Articles

Using the 3.5 Question Picker

In Panel+ 3.5 we have taken the concept of data maps and extended them to be used for a lot more then just importing and exporting data. Whether it’s for building panel filters, controlling the contents of your reports or adding references to past questions in your study for easy scripting the question picker has a number of shortcuts that can make your job easier. Read our three quick tips.Quick Tip #1 - Right clicking the folder icon that contains the questions on either the left or right hand side of the picker to add all or remove all. This can be very useful when making copies of question groups you previously defined or to remove all items and start fresh.

Quick Tip #2 - Add a single answer. Every choice based question can be expanded in the trees on the left. By right clicking on a single answer and selecting add you can create a reference to just that one answer. This can be a lot faster then adding the whole question and deleting the answers you don't need.

Quick Tip #3 - Search. Whenever you know the name of the question you are searching for the search box will always be your fastest route. Because the search box will search all questions defined in the lifetime of your panel it's possible to have duplicate names. Hold the mouse still over any returned item in the search and you will see a tooltip telling you the name of the study the question is from. This can help you easily tell which of the duplicates you are after.

Posted on October 31, 2005
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Blogs : The New Frontier for Customer Collaboration

Blogs range in scope from individual diaries to arms of political campaigns, media programs, and corporations; is it possible that this instantaneous publishing tool could also be used for research?

Since 2003, weblogs or blogs have gained prominence for their role in breaking, shaping, or spinning news stories. Recently, blogs were even considered the driving force behind the alleged "Rathergate" scandal involving Dan Rather of CBS and some memos used on the show 60 Minutes II.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, blog readership shot up by 58% in 2004. In the May 2005 issue of Business Week magazine, an article titled "Blogs Will Change Your Business" included the statement that "there are some 9 million blogs, with 40,000 new ones popping up each day."

Now that blogs have captured the public's attention, companies need to seriously consider how they can put them to good use.

An article in US News called "Blogging Bosses" found that senior executives from Sun Microsystems, General Motors, HP and Boeing have started to write blogs. You may wonder why a senior executive would spend the time to write a daily, weekly or monthly commentary; however, the article found that blogging provided executives with a soap box upon which to promote their views while opening new channels of communication with their customers.

Some believe the corporate use of blogs will lead to a decrease in the popularity of the medium because it represents the corporate takeover of a tool designed for free personal expression. Those on the flipside believe that the use of blogs by organizations will add new voices and vitality to the medium.

What appears to really be happening is that blogs are growing in format and usage; they can no longer be categorized into just one type. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, defines 22 different forms of weblogs, from personal to topical to corporate to video format.

Researchers may yet create another way to use blogs. Blogs are low cost vehicles for gaining immediate feedback, and can open doors to consumer insight that aren't available through traditional research methods.

One ubiquitous example of blogging as customer collaboration comes from a one man shop in Missouri. Pat Misterovich started blogging his ideas for turning a Pez candy dispenser into an MP3 player. Many comments and iterations later his blog captured the attention of the candy maker itself. All of this attention recently led to Pez candy signing a license agreement that allows Misterovich to develop and sell his MP3 player.

What is interesting about this story from a research perspective is that throughout the process Misterovich was conducting on-the-fly consumer research and collaborating with his target market even before he had finished the product.

Despite Misterovich's success story the challenge for most businesses is that their discrete nature makes them unlikely to share fully formed ideas for fear they will be seen, or stolen, by the competition.

The key is to find a balance between providing enough information to gain valuable consumer insight and giving away trade secrets. Blogs are here to stay - how can you use them in your business?

Posted on September 5, 2005
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Let the Snowballs Roll…

Top up your panel by throwing snowballs.

DID YOU KNOW THAT 17% OF CANADIAN WOMEN ARE BETWEEN THE AGES OF 18 AND 24?
We know it. The owners of the Women's Voice Online know it. Now even their panelists know it. But despite this statistic, as of two months ago Canadian women aged 18 to 24 comprised only 4% of the Women's Voice panel, which was meant to be representative of the English-speaking, female, viewing audience of Corus Entertainment's specialty channel the W Network.

Corus Entertainment looked to us for help in making the panel more representative and asked what we could do to attract more 18 to 24 year old women. We love a good challenge, so we accepted. This is our story.

WE'RE TRYING TO CREATE A REALLY BIG SNOWBALL, AND WE NEED YOUR HELP!
Recruiting can be costly, particularly when targeting low incidence segments. In this case, we didn't need to add a large number of women to make it more representative. We only needed a handful. The problem was that this handful were a very specific group of individuals. The other problem was a very limited budget. Mass media blanket campaigns were out of the question. Even crisply targeted online advertising campaigns were questionable. The final hurdle was the simple fact that the Women's Voice is a 'blind' panel, meaning the owner isn't identified to the panelists. This also rules out access to a customer database or any client media properties.

What we were left with was one obvious resource, the panel itself. The panel consists of over 2000 women who are actively engaged in the panel research process. The simple plan was to leverage our existing panelists to get their friends, family, associates, sisters, daughters, neighbors, etc. involved.

LET THE SNOWBALLS ROLL...
Take a tiny ball of snow and roll it on the ground. Even better, roll it down a hill. As the snowball rolls it picks up more snow, making the snowball bigger and bigger. The bigger the ball gets the more snow it picks up; the more snow it picks up the bigger it gets. You get the picture. Now, imagine your 2000 panelists are a tiny ball of snow...

SO... I'M LIKE... WHATEVER...
Put yourself in the shoes of women between the ages of 18 and 24. What are they thinking? What motivates them? We turned to Google and a whole series of blogs, not just for young women, but written by them to find the answers to these pressing questions. Who better to get us up to speed?

While we had found loads of writing by 18 to 24 young women with an inclination towards sitting in front of their computers all night writing in their blogs, we were skeptical that all of our current panelists were likewise minded. So, we went to the panel to find out. We have demographic information on all of our so it was easy to find out who they were.

Contrary to our initial assumptions, our 18 to 24 year old panelists are not a bunch of starry eyed young girls that are still in school or living at home with their parents. 65% of them watch the Discovery Channel regularly! And a full 46% of them are either married or cohabitating! 17% of them even have young children of their own.

HOW DO WE GRAB THEIR ATTENTION?
To engage the widest possible audience we needed to target three groups: those seeking incentives, those seeking information, and those looking to be heard.

Those seeking incentives are always the easiest to find, simply offer them something they want. Our offer was $100 to spend on lunch with their girlfriends. For every one of their girlfriends that joined the panel, they would be entered into our draw. To entice those who cherish a sense of social belonging, as well as those who are keen to share their opinions, we turned to interesting stats taken directly from the panel itself.

Because of all the data we have on our panelists, it was easy to find loads of interesting facts to entice our other target groups.

Captivating email copy and creative were the final ingredients. We took a really simple approach to the creative, making it generic enough so that all sorts of women would be able to relate, but without feeling that we needed to accurately portray each and every one of our panelists. We may aggregate their data, but our panelists are still unique and individual people.

SEE THE INITIAL EMAIL CAMPAIGN HERE.

APPARENTLY WE ALL REALLY DO KNOW 18 - 24 YEAR OLDS.
Within 2 minutes of sending out the first batch of emails, we had already collected 5 new email addresses - progress! By day 3, we had collected over 70 email addresses and had achieved a whopping 20% response rate to this simple yet targeted campaign. Typical campaigns of this type net about a 4% response rate.

After a few days we decided to take the campaign beyond the 18 to 24 year old sample group. We tweaked the copy slightly and sent out emails to the rest of the panel. Within 2 hours, we had collected an additional 200 addresses! The response rate among the rest of the panelists was lower than among the 18 to 24 year olds - about 8% - but the shear number of panelists involved allowed for a far higher number of addresses to be collected. Since we didn't come up with a whole new campaign directed at the remainder of the panel, the lower response rate was to be expected, but 8% is still double what we had anticipated.

CHECK OUT THE EMAIL THAT WENT TO THE REST OF THE PANEL HERE.

All in all we collected over 350 useable email addresses and ended up with 25 new 18 to 24 year old panelists. This may not sound impressive, but consider that there were only 84 panelists between the ages of 18 and 24 to begin with; that?s an increase of 30%!

SNOWBALLS KEEP FALLING...
Now, the nature of a snowball is to keep rolling - as long as it's headed downhill - so our next step is to engage our 25 new panelists in the search for their friends. Slow going, but in our world every panelist counts!

Posted on September 1, 2005
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Panel+ 3.1 : Advanced User Tip #6

Add to your panelist's data without asking them questions - import their data.

Many companies and organizations maintain extensive databases of customers as part of a reward or loyalty program, warranty system, or consumer credit accounts. These databases are continuously being updated with valuable information.

If you've created a panel full of people who also exist inside of your company's database, you may be wondering how you can make use of all of the information you've already collected about your panelists. Fortunately there is an easy solution. You can import it directly into your next study.

Importing is a powerful way for you to expand your panelist information without overburdening them with questions you already know the answers to.

For example, an airline company doing a study with panelists who have flown three or more times in the past month could avoid asking the question: "How many times have you flown in the last month?" if this information was readily available from their client/customer database.

This information could then be viewed in your study reports alongside your 'new' data and be used for further data analysis such as cross tabulation.

Importing data into Panel+ is as easy as 1, 2, 3...

1. To start, create a holding place for your data... we suggest a "new" study with a question for each variable you want to import. You know, a variable - like "State", "Service level", type of "Shopper" - the important labels your clients or customers have earned over time which help you to analyze your data.
   
   Are you still with me? In the Import section of Panel+ you can upload an SPSS file that contains all of the data you pulled from your customer database.
   
2. Matching up your variables has never been easier. Line up the variables from your SPSS file with the variables you created in your new survey and delete any unnecessary ones.
   
   Everything look good? Now, for the fun part...
   
3. Click on the 'import' button... et voila, you've just completed your first import!

If you're new to importing data, check your user manual or call your Vision Critical representative to learn more about the new features in Panel+ 3.1.

Posted on August 26, 2005
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The Best & The Brightest - Keith Laidman

We couldn't keep this place running without them, so we thought we should share them with you. This bi-monthly feature is about the people behind the scenes that keep this ship afloat.

Name:	Keith Laidman
Title:	Senior Developer - Fusion
Age:	33.333333e
Height:	18 hands
Nickname as a child:	Egor; there was a bad bowl haircut involved...
Likes:	Film, comics, music, playing guitar, my cats
Dislikes:	Being profiled

How long have you been at Vision Critical?
About 18 months.

What role do you play at VC?
As a Fusion developer, I play a formative role in creating our suite of rich-media Fusion applications. I work primarily in Flash as a medium, but my job involves interface design, audio/video/graphics production, 3D, and data capture, tied together by code written in Actionscript, JavaScript, HTML, XML and probably some other acronyms. It's great to have the opportunity to do creative work that is genuinely bleeding-edge.

What is your background and how does it benefit VC clients?
I did a couple of years of art school, but I'm basically self-educated, which seems to have worked out pretty well so far. I suppose this benefits our clients in that I?m always learning new things, and I'm able to adapt to new technologies and incorporate new methods of working quickly and easily.

What major improvements in products or service delivery have you seen in your tenure at Vision Critical?
Our suite of Fusion products has grown by leaps and bounds since I've been here. When I started, Fusion basically consisted of one product - our online shelfset. Since then we have added capabilities for audio, video and print media testing, product testing, and choice-based & qualitative exercises, as well as our ongoing R&D explorations into real-time 3D environments. As we build out our product line, we'll continue to look for new ways to collect behavioral data from respondents by providing meaningful stimuli and engaging experiences.

This piece was brought to you by: the letter K and the number 09071971.

Posted on June 26, 2005
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