••• innovation research
Digsite offers one-day sprints
Get feedback on products, CX, etc.
Software firm Digsite, Madison, Wis., has launched 1-Day Digsite Sprints, a solution for optimizing product concepts, positioning, graphic designs, customer experiences and more in 24 hours. The platform provides a forum for engagement between organizations and their target end-users where participants can discuss questions, mark up images and upload photos or videos. Users can iterate with participants in real-time, pin key responses and download reports.
••• research communities
Vision Critical debuts Sparq 3 platform
Integrates with enterprise systems
Canada-based software firm Vision Critical has released Sparq 3, its new customer intelligence platform for insight communities. Information provided by members remains in the platform, providing profiles that reflect changes in their lives, attitudes, behaviors, preferences, activities and needs, allowing community managers to use the profile information and historical participation to micro-target specific groups of members. The retained history in the Sparq 3 platform allows organizations to search and collect information that may have been gathered across multiple activities from many different segments to answer new questions without starting from scratch. They may uncover the information they need even without initiating new activities. Most organizations have multiple sources of customer information, each providing a single, siloed point of view with little or no context. This may be demographic data from a CRM, for example, or transactional data from a point-of-sale system. Typically, this provides a snapshot of a customer at a specific point in time – it shows what customers are doing (i.e., purchased x, returned y) or their status in a profile variable (i.e., single, married, divorced).
Sparq 3 enables brands to add context to these other sources of data through Web-standard and RESTful APIs that support integration with enterprise systems like CRM and loyalty databases. Transactions can be viewed in the light of recent changes to a customer profile, for example, and then activities can be deployed to provide additional information about attitudes and motivations for a more holistic view of the customer’s relationship with a brand.
••• health care research
Reckner introduces Qual EDGE
Adds quant to health care qual
Chalfont, Pa., research firm Reckner Healthcare has introduced QualEDGE, a new health care fieldwork solution designed for qualitative research for health care professionals. QualEDGE enables researchers to add a quantitative element to their qualitative research and provides live reporting, allowing researchers to view results and receive alerts as they come in. For example, it would be used for patient chart exercises, to view and respond to target product profiles and for pre/post-interview questions. The product is flexibly-priced to enable research agencies to achieve online efficiencies for qualitative projects.
••• internet of things
ComScore service monitors connected-home products
Computers, tablets, smart TVs and more
ComScore, Reston, Va., has introduced comScore Connected Home, a syndicated service based on its Total Home Panel – a research platform that measures consumer behavior across home network-connected devices. Connected Home gives insight into usage of products like computers, mobile phones, tablets, streaming sticks, smart TVs, Internet of Things devices and more.
Subscribers to comScore Connected Home receive measures including device penetration, usage frequency, engagement time, household demographics, OEM and OS market share and cross-device activity patterns to gain insight into how these products are used in the home today. Clients access these metrics through a Web-based user interface with flexible reporting capabilities.
The foundation of Connected Home is comScore’s Total Home Panel, a single-source research platform designed to measure the realities of cross-platform media consumption today. Since beginning to scale the Total Home Panel in early 2016, comScore has grown the panel to measure activity across a nationally distributed sample of more than 12,500 households with more than 147,000 active devices per month and 62,000 active devices per day.
••• online research
Platform collects insights from variety of tools
Think Tank from Focus Pointe Global
Focus Pointe Global, a Philadelphia research company, has introduced its new FPG Think Tank platform. FPG Think Tank is a collection of online platforms that provide insights from its opt-in research participant database. It includes: FPG Communities, a qualitative online community platform; FPG Polling; Gauge mobile app, a lifestyle mobile app that provides instant reactions to a product, concept or social issue; and STARS Product Use Research Experience, a review program designed to generate customer reviews to specific products online.
••• idea generation
Idea Mill gets consumers involved in ideation
Aims to produce 20 validated messages
Philadelphia-based research firm TRC has launched Idea Mill, an idea generator that incorporates consumers into the ideation process. The product is designed to help product developers and research professionals produce 20 validated messages or can be used to reevaluate existing products. Respondents are asked to evaluate starter ideas and to also contribute their own ideas. The process produces a range of product possibilities and ideas while evaluating them in real-time. Idea Mill uses TRC’s Smart Incentives gaming technique along with its proprietary algorithm to further refine long lists and multiple ideas.
••• Briefly
Seattle-based videoconferencing platform Discuss.io has launched Discuss.io 360 Immersion, which enables the viewing of a 360-degree videostream on the Discuss.io platform. The offering allows marketing and insights teams to observe in-home ethnographies as they happen in real-time by using a headset that is typically used for virtual reality applications.
Research facility IdeaSuite has added new virtual-reality testing capabilities to its Portland, Ore., facility that will allow VR developers, market researchers and usability analysts to test their VR products. Researchers can also observe and record users’ interactions with VR hardware components and virtual environments.
Location platform Skyhook, Boston, has released Skyhook Context 2.0, which provides location precision for marketers to engage with opted-in mobile consumers using Wi-Fi signals and geospatial insights.
Shelton, Conn., researcher SSI and Hawaiian Airlines have launched a new rewards program, Opinions Take Flight, which allows HawaiianMiles members to earn award miles by participating in surveys and sharing opinions. It will also grow SSI’s B2B U.S. sample membership and provide SSI clients more access to consumer and business travelers’ opinions.
Boston-based market intelligence firm InCrowd has introduced MicroQual, a qualitative research solution that applies the principles of micro research (brevity and iteration) to the qualitative research process for health care. MicroQual automates and streamlines the process of coordinating and executing qualitative virtual research and enables teams to schedule and conduct a series of micro meetings – brief, virtual meetings with participants as short as 20 minutes.
Toronto-based firm research strategy group inc has integrated a room-scale virtual reality studio into its offices and research approaches. The studio will use photographers and 3-D content developers to help gain insights from research respondents.
U.K. research video platform Voxpopme has launched its on-demand video feedback app in Ireland, adding to the firm’s video insight communities in the U.K., Australia, Singapore and North America.
U.K. researcher OnePoint Global has made the source code of its mobile survey platform available, allowing research and customer experience industries to access and use the company’s mobile software tools on a software-as-a-service or custom-build basis. The open-source approach enables clients to create and build their own mobile survey solutions, integrate survey modules within their existing survey platform architecture or take a white-labeled approach.
Westport, Conn., researcher Critical Mix has launched its OneOpinion survey member panels across several European markets, making them available in Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The firm will expand OneOpinion into additional countries throughout 2017.
Cross-media measurement company RealityMine, Toronto, has released TouchPoints Canada with passive mobile data. The study captures data on Canadians age 16+ and shows how TV, digital, mobile, radio, PC, game console, over-the-top video viewing and other behaviors interact, giving context to media behavior throughout the day.
Fayetteville, Ark., researcher Field Agent is building on its mobile research capabilities in the U.K., offering the same mobile research methods as its U.S. counterpart.
Researcher FocusVision, Stamford, Conn., has relaunched an upgraded version of its video content management system, now branded as FV Video Insights, which will work with FV360, the firm’s focus group video technology.
In Nairobi, Kenya, research platform mSurvey and communications company Safaricom have launched Consumer Wallet, a platform that quantifies offline consumer spending habits and trends. Currently in beta, Consumer Wallet uses mSurvey’s mobile messaging platform to track and measure Kenya’s cash economy over time, giving insight into the spending habits of the offline consumer.
Cincinnati-based researcher Ascribe has expanded its Ascribe Surveys panel-targeting capability to provide access to Android smartphone users, with validated samples in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain and the U.K.
TRP Research, based in the U.K., has adopted Questback’s feedback platform to underpin its media omnibus surveys, TRP Surveys, and its bilingual media response panels in Wales and Scotland.
Great Neck, N.Y., research firm Lieberman Inc. reports a successful first use of its Line Optimization Technique, a tool from its newly acquired company, FRC. The client, an automotive parts supplier, sought to minimize its portfolio. After the study uncovered redundancy in the current portfolio, Lieberman recommended reducing the line by half. Findings also indicated an opportunity for a portfolio extension to leverage unmet market needs, as well as a five-target solution highlighting the key market targets.
Cambridge, Mass., firm ZyloTech has launched an artificial intelligence-powered platform for customer analytics. The platform helps companies solve data-quality issues and analyze customer data for insights in support of omnichannel marketing operations.
Point Inside, a Bellevue, Wash., shopping and engagement solutions firm, has launched its Deals Personalization tool, allowing retailers to use historical shopping information along with a shopper’s in-store physical location to provide personalized deal recommendations through a retailer’s branded mobile app.
Canada-based research solutions firm itracks has released the itracks GO 2.0 platform, an online qualitative research suite. The new platform builds on the firm’s current GO platform and includes a new look, branding capabilities, a new video recorder interface and several enhancements.
U.K. research company Liveminds has introduced Behavioural Recruitment, a method that uses Facebook data to recruit research participants based on actual (versus claimed) behavior.
Loyalty program provider Maritz Motivation Solutions, St. Louis, has introduced decision sciences to the loyalty space, providing marketers with insights to predict consumer behavior. Decision sciences uses data analytics and behavioral science to uncover leading indicators, allowing marketers to predict customer defection.
Researcher Ipsos has launched Connect:Digital in partnership with New York-based analytics company Moat. Connect:Digital is a holistic approach to pre-testing digital ads that uses creative impact measures and digital trading measures to help brands redefine paid view criteria and establish more meaningful brand outcomes.
Research firm Kantar Millward Brown, New York, has expanded the Ignite Network, its brand marketing analytics platform, in the U.S. The expansion allows marketers to: measure the effectiveness of a wider scope of mobile campaigns, including those with smaller impression sizes; evaluate the impact of mobile advertising on more niche, hard-to-reach audiences; and make decisions to plan and optimize mobile advertising investments based on more granular insights into campaign performance.
Oslo, Norway, researcher Confirmit has launched Confirmit Horizons Version 22, the latest version of its software suite. Additions to the suite include: updates to Confirmit Genius Text Analytics; a new Model Builder module; the launch of the Confirmit AskMe mobile survey app; delivery of Confirmit Survey Designer; enhancements to Confirmit CRM Connect for Salesforce; a variety of new CATI features to streamline operations; and Language Localization for Action Management.
In Wilton, Conn., researcher Toluna has reported that the company will increase its global survey respondent capacity by 20 percent during the second half of 2017.