Perception Analyzer Dial.Log

Perception Analyzer® aids in lottery game design

The March/April edition of La Fleur's Magazine (a lottery and gaming publication) features an article entitled Measuring Consumer Attitudes Via Traditional & Wired Channels in which Sharon Bohn (Vice President, Market Strategies, Inc.) discusses advantages of using the Perception Analyzer for lottery & gaming research as well as in other focus group settings. Key quotes from the article:

"In the traditional focus group setting, the PA [Perception Analyzer] can reduce bias and quantify the reactions of participants. The data can be used for forecasting and determining the appeal of a product to likely demographic groups."

“The dial system actually allows you to capture quantitative information without the inherent bias of a typical focus group setting,” said Bohn. “Sometimes in traditional focus group settings one person can influence the group thinking because of their strong views.” [La Fleur's Magazine, (March/April 2004), Page 2]

Reviving old brands

Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge has an interesting article about breathing new life into old brands and contains a checklist of "Twelve Musts" for product turnarounds.

Newspapers around the world

This site allows you to find and read local newspapers online by drilling down by country and worldwide region. For many, this may be helpful for finding and preparing for international business opportunities.

Media multitasking

The Media Center at the American Press Institute concludes that 70% of media consumers use multiple forms of media at the same time. The goal of the study was to provide "quantifiable data on consumer media behaviors as an alternative to traditional audience measurement techniques, which at best capture bodies or time in front of devices but do not necessarily capture mindshare or influence."

Key stats:
• People who regularly or occasionally watch TV and read the newspaper at the same time: 74.2%
  
• People who regularly or occasionally watch TV while going online: 66.2%.
  
• For simultaneous online users, TV viewing is down 8.8% among 18 to 24 year-olds and down 12.2% among 25 to 34 year-olds in favor of video games
  
• What people do as they wait for downloads from the Internet: listen to the radio (52.1%); watch TV (61.8%), read the newspaper (20.2%)
  
• Importance of word of mouth when it comes to making purchase decisions: 72.5% of all consumers say it's very important versus 80% among cell phone users.
  

This is what we're saying!

For years, we at MSInteractive have been saying (and our clients agree) that using the Perception Analyzer® in focus groups helps eliminate "group-think" by allowing everyone to respond to questions based on their own opinions and not be influenced by the more vocal respondents in the group. It also facilitates more honest feedback through the anonymity derived from their own personal dials because people are not afraid to share opinions that may be embarrassing or unpopular.

Well, every once in a while we have our position validated by people far smarter than us. In this case, it is by way of a quote from Americus Reed (marketing professor at the Wharton School of Business). The context of the quote is in reference to traditional focus groups as compared to ethnographic research, the topic of the article in which he is quoted.

"A focus group is like a chainsaw. If you know what you're doing, it's very useful and effective. If you don't, you could lose a limb. Group opinion can be swayed by more vocal and strident members and findings can be skewed by participants' reluctance to share their true feelings in front of a group." [L. Tischler, "Every Move You Make," Fast Company, (April 2004), 73-75.]

Users of the Perception Analyzer certainly know what positive impact the elimination of those two concerns have on their research.

Office Makeover Contest

Creatively capitalizing on the whole makeover trend, Xerox, in conjunction with Entrepreneur Magazine, has launched an office makeover contest. Of course, the winning office will be stocked with state-of-the-art Xerox products and Thom Filicia (from "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy") will help design the space. IMHO, brilliant!

Home Internet access stats (II)

U.S. household broadband penetration of 18% significantly lags behind other nations according to this Business Week article.

Home Internet access stats

According to a new report by Nielsen/NetRatings, home Internet access penetration jumped from 66% in February 2003 to 75% today. However, the important caveat from the report is, "Internet access penetration is defined as the percent of people aged 2 and over living in households equipped with a fixed line phone, who have home Internet access, though not necessarily logging online during a specific period of time." So, take that for that it's worth.

Boomer women have the money and power

While most of us already know this, an article by Fast Company offers some interesting statistics - two that caught my eye:

• By 2010, spending by people 40 and older will be a trillion dollars greater than spending by people between the ages of 18 and 34 -- $2.6 trillion versus $1.6 trillion
  
• Women control or influence 80% of all purchases of both consumer and business goods and services
  

How DVR's will impact television ratings

Much is being made of the impact DVR's are going to have on television viewing, subsequent ratings and ad buys. TelevisionWeek has a very comprehensive article on what the future may look like.

Perception Analyzer® featured in new Showtime Original Picture

The new Showtime Original Picture, "Spinning Boris," is based on the true story of three American political consultants hired to manage Russian President Boris Yeltsin's 1996 re-election campaign. Approximately halfway through the movie, there is a focus group scene where the Perception Analyzer is mentioned by name and used to recreate an actual dial test that was performed during the campaign.

During production of the movie, Perception Analyzer technologies, services and custom graphics were provided by MSInteractive staff who were on location during the filming of the scene.

Poll shows advertisers wary of TV buying season

According to this new poll by the Association of National Advertisers, 58% of advertisers are dissatisfied with the spring "upfront" buying season for television spots and 40% plan to move part of their ad budget to other media outlets. Primary reasons cited for the dissatisfaction are the network's practice of making frequent, often short notice changes to programming and the proliferation of DVR/PVR’s.

Quiznos Creatures

Love 'em or hate 'em - here's the story behind the singing rodents in the Quiznos television ads.

Autosize Moment-to-Moment Subset Labels

A challenge in formatting moment-to-moment overlay graphs with the Perception Analyzer® has been setting the font sizes for subset labels at a size that is large enough to be clear on a video overlay, but not so large as to be truncated by the edges of the available display area. Beginning in Perception Analyzer version 7.0, a feature called Auto-Resizing may be activated to automatically optimize the font size of subset labels. Auto-Resizing automatically reduces the font size of the labels to fit the space, no matter the number of labels, the length of text, or whether or not you are in Full Screen View. In fact, you can set your subset labels to the largest possible size (72pt.) and let PA do the rest.

Activate Auto-Resizing on the MtM (moment-to-moment) tab of the Display Properties dialog window. Note that in version 7.0, that dialog is only available from PA-Report.

Who Owns What

For those doing research in the media field, Columbia Journalism Review's Who Owns What may provide a valuable resource for keeping track of, well, who owns what.

Use Acrobat to make PDF tables and graphs

You can use Adobe Acrobat to create a PDF document (portable document file) of selected Perception Analyzer® cross-tabulated tables and graphs. Install Acrobat on your PA computer, then use PA Report’s Print Setup dialog to select Acrobat as your printer. Best results may be achieved using the Acrobat Distiller print driver rather than the PDF-Writer driver. If you don’t have the Distiller feature, it may be necessary to adjust the font size of the question text; use Print Preview before printing to verify. Instead of actually printing to a printer, Acrobat creates a pdf file containing all the questions selected in the question list. If desired, use Acrobat’s page insertion feature to create a pdf file containing a combination of graphs and tables.

PDF files are convenient because they can be distributed electronically to your clients, and all tables and graphs contained within can be printed with one click from Acrobat Reader.

Acrobat is available from the Adobe on-line store. For information see http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/main.html

Welcome

Perception Analyzer Dial.Log, published by MSInteractive, is a resource and outlet for marketers, market researchers and Perception Analyzer® users.  Here you will find news, information, opinions and an on-going dialog on topics such as advertising, marketing, customer experience, market research and mass media.

We encourage you to share your thoughts and opinions by using the comments link at the bottom of each post.  You may also contact us directly by clicking the email address to the left.  Your comments, questions and suggestions are welcome and appreciated.  Hopefully this weblog will prove to be a valuable tool for marketers and all of our clients and partners worldwide.

Also, if you don't want to have to check back here all the time to read what's new, choose one of the subscription options to the left or grab our RSS feed to add to your favorite news aggregator.

Contribute

Please share articles, links and ideas you feel will be of interest.  We will do our best to post everything that fits within the scope of this weblog and if you provide your name, company and/or email address, we will always give credit where credit is due.  The more we get from you, our readers, the more relevant Perception Analyzer Dial.Log will be.