The past decade has been marked by two revolutions in market research and both are associated with the internet. The first is the move to online research, especially to access panels. Access panels are collections of people who have volunteered to take our surveys. Access panels have allowed us to provide speedy, cost effective research, using the compelling, visual medium of the internet.

The second is the growth of social media. Consumers are no longer passive. They are empowered; they socialise online; they get instant information about brands, often over their mobile. In this new social world the key question is who owns the brand? Brand owners are now part of a real time conversation where customers’ experiences and a brand’s performance are transparent for all to see. These new social media tools are moving us from access panels to increasingly socialised panels and to research based around communities, and they are one of the easiest ways for brands to converse with consumers.

Technology cycles tend to last about ten years, from the personal computing era of the ‘80s, through the desktop computing era of the ‘90s to the mobile computing era of the early 21st century. Each has brought more computing power, better user experiences, lower prices and expanded services to more people. And with every new technology comes new opportunities for the research industry. None more so than the saturation of mobile phone ownership and the increasing power and capabilities of the modern smartphones.

GfK has been investigating various ways that mobile technology can be leveraged for research purposes, and this is a brief introduction to a few of our recent initiatives.

Taking mobile-based surveys mainstream: a Nokia case study

It’s an exciting time to be involved in the digital world; only recently we were still developing .mobi websites, now it’s an annoyance when we get forced to a .mobi on a smartphone browser. We were sending each other MMS messages, now we just email them directly from our email account. Our number one reason to upgrade a phone was for more mega pixels from the built-in camera, now it’s less about the hardware and more about software.

Such rapid changes in technology force the online space to adapt and change to suit how the user wants to access content, one area that has maintained a steady evolution is online video technology.