by Anna Clowry, Research Director at Latitude Insights

We often talk about the benefits of depth and breadth achieved by online research. From online surveys, to panels and communities, it’s about helping us get closer to people that other methods might miss.

From farmers in remote cattle stations, to housewives from the Gold Coast, online communities have brought people together in virtual spaces to help companies and organisations understand the bigger picture. Now anyone with an internet connection can have a say, not just those who can come and meet us face to face.

As well as who we reach, we sometimes overlook the impact of how powerful the anonymity of an online community can be. A recent project we conducted with Australians with a range of Anxiety Disorders really brought this point home.

Most of the online community members would have found it impossible or challenging to attend a focus group with a group of strangers, in an unfamiliar environment.

But more importantly, if they had, the level of intense personal detail shared would have been nothing compared to what was shared online.

We were privileged to shape and guide conversations covering extremely sensitive and challenging topics, and were thrilled when our community members fed back to us on the positive experience of sharing their thoughts, with both us and with the other community members.

The combination of a safe and anonymous discussion space, connecting with others with similar experience, and the freedom to share when and where it suited them, in as much or little detail as they liked, made the online community an ideal approach.

So, for marketers and other clients who need to understand topics that are sensitive in nature, from health care, social issues, taboo topics etc, we fully support harnessing the power of an online community.

Gamification is surfacing in all corners of life from education and training to physiotherapy, improving your health with health monitor, communicating a social cause, soliciting friends for moral support with nike+ and even driving the new Ford Focus. Market research is one of the more obvious and advantageous applications.

Here’s my beginner’s guide to gamification…

1. Gamification is the concept of creating a fun, engaging experience to encourage users to participate in what otherwise would be a relatively boring task.

2. Worldwide, a staggering 500 million people spend an hour each day playing games online and on mobile devices and by 2016 corporations are expected to spend $2.8 billion on gamification.

3. Brands and organisations are discovering that interacting with people in a fun way produces positive results. Meanwhile traditional methods of marketing, education and other activities are failing as people seek out and receive new, more engaging ways of doing things.

4. The key benefit of gamification is the enhanced level of involvement and engagement. When an interaction is gamified, it creates a more intimate connection through the positive experience, rewards and recognition that build affinity and loyalty.

5. With gamification there is enormous potential for word of mouth recommendation through the sites like fanzy that reward fans
for spreading the word about your brand via social networks.

6. The success of the activity can be easily monitored through the use of metrics to track users who share content and friends who track back to the brand.

Surveys have traditionally been gap fillers, but these days, the prospect of completing a questionnaire is much less attractive than doing something like honing one’s investing skills in the carefully tailored Commonwealth’s Investorville, helping bring back rare creatures to the sea through theblu app or earning points while saving the planet on recyclebank. These are the calibre of activities with which our surveys compete making it increasingly more difficult to attract participation and a quality, considered response.

I’ll leave you with this short film, an entertaining perspective on where we may be heading with gamification and virtual reality. Enjoy!

Ever dreamed of having a virtual supermarket shopping experience from the comfort of your own home? No, neither have I…but UK retailer Tesco seems to think this may be the way of the future.

Tesco is working towards a three-dimensional virtual store that shoppers can walk through and buy from using a smart TV. Shoppers would move about the virtual store using motion sensor controls to turn and progress down aisles, and could purchase products by reaching out and touching them on the virtual shelves.

Software developers Keytree have built a demo store for Xbox Kinect that shows a little of what the virtual shopping experience might be like. See the video below:

There’s no doubt this is an innovative idea, but I struggle to see many valuable benefits from this method of shopping. The experience is expected to merge the best of online and offline shopping. The implication is that online shopping lacks the rich immersive experience – which the virtual store can now deliver.

While the 3D virtual store may feel more familiar to a real shopping experience, there is none of the hustle and bustle of a real supermarket, there’s no chance of bumping into friends from the area, and quite tragically, there’s no opportunity to steal a sneaky grape! So it really is very far from a realistic shopping experience. Plus, if you’re truly missing the full ‘shopping experience’ – you could always get up off the couch and go to the supermarket – the old fashioned way!

However, there is at least one foreseeable benefit to virtual shopping; it looks like fun! If you look at the video above, you’ll see that you select a product using a target – much like the way you select your unsuspecting victim in a game of Golden Eye! (Well, that’s what comes to mind for me!) Who doesn’t love a good game? And with all the talk about gamification at the moment, there’s every chance that Tesco will incorporate further gamification elements into the virtual shopping experience – now that could give it an edge! You heard it here first!

I’m sure many will want to try virtual shopping purely for the novelty factor, but I don’t think bricks and mortar supermarkets need to worry about closing their doors just yet…

What do you think? Will virtual shopping take off?

My grandfather-in-law, who lives in England, recently turned 100. I was very excited for him, greatly anticipating the obligatory telegram from the Queen.

“No”, my father-in-law said. “We have to write to them to request one.”

WHAT?!

My local video store knows my date of birth, along with my local pharmacist, my local library, my hairdresser, my beautician and just about all the major retailers with whom I have a loyalty card. But the Queen’s Anniversaries Office, can’t find out when I turn 100? I thought digital technology was making it easier to find out such information!

OK. So we get over that hurdle and request a telegram.

“No”, my father-in-law said. “He got a birthday card.”

A BIRTHDAY CARD?!

I was disappointed. It’s not the quaint, old fashioned telegram that I was expecting and I’d never seen a real telegram before so I was looking forward to checking out this traditional form of communication. But neither was it a new and innovative way to send your wishes like a tweet or a Facebook message (don’t you just love it when your Facebook page gets filled with birthday messages? – but I digress). No, it’s somewhere in that grey area of being almost – dare I say it – common.

I wonder if when it’s my time to turn 100, I’ll be receiving a tweet from King William? Or perhaps that will be considered too “quaint”, “old fashioned”, “traditional” or “common” by then. I can just hear my daughter now…. “Oh Mum, tweeting is so yesterday!”

Latitude prides itself on delivering insights not information but more recently we have been focussed on driving insights more than ever (pardon the pun!).  Last week, Latitude Insights took to the motor show to check out the latest in motoring.

Our first stop … the soon to be released Nissan LEAF – the first mass produced, purpose built electric vehicle to enter the Australian market.   Kerralie took to the stage to test drive a Nissan LEAF almost breaking the speedometer at 139km/hr.  This is the first time a car has been allowed to be driven inside the motor show – because the LEAF has no tail pipe emissions, it’s safe to drive inside or out.  Although with Kerralie at the wheel, I’m not sure how safe we really were ;-)

Latitude is proud to be working with Nissan in the lead up to the launch of the LEAF.

Researching the LEAF is a fascinating experience for us and we are excited to be part of the changing motoring landscape.

Look out for more driving insights in the future…

It’s incredible to think so much has changed over the past three years. As Charleni Li points out in her recent blog Groundswell Paperback: A Look Back Three Years Later, it was only back in May 2008 that Facebook and Twitter were still emerging trends. Even more incredible, the iPhone had no apps! Can any of us now imagine a world without our iPhone, without Facebook or without Twitter? I know I can’t!

And marketers and researchers alike are embracing these technologies to reach their different audiences.

This then led to me on to a bit of a tangent, wondering whether MROCs (market research online communities) or insight communities have yet fully ‘emerged’. It seems the world of marketing research may be lagging a little?  There are still many who are wedded to the idea of focus groups sufficing for all qualitative research.  Which continues to amaze me, because once the richness, depth of information and honesty online research community members reveal, there’s really no going back.

News.com.au has launched a visual map, Cabinet Confidential, which charts the political relationships within the Labor government. Interactive journalism at its best, this venture captures a wider audience – one that may not be partial to reading long political articles. Essentially, it’s a snapshot of major players, positions held, and powers of “Labor’s top ranks”.

Digital has made data visualisation progressively more interactive. In the NewMR’s ‘New approaches to presenting data’ webinar, Peter Harris introduced a range of data visualisation tools that allow researchers to take advantage of the digital sphere. Gradually, these tools will become commonplace for information industries, where the ‘entertainment factor’ in presenting data will deliver the highest impact.

News.com.au’s editor, Paul Colgan initiated the Cabinet Confidential project saying, “One of the things that the news media rightly gets accused of is not harnessing new technology enough to improve storytelling”. Are there lessons here for market research?