Despite the various advantages mobile provides and the many applications of mobile apps for market research, its possible insufficiencies encourages researchers to use other market research tools as support to ensure success when conducting mobile research.

What other market research tools can you use with mobile for more thorough studies?

• Telephone Interviews. The efficiency of mobile research makes it a leading market research tool for initial data gathering. However, telephone interviews are still a requirement for good qualitative research since mobile research methods such as digital surveys and questionnaires often require follow up questions and clarifications. Some researchers choose phone in-depth interviews (IDIs) as a mean of supplementing data mainly because telephone interviews are straightforward and often expected to be completed fairly quickly, which means more time for other pressing tasks. Phone interviews typically range from as short as 15 minutes to as long as an hour and a half. Using the mobile research activity that preceded the phone interview as a basis for formulating a discussion guide for the in-depth interview can generate a trove of high quality information.
• Web-Enabled Interviews. Online web-based research methods are techniques in which researchers utilize the Internet as a tool for data collection. Web-based interviews are perfect supplements to telephones-only interviews, when stimuli need to be shared with the respondent. In fact, web-based methods offer a lot more including online ethnography, focus groups, surveys and questionnaires, and even clinical trials. Clients often combine mobile research study finding into a Civicom CyberFacility web-enabled interview. The upturn on social media usage and its advancement has also become a key component in market research, therefore the birth of social media analysis. In marketing, social media analysis refers to an online research method mostly useful for analyzing consumer engagement and media use, deriving “viral” marketing strategies, and understanding community-based issues - all of which are tactical for brand management, product development, and business performance management.
• Market Research Online Communities (MROC). Another Internet-based method is utilizing online communities as an additional cost-efficient data collection method as an add-on to mobile research. Interviews and focus groups, be they mobile or face-to-face, are conducted in a limited time which forces the participants to give “first thing that pops in my mind” answers. On the other hand, an online bulletin board research is conducted over a longer time period which gives respondents a chance to carefully think through their responses and perhaps be asked to comment on the earlier data collected through the mobile research portion of the study. Shy participants also tends to voice out opinions more online than they would in person - thus richer, and perhaps deeper  insights. Civicom Chatterbox is a leading edge online bulletin board and research community solution perfect for global asynchronous discussions. It’s a haven where participants can freely interact and discuss any topic or question you probe. Utilize this research platform simultaneously with mobile research for advantageous features such as gamification, diaries and journals, personalized segmentation, question masking, and various engaging activity options available in almost every language. The more participants, the more insights.
• Video Editing Tools. Mobile market research generates a considerable amount of audio and video which can be overwhelming to the researcher. Audio and video are among the most powerful forms of data you can obtain from your research. However, the amount of material that results from qualitative research studies can be overwhelming to manage, leading to chaos and information overload. As a result new tools have been developed to enable researchers to store, sort, edit, clip and share their project videos. You want an easy to use online platform designed for researchers that lets you manage the media files you generate from in-depth interviews, focus groups, and mobile research studies so that you get the most value from the content for every project. One such product is Glide Central™. It is an online platform used for multimedia consolidation and organization of projects. Users can think of Glide as their virtual filing cabinet where recordings your recordings can be stored from a wide range of projects and where you can collate your structured content. Glide allows you to achieve comprehensive analysis of your video and audio recordings, and execute extraction of key insights for your reports.

Conduct Your Mobile Studies with Civicom® Marketing Research Services

• Civicom® Marketing Research Services is the global leader in providing creative and technical excellence for the success of your research. Our suite of services includes IDI and focus group facilitation, a mobile insights app, an online community platform, multimedia curation, plus other useful tools created for your research needs. Get in touch with us to learn more about what we offer.