Until now eye tracking was mostly done via a computer screen with a built in eye tracking device at its base. This worked very well, but it required the participant to sit in front of a computer screen. Until now.

Now, Tobii has just come out with a mobile solution – eye tracking glasses.

This is an exciting development, as it opens up an entirely new range of observational research.

Here are some examples of this technology’s possible applications:

1. Non-invasive “shop alongs”. Instead of having a research along for the shopping trip, participants can wear these glasses as they shop. The upside is a pure, unfiltered, recording of participants’ visual focus of shelves, display, etc. Downside? No interviewer prompting. When pupil dilation is factored in, we’ll have a better sense of what emotional triggers correlate with a shopping trip.

2. First impressions. This new, mobile, technology will allow us to better gauge initial reactions to a new physical environment. Examples of this would be hotel lobbies and casinos. In fact, given casino’s focus on the consumer experience, I can see these beeing a very useful tool for this sector. Theme parks would be similarly interested.

3. Trailer tests. Imagine outfitting a movie theater full of participants with these glasses and using them to help improve trailers.

I’m sure that there are many more potential applications for MR, but these seem to me to be the most promising.

AMA members can read the full report here.

GreenBook has some good topline coverage here.

Key points:

1. 2009 US revenue for the top 50 fell 3.5%, with Harris Interactive dropping 24% and Gfk (-11.7%), Synovate (-12.4%) and Ipsos (-7.3%) all struggling through this recession. The larger firms had problems, but from what I hear this recession drove many of the smaller firms to the brink. A CASRO survey of smaller firms (avg. of $5 million in reveue) found that their revenue was down 8.5%.

2. But, the outliers are interesting. Nielsen and Arbitron came in with growth of 3% and 4% respectively. Their consumers could not and did not substitute down. Westat, headquartered not too far from my offices in Washington, DC, did very well. Their work is largely for federal agencies and this has made them relatively recession-proof thus far. Public Opinion Strategies, a great company and a former employer, was down 57% from 2008, but that is ONLY because they are a political polling firm and there were no federal elections in 2009. That they made the list at all for 2009 is extremely impressive and suggests that they are finding ways to stabilize their heavily cyclical business.

3. But, the BIG outlier, the one that leaps off the page, is Communispace. The 800 pound MROC gorilla (245 employees) found 18% growth in 2009, in a downturn. This is prime evidence to me that the newer, non-traditional research methods are where the growth will be. Communispace is an almost perfect test case of this since they are solely focused on MROCs. In essence, they are a “tracking stock” for MROCs.

4. Globalization. The Honomichl report lists the percentage of each company’s business that is ex-US. Aside from government contracting it appears that one can’t get big unless one gets global.

5. New Entrants. StrategyOne, my employer, made the list for the first time.

By this I mean the application of memetics to marketing campaigns utilizing research and testing techniques.

Memetics is the application of the viral analogy to the world of ideas. The idea is the virus and the brain is the host.

Consider that the world of communications is transitioning from a vertical communications environment (top down, advertising, telling-yelling) to a horizontal - peer-to-peer model. This transition from mass advertising, mass market to niche marketing, the long tail and peer-to-peer will have major impacts on the market research industry in the future.

And this begs the question of what model we use in this new communications era. The vertical communications era created a stimulus-response research design. The horizontal communications era may require a different set of tools.

One approach is to apply the ideas in memetics and epidemiology to message testing.

What would this look like?

First, it would require multiple monadic cells with each cell being a slightly different meme. Each meme would be tested for stickiness, repeatability and selfishness.

Another approach might be running a number of parallel viral experiments among multiple monadic cells and measuring the spread of the meme over time. This would be a purer test, but difficult to measure. One measurement alternative would be listening to participants across their social media “lifestreams” and charting the spread of a meme via repetition of key phrases. This would require, among other things, very strong text analytics. The first market researchers to do this will be considered applied memetic engineers.

But, there are plenty of challenges. One challenge is evolution. One would expect these experiemental test memes to evolve over time, with word and meaning changes along the way. Tracking these would require the creation of a solid analytical framework and powerful text analytics.

Will this happen?

I think so. We already are seeing numerous experiments tracking Twitter traffic to box office sales and Presidential approval scores. This kind of work should lead naturally into the work I described above.

This is why I was pleased to see Nigel Hollis at the Millward Brown blog write on the topic of “yelling, story telling, and selling”. Here he writes about Seth Godin speaking at Foro Mundial. It’s worth a read, and it highlights how others are thinking of a meme-driven communication mix in a horizontal, peer-to-peer world.

For a complementary perspective, I recommend watching the following interview with Simon Chadwick:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6clSVeVhU_c

Our views are very similar.

While much of the industry as it is currently defined is still in the “Asking Epoch” defined by the survey, we are entering the “Listening Epoch” defined by observational analytics (social media “lifestreaming”, MROCs, co-creation, etc.)

And, beyond this new research epoch is the “Simulation Epoch” defined by mass simulation gaming, prediction markets, MROC Delphin panels and strategic foresight.

Simon outlines the transition from the Asking Epoch to the Listening Epoch nicely.

With many points of view being promoted and it’s worth a quick read.

For the record, here are my posts:

Post 1:

Today there is no one single future for market research, but alternative futures.

I’ve written quite a bit about this at the Future of Insight project and in my white paper on the topic.

The industry as currently configured has significant challenges, and there are many plausible futures.

At a macro level, I believe market research can be divided into five (5) developmental eras that can be classified into epochs:

“The Asking Epoch”:
1. Face-to-Face Era
2. Telephone Era
3. Online Era

“The Listening Epoch”
4. Observational Analytics: SM “lifestreaming”, MROCs, fMRI, eyetracking

“The Simulation Epoch”
5. Anticipatory Era: Mass simulation gaming, prediction markets, MROC Delphi panels, strategic foresight

I recently wrote about some possible futures flowing from this evolution. They are:

1. Army of Davids: The large players are overwhelmed by new entrants and technologies
2. Free Agency: MR goes “mechanical turk”.
3. Convergence: A new, much larger and more holistic, industry emerges.
4. Incredible Shrinking MR: MR fails to innovate and watches the future pass it by.
5. DIY: Google, Facebook and other future social media platforms enter the MR space and become desktop or portal based applications.

There are many more and they will be in my upcoming book, but we should begin strategizing based on these potential futures.

Post 2:

One of the things I find interesting about many of the responses here is that they assume the answer is in making the survey research process more efficient. I think it is a given that the survey research process will be optimized (in a much shorter, more mobile, format).

But, this assumes that the survey instrument will continue to be the core of what we do and that people will still want to answer our surveys.

I’m skeptical.

This is akin to listening to the canal owners of early 1800s America talk about making the canals wider and with smoother oxen trails while the railroad was in its infancy.

Almost everyone in this discussion was socialized during what I call the “Asking Epoch”, the time when the survey was the core engine of research.

But, observational research (fMRI, MROCs, social media lifestreaming) is in take-off mode, and it isn’t survey driven. Imagine today’s project directors morphing into tomorrow’s “community managers.”

Moreover, with massive multiplayer gaming and prediction markets, the era of anticipatory research may be just around the bend. Imagine the survey going away and being replaced by simulation gaming. Given the youth gaming culture that extends to GenX, this seems more natural than a survey experience.

Rubinson takes a look at the evolution of the ad agency and applies this evolutionary footpath to MR with media buying the analog to the data collection side of the business and creative the analog to the full service, analytics side of the business. It’s worth a read.

In my thinking about the future of the MR agency, I have developed at least five (5) plausible futures (not mutually exclusive):

1. Army of Davids: In this scenario, the larger firms keep consolidating and attempting to buy their future by acquiring hot new companies, but the systemic change and “free agent nation” overwhelms them. The goliaths are killed off by the Davids. The carriagemakers can’t adjust to the age of the automobile, and they are overhwelmed by new entrants, new technologies, new approaches (social media listening, etc.) and agile specialty firms.

2. Whuffie-Driven Free Agency: A second and more extreme “Army of Davids” scenario, Whuffie-driven free agency develops when individual researchers band together under a kind of digital guild in which each is rated by his-her clients. The resulting client score, their Whuffie (hat tip to Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the MagicKingdom”) roughly determines an individual researcher’s compensation if and when they are chosen to do the work. Sound fantastical? Hardly. Consider: (a) eBay feedback profiles and (b) the mechanical turk. Now assume that a community of credentialed researchers (think PRC or similar) build an elance site on these principles. Insights rockstars, as opposed to large companies or even specialty firms, dominate the scene.

3. Convergence: Under the convergence scenario the MR industry is renamed, rebranded and redefined by a much larger collection of data-driven strategic consultants, including: management consulting, social media listening and analytics firms, predictive markets, game modelled consumer behavior research, foresight practices and IBM. Under this scenario, the first to combine all fields in an integrated way gains a significant advantage. The deepest pockets are the most favored here.

4. Incredible Shrinking MR: In this scenario the market research industry retains its current, distinctive, identity. It is not reinvented or transformed. Plenty of new innovations come along, but they’re not part of MR. MR labors on, like the dinosaurs after the first asteroid strike, oblivious of their doomed future.

5. DIY: Google, Facebook and future social media platforms enter the consumer research business by offering unimaginably massive panels of their users-members. With MR now a simple page on these social media sites, the era of DIY research is fully unleashed. Need a quick, global survey of fashion conscious, well-educated women? No problem. GoogleSurvey will collect data for you in 30 minutes after you have posted your (mandated) 5 questions or less survey. Need some collage-based qual done in 20 countries on a new tourist destination? No problem. 3 hours. Survey quality suffers, but the data is abundant. Insights? Well, those are a bit tougher to come by.

I am very bullish on this technology, but we have a long way to go until we have a fully developed analytical framework for the data.

With this in mind, I found the following research summary courtesy of Tobii’s eyeQ.

As you can see below, eye tracking research found that restaurant patrons were more likely to look at the middle of the menu first, as opposed to the upper left hand corner. This suggests that restaurants should place their most appealing, high margin items in the center of the menu.

This also has clear implications for menus with alcoholic beverages. Consider the wine list, for example. This research suggests that it may be more advantageous to put the higher margin wines in the center of the list.

Coming from another perspective, health advocates might read this and urge a mandated “healthy choices” box in the middle of menus. Given society’s complementary learnings in behavioral economics and an interest in “nudging” people toward theoretically better choices, eye tracking might open a can of worms no one previously considered.

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An Experiment on Psychological Gaze Motion: A Re-Examination of Item Selection Behavior of Restaurant Customers
Journal of Global Business & Technology (06/10) Vol. 6, No. 1, P. 68; Choi, Jeong-Gil; Woo, Byung-Woo; Mok, Jin-won

A recent study examined psychological gaze motion by restaurant customers as they made their menu selections. The goal was to determine whether a customer’s selection of a menu item was correlated to the item’s position on the menu or by chance. The study found that the middle part is the first spot of eye contact for all three types of menu panels studied. The findings also describe a rift between customers and menu suppliers with regard to menu choice. Though menu suppliers thought that on the first glance customers would gaze at the upper left part of a menu, the research found that customers are more inclined to focus on the center, leading them to choose items from that location. The results show that for single-panel menus, most customers tend to focus on the middle section of the page, not the upper part as documented in previous studies. The gaze sequence continues to the upper part and then the bottom section. For the double-panel menu, the initial gaze again came to the middle section. When presented with the triple-fold menu, customers first went to the middle section, followed by the upper part of the left page and ending at the lower part of the right page. The study also looked at the question of whether the tendencies of customer gaze movement lead to the choice of an item. At least one-third of those surveyed said that they tend to order items from the spot that caught their attention first. These findings suggest that a substantial number of customers are likely to choose an item that their eyes are instantly drawn to. The results indicate that placing the most strategic items on any section of the menu other than the middle would not be as effective in attracting the customer’s attention.

Tom Anderson promos the RIT a bit over at Next Gen Market Research. It’s worth a look.

The top two concerns are:

1. The non-representative nature of online samples
2. Quality of online sample is worse than most believe

Clearly these two concerns complement each other.

Although Jeffrey Henning is right about random samples vs. so-called “convenience samples”, the industry has clearly embraced “convenience samples” as the next best thing to purely random studies.

Stay tuned.

This year’s RIT study promises much more.

(Of course, I should disclose that my firm, StrategyOne, and I were pleased to be included in the survey design discussions for the RIT, and so I do have some “skin in the game.”)

After a series of great discussions with several peers in New York, I began thinking about the MROC name and brand. With my flight delayed on the way home and with time to kill in the Rochester airport, I came to the conclusion that we need to change the name.

Why?

First, I am not a fan of the phrase “market research” for many reasons. This terminology focuses on the physical act of collecting data instead of the value or benefit. And, the temporal focus is the past and present instead of future behavior.

The word “online” is descriptive, but is going to feel a bit dated very soon. Of course it’s online. Everything is online.

I think a better name is “ICs”, standing for “insights communities”. This new name gets the product category out of the stodgy “MR” box, is much shorter, and sounds like “I see”.

Alternative naming conventions might play off of “social”, hooking into social media, or “streaming”, as opposed to periodic primary research that follows a more episodic approach.

The future of market research is… Street interviewers with jet packs. Either that or a closer alignment to (and integration with) increasingly sophisticated and knowledge-rich customer databases.

Although street interviewers with jet packs is a fantastic “atomic ranch” image, my bet is on customer database integration.