Forrester:”game-changing year for online panels”

Panel quality tools set to ‘change the online research game’

http://www.research-live.com/news_story.aspx?pageid=30&r=y&newsid=4728

Advisory Board Rocks the Press!

“Peanut Labs’ A-Team to Tackle Bad Respondents”

http://www.mrweb.com/drno/news8405.htm

 

The Coverage Continues: Peanut Labs Announces Internal Advisory Board

Peanut Labs Announces Internal Advisory Board to Resolve Market Research Data Quality Issues Through Technology

Renowned Market Research Leaders Join Peanut Labs Board to Discuss and Enact Technological Solutions Like OptimusID^TM to Fight Suspect Online Survey Responses

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=861630

 

 

Advisory Board: Industry leaders discuss technology solutions to data-quality

Tomorrow Peanut Labs will be announcing a new internal advisory board around its Optimus digital fingerprinting technology. You got the info a day before it happened, right here on this blog.

The Advisory Board currently consists of 17 market research leaders from companies such as WaMu, Warners Bros, Knowledge Networks, Decipher and Millward Brown. The group is coming together to help shape how digital fingerprinting and other technologies can best be used for data-quality control in online research. This involves sharing internal research-on-research, creating a dialogue and evaluating tools and technologies that make the process of data-cleansing cheaper and less labor-intensive. Simon Chadwick, the former Global CEO of NOP World, will be chairing this group.

This is not an industry-wide initiative to improve data quality, such as the ARF Online Quality Council (which has been bringing the industry together on this in a collaborative manner). Peanut Labs is an active participant in the ARF ORQC and fully supports that initiative. This advisory board is a group that looks at specific ways to use Optimus and other technologies in online research. We highly commend the work that industry organizations are doing in this regard and continue to be involved in those initiatives.

We’d like to open the forum and invite your views on the subject. How have you used technology to automate and improve quality-control and data management?

Re-Rez on Research: Insight from Industry Innovators

Joined on the conference lines by the leaders of Re-Rez (Malcolm Williamson, Debbie Peternana, and Eric Bell), we are offered a brilliant opportunity to hear more about how this Texas-based company is earning its street cred.  ”Traditional web survey is here to stay,” says Eric, “but we must gravitate to access points such as web 2.0 sites, mobile platforms, and social networks.”  Malcolm points out that as the research industry shifts its attention to available resources, we are being flooding with an overabundance of junk pouring in from small panel and online companies trying to get a piece of the action.  ”We don’t care if the sample we pull from is good or bad, we’ll make it good, and this happens through effective questioning and implementing identification technologies, such as OptimusID.”  

Although many researchers voice that good survey design will turn out good data, Debbie takes this a step-further, “with increasing variance in the level of quality amongst identification technologies, Re-Rez adds strong screening and machine/digital fingerprinting technologies to better ensure we weed out the good from the bad.”  Debbie adheres to her beliefs that there is honesty online, and that good data does come from online respondents.  ”Good data.” says Debbie, “does comes from writing the survey and effectively analyzing the results.”  

When asked about how Re-Rez is answering the challenges of online data quality, Eric shared that “we are not just an aggregator, rather, we are able to get the ‘best-of-breed’ to what’s available for a particular study.”  Eric reminds us that Re-Rez even guarantees their work, while taking on the burden of managing multiple vendors so the end-clients don’t have to.  ”We monitor best practices from sources such as CASRO and MRA, and we continue to keep our eye on the ball.  We monitor and implement.”  Debbie adds that Re-Rez makes sure that a client is checking a study within 24-48 hours of launch, ensuring that they are showing appropriate survey behavior, data integrity, and addressing the removal of speeders and cheaters.

“Re-Rez has built its reputation on trust and innovation,” says Malcolm.  ”We are focused on the research experience, we monitor and align with upcoming trends, we focus on the best current practices, and we continue to be progressive in our service to clients.”  ”And we serve our core clients by finding better ways to serve them,” says Debbie jumping in with a jolt of enthusiasm, “we help our clients go out and earn business.”

With that said, I offer many thanks to the folks at Re-Rez for offering their insight and energy around the state of online research.  It’s great to see a group of able professionals so devoted to offering real data quality and client-focused results!

What is the true cost of BAD Market Research?

I have often heard this question asked, but rarely have I seen a real answer - so I am shouting out to the readers of this blog in search of one!  We all know that MR quality stems from making sure that we are asking the right people the right questions, and applying valid statistics to the data to draw conclusions.  Taking it a step further, we also need the smart, informed people to interpret the results and formulate meaningful actions based on their interpretation.  Hopefully this happens flawlessly every time, but what happens if a mistake is made?  Does it cost

• nothing?
• $20,000?
• $1,000,000?
• $30,000,000?
• An FDA approval?
• A hard earned promotion?
• The loss of a valued client?
• The loss of a job?
• An entire brand?

I think that all of the above situations are not only possible, but probably have occurred over the course of MR history.  That said, can someone send me an answer or add to the list?  Even better, if you have a horror story or real statistic that can aid in answering this question, don’t hold back - post it!

If we can better understand the costs of BAD research, then we can start to address the potential problems from the right perspectives.  In doing so, we can find meaningful solutions and best practices to PREVENT poor decisions from ever being made.

Where’s the Love? Media-Screen’s CEO Shares his Vision of Market Research

Housed in a beautifully restored historic building in San Francisco’s mission district, Media-Screen’s CEO Josh Crandall offers his unique perspective into the future of market research. “Well it’s evident that research as a whole is headed online,” said Josh, “we (the industry) have seen the change from random-digit dial as becoming less representative of research, to online surveys becoming a more acceptable methodology.”  

 

Josh Crandall, CEO (Media-Screen)

 

As I continue to point out, albeit ad nauseam, there continue to be challenges with integrating effective online survey strategy, and at the peak of these issues we find data quality.  ”With effective survey design, respondent recruiting, and the use of behavioral-based analytics, we should essentially be able to weed out many of the quality issues plaguing online research.”  Mr. Crandall continues by adding, “The real issues facing the online research world are two part: one, is technical, the other is interpersonal.”  Josh makes the point that technical aspects of online research means that we face multiple analytic systems measuring data with their own set of standards.  And as we know, end-clients and market research firms draft their own standards too.  So in trying to cope with a lack of quality standards, Josh reiterated the need for two primary elements of effective online research: consumer engagement and effective survey design.

“It seems the industry doesn’t look favorably on professional survey takers, and I think that’s crazy, we should cherish these consumers, even reward them.”  Josh is speaking at the heart of consumer engagement.  It appears that there’s a bit of love lost amongst the survey takers and market researchers, and not enough to be done to bridge the gap between the huge online population willing to boast their opinions anywhere they can, to honest respondents taking the time to thoroughly complete an online survey.  ”We need to respect respondents’ time,” said Josh,” while continuing to conduct good research.”

Though I have conducted many an interview, there are times when someone can really strike a cord, priming your heart strings for a refreshing new tonality.  This was the case as Josh spoke so passionately about consumer engagement. “Online research is a reflection of where the market lives today.  We simply need to ask the right questions to really engage consumers in the place where they live.”

 

Custom Couture: An Interview with Decipher’s Dynamic President

 

It’s Monday, May 12th, the sun shining through San Francisco’s always metropolitan financial district, and I’m lucky enough to be joined on the phone lines by Kristin Luck, President of Decipher.  As a leading market research expert, Kristin has answered a few questions we have regarding the state of the industry, and where we’re heading in the years to come.

 

Kristin Luck, President (Decipher)

 

When asked about the future of online research, Kristin explained that online market research is here to stay, but that it is important to see online research as a part of the broader whole of “offline” research, which includes the increasingly popular trend of mobile research.  Kristin added that all research platforms evolve over time, and online research is one of those powerful mediums that is continuing to evolve.

There are many issues that are currently demanding the research industry’s attention, however, Kristin suggested that online data quality continues to be a primary and most relevant issue.   Ms. Luck feels that data quality is client-driven, and should not be thought of as a negative thing.  Yes, this suggests that the big client challenge still remains, with each client boasting its own need for quality standards, leaving no clear cut standard as to general data quality expectations.  But regardless if a client grabs hold of quality initiatives or not, Kristin and her team at Decipher have implemented several best practices to ensure the very best online research quality.  From implementing intuitive survey traps to deploying the revolutionary Optimus digital fingerprinting technology, Kristin goes above and beyond to ensure unparalleled data quality is delivered to all her clients.

The future is an uncertain place, but Kristin feels that an ongoing adaptation to relevant trends, such as mobile research and self-serve research tools, will continue to drive Decipher as an industry leader in high quality market research.  Armed with an in-house development team whose sole mission in life is to customize client-facing research applications, Decipher’s custom couture is a refreshing new wardrobe design for an otherwise off-the-shelf laden industry.

 

OptimusID on Youtube

CASRO Intl. Conference

NYC

1:35 pm: Eileen A. Campbell from Millward Brown talking about going international. Good 101 talk. Lots of multimedia - cool audio and video. Shes an impressive speaker.

Eileen: “Need mind, heart and stomach”. That pretty much sums it up.

Great comment on risk. Ability to take risk is inversely proportional to the size of the organization.

2:15 pm: Duane Berlin from CASRO (General Counsel). Chief Privacy Guru. Talking about EU Safe Harbor. General overview and background. This is useful stuff.

Duane: “Worst of both worlds” (on why not to sign up).

Based on our experience if you’re planning to work with any major client, they will require you to certify. So might as well get it done, and over with sooner than later.

Hes getting into a lot of details, which is a good thing. Boy i’m happy I didn’t have to go through this. Kudos to Ali (our COO) who got OptimusID certified.

Ended with saying no solution is perfect. I wish lawyers took sides more often.

Recent research conducted by Gallup (commissioned by the EU) show consumers have a low level of trust in research / panel companies (even lower than credit card companies). The trust level was down from a study done in 1996 on the same issue. Not good.

3:30pm: Reginald Baker, COO, Market Strategies International. Talk about the ISO 20252. Need a true commitment to quality. Don’t do it, just to put it on your website. Need certification bodies for the US. But in the UK, 37 companies have been certified.

ISO certification for access panels, sets a low bar. Will be finalized in Sydney in about 2 weeks. Takes usually about a year to become an official standard.

3:52pm: Erich Wiegand, the Association of German Market and Social Research Institutes (ADM). Funny guy. He believes ISO 20252 sets a good standard for research practice.

I’m skeptical about ISO DIS 26362 (standard for access panels). If you’ve had a chance to read through the draft, it reads more like a set of definitions rather than processes that improve quality. Sounds more and more like lip service.

There is going to be real cost for sample companies to get certified and to comply. The question that will drive this decision is will end clients pay more for quality. This is yet to be seen.

(sorry not blogging the last session of the day - need to get back to work)