Personal privacy and confidentiality – how important are these issues in market research?

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Google has recently modified, or unified rather, its privacy policy, giving rise to numerous discussions and critiques on the Web. Similarly, Facebook is another technological giant that has subject to sharp debates relating to the impact of changes in its interface on the confidentiality of its users’ data. It is clear that data confidentiality has become a very sensitive issue for internet users.

At the same time, this is an area which is difficult for organizations to master given the many changes which impinge both on the technology and user behavior. The TechCrunch blog has published an interesting article on this subject. It clearly illustrates the issue from Facebook’s perspective.  The Web is no longer simply a read-only medium, but a medium through which everybody can publish, and in which identifiable users have been replaced by anonymous ones. On the other hand, it is important to distinguish between public dissemination of group discussions and strictly private ones. Even when social media allow for such distinction, frequently users make errors and publish confidential information for all to see.

The market research world is certainly not excluded from this debate, particularly as its survey activities are increasingly conducted over the Internet. Organizations such as MRS (The Market Research Society) and CASRO (Council of American Survey Research Organizations) recently addressed this issue, and a series of recommendations concerning research on social media (Social Media Research Guidelines) is in the process of discussion.

To say the least, the opinion of research professionals seems to be very divided on this subject, as shown by the report on a Web round table in the Greenbookblog.org blog. They note the need to regain public confidence and to respect applicable legislation, but also the disparities that exist between the desire to establish rules and the operational realities of Web 2.0 and Social Media. The final summary contains three important points.

Firstly, it is very difficult to make sense of the forest of different laws and multiple privacy policies on different sites, let alone figure out how they might be interpreted by judges and lawyers in the event of legal conflict. Many laws deal with these aspects previous to the Internet and Social Media. Their application in this new context is extremely difficult to evaluate.

Secondly, we observe that even if many users may find it difficult to understand the implications of what they are disseminating on social media, the content which they are publishing is nevertheless their responsibility, and it is up to them to choose the appropriate settings when they use the media.

Thirdly, it should not be forgotten that the Web crosses frontiers and spans multiple laws which a far from being uniform and which are sometimes even conflicting. Can organizations settle for a least common denominator of simple basic rules? There is no easy answer to this question, unfortunately, other than a definition of them.

On the other hand, what is clear from this study, published in April 2012 is that any breakdown in trust bears severe consequences: more than two thirds of the 1,000 British consumers who were surveyed broke off relations with an organization which misused their private information. The issues surrounding personal privacy and the confidentiality of information should never be underestimated.

The Voxco Team.

Trends in mobile devices: not just new technology, but behavioural changes as well

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The mobile device revolution is at a turning point from which things will change significantly. Do you doubt this? Take a look at the  following numbers. In 2011 more smart phones were sold than PCs. However, even though the number of smart phones in the US equals that of regular cell phones, globally this proportion is only 15%. It is estimated that in 2016 sales of tablets and smart phones will be 4 times that of PCs. In terms of internet access everything is going to change.

Note that these figures come from a publication, dated March 22, in which one of the conclusions is that Instagram (an application) is a remarkable example of success related to this mobile revolution. One month later, Facebook acquired Instagram, together with its 14 employees and more than 25 million users, for the lowly sum of 1 billion dollars. We can only conclude that users of mobile applications are enormously valuable to Facebook.

Perhaps you reckon that Facebook is being pulled along by a warped view of things, and that this acquisition is an act of folly. After all, they could have hired a team of developers and created an equivalent application for a fraction of the cost. But reflect for a moment on the following numbers. To get 1 million users it took AOL (the internet access services company) 9 years, Facebook (social networking) 9 months, and “Draw Something”, the latest mobile application of epidemic proportions, only 9 days! Can you see the acceleration effect?

As always, it’s easy to say that things are changing. But to predict the consequences of change is much more nebulous. At first sight, we are talking here about changes in technology: we are replacing a device, the PC, with another, a phone or a tablet. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s not a replacement but an addition, or even a multiplication. In fact, more and more users in developed countries have a computer, AND a smart phone, AND a tablet device.

Forget the technology, it’s all about changes in behavior. Not long ago, advertisers used to plan on the basis of the number of TV viewers expected to be watching a particular program. The remote control has enabled viewers to change program on the fly. But if you think that this was the ultimate zapping tool, then read this. According to a study published this month in Adage magazine, new users change their media platform 17 to 27 times per hour, depending on their age category. The youngest among them, the “digital natives”, change media roughly every 2 minutes. In short, with mobile technology, the user is becoming a multi-platform browser.

To conclude, the use of mobile technology is now an established fact. However, beyond offering consumers an additional click, we need to understand them, accept their limited attention spans, and be able to follow them in their perpetual movement. To impose a particular platform on them is a guarantee of losing them. It is essential to offer them choices, to adapt to their rhythm, and to their preferred communication method of the moment. Our survey tools are ready for this new challenge, the consumers also. All that is needed now is your ideas and talent to forge ahead!

The Voxco Team

A Facebook survey can’t substitute for a traditional survey

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Many organizations have invested in creating Facebook pages to enable dialogue with their clients, employees or citizens. According to a study conducted in 2011 by CNW and Léger Marketing, 90% of American consumers (87% in Canada) are using this popular social network created by Mark Zuckerberg.

It’s perfectly logical, therefore, to consider adding a survey application to your organization’s page for the purpose of collection information. This will undoubtedly obtain data, but the real question is what decisions can be taken on the basis of it?

Facebook Survey

You may ask “If 90% of clients are there, why would the results not have the same value as a traditional survey?” Quite simply, because this high proportion, while impressive, hides a much more complex reality.

First of all, even if 90% of consumers are on Facebook, the above-mentioned study merely reflects that the majority are chiefly interested in conversing with their friends and looking for entertainment. Some of them, nevertheless, do follow certain brands, but their primary goal is to look for special offers, and not to respond to your questions.

You will certainly find it a challenge to entice these people to participate in your survey. You could, of course, achieve some success by offering a reward through a contest or draw. Obviously, there are additional costs associated with the operation, coupled with a risk of biasing the results. The respondents are unlikely to typify your targeted cross section of the population, and your choice of reward can easily skew the respondents. For example, offering an iPad is an attraction, but only for certain types of consumers.

Maybe you have thought of using Facebook profiles to get to know your respondents. Unfortunately, these are extremely unreliable. For example, it’s known that in certain countries 25% of 12 year-olds have a profile even though the minimum age limit is age 13. Facebook also has a known problem of false identifications, due to a variety of reasons.

Another point to consider is the actual dynamics of social media. This can be useful to you because, for example, it allows your most loyal clients to recommend your survey to their friends – an excellent method for propagating your study in “viral” fashion. However, some of them can also change into activists and recommend which answers to supply. It’s not just a matter of chance that the concept of “influencers” is present in all analyses of social media. Make sure that you seriously monitor the social web before analyzing your results.

As you can see, surveys conducted by market research firms still have a bright future. Besides, they still have more research to do, and that concerns the use of social media.

The Voxco Team

The Biggest Risk in Marketing

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Recessions inevitably give rise to serious risk aversion.

It’s to be expected, with limited budgets, that every effort needs is needed to make each dollar count. In this context, investing in tools, activities or campaigns which produce little results is a luxury that can’t be afforded.

Is consumer attitude and confidence also significantly affected by the notion of risk? A recent study reveals that 62% of consumers are finding the world increasingly hostile and uncertain. It’s likely that many company managers also share the same view.

Despite all of this, the aim of marketing is to generate more growth than your competitors. Do you think that you could win the Formula 1 Grand-Prix without taking any risks? The question begs the answer. In fact, it could be said that the biggest risk in marketing is refusing to take any.

A concrete and up-to-the-minute example is the Web 2.0. For many managers the potential benefits are fuzzy and impossible to quantify, and the risk of losses looms large. It’s very tempting to wait on the sidelines. To avoid giving the appearance of being outmoded, simply open a Facebook page and a Twitter account on which to post our press releases. There’s no apparent risk at all.

However, there is a big risk in doing that: you open a major opportunity for your competition. The famous “first mover advantage” is indeed important. Also, a new domain must be used for experimenting, and initial tardiness if often hard to catch up on. Nike, understanding this, has recently launched a range of footwear 2.0 (linked to smart phone applications) - a truly innovative approach.

Obviously, taking the risk of being innovative does not necessarily mean forging ahead blindly. As we have already discussed on a number of occasions on this blog, knowing how to listen is important when it comes to the Social Media. This will allow you to analyze the results and adjust your strategy accordingly. Our social media monitoring tool is valuable for managing these kind of risks and converting them into opportunities.

Are you ready to do some innovating?

The Voxco Team

Market Research in 2012: Speed versus Depth

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Speed, and yet more speed is the current norm. In Great Britain there’s even talk of raising the speed limit on motorways to obtain more productivity. As one management guru said, “It’s better to act too quickly than to wait for too long.”

The notion of speed is often associated with Social Media. To be sure, by following a marketing expert on Twitter you can discover 10 new trends every day. However, responding immediately to them is not a viable option. The important thing is to understand the underlying notions which can be useful in guiding our business decisions.

Questions which capture the attention of marketing specialists are often related to current events. A crisis peaks, a competitor launches a new product, new legislation is about to be implemented, all these events require understanding possible consumer reaction. At today’s pace of competitive development, the ability to quickly grasp the critical issues is the greatest asset. However, it’s still important to understand the implications, and these might sometimes be contradictory.

In this context, market research tools have not become obsolete all of a sudden. Studies and surveys have been proving their worth for a long time. The secret is to improve their speed of execution and analysis.

Thanks to new internet surveying tools, many organizations can now undertake studies on their own.  This is perfect for customer satisfaction surveys or to periodically take the pulse of potential consumers. However, to quickly evaluate the impact of new trends, market research firms are better equipped for the job. Not only do they have powerful tool to build the surveys efficiently, but they also offer significant advantages in terms of expertise and resources.

Speed is not everything in this area. It’s important to develop a pertinent questionnaire with the right questions, and this requires in-depth experience. You have, no doubt, noticed that various media have their “current” survey on their website. It’s a good idea, but the phrasing of the question often significantly biases the results, so what are you to conclude? Following that, you need to mobilize the resources necessary to execute the survey quickly. And finally, the results have to be analyzed without delay; for this both expertise and technical tools are critical.

Managers need immediate responses because they would like to take action quickly. On the other hand, they don’t want to go wrong, hence these responses must be founded on studies which have some depth. All of this is anything but simple. For this reason market research firms still have a future. Since they require superior tools, we are very proud to point out that it is our products that many of them have chosen to use.

Social Media: Trends in 2012

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As the new year kicks in, so does the craze for predicting all sorts of trends for 2012. Social media don’t escape this ritual, so what does our little crystal ball have to tell us?

One follower of marketing-related blogs has found that every one, without exception, is forecasting continuing growth of social media. However, this explosion of social media is also a key trend driving forecasts in other domains. Take, for example, predictions made by Gartner relating to information technology. In their estimation, social media will also have an impact on other business technologies such as the development of applications.

In fact, we could say that organizations are evolving socially. We have seen this change in the traditional media world where social tools are now an established means of interacting with readers, listeners and viewers. Equally fascinating is that this interaction often goes beyond practical matters (answering questions, making announcements, promotions etc.), and aims at enriching the communication experience itself in these media.

On the other hand, it is difficult to predict in what way the social media world will evolve, given that the changes are so swift and numerous. As we witness the crowning of Facebook, currently in the news as it goes public, who could have foreseen the brutal fall of MySpace when it was number one?

Several of Google’s initiatives have been unsuccessful, however Google+ seems to be gaining some traction. Since the relationship between research tools and social media is changing profoundly, will we soon see a major shake-up?

Relatively unknown players also merit attention, not just struggles between the giants. Foursquare seems well placed regarding localization functionalities, however there is much talk about the success of Instagram. Some think there is already too much talk about social media, but look at the buzz around Pinterest, just about anything can happen!

In this highly volatile context, what lessons can we draw for the next few months?

Firstly, waiting on the sidelines is no longer an option. There is no time to dither, it is time to move and actively develop the presence of one’s brand, products and enterprise.

Following that, it’s necessary to be properly equipped to deal with the diversity of platforms and volume of data to be managed.

Try investigating a potential market by checking out social media–it works!

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An important feature of social media is that it operates in real time. This aspect sets it apart from most other media. Even television presents you, most of the time, with pre-recorded content. In a “live” broadcast the participants interact face-to-face but they are nonetheless cut off from the outside world.


In contrast, social media functions live with participants who are all connected together. The result is a special type of interaction where spontaneity and transparency go together. This medium, or space, is perfect for understanding the evolution of a need, or a market. Let’s take a quick look at how it’s done.

Of course, following opinions posted by your clients will give you important information about what they like, what they are less enthusiastic about, and what changes they would like to see. You can obtain the same kind of information from customer feedback programs, but with considerably less spontaneity since your clients are expressing their opinions within a circumscribed situation. If your organization does not operate such a program, social media allows you to create one for free, and obtain results immediately.

A marked distinction in comparison with traditional research methods is that social media allows you to simultaneously survey the clients of your principal competitors. You will get to know their strengths and weaknesses, exactly as their clients (or prospects) state in their own words. Analyzing the volume of opinions will allow you to figure out your competitors’ most important weaknesses; this will provide focus and direction to your own development efforts, and make you more competitive.

By looking at similar discussions, you might even find other business areas having similar preoccupations and needs. This is an ideal opportunity to look deeper into new potential markets for your solutions.

If you are under the impression that this type of analysis is a bit off the wall, think about the following example taken from a recent article. When analyzing tweets from the City of Los Angeles, a firm discovered that out of the 1 millions messages transmitted every day, 25 people reported having lost their keys. It is a simple calculation to conclude that careful monitoring of Twitter can generate 750 leads every month for a locksmith in L.A.!

Are you already thinking about that question which will allow you to uncover prospects for your own products?

The Voxco Team

Season’s Greetings !

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As 2012 quickly approaches, we’d like to take this time to send our warmest thoughts and best wishes for a wonderful holiday season.

May the coming year will be filled with Surprises, Opportunities and Success.

Looking forward to seeing you in 2012.

Please note that our offices will be closed from December 24 to January 2. However, our Paris office and our technical support specialists will be available at the usual times.

Voxco Team,

Social Media Monitoring – Google is free but very limited nonetheless!

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Google has changed the way we access information. However, investigating a topic usually involves launching a series of requests on its famous search engine. This is the starting point for this article.

The good part of it is that Google is free. It should come as no surprise to see it used in all sorts of different ways, some of them very creative.

It is also the primary tool for scanning social media. Together with its various alerts and blog searches it has wide scope. However, even if media scanners nearly all start out with Google as their basic tool, they should eventually migrate to more robust solutions. Here are the main reasons why.

To begin with, it’s simply a matter of the amount of information. When your requests return just a handful of results there is no problem in reading and analyzing them one by one. But when the amount of information grows, several problems arise. Sorting out the valuable wheat from the chaff becomes laborious. Eliminating duplicated data is a chore. Discovering the authors of all these messages is impossible.

Next, the tool provides no clue as to the influence of the authors of these search results. Research is required into each of them to be able to distinguish an one-off complainer from an influential blogger. Deciding when to switch from scanning to action mode cannot be other than arbitrary.

Google is based on the notion of key words. This works very well for a set of requests, particularly when the sites being analyzed have been optimized for standard key words. However, social media users use a vocabulary that is far from the usual standards. This makes linguistic analysis techniques extremely useful to increase the accuracy of searches, suggest an alternative terminology, or discover trends.

Finally, presenting the results of your analyses is very labor intensive (Google doesn’t offer much help in this regard) which severely limits the positive results of scanning for your enterprise. Your managers need to see tables, graphs, summaries, trends, and reports in order to be able to understand the situation and take appropriate action. Consider using a sophisticated tool for scanning and analyzing social media, on which capable of quickly generating the reports that both you and your organization need.

Happy monitoring!

The Voxco Team

Why social media monitoring can’t replace surveys

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In the last few months several provocative articles have appeared announcing the imminent demise of surveys. The cited cause is the possibility of obtaining the same information, with even better quality, from the social media.

At Voxco, we offer our client solutions using both technologies, and we plan on doing so for the foreseeable future. In fact, we have already explained on this blog how monitoring social media can provide useful information, and we continue to develop this domain intensely since it holds much promise. However, social media monitoring can never replace surveys for a large number of studies. To figure out which is the appropriate tool to use it is important to understand the inherent limitations of social media monitoring in certain cases.

For starters, participants on social media are only partially representative of the population at large. Not all types of people are active in the social media. There are major differences according to age, level of education, etc. It’s important to fully understand what distinguishes presence in the media (to have a profile, as many people already do) from participation in it (display information or provide comments), particularly when the dialogue goes beyond simple chats between close friends. Moreover, the reliability of profiles data provided by participants is certainly open to question.

Also, it is impossible to control the subjects of the conversations. Participants will discuss what is of interest to them, not necessarily what you are currently looking for. For sure, you can always try to stimulate conversations, but nothing is guaranteed, and you can easily bias the results through your interventions.

Another issue concerns the unique dynamics of exchanges in the social media. It’s a very volatile environment in which a subject can quickly rise to the top only to be quickly replaced by another. Opinions are often very categorical, devoid of nuance, and can be strongly influenced by the activity of popular opinion leaders.

As certain studies have shown, one can expect to obtain equivalent results from the two technologies for a topic where a large number of people express their opinion on a simple question, for example satisfaction with the government.

On the other hand, the two research methods are chiefly complementary rather than anything else. The social media are a reliable source of information, but accompanied by limitations imposed by their very nature. They are excellent for obtaining the advice of opinion leaders but powerless for listening to the silent majority. Studies and surveys can still look forward to a long life!

Please don’t hesitate to use the comments section to give us your opinions.

The Voxco Team