As part of our effort to stay tapped into what market researchers and marketers need, as well as the cutting-edge technologies that are changing the field, we at Rybbon sponsor and attend many industry events each year. The 2018 Corporate Researchers Conference, held in Orlando in October, was one such event.
While our CEO, Jignesh Shah, spoke to researchers about best practices for using incentives in market research (more on that in a bit), we were also there to learn. Here are a few of the big ideas that corporate researchers like you can take from what we learned, even if you didn’t get to attend CRC.
While researchers have long relied on surveys, focus groups, and interviews, we’re seeing some innovative leaps and bounds, thanks to technology, that are opening up new avenues to better understanding your demographic.
In the presentation, Beyond Traditional Measures: Exploring Biometrics/Neuromarketing Research, Colette Thayer of AARP and Paul Bolls of Texas Tech University talked about the role that neuromarketing and biometrics play in research.
By looking at brain functions, researchers can understand subjects’ responses to different stimuli, including advertising and media.
Biometrics that can be measured include:
For researchers who want to test emotional stimuli and real-time reaction, biometrics may provide new levels of understanding.
While research produces great data, a lot of attention has been given to making products better, faster, and cheaper. In Elevating The Insights Function: Measuring, Demonstrating And Building Business Impact, a panel of experts discussed how to elevate the insights function within a company to become a strategic insight partner to the business, not just a data gatherer.
This starts by looking at the return on investment of insights as real and measurable impact from those insights derived from market research; in other words, insights are useless if they don’t cause you to take action or make a change.
The more effort you put into the insights gleaned from research, the better the decisions your company can make. Better decisions create better results and can help your company be smarter about where to allocate budget.
So rather than collecting data points and walking away, researchers should make an effort to connect the dots to the greater whole of the business and its strategy.
In the presentation, “Alexa, Order Me…” / The Rise of Voice Technology As The Fourth Sales Channel, Nikki Smathers and Cori Deutsch of SKIM discuss how shoppers are using voice technology (through smartphones and tools like Amazon’s Echo speaker) to make purchases.
Of these tech-savvy consumers, an overwhelming majority (82%) of parents aged 25-34 use smart speakers to do a variety of things:
Consumers are buying food, toys, electronics, clothes, pet supplies, and more through these voice-activated tools.
Brands wishing to take advantage of this fourth sales channel can create voice applications to create new triggers, rewarding customers who order via voice with discounts. To make this a habit, continue offering incentives like discounts and special offers for customers who reorder with voice.
As any researcher knows, offering incentives, such as a gift card, helps you get more participation in research projects. But one size does not fit all when it comes to rewarding different audiences.
Our CEO, Jignesh Shah, presented Best Practices for Using Incentives in Market Research to show researchers how to increase response rate and give participants the rewards they want.
It starts by knowing your audience; if you’re trying to reach CEOs with a survey, they might not find a $5 Starbucks card incentive enough to participate. You may need to increase your offering by matching the incentive value with your participants’ time value.
You can also see a high response rate by letting participants choose their own rewards rather than preselecting them. Giving them a choice, for example, of a prepaid Visa card, an Amazon card, or a Macy’s card may entice them since they get to select what they want most.
Recipients want incentive delivery to be fast, so build it into your survey flow using Rybbon integration with survey platforms like Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey and others. Automating this will save time and cut down on customer service questions (“where’s my reward?”).
The market research industry is in the midst of interesting times. With technology expanding the capability to understand consumers in new and innovative ways, and with an unparalleled amount of data to glean about them, brands are better positioned than they’ve ever been to truly understand today’s consumer and deliver customized solutions tailored to their preferences.
Learn more about how market researchers use Rybbon’s all-in-one platform to organize and track rewards for multiple surveys and studies and eliminate the hassle and expense of manual reward administration. Get started today for free with no strings attached.
Brenda has over 20 years of experience building, selling and marketing products for F100 and start-ups.
Brenda has over 20 years of experience building, selling and marketing products for F100 and start-ups.
