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?

According to research done by Google recently, there will be more web searches done on mobile phones than will be done on desktops by 2013. In more traditional markets like Australia and the US, a more standard progression in technology has seen the desktop become a feature of most households over the past 15 years. However in emerging markets such as India and China, access to desktop computers was limited during their expansion in the west and now instead of following the trend of western markets, consumers in these countries are skipping desktop computers and the fixed internet connection in preference of mobile devices. Across the world mobile internet usage has increased 3000% in the last three years, largely driven by the access that consumers in emerging economies have to these previously out of reach devices.

It seems only natural that research should take advantage of this shift in reliance on mobile internet usage. Whilst being able to contact a respondent at their desktop at any time at any place has always been one of the foundations of online research’s benefit over traditional methodologies, mobile research takes this one step further and allows us to interact with respondents in their natural surroundings whenever we want.

The convenience of being able to reach for our phones and access the Internet anywhere is something that should be jumped upon by researchers. The devil makes work for idle hands, so why not use time when sitting on a train, in front of the TV at home as a time to undertake research.

A company in New Zealand has done something very similar. After the devastating earthquake in Christchurch, the plumbing to houses has been significantly impacted and residents are having to make do with portaloos installed on street corners. In these portaloos, a firm has begun recruiting participants for research through adverts placed on the walls. Surveys asking for opinions about the reconstruction efforts are sent and in some cases completed whilst…umm…taking care of business.

Being constantly connected through Internet enabled phones presents such a strong opportunity for companies to get an immediate read on their consumers. To take advantage of even the shortest amount of downtime to complete research can easily be seized upon. Being able to get feedback in either a qualitative or quantitative study could potentially take hours, not days or weeks.

Mobile is an inherent part of our lives today and it’s important for researchers to grasp how this medium can help us improve our research outcomes.  That’s why, last month I attended the Merlien Institute conference MobileMR 2010: Market Research in the Mobile World conference in Berlin.

Some interesting examples of how it can enhance our research were presented including:

• Steve August and Ian Ralph showed how using mobiles for diary studies results in far more frequently and timely responses
• Siamick Salari, founder of Everyday Lives, spoke about using mobiles to collect and tag on the go multi-media ethnographic information
• Julie Gade gave a great case study using mobiles to get children/teenagers to share via photos what they eat.  We know asking questions doesn’t always tell us what we need to know, and when it comes to teenagers – mobile is what they know.  Furthermore, letting them have a role in storytelling can be a powerful tool.  As Julie said, mobile reduces the gap between what people say and do.

But as Steve August from Revelation kindly reminded us mobile is a technology not a methodology; it’s just a medium for gathering information in a different way, which has its strengths and weaknesses, like all others.

During the conference there was lots of discussion on how to get people to participate in research using mobile phones.  But to me, the same rules apply no matter what medium you use:

• make it interesting
• make it relevant
• make it easy and simple

And when it comes to motivating them we need to:

• Make it about them and their lives
• Share the results and let them see the results of others
• Not underestimate the importance of the social aspect

Ultimately, if you are considering including mobile as a medium for data collection you need to ensure there is a benefit for the participant (be it easier, interesting, social or just fun).