IPSOS MOBILE VIEWS GEO-TRIGGERING: YOUR WISH IS MOBILE’S COMMANDApril 2015

Pointofview

Here’s a thought; wouldn’t it be nice if you could shadow your consumers and ask them questions at the exact time and location you are interested in? That may be a store, an area of a city or even an event etc.

Thanks to the mobile technology that sits right inside your consumers’ pockets or handbags, and which is with them all day long, you can get closer to the real thoughts and experiences of the consumer in the moment, at the time and place they are making decisions.

The smartphone is your partner for geo-locating your respondents and geo-triggering surveys when they enter the geo-fenced areas.

FIRSTLY, THE TERMINOLOGY:

Through Mobile applications, you can trigger surveys for participants in several different ways at many different locations, so imagine being able to trigger surveys for participants when…

• they enter a store to shop for a specific product or at a specific store, or you want to instruct them to visit certain aisles and tell you about their experience.

• they dwell in an area for a specific amount of time, so you can be sure they are staying at a location rather than just passing by.

• they exit a location, to share their experience immediately after they leave an event or store and can tell you in the moment about what they have experienced or purchased or even not purchased, or whether they noticed the client’s POS material while in the store.

• they leave and you need the trigger delayed, to ensure they don’t have any store or location influences and you want them to think about their experience and complete a survey at a more convenient time.

GeolocationTechnology that taps into

mobile device GPS functionsto pinpoint the user’s

exact location

GeofencingEstablishing virtual perimeters

within specific radius orpre-defined path around

geolocation

GeotriggeringInitiating automated actions

based on user proximityand interaction with

geofences

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IPSOS MOBILE V IEWS GEO -TRIGGERING : YOUR WISH IS MOBILE’S COMMAND

When insights are collected at the right time and the right place, they provide answers to your merchandising questions, add context and depth to your path-to- purchase research, provide information about non-purchasers, assess quality of employee interaction, compliance with service protocols, store operations standards and more generally capture volatile facts and emotions that place you closer to the consumer experience.

In a recent geo-triggering study, Manchester City Council wanted to understand if local residents were seeing any improvements in four areas of the city since it launched the “Litter Campaign”, with the aim to clean up the city centre.

By using geo-triggering, we were able to deliver a short and engaging survey to participants via their smartphone as they entered any one of the four areas, labelled “litter hot spots”. The in-the-moment survey asked participants to take a photo of the area and to tell us if they thought there was an improvement in overall cleanliness or not through simple sliding scale and rating based questions.

The quantitative feedback and the images collected on the Ipsos Mobile App helped the Council understand how the campaign was making a difference to the cleanliness of the area and to identify opportunities for further improvement.

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IPSOS MOBILE V IEWS GEO -TRIGGERING : YOUR WISH IS MOBILE’S COMMAND

Using a different approach, in collaboration with Google Consumer Surveys we recently completed a survey in less than 7 hours among over 1000 shoppers who had visited a large US retailer within the previous 48 hours. The objective was to understand these shoppers’ satisfaction with their overall shopping experience. 25% of the visitors had not purchased everything they went to the store to buy and explained why. We were also able to reach target groups which are underrepresented in traditional retail satisfaction surveys – such as younger targets or shoppers who did not make a purchase - and decided to repeat the experience focussing on these groups specifically.

HOW GEO-TRIGGERING WORKSA survey is delivered to an individual with the appropriate App installed on their smartphone through a trigger (when a smartphone interacts with the geo-fence). This works through the participant’s smartphone poling/communicating back and forth with the mobile network. As our participant gets closer to the geo-fenced area(s), the device will poll more and more frequently to ensure the trigger is accurately timed and the survey is delivered.

QUALITY BENEFITS OF GEO-TRIGGERINGIn addition to allowing surveys to happen at the time & location of your choice, geo-triggering allows better monitoring of respondent compliance: exact location and time of survey responses are recorded as validation.

Another quality benefit is that through geo-triggering you can reach a broader spectrum of customers who traditionally don’t participate in ‘receipt’ or other types of retail surveys. In some cases, in-the-moment can also provide more immediate feedback.

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IPSOS MOBILE V IEWS GEO -TRIGGERING : YOUR WISH IS MOBILE’S COMMAND

SOLUTIONS TO GEO-TRIGGERING CHALLENGESBattery Drainage – After extensive testing, we’ve found the optimal way to track a participant’s location, while causing no significant reduction in battery life or performance.

Continuous Triggering – Often, participants will enter a geo-fenced area several times during the survey period. To avoid unnecessary triggering, and to avoid sending notifications to participants who have already responded to our location- specific questions, there is always a screening question asking if that person has already been contacted at this location and if so, whether they want to answer the survey again.

Participant Acceptance – Because we can recruit from Ipsos panels, which have been screened for smartphone ownership and willingness to participate in mobile research studies, we have had good acceptance and response rates to geo-triggered studies.

GPS & Line Of Sight – Geo-triggering relies on a clear line of sight to a satellite and therefore doesn’t work indoors. Because of this, we can’t trigger a survey when a person gets to a particular aisle within a store, but we are looking into technologies to overcome this.

GEO-TRIGGERING TIPSDefine your geo-fenced area well – We work with the client to understand the size of the geo-fence that’s needed for any particular project, making sure it’s not too big or small and doesn’t intrude on residential areas where people may be dwelling for a long time. When fencing a large venue like a stadium or a shopping mall, it is also important that all possible entrances and exits are fenced.

Participant Instructions – Put yourself in the shoes of the participant: if you downloaded an app agreed to be tracked but didn’t see any other information or instructions in the app, you’d probably become a bit suspicious about exactly what you had gotten yourself involved in. To counteract this we always include clear instructions not only in recruitment, but as an “Instruction Survey” within the app when a participant first logs in. This provides clear guidance on what is expected of them, and when they can expect a trigger for any survey to appear.

Survey format – Think Mobile first and keep the surveys short and relevant to keep participants engaged and motivated.

mobile polling

trigger

geo-fence

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IPSOS MOBILE V IEWS GEO -TRIGGERING : YOUR WISH IS MOBILE’S COMMAND

WHAT’S NEXT FOR GEO-LOCATION?As mentioned above, because Geo-Triggering surveys rely on line-of-sight to a satellite, we can trigger surveys right up to the front door, but not inside a location. Our next venture into this type of technology revolves around triggering surveys inside the building – when they arrive at a particular store in a shopping mall, or when they step into a specific aisle or section of that store. To do this, we are investigating the use of iBeacon technology.

SO WHAT ARE IBEACONS?iBeacon are a new class of low-powered, low-cost transmitters that can notify nearby iOS7 or 8 devices of their presence. The technology enables a smart phone or other device to perform actions when in close proximity to an iBeacon.

There are several immediate applications of beacon technology for market research: triggering a survey when a participant reaches a particular aisle within a supermarket, or when they are standing in front of a specific product; or gathering customer feedback and satisfaction within shopping centres or inside stores or in other areas where geo-triggering does not give the precision required.

CONTACTPlease contact the Ipsos team to find out more about how geolocation research can add new insights to your shopper, customer satisfaction, advertising awareness or other research studies.

Or contact the IIS Mobile Team at ipsosmobile@ipsos.com to find out more about how you can get closer to your consumer’s experience.

Copyright© 2015 Ipsos. All rights reserved.

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