The presentation focuses – next to the discussion on opportunities and limitations of mobile market research (mmr) - on an overview of core results of mobile market research studies conducted by evolaris during the past 3 years.

At first the paper will give a definition of mobile market research i.e. using mobile phone devices and technologies like SMS, MMS, mobile internet, GPS, pattern recognition and cameras to collect data from respondents. Advantages will be outlined and empirically affirmed e.g. speed of reactions and better reach of special target-groups as well as limitations like issues of usability, costs and representativeness. However upcoming trends like i-phone and flat rates for data-transfer will argue against some provisos.

In the following part of the presentation a short synopsis of the mobile phone distribution, spread of technological features and usage as basis for potential target groups will help to encircle potential target groups to research e.g. SMS usage, current mobile internet usage and forcast.

Next, different types of mobile market research methods will be discussed: Researching by SMS / MMS / WAP i.e. mobile internet and location based information (e.g.) is on the proof. Strengths, weaknesses and legal restrictions of each approach are presented side by side. SMS research for instance has the benefit of potentially reaching all mobile phone users since every device is equipped with it. On the contrary responding by SMS might be less convenient and even faulty due to limited characters, lack of visibility of questions and code words which have to be remembered. MMS adds the assistance of showing multimedia material to respondents but sets limits to amount of questions as well as SMS do.

More detailed the use of mmr in qualitative research is shown by an example using mobile blogging in trend research. Comparing the usage of mobile phones with paper&pencil diaries documents the usefulness especially for younger, technical-affine targets groups. Immediate availability of posted contributions is another benefit of the mobile method.

Coming to the main part of the presentation, the use of a mobile survey application and workflow of mobile surveys from sending out invitations in form of wap-pushes, presenting the survey in a user-friendly way to analyse data is depicted. Differences and similarities to web surveys are presented by a case study done for Vodafone live, a mobile entertainment platform researching customer satisfaction. Results of a web are compared with a mobile survey showing higher and quicker response by the latter. Reasons for this will be summarized e.g. lack of fraction of the research medium. However, the data shows differences between both methods. Possible reasons like psychographic variaton of respond-groups are discussed. Further areas of application for mmr like advertising testing and evaluation of mobile marketing campaigns are sketched by case studies.

Finally: The most relevant learnings from until now conducted mobile surveys will be presented to the audience. This includes answers and indications to the following questions:

How do respondents feel about this kind of method? Figures of post assessments illustrate a high acceptance in special younger target groups between about 16 and 26 years with specific technological-friendly attitudes.

How high are response rates and which variables influence them? We got response rates from 1% to 23% and finishing quotes from 63% to 84%.

How long should a wap-questionnaire be? Results document that even 26 questions do not result to higher dropout rates, considering however the set-up and target-group of research, in this case students.

What about the speed of getting data and feedback? Our results show rates from 53% to 73% of sample in total within the first hour of sending out invitations. Thus suggesting respondents participate immediately or not at all.

How is the influence of the presentation, layout and display of scales? Even though scales can only be depicted vertically on most of mobile phones in wml and xhtml, we couldn’t find a bias by flipping scales at split half of sample.

Comparison to other methods i.e. web and CATI shows differences especially looking at the more “emotional” items.

The presentation will close with an outlook to future trends in mobile phone technology like NFC, mobile TV / DVB-H, 2D-Codes and some ideas on how to get best use of it in market research.