By: Chris Binney, Research Manager

You’ve got two minutes to yourself and what is the first thing so many of us think about doing? Getting out our phone to check our email, post a tweet, update a Facebook status, the list of possibilities goes on. The idea of doing nothing has disappeared almost completely.

We’re always connected with the web.

With smartphone penetration growing at a rate that will see one in two Australians owning a smartphone in the coming few years (if not sooner), the research industry has rightly seen the potential of having a constant internet connection in your pocket. Why not compete for people’s down time by conducting research instead of posting that picture of breakfast to Instagram?

The flexibility of online mobile research platforms give the ability to access people in places and at times that previously were thought too difficult. Think about walking from a supermarket and being asked to rate the level of service that you had just experienced? Why not provide a detailed video review of a product when in the store.  The possibilities that are opened through greater access are huge but how else can mobile benefit over traditional online research?

• Engagement with tasks both quantitative and qualitative is higher when conducting a survey that is relevant to your surroundings. Furthermore, to this,

• Recall when undertaking a task is stronger. We’re much more likely to recount experiences as or shortly after they have occurred.Of course it is widely accepted that a combination of stronger engagement and better recall leads to…

• Better data quality.

By: Tabitha Lucas, Research Director

I love the fact that people continue to surprise me. This particular instance was prompted by the results of a major study we have just completed about consumers and brands on social media called ‘Always On’.

It’s no surprise to me that brands are trying hard to get a foothold in the social media space and harness it’s potential power. But what did surprise me is how welcoming Australian consumers are to connecting with brands on social media. In casual conversation you hear complaints about ads, and irritation about brands filling up your news feed, etc. But when we dug deeper we found that a whopping 82% had connected with a brand on social media.

And even more surprisingly, nearly a third had connected with more than 10 brands.

Australian consumers are actually seeing real benefits from connecting with brands in the social media space – beyond the ubiquitous competition entry. They see the opportunity to be ‘the first to know’ and most interestingly, to actually support a brand they admire and to have a real ‘voice’ with a brand.

So where does all the anecdotal whinging come from?

It seems that despite consumers’ welcoming attitude towards connecting with brands on social media, brands aren’t always delivering the benefit that consumers had hoped for. In fact despite being willing to connect, nearly half have actually dumped a brand on social media as well. While I wasn’t surprised to hear that this was often because of boring content, what did raise the other eyebrow was that brands can actually get the boot for behaving ‘badly’. Consumers want to have a voice with brands, so sometimes that voice is saying ‘not happy, Jan’.

The good news is clearly there for brands. But so is the need to get it right. Hopefully this will raise the collective eyebrows of brands out there – making it clear that social media is a very different space for brands, with different rules for behaviour. And to succeed in social media they need to do more than just have a competition and then try to sell their product.

With these insights, I can see the potential to help brands do great things!

For access to the Always On whitepaper and infographic, visit our website: www.latitudeinsights.com.au

By: Marcail Arbuthnot

Within the retail world, we often hear talk of online stores as distinctly different to and separate from the more traditional physical bricks and mortar stores.

However it seems premium retailer Burberry may be blurring the lines between the two, with the opening of their new high-tech Regent Street store in London.

In the video below, Burberry’s Christopher Bailey describes the merging of the burberry.com website with a physical experience to create their new flagship store…

Burberry’s new digital store concept, which has been 2 years in the making, focuses on bringing the best elements of the retailer’s website into the physical store, to create a richer experience for their customers.

Via the use of large web-enabled screens, RFID tags, ‘smart mirrors’ and iPad equipped staff, Burberry have provided an example of how two previously separate retail channels (online and B&M) can be brought together, to offer shoppers a seamless, engaging and exciting experience.

Burberry’s new store reflects a significant shift in customer expectations – online stores have raised the bar in terms of the opportunities for rich content delivery, customised shopping and a high level of convenience. Shoppers are now increasingly extending these expectations to the physical store environment as well.

The next 12 months will be an interesting period within the industry. Which retailers will respond to this shift in expectations? How will they respond? Who will get it right? What are the implications for those that do not?

By: Margie Lane, Research Director

The end of the year came & went, a reminder of how much time flies. So I’m making the time now to reflect on what we’ve achieved and the direction we need to take next year with our online communities.

1. There is always room for more scope to explore market gaps and opportunities rather than simply answering burning questions or sense checking ideas just before they go to market.  We need to help our clients to use our communities much earlier in the product development process when ideas are first on the drawing board.

2. Research shows, and our members tell us, that they’re happy to tell us about their lives and be involved in the cocreation process as long as we tell them how the information is being used.  We need to help our clients provide our communities with feedback so they receive the recognition and feedback they need and deserve.

3. As we continue to develop our mobile platforms we will be including more mobile tasks and challenges for consumers to capture insitu experiences that help identify actual behaviour and can be used to bring the consumer to life in the boardroom.

4. Internal stakeholders benefit much more when they are fully engaged with our communities.  We need to invest more time upfront when our communities are being established to inform and excite stakeholders and provide ongoing dialogue, not just written reports.  Debriefs will be more brainstorming sessions than formal debriefs.

5. Focus more on engagement than be concerned about size.  We know engagement is the key to delving beyond predictable, rational responses and our focus needs to be on continually challenging, inspiring and relating to our members to reveal their true behaviour and attitudes.

6. Ideally we want more time for spontaneous discussions and exploration of issues and ideas as they emerge.  The accessibility of online communities makes it too easy to use them to seek an answer to a question, but answers to direct questions do not always provide an accurate reflection of what the consumer will do.  Far better we learn from consumers’ conversations of how they go about using products and services and making their decisions to guide decision-making.

How do you plan to use your online communities in 2013?

By: Monica Greenwood, Research Director

Dave Griffin, our shopper and retail specialist, recently blogged about customer service measurement (click here to read that). He cited a study based on just four ‘mystery shops’ which is clearly too few to come to any substantial conclusions about your customers’ in-store service or experience.

But can you go the other way? Can you have too many customer data points?

Consider this – I was recently travelling overseas and during a lay over at Singapore’s Changi airport needed to use the bathroom. But that’s not the unusual bit (at least I hope it isn’t!). What I found intriguing was the interactive screens posted in the bathroom so that as you exit, you can rate the overall service of your bathroom experience. The task used a series of smiley faces – you simply tap on the one that reflects your overall service experience and if things aren’t to your satisfaction, you have an opportunity to report why (e.g. no toilet paper). It even has a picture of the cleaner on duty so you know whose performance you are rating.

Now there are over 42 million passengers that travel through Changi airport every year. If you assume at least 90% of them need to use the bathroom at some point during their visit, then you still have at least 37.8 million passengers who could rate the service. Even if only 10% of those take the time to submit their rating, you are left with nearly 4 million data points to measure the customer experience. That’s extraordinary!

I’ve since learned that this is called the SWIFT initiative – Service Workforce Instant Feedback Transformation – which is a program allowing Changi Airport management to quickly identify issues at various customer touch points (e.g the bathrooms but also at customer service desks and other places around the airport) and to rectify any problems immediately. In this instance, it is used as an instant feedback system rather than a long term strategic insight into customer service levels. That said, it has been used to examine trends in customer service experiences.

Unfortunately, for Changi Airport management, they also had my 10 year old daughter rating her experience several times because she liked the smiley faces on the interactive screen. She was convinced that the more times she rated the service (even though she only used the bathroom once) that the cleaner would get a bonus or a pay rise for good work! So clearly this would be misleading. Then again, when you’re talking about 4 million customer data points, what’s a few extra ratings from an excited 10 year old?

By: Kate Reardon, Research Executive

Like anyone, I too get quite excited by duty-free shopping and all its dollar saving glory! So on a recent trip home from Bali, we made a stopover at Changi Airport in Singapore to see what bargains we could find! (For those of you playing at home, yes, we purposely detoured from the logical, efficient way home for this shopping expedition).

I won’t go into details of the many purchases made by me and my friends during those few hours, but something worth mentioning is what caught my eye whilst perusing the alcohol section. There was a display of bright, paint-splashed ABSOLUT Vodka bottles – somewhat of an art form compared to the standard ABSOLUT bottles.

I found out that ABSOLUT had released four million of these uniquely designed, limited edition ‘ABSOLUT UNIQUE’ bottles. The new ‘look’ had been achieved by a combination of splash guns, machines equipped with 35 colours and 51 stencils, and placement algorithms to ensure that no two bottles would be alike.

My friends were instantly drawn to them. It was hard work convincing them that it wasn’t worth spending the extra money on an ABSOLUT UNIQUE bottle as it would taste exactly the same as the colourless, regular ABSOLUT bottle sitting a short distance away. Of course I was wearing my ‘rational’ hat at the time – I know it’s not really about the ‘taste’.

Nonetheless, this example demonstrates the strong pulling-power of this design innovation. And this becomes even clearer with a quick glance at ABSOLUT’s Facebook page. Many fans have posted photos of the unique bottles they have purchased on the Facebook page, while others say they want to collect them all! I struggled to find any negative comments…

I think ABSOLUT has hit the nail on the head with this one! Ultimately, it works because everyone wants to be an individual – the younger demographic especially! So offering a product that no-one else can possibly have is bound to be a winner.

But what use is being an individual if no-one knows you have a one in four million bottle? Well, tell the world on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and problem solved!

I’m willing to bet this innovation will be both a sales AND social media success!

By Victoria Parr, Managing Director, Latitude Insights Sydney office 

At the last AMSRS conference I presented a paper on the research to develop the design of plain packaging for tobacco products (yes, that colour…… Pantone 448C). During the questions that followed, an audience member highlighted that even though the emphasis of the conference had been on new methodologies and digital data collection, most of the papers dealing with significant social or community impact had used very traditional methods, including mine.  He was questioning the tension between the ‘new’ methodologies and the need for delivery of robust and evidence based research that is required for government research.

This is an issue that I believe many in the audience of that last conference were grappling with, especially those of us that work within the social and government sphere. Our government clients are similar to commercial clients in that they too need to do everything cheaper and faster. They are also aware of that ‘new fangled’ thing called the internet, and they know that  people now have 100′s of friends and followers whose profile pictures they see on a daily basis, and who they converse with in 140 characters or less.

How our government clients differ is that the research they do is funded by all Australian taxpayers, so all of us in the community who are relevant to the problem need to be represented in the research. It is a critical part of the democratic model of government that all have chance to express their views and opinions on matters that affect them,  and that means the research we do must be representative of the population in question.

And here lies the crux of the issue.

As I said at the conference, government needs to be accountable and need to  ensure reliability of rigorous and robust research methods to achieve this. But at the same time, the world is changing and we all know that the way people are communicating is now different. We type to communicate almost as much, if not more, than we verbalise our thoughts. As AMSRS committee member Victoria Gamble gamely said when called out to take the roving microphone at the conference ‘I don’t like to speak in front of so many people, that’s why I use twitter’.

So my question is, if we don’t start to talk to people using the same way they communicate with each other, are we in fact losing some of the rigour of the research? Not only do we miss representation of the people who will not elect to do face-to-face qual, are we also not missing a vital part of capturing their views and opinions by not communicating with them in the way they are accustomed to?

Fishkin[1] wrote about deliberative democracy and public consultation under the title ‘When the People Speak’. My question is about recognizing that how people are speaking is now, in fact, different and we in the social and government side of research need to explore this issue more, both clients and suppliers alike. All methodologies, both the tried and tested and the ‘new’ have their faults. What we really need to consider as we look at each new project or problem is what method is going to really give a voice to those whose views and opinions we are trying to represent?