Study Probes Online Power of Hispanic Consumers

- Mark Dolliver, Adweek

Not so long ago, a report on Hispanic Americans' Internet usage would likely have been focusing on a "digital divide," with Hispanic and other minorities lagging far behind the general population in online access and activity. The title of a Scarborough Research report released today, "The Power of the Hispanic Consumer Online," gives a quick hint at how times have changed. The report finds Hispanic Internet users to be "avid downloaders of digital content," thanks in part to a broadband adoption rate mirroring that of the nation's overall online population.

Scarborough says 54 percent of Hispanic adults are online, vs. 69 percent of total U.S. adults. (If anything, the gap is likely to be narrower now, as the national data for the report were gathered between February 2007 and March 2008.) Among Hispanics who are online, 68 percent have a broadband connection in their household, as do 71 percent of U.S. Internet users in general.

In Scarborough's polling, 42 percent of Hispanic Internet users (vs. 35 percent of Internet users in general) reported downloading some sort of digital content in the 30 days before being questioned. And what have they been downloading? As with the total online population, Hispanic Internet users are most likely to be latching onto music. Thirty-two percent of wired Hispanics reported having done so in the previous 30 days, vs. 24 percent of Internet users in general. Seventeen percent of online Hispanics (and 14 percent of all wired respondents) reported downloading something in the catchall "other video" category within that period.

Fewer Hispanic respondents said they'd downloaded audio clips (11 percent), movies (9 percent), TV programs (8 percent), video games (6 percent) or podcasts (3 percent) within that 30-day period. Aside from podcasts, the incidence of downloading in each category was slightly lower among Internet users in general than it was for the study's Hispanic respondents. Scarborough (a joint venture between Arbitron and AdweekMedia parent The Nielsen Co.) notes that younger Hispanic adults were, as you'd expect, more likely than their elders to have downloaded digital content in the previous 30 days, with 51 percent of the 18-34-year-olds saying they'd done so.

Another section of the report notes that mobile devices are "an important point of Internet entry" for Hispanic adults. Among Hispanic cell-phone subscribers, 55 percent use it for text messaging, 28 percent for picture messaging, 22 percent for instant messaging, 15 percent for downloading video games, 15 percent for e-mail and 11 percent for "other" Internet usage. Here again, the polling finds Hispanic respondents more likely than cell-phone users in general to use the device in these ways.

When it comes to buying online, Scarborough found Hispanic Internet users lagging behind the total online population -- but not by much. Sixty-two percent of online Hispanic adults reported having made at least one online purchase in the previous 12 months, vs. 70 percent of Internet users in general. Among those who did make such purchases, the average spent in the previous 12 months was $762 for Hispanic respondents and $861 for Internet users generally.

The report also took a look at some metro areas that have disproportionate numbers of Hispanic adults. Among the findings about these markets: The incidence of broadband access among online Hispanics was particularly high in Miami (76 percent), San Francisco (75 percent) and New York (72 percent). The incidence of past-30-day downloading among Hispanic Internet users was highest in Phoenix (60 percent). The average amount of online spending, among Hispanics who'd made any online purchase in the prior 12 months, was highest in New York (at $883), San Francisco ($879) and Phoenix ($831).

Conquest unveils viral ad testing tool

Conquest has launched AdSpark, an online tool to test the viral potential of new adverts, which is based on the firm’s Metaphorix system of using avatars to measure how respondents feel about brands

Agency founder David Penn (pictured) said that “everyone is after viral ads now” after the success of campaigns such as comparison site Compare the Market’s ‘Compare the Meerkat’ and Cadbury’s drumming gorilla.

“The marketing world has shifted irrevocably from the traditional ‘interrupt and persuade’ rational model of advertising to a place where a meerkat fan club can set a brand alight,” said Penn. “Most research tools are blunt instruments when it comes to contagious, emotional response and sometimes miss the truly great ads.”

To track an advert’s buzz potential using AdSpark, Penn says a respondent could be asked to control animated characters around an office watercooler. In the case of the Compare the Meerkat advert, a meerkat will appear above the watercooler and users populate the screen with characters, depending on how much buzz they think the advert will create.

via http://www.research-live.com By James Verrinder

ESOMAR 2009 - ONLINE PANELS AND BEYOND

Invite a colleague | Add to Outlook calendar | Add to Google calendar

CONFERENCE REVIEW: WINDOW INTO 2010

by Ray Poynter

• Listening
• Communities

Set in Chicago, in an unusually mild October week, a well attended (over 230 people from 28 countries) ESOMAR Online Conference shone a spotlight on the changes we are likely to see in 2010 and beyond. Rather than run chronologically through the Conference, this report addresses the implications of the conference thematically.

Listening

The single biggest message from Chicago was that researchers need to Listen, which in this context means using observational techniques. The importance of listening was highlighted by an excellent presentation by Annelies Verhaeghe from Belgium and Emilie van den Berge from the Netherlands called “Getting answers without asking questions”, which was a case study looking at how web scraping technologies were used to extract over 70,000 comments from social networks about the Dutch version of the TV show X factor. One great aspect of the case study was that it showed how the information had been used to change the show.

The listening theme was further developed by Karina Besprosvan and David Oyarzun, from Chile, who presented the progress they have been making in the use of Twitter as a tool for research, in their paper “Tweetmiotics”. Their case study looked at collecting two million tweets, sampling 200,000 and analysing them to produce insight.

The listening topic raised a number of issues, including: what technologies are best? What are the ethics of extracting comments? How should we process millions of comments? What does representativity mean in this field? Indeed, is it qual, quant, or something else?

Twitter played other roles in the conference, beyond being a source of passive data collection. Many of the delegates tweeted their way through the conference, sharing thoughts and pictures. To get an idea of what it was like to be there, enter #esoc into the search field of Twitter (you don’t even need to be a member). In addition, the Tuesday night saw a Tweet-Up at the Luxbar, where over 40 researchers gathered to extend the social side of the conference, in an initiative organised by Brian LoCicero using twtvite. One of the interesting things about this use of Twitter (both during the day and at the Tweet-up) was the way that it managed to involve people who were not attending the conference.

Communities

Several of the presentations, and much of the discussion, made it clear that communities have become a mainstream technique, at least amongst the avant-garde. Over the last couple of years many conference papers have been looking at ‘exploring’ the idea of communities. However, this year the Conference saw papers that had moved on to more advanced issues, such as a taxonomy of communities from James Kennedy (“Online community platforms”), a cross-cultural review by Manila Austin (“Cultural differences: a draw or barrier?”), a study of community member’s views from Australia (“It works for us but does it work for them?”), and a Swarovski case study of innovation communities by Volker Bilgram (“How to be successful in co-creation research?”).

Although more than 90% of the delegates appeared to be fans of communities as a research tool (based on a highly scientific raising of hands and chanting of ‘I believe’) a very interesting query was raised by Bill Blyth, who asked whether there was, or could be, a business model that would generate sufficient revenue from Communities, at an industry level.

It is also worth noting that the two papers that were nominated for the ESOMAR Excellence Award were both about communities, i.e. "Optimizing engagement in multinational online communities" and “How online research communities work for consumers invited to participate".

LinkedIn and Facebook - the shape of the future?

Perhaps the most exciting and most scary contribution was the session with Daniel Shapero of LinkedIn and Sean Bruich of Facebook (who has the interesting and revealing job title of Monetization Analytics). The session was moderated by Tom Anderson and illustrated the amazing potential that Facebook and LinkedIn present in terms of being able to reach potential respondents, especially given the massive amount of information held by these social networks. This data could allow targeting researchers to reach tightly defined groups and avoid having to ask the traditional profiling type questions. However, the session made many delegates wonder what would happen if social networks decided to compete directly with market research?

Both speakers made the point that they could not imagine allowing researchers direct access to their members, because they were concerned to protect their members from abuse, a telling indictment on many research surveys and approaches.

Daniel Shapero of LinkedIn and Sean Bruich of Facebook panel discussion with Anderson Analytics’ Tom Anderson.

What’s All The Fuss About Online Community Panels?

So you’ve probably heard the term “panel” and “community” used separately. Some even suggest it isn’t possible to have the best of both of these concepts in one. But in fact it’s absolutely possible and being used for market research purposes right now!

At Vision Critical, we take all the great things about an online panel and all of the great things about an online community, and put them together. So we’re on the same page, here’s a definition of each concept so that we can understand the difference between the two.

• A Panel is typically large, private, invitation-only environment for sending out surveys. Panels give clients easy, longitudinal access to customers. Interaction is only one-on-one and members don’t get to interact with each another.
• A Community is typically small and intimate. Members can talk to one another and start their own conversations about topics they want to discuss. Client’s lead more focused discussions and members also generate their own content.

There are many benefits to an online community panel – here’s a list of the most prevalent:

Benefit 1: Larger Quantitative Base Plus Intimate Discussions:

With Online Community Panels you get the bonus of a larger sample base for quantitative data, interactive visual surveys, as well as intimate conversations between smaller groups of members through both client focused and member generated discussion forums.

Benefit 2: Target Who You Want To Hear From:

Larger groups are invited to participate in surveys and smaller groups participate in discussion forums. You invite different groups and segments to participate in different activities and projects depending on what your information needs are.

Benefit 3: Use The Right Tool From The Toolbox:

Surveys, forums, photos, highlighter, collage, quantifiable projective techniques, and more. Pick the right tool to meet your business needs and research objectives.

Benefit 4: Save Money And Do More:

Having a 2-in-1 eliminates the duplicated cost of running the two separately and also reduces the need for more expensive, traditional research. Having longitudinal, real time access to your best customers, means you can reach out to them whenever you need to and get insights back right away.

There are also many practical implications to consider before starting a community panel, including: size, incentives, target, brand affinity, blind/branded, engagement, reporting, response rates, health, resourcing, and more. I’ll discuss these topics in future blog posts.

BY ELLIE SYKES, VP OF COMMUNITY INSIGHTS – VISION CRITICAL

I’ve been a part of Vision Critical’s community development and evolution since I joined in November 2006. My research background is largely in moderating, ethnography, and online community management.

The aim for the Community blog is to share best practices and some of the lessons learned from running online communities and community panels at Vision Critical. I’ll also take the frequently asked questions our team gets about running private communities and community panels and try to answer them in a succinct way.

Social Media ROI: Socialnomics

by Socialnomics author Erik Qualman.

This video showcases several Social Media ROI examples along with other effective Social Media Strategies. Music is by Bob Sinclair ("Tennessee")

Panel Management Explained

A panel is a group of people with relevant backgrounds who agree to participate in surveys. Businesses can organize a panel for each group of key stakeholders: customers, employees, resellers, partners, prospects, etc.

Because panelists agree in advance to participate in surveys and feedback efforts, they become almost a guaranteed source of information for the sponsoring organization. Customers typically participate in the panel because they value their relationship with the sponsor, and they appreciate the additional information, influence and early access that comes from participating in the panel. For general market panels, panelists instead often look to merchandise and cash rewards, though even for many general panels people participate because they want to make their views heard.

How does a panel work? You invite an individual to participate in a panel and communicate the ground rules:

• What they will be surveyed about
• How you'll use the information
• How frequently they'll be asked to participate in surveys
• Why it's important that they participate
• How they can opt-out if they change their mind
• What's in it for them

Once you gain their permission, you invite the panelist to complete a registration survey, which will gather detailed demographic or firmographic information. This information can be used to target individual surveys to panel subsegments and also provides for rich opportunities in cross-tabulating survey results.

In contrast to online communities, in a panel, members communicate only with the sponsoring researcher, through the medium of the surveys they are sent. In online communities, members can engage in discussions with one another through an online portal.

Want to learn how to set up your own customer panel? Download a complimentary copy of my white paper, Customers as Confidants: Customer Panel Management Made Easy.

by Jeffrey Henning - http://blog.vovici.com

Social media studies find pros and cons for buzz trackers

Social media savvy businesses have been quick to tap new communications channels to monitor what people are saying about their brands, according to a Business.com survey. But now for the bad news – most aren’t paying for the tools they use to track mentions of their companies.

The Business Social Media Benchmarking Study pegged brand monitoring as one of the top social media activities firms are engaged in, with 60% of 1,600 respondents doing so – second only to the 70% who maintain company-related accounts or profiles on sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

Just over 50% of respondents said they also track what’s being said about their competitors, but when asked to list what tools they use for monitoring online conversations, most report relying on free Google searches. Other search engines followed behind, while the percentages using paid-for tools such as Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Radian6 or Converseon were in the low single digits.

It is important to note that many of the companies participating in the Business.com survey were small enterprises, with 60% of respondents employing fewer than 10 people.

Vendors of paid-for tools might take more comfort from a separate study by the Aberdeen Group, where just under half of respondents were from companies of more than 100 employees. In that survey, 50% of participants said they were increasing their investment level in social media monitoring initiatives despite cutbacks made elsewhere in marketing and research activities as a result of the recession.

Both reports are available free online, though registration may be required to access them. Click here for the Business.com survey and here for the Aberdeen Group study.

By Brian Tarran via http://www.research-live.com

Kitelab: mix de tecnologías al servicio del research

por Jimena Laclau - Via InfoBrand

Hoy hay horizontalidad en los estudios, se combinan metodologías y se dan procesos más cortos. Esto señala Lila Guerrero, presidente de Kitelab Argentina, la agencia que desarrolló una guía práctica titulada “Plan de Vuelo”.

En términos cuantitativos, el tamaño del mercado argentino según algunos estimadores ronda actualmente los 120 millones de dólares, teniendo en cuenta la totalidad de los estudios que se realizan. Otros hablan de 71 millones, pero tienen en cuenta tan sólo un grupo de estudios.

Guerrero aporta estas cifras y da cuenta de que, de 2007 a 2008, la investigación de mercado creció en nuestro país un 25 por ciento. En tanto que en el primer semestre de 2009 no se registró crecimiento alguno respecto al mismo semestre de 2008 y esto arroja un saldo para el período decreciente. La baja se vincula con la caída de la actividad económica, caída del producto bruto e incluso caída del índice de confianza del consumidor, propone Guerrero.

Las tres “I” en cuestión

Mientras todos los pronósticos para 2010 anticipan una reactivación, “que en nuestra actividad se va a notar recién en el segundo semestre del año”, hoy todavía las marcas están haciendo sólo los estudios imprescindibles. “Para medir en cantidad de estudios, un cliente nos dijo una vez muy acertado que la investigación puede ser Interesante, Importante o Imprescindible. Hoy se hace sólo lo imprescindible, y fundamentalmente se resuelve todo con estudios cuali, que requieren hacer menos encuestas y recursos.” La investigación en Argentina siempre fue de muy buena calidad. “Lo que se está incorporando hoy, es un mix de tecnologías. Dentro de los estudios sindicados por ejemplo, realizados para varios clientes, hoy existe una parte de la metodología que es la ‘antropología online’, que requiere tener especialistas.”

Research express

En las demandas de los clientes aparecen algunas tendencias. Guerrero señala que “por un lado, estos piden que no les demos datos sino información, es decir datos organizados para poder tomar decisiones. Por otra parte, están cada vez más apurados, lo que obliga a resolver los estudios en menos tiempo, y a presentar a veces sólo un breve resumen ejecutivo. Hay clientes que no quieren saber la trama del estudio, sino sólo los resultados y otros que quieren todo. Pero esta última modalidad está decreciendo. En tercer lugar demandan soluciones flexibles, que atiendan por ejemplo a la menor disponibilidad de recursos. Esto tiene que ver con la actual combinación de metodologías.

La idea es buscar toda la ‘info’ posible, actuar como una especie de infocenter que a la vez, es un selector y un sintetizador”. De ahí, que parte del trabajo de las investigadoras hoy es analizar foros, chats, webs o blogs. O salir a la calle y hacer etnografía. “Por eso, tenemos que tener, analistas de sistemas, antropólogos, matemáticos, gente de datamining porque mucha información está dentro del propio cliente.”

A la incorporación de tecnologías y la combinación de estudios, se suma “una especie de horizontalidad entre los estudios: se hacen los informes tradicionales, pero también es tan importante mirar todo ésto”.

Balancear el online

Internet como herramienta ofrece ventajas y desventajas, plantea Guerrero. Las ventajas son que la gente pueda hacer las encuestas sola, en el momento que le venga bien; es ideal para temas más comprometidos. Además, Internet permite hacer un seguimiento minuto a minuto. Las limitaciones en tanto, tienen que ver con que lo online es todo auto-administrado, de manera que la tasa de respuesta de la gente es baja. O también, hay un cierto sesgo en la red, que recorta por ejemplo en quienes tiene acceso a esta. “Internet sirve especialmente para un target como el ejecutivo.”

Los focus online por ejemplo, “sirven para juntar gente de puntos muy alejados, sustituyen restricciones de tiempo y espacio. O si no hay otra alternativa por cualquier factor. Si no es así, es mucho más efectivo poder verse a la cara, personalmente”.

El rol de la investigación hoy es “aportar información o conocimiento al modo de un intérprete, está más del lado de la consultoría. A veces, le toca simplemente validar, dar tranquilidad respecto a decisiones tomadas. Aunque también hay veces que las empresas tienen que tomar decisiones en contra de las recomendaciones dadas por las investigadoras”.

Contexto crispado

Por último, si se compara el desarrollo de la actividad actual con el pasado, hoy surgen dos graves problemas que la investigación enfrenta: la inseguridad y la accesibilidad. “Ruben Ordoñez, uno de los primeros investigadores del mercado local, cuenta que ellos solían dejar su tarjeta y entonces por ahí la gente los llamaba para comentarles que se habían olvidado de decirles algo… Hoy en cambio, el muestreo en hogares, o una encuesta probabilística por timbreo enfrenta graves problemas. A los hogares ABC1 no llegás ni al timbre (por la seguridad). En tanto que el nivel más bajo por su parte, casi no tiene líneas fijas sino que usa celulares, y esto también dificulta los muestreos.”

Otro problema de la investigación hoy, es el acoso que la gente ya sufre de la publicidad, los concursos…, “nosotros caemos en esa bolsa”, resalta Guerrero.

2do Estudio de Consumo de Medios Digitales 2009 | IAB México

IAB presentó su último estudio titulado “Consumo de Medios Digitales 2009” en conjunto con Millward Brown y diPaola Márquez.

Este documento comprende tendencias de consumo hacia nuevos medios en comparación con 2008, porcentaje de penetración, demográficos y otros datos útiles para cualquiera interesado en estrategia digital para la web de hoy.

Estudio de Consumo de Medios Digitales 2009 | Iab Mexico

View more documents from marcabeta.

WHY CHOOSE ONLINE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH?

In discussing online qualitative research, it is important to bear in mind that its power and relevance stem not just from its potential to substitute for traditional offline methods. However, just as importantly, it is a way to allow companies to conduct qualitative research in situations that might not have allowed it beforehand, and with audiences that were previously harder to access.

Traditional qualitative studies are often ruled out as too expensive or time consuming—factors that remain critical barriers in today’s ever faster paced business community. However, the growing assortment of online qualitative tools has rendered many of these objections moot as the very real benefits become clear:

• Speed: Studies can be deployed and completed in a matter of days, with transcripts instantly available for review.
• Cost: Because moderators and clients do not need to travel to far-flung facilities, saings in both time and cost can be significant.
• Geography: Diverse and wide-ranging groups of participants can be assembled for a single project easily and without requiring travel. Hard-to-recruit or low-incidence groups are less of a challenge as well.
• Candor: Because the online setting affords participants a degree of privacy, they are often much more comfortable discussing sensitive topics and sharing unpopular opinions than they would be in a traditional face-to-face setting.
• Access: Clients are able to view sessions in real time, interact with the moderator and provide feedback.
• Relevance: Many respondents are comfortable with interactive communication and may embrace the opportunity to participate in research using online techniques that seem less intrusive than traditional methods.

via http://www.greenbook.org