goInnovate: How innovation & technology is shaping the future.

Smartphone 2.0 – The Potential of the “Genius Phone” to be a Disruptive MR Technology

Blogger’s note: This post has been co-authored with Bryan Cremeens, one of the many bright young researchers at Gongos.  Bryan brought this subject to my attention some time ago and our resulting conversations have been both fascinating and wide-ranging. What you’ll read below is a nice synthesis of these conversations, focusing on what we see as some of the key implications of the coming generation of smartphone technologies. Many thanks to Bryan for his passion and contributions to the final product!!

We’ve been posting for a while now about the vital importance of smartphones, both from a cultural and marketing research perspective.  We’ll begin with an update on the sonic boom of its adoption.  Beyond that, we’ll explore the emerging technologies that will make future smartphones way more than smart – they’ll make them genius.

Adoption Rates

Within five years, the world’s population will have surpassed 7 billion people. In that time, between four and 5 billion of those folks will own a smartphone. And that’s double the number owning computers. Sound crazy? Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t think so. In fact, he declared mobile to be one of Facebook’s primary strategic imperatives in the coming years. Zuckerberg is a smart guy, and he knows that the smartphone is inherently a social technology; one that is deeply woven into the fabric of peoples’ lives.  Engagement is the lifeblood of social networking, and without providing increasingly engaging mobile experiences--and a way to monetize them— Facebook could be dead in the water.

This “mobile dilemma” shouldn’t just be keeping Zuck up at night.  We researchers should be pondering it in those wee hours of the morning, too.  Not only do we need to keep upping the “mobile experience ante,” we need to recalibrate our discipline for this brave new world.

Emerging Technologies

Beyond the lightning-fast adoption cycle lies the power of advancing technology.  Smartphones are accumulating more gray matter every day.  It wasn't that long ago that reviewers were raving about flip-phones with color displays and integrated cameras. (A fascinating look at the progression of cell phone design over time can be found here).

My, how times change.

We’re on the precipice of a number of major advancements that are going to dramatically raise the smartphone’s IQ.  Here are just a few:

4G LTE - We’re rapidly entering a world where hanging out with your friends via high-def video calls will be as natural as sending a text . The roll-out of 4G LTE is the game-changer here, delivering bandwidth to your phone that is as fast (or sometimes faster) than current T1 lines that serve businesses like yours and mine.

Near Field Communication (NFC) – Our instant gratification culture is about to get a shot of adrenaline. A wave of your smartphone near a display will replace waiting in line at the box office; and another wave will grant you entrance into the theatre. With this radio-communication technology, Google’s currently leading the way, shipping about a million NFC-enabled smartphones per week.  They won’t be alone for long, since projections suggest annual sales of up to 700 million by 2016.

Biometric Scanning -  Gone will be the days of entering that annoying pass code to unlock your phone. All you’ll soon need is your thumbprint.  And this technology will also ensure your unique print is attached to any transactions used via your NFC chip.  Apple recently acquired a mobile security company called AuthenTec. Their biometric scanning technology is so advanced, that it can detect  the difference between an actual human print and a replica.

And…there are a whole lot more. Soon, our smartphones will have more powerful processors than what we currently have in our PCs, enabling apps to do things we can only dream up today.  They’ll have advanced wireless capabilities that will allow them to effortlessly “talk” to a rapidly expanding ecosystem of “connected” devices.  Oh, and they’ll charge themselves without being plugged in too.

A brave new world, indeed.

What does this mean for research?

The implications of the global adoption of these new technologies are staggering. Here are a few:

• The rollout of 4G LTE will revolutionize ethnography.  The sense of “being there” will replace the need to physically be there. Learning from consumers wherever they are in such a highly personal and unobtrusive way will be an incredible opportunity for us as researchers.  It will allow us to be the proverbial fly on the wall in a uniquely 21^st century way. 

• NFC technology will transform the way researchers understand how consumers shop. NFC scanning is far less cumbersome than current UPC barcode scanning, making it more seamless of an experience for consumers in the context of their shopping experience. 

• Biometric technology has promise to capture a whole lot more than thumbprints.  Smartphones will become a gateway to capturing and measuring physical and neurological responses, giving researchers a truer read on unconscious behavior.

Fascinating and exhilarating at the same time! These examples are ways we think the genius phone in our future will disrupt market research.

So now we ask, what direction do you think the smartphone tsunami is going to take us?

The Soul of Tradition and The Spirit of Innovation

With a week’s distance from the “Great Debate” on mobile research – with my colleague Michael Alioto and industry voices Lenny Murphy, Ray Poynter and Reg Baker – it’s clear to me that the two sides represent the forces of tradition and innovation in marketing research. While it’s tempting to root for one side or the other, there’s no devil or angel in this equation. The interplay of “tradition” and “innovation” in terms of creating meaningful shifts in our industry is essential.  

Without the spirit of innovation, marketing research as a discipline could get so mired in tried-and-true approaches that we risk becoming irrelevant in a world where technology is fundamentally changing the way consumers prefer to communicate.

On the other hand, the spirit of innovation without discipline would leave us vulnerable to frivolous inventions that may seem flashy, but ultimately become a “flash in the pan.” The gravitas of traditional marketing research grounds us in creating purposeful innovations that will serve as the foundations of research to come.

This debate demonstrated what an important and exciting time it is to be a part of the MR industry.  We're at an important inflection point, making the interplay between Tradition and Innovation more important than ever. I hope that we can collectively continue this vigorous exchange of ideas and thus cocreate the emerging new norm in marketing research.

Join the Debate

Ray Poynter posted a response to our recent release regarding the results of a new study on the validity of smartphone research. Our own Michael Alioto responded to Ray's post.

I think this is an extremely important conversation for us as researchers to be having at this time.  Mobile research is an important emerging way of engaging with consumers, and rigorously establishing both its validity and how to best utilize it is something both myself and my colleagues here at Gongos are working on very aggressively.

Here's the recap

What are your thoughts?  Tell us what you think.

The App is Where It's At - Untethering Online Communities in a Multi-touch World

My colleague from General Motors, Joyce Salisbury, and I had an opportunity to speak to our peers focused on innovation in marketing research at the TDMR Conference in May.

This article captures the heart of our discussion.

Enjoy.

The App is Where It's At

 

 

Mobile MR: Hype or Hope?

Our friend Lenny Murphy posted a comprehensive piece on the GreenBook Blog about why he thinks mobile research applications have switched from hype to hope. In it he cites results from the most recent GRIT trends study. I look forward to insights from the next study!

Mobile MR: Hype or Hope

"Is the Future of Communities in the Palm of Your Hands?"

At The Market Research Event in November, I addressed a crowd about how two disruptive innovations will effect the future of market research.

Join me for a clip of the first ten minutes, or for the full presentation visit http://tinyurl.com/35y225y

Greg Speaks at TMRE 2010.mp3

What Facebook Teaches Us About the Potential of Mobile Research Communities

Recently, Facebook began publishing statistics about its user base. I want to highlight some of their statistics about mobile and talk a bit about what these facts point to about the future of online research communities.

The first is this: There are more than 100 million users currently accessing Facebook through their smartphones on a monthly basis.  This represents approximately 20% of all Facebook members.  

Now, think about this statistic for a moment:  To me, this implies that people are already comfortable with the concept of participating in an online community via a smartphone.  With numbers of this magnitude, we're not talking about a"fringe element" or something that only early adopters do.  Nope. When over 100 million people are doing something, its clearly something that has mass appeal.

Perhaps even more compelling for a researcher is this:  People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active as non-mobile users.

Simply put, smartphone users are far more engaged than their non-mobile peers. 

 

This makes a lot of sense, since it's much easier to steal a snapshot or update your status "as it happens" when all you need to do is pull your phone out of your pocket.

But, the story gets better.  Projections show that within 12 months more people will be buying smartphones than feature phones. This tells me we are quickly reaching a powerful tipping point that will have ramifications for the research industry for years to come.

Despite not having a fully-functioning crystal ball, I'm lucky enough to be paid to foresee major trends in consumer behavior, and figuring out what it means for marketing research.  In doing that a couple of years ago, our mobile research strategy was born.  Embracing the two megatrends above led to the launch of iCommunities mobile for iPhone and iPod touch.

I hope you can take a couple of minutes to check out this video that shows how we are talking to consumers about iCommunities mobile and how it enables research to better fit into their lifestyle.

 

Right now, we're conducting pilot tests with a few of our clients to understand how best to take advantage of this new research technology. Like any first-to-market product, we expect to learn a lot in the coming months. Yet, we anticipate the transition of consumers into mobile research communities to be relatively smooth -- thanks to ubiquitous world of Facebook.