materials are developing, I am posting some of the items here to get your feedback on whether we are on the right track and to acquire additional cases for the course. I have just finished a section on laws, guidelines, regulations, and ethics and I have included a checklist. I would appreciate hearing you views on the checklist below. Ethics Checklist – Mobile Marketing Research No list can be complete or fully up-to-date, but this checklist should be useful when scoping a mobile marketing research project, in terms of ethics and guidelines: Is it legal? Check whether, in the country where the research is happening, with the approaches being used, and for the topic being researched, is it allowed within the relevant laws? In all cases the law should take precedence over industry or company guidelines. With a mobile study this includes when and how you can contact people (auto-dialers are not legal in some countries), what you can record (location and traffic data are restricted in some countries), […]

A Short History of Mobile Marketing Research

Navin Williams and I are creating an MMR (mobile marketing research) module for the University of Georgia’s MRII’s Principles of Marketing Research course (under the guiding eye of Reg Baker) – click here to read more. As part of that course we need to provide a very short summary of the history of MMR. So, the text below is my starting point and I would love to hear any suggestions, corrections, etc that people out there might have. In terms of context, the course takes the term MMR to include: Self-completion surveys via mobile devices (i.e. not CATI) Qualitative research utilising mobile devices Passive data collection via mobile devices Mobile devices are taken as mostly being mobile phones, although more recently the term has been expanded to include tablets. Other devices exist, such as PDAs, but they have never been central to the bulk of MMR. Phones tend to be divided into smartphones and feature phones. However, the definition of a smartphone keeps changing, and a feature phone is pretty much any phone that does not meet the current criteria for a smartphone – and yes we are assuming that smartphone is now a single word. A Brief History of […]

How much accidental MMR is happening?

At the moment I am working on two exciting projects with Navin Williams looking at mobile market research (MMR), a book and course – more on these soon. As part of these projects I have been taking another look at the phenomenon of ‘accidental MMR’. Most people who are using online surveys are already using MMR, even if they have not decided to, and even if they are not aware of it. Any online survey, even if not designed for a mobile device, runs the risk of being completed on a mobile device by some respondents – unless specific measures are taken to avoid it. Surveys sent to members of online access panels or to customers sourced from client databases are frequently completed via mobile devices – unless the survey has been designed to recognize the mobile device and designed to prevent a mobile device being used. This form of MMR is referred to as accidental mobile research, and the prevalence of accidental MMR is one of the reasons that it is safe to say that MMR, in 2013, has ‘arrived’. As with most things mobile, reliable and consistent figures, about the prevalence of accidental MMR, are hard to obtain. […]