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Billion Dollar Baby: Leveraging Mobile Technology forResearch Applications in India

Madhumita Chakraborty and Sandeep Arora

ESOMAR

Asia Pacific, Kuala Lumpur, April 2010



Billion Dollar Baby: Leveraging Mobile Technology for ResearchApplications in India

Madhumita Chakraborty

Consumer Insights, PepsiCo International (Beverages BU), India

Sandeep Arora

Datamatics Global Services, India

INTRODUCTION

India is characterized as a country with several countries within it. The multiplicity of languages and ethnicity, geographical

spread, low literacy levels and a large rural audience brings operational challenges to reaching India's diverse audience.

The exhilarating growth in mobile phone penetration offers marketers and researchers an opportunity to tap into this

burgeoning and fast evolving Indian audience – in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner. Yet adoption of mobile based

research has been fairly limited worldwide, more so in India.

This paper addresses these barriers and showcases mobile based applications that are increasingly gaining attractiveness for

data collection, in or out of MR, within India.

MOBILE MANIA – IT'S ALREADY HERE

In a recent study by this tile, Young and Rubicam argue that the second internet mobile will not be on computers, but on the

mobile phone. Today there are mobile phones that are far more powerful even than top-of-the-range computers at the height

of the internet boom in 1999. And unlike computers which only just managed to get to the “personal” space; mobile phones

operate in the “intimate” space. After all no other device has such a close association with you, moving with you through the

day, and affecting your life in so many ways as the mobile. The average woman in Sub Saharan Africa touches her hair 37

times a day. But she checks her cell-phone 82 times a day.1)

What makes this thought really big is the fact that with 3.5 billion users worldwide, mobile phones today touch the lives of

approximately half the human population on the planet. Experts point that adoption of mobile phones is perhaps the most

democratic technology movement ever. Sending money by cell phone is happening first in Kenya. Mobile minutes have

become a widely traded currency, and a phone-based system known as M-PESA has become the payment system of choice.

High definition voice calls are already alive and well – in Moldova.

Title: Billion Dollar Baby: Leveraging Mobile Technology for Research Applications in India

Author(s): Madhumita Chakraborty and Sandeep Arora

Source: ESOMAR

Issue: Asia Pacific, Kuala Lumpur, April 2010

Downloaded from warc.com

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The mobile phone has already arrived. It is changing the way people communicate and conduct their daily lives and

professions. Marketers and researchers worldwide recognize the importance of this medium – especially in view of the extreme

media fragmentation and pressure on budgets in the recent economic slowdown.

INDIA – THE LAND OF MAGGI NOODLES AND MOBILE PHONES

“The realisation from the Uttaranchal trip was that religiosity, cell phones and Maggi Noodles are three things that hold

modern India together. Since the latter two are not part of our ancient heritage, we can heave a sigh of relief that we are

evolving and not stuck in the past! … Deep in the mountains of Uttaranchal where landslides often block treacherous roads

and cut off mobility, and where children walk miles and miles to school, the cell signal and the television signal is almost

always there, enabling everyone everywhere to be connected with the rest of the country.” (Rama Bijapurkar, Economic

Times, November 2009)

The mobile telephony sector has grown at an unprecedented rate in India. In a short span of 15 years, India has come to be

the second most populous mobile subscriber base in the world. At present there are over 500 million mobile subscribers in

India, and the market continues to grow by 10 – 12 million subscribers every month.

Proliferation of mobile phones in India mirrors the global trend of an all-inclusive technology movement. It is perhaps one of the

few categories that has double digit penetration in rural areas, in bottom of the pyramid consumers; and that continues to grow

at CAGR of 30%+ in India.2)

IS MARKET RESEARCH IN INDIA READY FOR MOBILE-BASED DATA COLLECTION?

For marketers and the market research (MR) fraternity, this growth in mobile telephony poses tremendous opportunity to reach

out to hitherto “difficult” to reach audience in a time and cost efficient manner. Mobile technology, and to some extent even

some of the applications we looked at, are perhaps not “new news”. Location based services, PDAs and GPs have been

around at least a decade now. But, for the most part, they have been an unviable option for the Indian research industry – both

given the relatively high costs associated and the fact that there was no real need felt to deviate from the tried and tested face-

to-face methodology.

With the changing Indian socio-economic milieu, we believe that marketers and researchers can now leverage mobile

applications. Our endeavor in writing this paper was two-fold:

l Gauge the need for mobile based applications in market research industry in India.

l Scan the marketplace for mobile based data collection methods in use, with a view to understand the benefits and

barriers to usage.

Much has been written about the rise of consumerism in India. Indian economy has been growing at a scorching pace (GDP

growth rates in the last few years have averaged 7.4% p.a.). The growing disposable income, greater media exposure and

phenomenal rise in consumerism mean that the marketing outlook in India has changed far more in the last decade than it did

in the thirty years preceding economic liberalization. Hence we started this paper by analyzing what these changing trends

mean for the market research industry in India.

After mapping the state of market research in India, we then scanned the mobile applications in use for data collection in India.


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While we began with a focus on the use of mobile based applications in market research in India, we later expanded this to

include mobile applications in use for other types of data collection (pharmacological, sales infrastructure and marketing

activation). We also looked within market research companies to gauge their experience with PDAs, which have been around

for the last four to five years in varying degrees across market research firms.

Finally, we conjoined the information across these efforts to understand the barriers in use for mobile applications today, the

extent to which it can impact operational and cost efficiencies for market research firms; and to examine the future potential for

mobile based data collection in India.

BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE: THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A paper such as this is only meaningful when it carries inputs from the people it addresses. In writing this paper, we therefore

sourced from conversations with people across market research, mobile technology and marketing organizations. In addition,

we also supplemented the interviews with secondary research. Specifically we mined information through:

l Secondary research – from articles previously presented at conferences focused on mobile based research organized by

ESOMAR, MRS and MMA (Mobile Marketing Association). In addition, we also looked at websites of major technology

developers, market research firms, academic white papers, and blogs of mobile technology experts. Our secondary

research was focused on familiarizing ourselves with mobile applications, and in comparing the state of mobile data

collection in India with that in other developed countries.

l Conversations within the market research industry – we spoke with senior business leaders, heads of research teams

(both quantitative and qualitative) and heads of operations at the largest market research firms in India including Nielsen,

IMRB, TNS and Synovate. These interviews were geared to understand the state of the market research industry today

and the present issues and challenges face by the market research firms, with a view to evaluate potential of mobile data

collection methodologies. We also discussed the firms' openness to adopting mobile based data collection and their

experience with mobile / PDA technologies, if any.

l Conversations with industry experts outside market research – we augmented our understanding of data collection by

speaking with a variety of people who are experimenting with mobile phones for data collection. These included

conversations with technology developers, sales and marketing professionals, and business leaders from CPG, pharma,

banking and telecom industries.

In addition, we partnered with IMRB International's Consumer Panel tracking team to conduct a pilot specifically for this paper

to evaluate the effectiveness of mobile phones in data collection. To explore the feasibility of mobile driven location tracking

technology, a customized application was installed in mobile phones of field interviewers who collect diaries from households

that are part of IMRB's consumer panel. The purpose was to get a first-hand feel of the challenges in rolling out widespread

deployment of mobile phones for field tracking in large-scale studies.

STATE OF THE (MARKET RESEARCH) HOUSE TODAY

India is changing, and so are the marketers' needs

We begin this paper by an analysis of the Indian marketplace, and the impact of the changing consumer on the market

research industry. We uncovered three important trends which impact the market research industry today.


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Over the last decade or so, India has seen a phenomenal rise in consumerism. Much has been written about the growth of the

middle class consumer in India, which according to a McKinsey survey will increase 10 times – from 5% to 41% of population

(or from 50 to 500 million households) by 2025. Between 2000 and 2008 alone, the number of brands advertised on TV has

grown from 8,000 to 15,000.

The portfolio of the market research firm's clientele is changing from a dominantly CPG-led business to a wider variety of

industries. CPG today accounts for just a third of the market research firm's business composition. Also with increased brand

proliferation and media fragmentation have increased the marketer's demand for different kinds of data around the consumer,

media, and retail space. Shopper marketing, locational analysis, quality audits, cultural analysis, semiotics, etc. are some

examples of the new types of research that were previously rare.

Secondly, this rising consumerist wave is also leading to the idea of “personal consumption ” amongst middle class Indians for

the first time. The long-held view that consumption – from soaps to TV in India is always at a household level – is now giving

rise to consumption at an individual level – from special toothpastes, to fairness creams to DTH services – customization to the

individual consumer is a growing phenomenon. The need to understand people as individuals today means interviews with

housewives alone are not sufficient indicators of consumption.

A third important trend that impacts marketers is the growing disposable income among the rural Indians and small town

India. While the bulk of Indians live in rural areas and are growing increasingly “attractive” to marketers with rising disposable

income, and increasing exposure to urban lifestyles and products; research continues to focus on urban audience. (According

to some estimates, while 70% of India's population lives in rural areas, less than 20% of research ever considers a rural target

group). This, however, is set to change if one goes by the number of marketing campaigns that are today making inroads into

rural areas.

… which increases the pressure (and opportunity) for market research firms to innovate

These changes have impacted the marketer's needs today and the market research industry in India is witnessing significant

changes. However the reality of market research industry in India is that despite a very high volume of data collection, market

research revenues remain relatively lower than other countries. Per ESOMAR's Global Prices Study 2007, the rate per

interview for conducting market research in India is one of the lowest across the world.

Coupled with the pressure of low rates, market research firms are reeling under demands of changing business conditions

wherein the project cycle times are required to be reduced from weeks to days. Amidst these pressures the prevalent data

collection methodology is not geared to deliver either on respondent reach or cost and time efficiencies (more than 90%

interviews in India are conducted face to face).

We believe that mobile technology can offer the research industry support on both fronts. On one hand mobile technology

offers operational efficiencies by reducing project cycle time, improving data accuracy and targeting hitherto difficult to reach

consumers. In addition, mobile applications can expand the scope of research projects to newer revenue streams for research

firms. In the next section we explored case studies from within MR and other mainstream sales and marketing teams to

evaluate the potential for MR firms to meet these business needs.

But there ain't no gold rush just yet …


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In our conversations with market research firms in India, we came across four key barriers to adoption of mobile phones in

data collection.

1. Perception that mobile phones can only be used for fieldwork – the interviewers all have high end smartphones or PDAs.

This requires significant technology investment if one wants to migrate to mobile data capture.

2. Bulk of interviewing in India is conducted by housewives, or interviewers who belong to lower socio-economic strata, and

their comfort with adopting new technology is low.

3. Mobile phones are not very effective when we want to expose stimulus to the respondents or want to capture open end

data from them. Hence our current project mix is not amenable to mobile data capture.

4. Unavailability of constant mobile network – especially in remote places – can be a significant limitation for on-the-move

interviewers

To test the validity of these hypotheses, we looked at case studies from within and outside the market research industry for

inspiration on how mobile technology can be deployed towards the bigger objective of 'data collection'.

Following are some of the success stories that we have come across which highlight how mobile applications (most of which

can be installed on low cost phones or use only the SMS feature) can boost the quality and timeliness of information collected

in areas as diverse as patient care, sales governance, marketing promotion tracking and customer verification.

MOBILE ENABLED DATA COLLECTION IN THE WORLD OF SALES AND MARKETING

Consumer promotion management at Nokia

Nokia India is not only the leading mobile handset manufacturer in India, but is also one of the leading “technology” adopters.Applying technology solutions to products and communication is passé; Nokia is now dialing up technology applications in

other parts of their marketing plans. Recently Nokia undertook a “paperless” scratch card consumer promo. Like other scratch

card gift promos, this one too has a simple objective – to drive sales by offering consumers a free gift with the purchase of a

mobile phone. Dealers are provided with an application on their phones which generates an electronic voucher entitling the

customer to prizes. The consumer receives this voucher as an SMS on their mobile and must call a Nokia toll-free helpdesk or

show the same to the dealer to claim the prize. A Nokia appointed helpline executive calls the consumer back and collects

some information regarding their last phone owned and contact details.

In deploying this mobile application, Nokia was able to:

l Control for pilferage of scratch cards by dealers – one of the biggest pain points for a marketer is the loss in transmission,

by way of dealers hoarding the attractive gifts, and therefore the promotion not actually reaching consumers. This

mechanism actually allows control for pilferage and ensures that the promotion reaches the end consumer as it is meant

to.

l Collect hard to get consumer information – understanding the consumer's progression in handset ownership is key to

Nokia's plans for designing its offering. However this information is very difficult to come by, and is usually collected as

tag-ons on other large surveys.


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l Track sales real time by city and dealer – not only does this provide accurate, instantaneous sales information, this also

allowed Nokia to reallocate the cards across cities and across dealers in line with the sales in those cities. In addition, it

also allowed Nokia to match suitable prizes to the value of the handset purchased.

l Cost savings in production and logistics of producing and managing paper coupons.

The mobile application therefore enabled Nokia to improve the effectiveness of their sales promotion, and also collect rich

information regarding consumers and retailers alike – thereby providing information to improve subsequent promotions.

Secondary sales capturing system (Beauty-care product manufacturer)

This global beauty products company retails through a complex distribution chain with multiple forwarding agents, distributors

and retailers. Like most CPG companies, it struggles to accurately estimate its sales to individual retail stores by distributors.

This results in huge gaps in data required for demand planning and supply chain planning. The company often struggles to

provide stock in time to retailers and has little information on stock inventory at the distributor and retailer end. In the past it

has instituted a stock reporting system, however as this is a manual process, it is an extremely time and effort intensive

exercise to reconcile this data in time for monthly sales plans.

The company worked with a third party to develop an application which resides in every distributor's mobile phone. As soon as

they complete a retail outlet visit, the distributor is expected to log all the details of stocks delivered using a fairly user-friendly

GUI on his mobile screen. Upon completion of the feeding of data, the master database, residing at the client's end, is updated

through SMS technology. Along with this update, the retailer also receives an SMS at his end acknowledging the details of the

transaction, for his records.

This application has been well received by distributors as it is fairly easy to use. Some salient features and benefits of the

application include:

l It is an SMS based application, hence it can work on any handset, and hence the distributors could operate this on their

existing handsets. This application is operator agnostic, and runs on GSM as well as CDMA technology with comparable

proficiency; and can work even in areas with moderate signal coverage.

l In the mobile application, as soon as the agent keys in the retailer ID (numeric), the prompts for SKU sold in this round

are very specific to that retail outlet. Hence, this saves the agent time as the data is keyed – avoiding the need to browse

through a never-ending list of SKUs by different brands, etc. to complete the reporting.

l The data collected by the agent is stored in an encrypted format, thus enhancing the data confidentiality.

l The application on the agent's mobile handset can be controlled remotely. For instance, one can add, modify or delete

the SKUs or any other details for a particular outlet, remotely. It also allows the administrator to delete the application and

the residing data at any point.

At the central sales office, this application has led to greater accuracy of data collected and improved sales planning

dramatically. Since deploying this application, the company found that on ground distributor inventory stocking is more

systematic and the speed of stock processing has improved and the right product is made available at the right time to the

retailer.


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Effective patient governance system (Healthcare company)

A leading healthcare provider and a wholly owned subsidiary of a global leader in medical products and services, this

company has been in the healthcare industry for more than 75 years. They work closely with the end users, i.e. patients, to

raise the standards of care and provide access to care through clinical support on renal therapies, as an integral component of

the comprehensive care approach. They have a task force of 250 Clinical Coordinators (CC) who visit each patient once a

month to clean the machines, note the findings and provide basic guidance on dialysis and diet control. The information

collected is then relayed back to doctors for monitoring patient health.

Given the sensitive nature of their business, the company felt a strong need to monitor the movement of the CCs in ensuring

that they cover every patient as per the planned schedule. Also the doctors felt the need to have visibility of

services/counselling rendered by the CCs to their patients to ensure that they are taking note of all the required observations.

The company deployed a Patient Governance System that was installed on the mobile phones of all the CCs to address the

above issues. The CCs upon completing a patient visit log in their visit details using a guided interface on their mobile phones.

Upon logging in the details, the patient, the supervisor of the CC in the healthcare company and the doctor all receive

confirmation of the visit undertaken by the CC almost immediately. The CCs movement throughout the day is reported to his

supervisor plotted on Google Earth, through an online web portal, significantly reducing supervision costs.

The healthcare company uses this system to configure the list of patients to be visited by their CCs in the system, and enables

the supervisor to route any new visit request directly in to the mobile phone of the CC who is in close proximity of the patient at

that point in time. In the case of an emergency at the patient's end upon examination of the CC, an alert can be sent to the

respective doctor for immediate action, and thus plays a vital role in providing life saving assistance.

The key benefit is the enhanced connect between the doctor and the patient, through a key stakeholder of the relationship –

the healthcare company. It has increased the doctors' confidence in this healthcare company.

Rajul Tandon, CEO of Elixir Computech, a leading player in the mobile technology related development space, says,

“Implementing a mobile based solution was a perfect fit as it is economical, accessible on-the-go and the information gets

generated in a digitized format. Today, mobile phones are enabling us to offer companies with such mobile based business

solutions for improving their operational efficiencies and customer face time.”

This technology has found its application in some of the other industry segments as well, such as banking, insurance or

telecom – where there are a high number of DSAs/agents in the field on a daily basis for a number of activities such as

collections, parcel deliveries or for new customer acquisition processes. This works quite well since it eliminates the need for a

daily congregation of the agents at a central location for day's work allocation. Through this application, the supervisor candirectly upload the allocated work to the agent on his mobile phone. This saves everyone's time and enhances communication.

Upon completion of the task, the acknowledgment SMSs go to all the concerned parties – thereby ensuring confidence of a

genuine completion of a genuine transaction (at customer's end, at the supervisor's end, etc.). Additionally, at the end of the

day, the supervisor gets a location-based report of the movement of the agent during the day or the week, etc. This, on one

end, helps the supervisor monitor the individual – however, on the other hand, it helps him plan his field force appropriately (to

see if the routes allotted to different agents is the most efficient way or is his sales force adequately staffed to cover the city,

etc). For this application to be deployed, not requiring high-end handsets or a constant network connection, also helps in

enhancing penetration of the application across social strata and/or geography.


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Sales tracking system (Perfetti Van Melle)

Perfetti Van Melle India (PVM) is a leading confectionery organization in India with market share close to 25%. In India PVM

today has 14 brands in the market and operates with the largest distribution network among any confectionary manufacturer in

India. Over the last few years, PVM has been consistently investing in its sales IT systems to improve data accuracy, depth

and speed in tracking sales movements. Recently they piloted a mobile application that works with a third party vendor to track

daily movements through the sales funnel.

Daily market reports are not new to sales team. The software – co-developed by the vendor and PVM Sales – tracks daily

contacts and sales, and also has a special section dedicated to tracking sales of “focus products” for that week. At the end of

the day, the data is collected on a central server, and reports are generated and sent to the central sales team within a matter

of seconds. The beauty of this application lies in the fact that not only can this be used to collect data across markets with

greater speed; it also eases the data collection process for a sales team, and thereby improves compliance to completion of

daily reports.

Initial feedback indicates that the application has been useful and possible to roll out to other locations as well.

Customer verification system (Telecom service provider)

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has mandated all telecom service providers to physically verify a customer's

address before activating service for a new connection application. Like other service providers, this company too outsources

this process to small regional companies, and like its peers this company too has little data that confirms that proper protocol

was followed for the physical verification. Per TRAI estimates, approximately 35% of all addresses submitted by service

providers are not actually verified. This can be detrimental to the company's brand image and can also land it in regulatory

violation with TRAI.

A simple mobile application that tracks the field agent's verification data with his geographical coordinates has helped the

company overcome this. When the agent goes to the address provided in the application form and confirms the status of

verification as success or rejected supported by appropriate reasons; a dashboard is generated that plots his location. This

helps in authenticating if the agent has actually visited the site to verify the address of the customer as provided in the

application form.

MOBILE ENABLED DATA COLLECTION IN MARKET RESEARCH FIRMS

Phase 1: Handheld devices in retail audits

MR India first flirted with this technology in data collection about five years back, when Nielsen first introduced HHTs for data

capture. The traditional trade channel dominates CPG retail landscape in India. In the absence of barcode scanners, retail

audits have been conducted in India for the last forty years in much the same way – a physical stock check of products in the

outlet, transfer of data on a paper form, and then collation of forms across surveyors. Five years back, Nielsen installed HHTs

for the first time, the primary objective being reduction in time spent in field (the device can be customized to the products

stocked in the retail outlet, thereby reducing time spent in searching through the questionnaire. It also improved data quality

and reduced data supervision time through the built-in checks installed. This was the first phase of HHT usage in India.

Today, HHTs used for retail audits also have built-in barcode scanners.


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Having seen the benefits of technology deployment, Nielsen has now set an internal mandate for itself to migrate at least 20%

of its customized research projects to mobile based data capture.

Phase 2: Experimentation with mobile applications

Mobile in the qualitative space – Digital ethnography

Anjali Puri, Executive Director at TNS Qualitative Research, Shopper Consulting and Digital Media, believes that mobile

phones have added richness to ethnographic studies. Youth marketers and telecom companies are the first to take to

incorporating the mobile into traditional ethnographic studies. The methodology is very simple. Pre-recruit a panel of

respondents, and send them messages to share what they are doing, who they are with, what they are eating, share pictures

of their surroundings, etc. abruptly at different times of the day. It often requires reminders to elicit response, and since

response is voluntary, not all the respondents may reply back all the time. However this is easy to overcome by recruiting a

larger panel, to supplementing mobile messages with some visits by the researcher.

Says Anjali, “The proliferation of smart mobile phones with urban youth has made it far more efficient to conduct digital

ethnographic studies. You can collect a week's worth of data at a fraction of the costs of capturing the respondents' lives

through videocams. But perhaps the biggest advantage of the mobile phone is that it is far less intrusive in the respondent's

lives and therefore the data one can collect is a lot more spontaneous and relatively bias free. And, of course, it is possible

to capture snapshots of their lives anytime, anywhere.”

The agency has also used mobile phone logs in a rural ethnography study. The data bias arising from an urban (mostly

female) researcher fitting in with the rural opinion leaders is fairly acute. Besides, it is a fairly cost intensive exercise to conduct

rural ethnographic studies, as the warm up period is much longer. In this instance, after establishing initial contact with the

audience, the research relied heavily on collection information from opinion leaders in the village by contact over the mobile

phone (in this case largely voice and camera applications) over a longer period of time. The mobile logs are found to be

equally candid and rich in data as the information collected through personal contacts. While this methodology might not work

for all kinds of ethnographic studies, it definitely bridges part of the gap in connecting with rural audience in a cost effective

manner.

Using IVR technology in Mystery Shopping

In the good old days of mystery shopping, training of auditors with the pre-defined checklist used to be a task in itself. The

multi-centre, multi-language audits would just make this task a bit more challenging. The memory-led biases of the auditors

and the turn-around time of results emerged as the primary challenges. The answer to these problems lies in adoption of IVR.

Deployment of IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technology in mystery shopping eliminates most of these challenges. Upon

entering the 'auditee' outlet, the auditor simply dials a pre-configured phone number, wherein through IVR, he is guided

through a number of events that he has to audit. (For instance, the IVR would prompt, “If you see any of competition's brands

of beverages present in the visi-cooler, press '1', otherwise press '2'). The data is collected by the auditor through his mobile

phone while he is moving around in the outlet. The auditor also has the option of choosing the language in which he would

want to hear the IVR prompts. Upon completion of the visit, the auditor's rating scores are made available, on a real-time basis,

through a web portal for immediate actions. The entire workflow also provides the auditor an option to raise a hot-alert directly

to client in case of any 'critical' misalignments.


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Mobile application for field rep tracking – A pilot exercise

We conducted a pilot exercise with IMRB International, a Kantar Group Company and the largest custom research company in

India, to test the waters for application of mobile data collection to large scale quantitative surveys. To warm up to the idea of

mobile enabled data collection, we decided to start with the first step – tracking a field interviewer's movement by deploying amobile application called the 'Fieldforce Tracking System'.

We chose a large-scale tracking study wherein the interviewers collect close to 5,000 odd diaries within a week's time from a

panel of pre-recruited respondents. For the purpose of this pilot, we restricted the scope to Mumbai only, and deployed it

among 50% of the interviewers (a mix of tech-savvy and not-so tech savvy interviewers). Each interviewer was provided with a

regular mobile handset loaded with the 'Fieldforce Tracking System' application. This application runs in the background, and

undertakes two activities:

l Keeps sending out geographical coordinates at hourly intervals to plot the movement of the interviewer during the day;

and

l Upon collection of the diary, the interviewer is required to enter the unique respondent ID – which sends out

acknowledgement SMSs to be sent to the supervisor (confirming collection of diary from Resp No. XXXX) and to the

respondent (thanking for taking part in the survey on behalf of the organization).

Some of the challenges faced in deploying the application are similar to challenges faced across research firms worldwide –

the multiplicity of mobile OS systems makes it a cumbersome exercise to develop an application that is compatible across

different brands and models of handsets. In addition, there is always an initial resistance to any governance system that is

primarily seen as a cop, and therefore, it requires sensitivity in deployment, and some time before field reps also become

comfortable.

However the benefits of this application far outstripped the challenges. Nikhil Rawal, Senior Vice President of the Field &

Business Operations unit of IMRB – Abacus Business Operations, comments, “We see this technology helping us in more

ways than one. It not only helped us to monitor and control fieldwork but also helped us gauge productivity, and therefore,

optimal resource planning. With better resource planning and better control, our Field Supervisors would be able to handle

more and bring in cost savings ” .

Key benefits include:

l As with other sales-force optimization case-studies mentioned above, we anticipate that this application would help in

reducing supervision efforts and costs by almost 30% – 40%.

l This would help in redefining the role of the supervisor substantially. From his current role which primarily comprises

undertaking monitoring and quality-checks of the interviewers, he would be able to utilize his time on better resource-

planning or route-planning. At present, he spends time on resource planning before the project begins. However, with this

application (and with him having a bit more time at his disposal), he would be able to undertake dynamic planning on the

resources and routes, as the project progresses.

l From the feedback of field supervisors of IMRB, this tool has provided a very good mechanism, in terms of control. This

eliminates the need for the supervisors to continue calling interviewers regularly to monitor the status. They are able to


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get information online, on a real-time basis, about the number of interviews completed, productivity for the day, when the

interviewer started the day, the time gap between interviews, etc. One of the supervisors mentioned that this helped him

conduct a surprise QC, since he was already aware of the location of the interviewer.

l In line with previous case studies, we estimate that with IMRB deploying this application, they should witness a

productivity increase of 15% – 20% after an initial settling period, among the field reps that are provided these phones

vis-à-vis those who are not being tracked real time.

l It would be fairly obvious to add that with all of these processes in place, the quality of data that is being collected would

also see a significant improvement...

As per Manish Agarwal, Regional Field Director, the studies where such a mechanism would be of higher relevance would be

where timeline is a crunch or geographic representation is a must or panels where one needs to monitor the start time and end

time of the day for each collector.

IMRB is still in the process of conducting a detailed cost-benefit analysis.

Based on initial feelers, IMRB International is keen to extend this pilot to ad-hoc projects where the requirement for monitoring

and resource-planning is much bigger (and more complex). Over a period, they believe, if expectations are met, it can serve as

a powerful productivity measurement tool.

Figure 1: Training Field Staff in Using Mobile Applications


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Figure 2: Dashboard Showing Field Movements

Figure 3: Messages Sent to Field Supervisors and Respondent Upon Completion

Phase 3: The next phase of mobile data collection (Ideas that we have yet to see in action)

While we did not find the following in use today, we have heard whispers among the research community that they would be

keen to explore these methodologies sooner than later:

l Mobile Omnibus/Panel: As Indians grow comfortable with text responses – made famous by reality shows – the

openness and comfort to text based surveys will also grow. Imagine a mobile omnibus or a panel where respondents arerequired to simply turn in their answers by typing key numeric buttons to a question asked (text or voice-depending on

literacy levels) once a day. Instead of reaching out to the panel with 15 –30 questions at one shot, the same information

can be collected by staggering it over the month. Response rate is definitely likely to improve, and it also does away with

respondent bias in answering a series of questions.

l IVR Supported Mobile Interviews: A typical pan-India survey involves interviews in three to five languages. This requires

significant time to translate and code verbatim responses. By conducting interviews over a mobile phone through an IVR

set-up (a mix of calling over the phone, and requesting the respondent to answer through an IVR tree), it is feasible to


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conduct interviews out of one location; and also ensure that when the respondent selects an answer in his native

language, the essence is not lost in translation.

l Observational research – ethnography, shopper studies and retail observations can really be enhanced both in terms of

quality of information collected, speed with which red flags can be reported to the company and the time it takes for the

surveyor to visit and complete his observations. Instead of relying on the surveyor's memory to complete a form – often

hours after he has visited a couple of outlets – the recording and relaying of information to the central field operations can

be instantaneous. Much of this information can be collected or supported by capturing images. An inbuilt messaging

system can alert the marketer about issues that the surveyor has picked up at the store within seconds of having visited

an outlet.

l Smart phones instead of CAPIs : With respondents becoming more and more time pressed to meet and the costs of in-

hall tests soaring, it is becoming increasingly difficult to bring respondents to venues for interviews. Often in-hall

interviews require stimulus to be shown in a certain order, and hence cannot be replaced with home interviews. Carrying

laptops equipped with stimulus has been tried in the past. Again the transient labour used places security issues insharing laptops freely. Mobile phones serve as a possible bridge where the stimulus can be carried to the respondent via

a smart phone.

l Monitoring Traffic Patterns – with a power to capture the location and the speed with a time-stamped context, the mobile

phone can give power to capture data that can have several applications ranging from urban planning (through

monitoring of traffic patterns across different day parts) to measurement of noticeability of billboards (how many people

passing across a particular billboard) to aisle-level shopper movements in a supermarket.

OUR LEARNING: “I THINK THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP”

The famous last line from Casablanca seems like the most apt way to sum up our learning in writing this paper. We find that

isolated experiments in incorporating mobile platform based data collection are already are underway, sooner than later they

will significantly impact the market research fraternity. There are some initial hiccups at present – some technological and

some that require a mindset shift. But these, we believe, are short term, and mobile based data collection is likely to become

the second largest mode for data collection, validation and fieldwork tracking in India.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

l Mobile based data collection is a reality in India. Its most prominent use seems to be in the area of field governance and

sales IT, especially in companies that work on a distribution system involving intermediaries or large scale ground staff. In

contrast, market research firms and field agencies have been slow to take to technology for fieldwork governance.

l In the past a significant concern in rolling out HHTs to field force was the relative cost risk in handing out a device that

costs USD 300+ to a transient field force that makes USD 2 a day. The cost of rolling out mobile based data collection is

significantly lower.

¡ Close to 70% of the field force in most market research firms already owns a mobile.

¡ Today's low end phones are enabled with the basic platforms required for running SMS based applications.


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l Similar to the trend observed in other countries, we find that mobile based research is first being adopted by youth

marketers, technology firms and telecom industry to reach hard to reach audience (youth, high-net worth individuals, rural

audience), and primarily to collect observational data (digital ethnography, text analytics, retail audits, etc.).

l There are some concerns today that are on the technology front, which need to be address for expediting widespread

adoption of mobile-based applications:

¡ Mobile phones work on multiple platforms today. Nokia alone has three operating systems and five programming

platforms. Developing an application that can work smoothly across brands and models is a key task for mobile

technology developers today.

¡ The life of the battery on a handset is also a concern if mobile phones are to be rolled out for data collection using

mobile phones. Batteries usually last four to five hours, with an interviewer being on the road for eight hours, it

means it is necessary to carry a spare battery to last through the day

l We also believe that as MR stakeholders we need to change the yardstick for considering mobile methodologies for

research. In our opinion, the two key mindset aspects that can expedite adoption of mobile-based research designs into

are our mainstream projects would be:

¡ Each method of data collection has its own advantages, and limitations. Therefore, we should not be comparing

mobile platform with any other media of data collection. It is not a question of 'versus' (mobile phone versus other

media), it has to be an 'and' (mobile phone and other media). For a particular study, we can capture different

elements of data through different media – each one bringing its inherent strength towards higher quality and

efficiency of data collected.

¡ Most of the studies tend to use the mobile technology for 'active' data collection (where in the respondent has tofeed in the data through his/her active involvement). We have come to the conclusion through this paper that while

active data collection would definitely remain one of the ways in which data would be collected through a mobile

platform, however, it would be remain as just one of the many other ways. We believe that mobile technology would

produce exceptional results in cases where it is deployed as a 'passive' medium of data collection (the data gets

collected automatically instead of someone having to feed it in) such as location-based data, or mobile-phone usage

logs, etc.

l The size of the prize is BIG because it can impact cost, quality and speed of operations.

¡ Mobile based data collection can support operational efficiencies by way of reduced spend on printing, courier,

increase in fieldwork productivity, reduced supervision and data punching costs and improvement in cycle time for

projects.

¡ Beyond this, mobile based data collection can also open up new revenue streams for research firms-tracking on

ground activities, consumer promotions, trade activation, shopper studies, and contact with rural audience.

¡ And, the beauty of it is that through checks and balances built into mobile applications, mobile based data capture

can lift quality of data to a much higher level.


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Mobile handsets took only eight years to reach a level of penetration it took TVs 25 years to reach. It is the only medium that is

always on, and it's always with you. For a country with over 500 million mobile subscribers, the question today is no longer

about should research adopt mobile phones. The question today is how!

FOOTNOTES1. Millward Brown 2008.

2. IRS 2009.

REFERENCES

Young and Rubicam (2010): Mobile Mania: A Manual for the Second Internet Revolution (pubs.yr.com/mobilemania )

ESOMAR (2009): Global Industry Report.

Manuel Zahariev, Chris Ferneyhough and Chris Ryan (2009): Best Practices in Mobile Research; ESOMAR Online Research

Conference.

Emanuel Maxl and Sigrid Studler (2006): Creative Mobile Phone Research; ESOMAR Qualitative Conference.

Sheila Kinkade and Katrin Verclas: Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in Mobile Use by NGOs;

MobileActive.org

Marie Lena Tupot and Tim Stock (2009): Tried and Texted Approach to Getting Consumers Talking; Admap: January, Issue

501.

Michael DeNitto, Leon Walsh and Philip Martin (2009): Technology Futures: Perspectives on How Technology Will

Transform the Market Research of Tomorrow; MRS Annual Conference.

© Copyright ESOMAR 2010 ESOMAR

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