Inside Intent

American Demographics, March 1, 2004

Byline: LOUISE WITT

Market researchers have always desired to get up close and personal with consumers. With today's technology, they're finally getting a better understanding of how consumer purchase intent works. Thing is, the ones who pay the bills for market research are asking a lot right now. Clients want research that gives them fast results. What's more, the results they want are tough ones. Market research must: 1. Help marketers understand consumers, and 2. Help influence consumers to buy their products.

Advances in technology as well as methodologies to collect information on consumers give market researchers a fuller, more accurate picture of them. American Demographics talked to several market research executives - some at the world's best-known research companies and others at smaller, up-and-coming firms - to discover how they are responding to clients' need to solve the riddles of consumer behavior.

Companies such as PortiCo Research and Mediamark Research Inc. (MRI) are collecting more information. Mediamark now includes Spanish speakers in its household surveys and adds more questions about Spanish-language media, while PortiCo's expanded "In Their World" interviews gather greater details about what consumers do and who they interact with on a daily basis. "We find out what matters to them in life," says Caroline Gibbons Barry, PortiCo's president and founder.

Tom Miller, managing director of RoperASW, part of NOP World, a worldwide group of market research firms, including MRI, says that the global company has integrated its consumer segmentation tool, LifeMatrix, into its research products. LifeMatrix asks questions about consumers' values, lifestyles and stages of life. "How people actually spend their time and their different life stages is significant in predicting consumers' preferences and choices," Miller says.

NOT JUST A NUMBER

Technology is making it easier for market researchers to collect more information on consumers, and better understand the data once they have it. High-powered computers allow researchers to manipulate and mine customer databases for patterns. Simmons Market Research Bureau, for instance, has behavioral segments to help MasterCard know more about its credit-card holders. Simmons' behavioral segments may reveal that the same customers who shop at Saks Fifth Avenue also watch The Bachelorette on TV. So, MasterCard could buy time on that ABC program for its "priceless" ads.

The Internet reaches consumers in their homes without companies having to send interviewers to conduct door-to-door surveys. Also, it lets marketers give consumers more options. For Affinnova, Internet research gives consumers hundreds of options in product design and marketing campaigns. Rob Frasca, president of the Cambridge, Mass.-based, company, likens consumer preference to natural selection. "If products don't improve," Frasca says, "They won't thrive and survive."

Some new market research technologies aren't as advanced, but they are significantly more effective over previous ones. Arbitron, for example, is testing a device that it hopes will replace its survey participants' diaries with electronic monitors. Called Portable People Meters, or PPMs, these devices record the number of radio programs a person is exposed to during the day. (Arbitron is also testing a device in Chicago that uses the Global Positioning System, GPS, to more accurately measure how many billboards a person may walk by, or drive by, during a day.) "With a diary, you have no way to know what a person should have written down," says Thom Mocarsky, Arbitron's spokesman.

HANGING UP

In some cases, marketers are being forced to use new research techniques because tried-and-true methods are either becoming less accurate, too expensive or just plain obsolete. In late 2003, Congress passed legislation allowing the Federal Trade Commission to restrict telemarketing calls to consumers through its "Do Not Call" registry. Although market research firms were exempt, many think that within a few years telephone surveys will be far less frequently used.

The Internet seemed to be the replacement for the phone, yet even cyberspace isn't as open to market researchers as it once was. Internet research's biggest challenge is that it doesn't give analysts a random sample of the population. Only roughly 60 percent of U.S. households have Internet access. Knowledge Networks has gotten around those problems by using more traditional methods to form its consumer panel. Then, for those participants who don't have Web access, the company provides them with MSN TV, an interactive service for their TVs.

AC Nielsen's Homescan solves the problem by partnering with Yahoo!, one of the largest Web portals with an average of 100 million visitors a month. Homescan combines information AC Nielsen collects from its consumer panel sales scanner data with consumers' online activity. The company hopes that this will give consumer packaged goods manufacturers a better idea of how to promote their products online.