Mobile marketing research

Survey on a mobile phone

Due to the deep sociocultural changes towards digitization at the turn of the 21st century, it has become more difficult for the marketing research industry to address respondents that are both willing to participate in surveys and who are reachable via traditional media. Consumers were no longer classified, which made it harder for marketing researchers to make obvious assumptions about their behavior. Researchers had to adapt their approaches to keep up with technology and cope with these changes in order to find out who their customers were and to establish their preferences.[2]

Mobile phones are practical, versatile and have already become an indispensable device for communication, being used day and night. Smartphones, in particular, offer many different kinds of applications to fulfill further technical requirements. Several mobile applications provide mobile market research through smart phones. This is the basis to allow conducting empirical research studies.[3] Besides the number of mobile phones, the number of smartphones and PDAs is still growing. In 2006, the number of worldwide mobile phone users exceeded the number of landline users. According to a study of PEW (Internet & American Life Projects) which examined more than 1000 internet leaders, analysts, and executives, mobile devices will become the most often used instrument to connect to the internet by the year 2020. According to Pew Research’s Internet & American Life study in January 2014, 58% of adults in the US had a smartphone,[4] up from 56% in May 2013. In other parts of the world, like Central and Latin America, many people never had a PC, but they now have a smartphone. For instance, in Chile, more than 85% of the participants of an online panel had a smartphone in 2014, whereas only around 60% had a desktop.[5] For many people, the mobile phone is already a kind of "life-support tool”. Therefore, conducting surveys via mobile phones could help to counteract the generally declining motivation of respondents, as many potential participants enjoy using electronic devices. Particularly, it is difficult to reach the younger generation through traditional media, compared to more modern media such as cell phones. Therefore, this medium is very appropriate to address this target group.[6][7] Even if some respondents declare that they still prefer to answer web surveys through PCs, the proportion which prefers to answer through smartphones is significant across many different countries.[8]

The most important point to be discussed is the representativity of the sampling regarding the quality of data. Based on the total population, those people who don’t own a mobile phone, cannot become part of the sampling. Mobile phone users have to be able to be reached as well as to be willing to take part in the survey. But it is by far not enough to just look at the users of mobile phones. Equally important is to also know the number of people who use the SMS service and how many of these people own a web-enabled phone. Only if all these aspects are noticed, a conclusion regarding the sampling can be drawn.[13] For these reasons, a mobile survey does not meet the standards of statistical representativity. As mentioned in the beginning, the restricted possibilities to access WAP-Surveys are another problem. The number of those who use the internet via their mobile phone is rather small: According to IFCom, only 19% of all mobile phone users do so.[14] But the data acquisition through mobile phones holds more difficulties. On the one hand, there are high costs for Incentives and intensive recruitment by the institutes. On the other hand, the participants of the survey have to pay the costs for internet usage via mobile phone. However, more and more respondents do not pay the internet access based on the time spent on the Internet and more and more places propose free Wi-Fi, making this issue less and less relevant for respondents. Additionally, there are also technical difficulties that may occur. The high number of different and not-compatible software or the low transmission rate of data are just a few to name. To improve the respondents' experience in answering web surveys on mobile devices, optimizing the layout of the survey for smaller screens is crucial: non-optimized layouts lead to lower data quality.[15] Restrictions concerning the reveal and passing on of mobile phone numbers (because of data protection and the lack of Anonymity) are setting limits to the research in this field of study, too.[16]

Statistical methods in mobile market research profit from the fact that they do not depend on place or time.[17] This means that surveys via mobile phone can be done anywhere and at any time and are therefore much more advantageous compared to surveys via landline phones. Considering that a high number of participants of the main target groups cannot be reached at home at most hours of the day,[18] the chance to get hold of them by mobile phone is much higher. Especially concerning to people under the age of 25 as well as businesspeople, who are often on the way and cannot get hold of easily, the chances of the mobile market research are promising. As most people always carry their mobile phones with them, an immediate transmission of personal impressions of current events is possible at any time.[16] Thus, the so-called ‘magic moment’ can be captured, which is often very helpful. Surveys concerning product placement and efficiency of sales promotion measures at the point of sale turned out to be perfectly realizable this way. Looking at the topic “Access possibilities to WAP-Surveys” by mobile phone, as well as at the topic “Getting hold of potential participants”, there are some developments that should be named. The trend towards the increasing distribution of web-enabled mobile phones, and the improved representativity that comes along with it, does continue from 2007 to 2008, Nielsen Mobile noticed an increase in mobile internet usage.[19] With decreasing costs and improving technology, a further upward tendency can be expected. In addition, mobile internet usage increases with the rapidly developing distribution of smartphones. According to IM (Mediawork Initiative), already in 2013 more people will log in with their smartphones, than with a PC. Mobile statistics show a high and very fast response rate. As a result of the independence from time and place, answers can be submitted immediately. This also means that results can almost be transmitted in real-time. A study from Globalpark shows that approximately 35% of the participants answered a mobile survey within 2 hours.[20] Through the novelty of the form of the survey and its playful design, mobile research has a motivating effect on the participants. This applies especially to young, technologically interested male persons. iPhone users are also considered to be very communicative. As the devices are easy to handle, the users are more likely and more motivated to take part in surveys.[21] A study examining how to best reach mobile respondents published in the Journal of Social Science Computer Review underlines the importance of social factors. Especially their subjective belief of how they are seen by significant others, or their intention of how they would like to be seen by significant others seem to play a major role in their mobile phone behavior.[7]