The Future Place Blog

Could we be using QR-Codes in Market Research?

I have been awaiting the arrival of QR-codes in Europe for several years after hearing about how popular they were in Japan in a presentation at ESOMAR (in Lisbon). Having noticed that they seem to be popping up in an increasingly wide number of places and that free readers are available for most smartphones, I posted a message in QR-Code format in a number of places, including Twitter, Facebook, my blog, and NewMR.

The code is shown below, followed by the message embodied within it.

“Email your suggestion for how to use QR-Codes for Market Research to [email protected]. The best idea will win a copy of my book.”

Would I be deluged with answers? Or, would nobody contact me?

Well, a few people contacted me, probably about ten in total, but the clear winner was from Claire Banbury, who suggestions included using them with visitors to locations (e.g. tourist locations or events) in order to link to online surveys (amongst the things that can be embedded in a QR-Code is a URL, which in turn could be a survey) and possibly using them in mystery shopping.

I will be contacting Claire to send her a copy of my book.

Having conducted this exercise my feeling is that QR-Codes will make an impact and my suspicion is that it will take an innovative brand to really get behind QR-Codes and create a 'reason' for people to want to read the codes, probably to either win something or to compete in some sort of game.

The implication for the exposome for market research?

The Christmas edition of New Scientist and my attention was drawn to an article on the exposome [you can access it for free if you register at http://www.newscientist.com/]. The point of the article was that in terms of disease nurture appears to trump nature in most cases. Whilst the genes we are dealt have an impact on susceptibility, the environmental triggers may have a much bigger say in whether we are going suffer from conditions such as cancer.

Over the last few years the amount we know about the genome has increased massively, but attempts to predict health outcomes from genes has been much less successful than was hoped for. Whilst the knowledge of the genome has expanded, the knowledge of the environmental factors has hardly changed. However, this may all be about to change with a variety of wearable devices being developed that will monitor air, noise, pollution, radiation, temperature etc, with apps linking them to smartphones.

OK, I can see that the important use for these technologies will be in the area of human health and happiness, but I can also see that they might open some really interesting opportunities for market research. In addition to knowing about pollution and radiation, these devices may be able to collect brand related stimuli such as advertising, branding, messages etc.

I have felt for a long time that the days of asking people what they have done, for example in tracking studies, are numbered. I refer to this aspect of research as bean counting and expect that in the foreseeable future this information will be collected from a combination of loyalty card, credit card, smartphone, CCTV, geo-tagging, RFIDs, and the sorts of wearable devices being designed for exposome research (collectively I think of these as part of the electronic wake, the trail we leave behind us). These changes will be another nail in the coffin of the days of surveys (I have previously blogged that in the future there will be far fewer surveys, and I will be returning to this theme in the New Year).

iPhone vs Blackberry, which is best, for what?

A few months ago I switched from my beloved and battered Blackberry to an iPhone 3GS, mostly to compare the differences.

I am not sure I have completely sorted out my views but here are my basic thoughts.

The iPhone is more fun, much better for the Internet, better as an MP3 player, and has a wide range of really useful apps. Many of its features are really easy to use.

By contrast the Blackberry was more limited, but much better at what it did. The battery life of the Blackberry was great, several days of normal use. The iPhone battery does last a full day of normal use (although its normal use includes more uses). The Blackberry is much better for email, with its SMS system it does not need the Internet and means you are much less likely to run up a major bill whilst abroad. I found typing was much faster on the Blackberry, the Apple's touch screen is not very forgiving to my fat fingers, whereas I had developed a two thumbs approach on the Blackberry that was both accurate and fast.

So, will I be changing back to the Blackberry? No. If I have wi-fi access the iPhone's internet is just too much better. Tweetdeck on the iPhone is a much better way of working with Twitter. And, I am listening to many more audio books and podcasts than before. I am even finding the camera useful - it is so easy to take a picture and send the image straight to Twitter.

What do you think? Blackberry or iPhone - or would you recommend another phone, perhaps an Android?

Easy to use Web Scraper

This is a really good video showing how to use OutWit a simple to use Web Scraper that sits as an extension to Firefox.

Remember, there are ethical considerations about using Web Scrapers. In particular

1. Some services have Terms and Conditions that prohibit automation, for example Google does.
2. When deciding whether something is truly in the public domain it is important to keep in mind the author's intent. If somebody posts a comment in on online discussion they might have the expectation that it would only be read by human, not scraped and searched.

However, if the web scraper is simply being used to change 20 minutes of cut and paste into 1 minute of scrape and post, then there is probably not a major difference.

Sixth Sense - a glimpse of what the mobile device of the future might look like

This is a great video from the TED series that gives an idea of where the future, mobile phones, and the Tom Cruise film Minority Report might all meet up in a few years time.

With thanks to Boing Boing for highlighting it.

Politcians and Cookies - a dodgy mix

Research-Live has an interesting article about the EU's new directive on cookies and techniques such as digital fingerprinting. One always worries when politicians try to legislate for the specifics of a new technology, a) they struggle to understand it and b) it does not stand still long enough for most laws to be sensibly written and implemented.

The directive will have to be implemented by each of the countries in the EU, but each one will draft their own laws, which could be quite incompatible with each other.

The main thrust is that before a cookie can be served and before data can be read from a website visitor's site, prior permission must be obtained. The problem is that it is not clear whether this mean, at one extreme, asking every time every cookie is served, or at the other extreme that not setting your browser to reject the request means you have given prior permission.

The fear is that if rules are drawn too tightly online advertising and sight personalisation will be rendered useless, destroying the cost model of large parts of the Web and making sites less responsive to users.

Of course, if EU legislation makes Google.co.uk unusable and Amazon.co.uk unusable we will still be able to use Google.com and Amazon.com - but I am not quite clear how that helps companies based in EU, indeed if UK shoppers are pushed into using non-EU sites, there rights will be severely diminished.

Will your mobile phone snitch on you?

This week's New Scientist has a great article about the amount of information your mobile phone can give away about you, even if you have removed the SIM card. As phones get smarter they are collecting an increasingly large amount of personal information, including GPS information about where you have been, and how long you spent there.

Handing you company phone back to your employer, for example, could tell them much more about you, your family, and your other activities than you might imagine.

Is the future WiFi or 3G?

The BBC have a great radio programme (which should be around for at least a week) looking at how connectivity is going to develop.

My favourite outcome was the view that WiFi is interesting because it is an indication of what the future might be like, but that WiFi is not, itself, the future.

Is the future WiFi or 3G?

The BBC have a great radio programme (which should be around for at least a week) looking at how connectivity is going to develop.

My favourite outcome was the view that WiFi is interesting because it is an indication of what the future might be like, but that WiFi is not, itself, the future.

Kindle disappoints Princeton students

Slashdot has an article describing how a pilot by Princeton University (in the US) to supply 50 free Kindles (eBooks) to students had left some of them disappointed after just two weeks. One student is quoted and explains the benefits of a traditional book, including writing in the margins, using stick notes, highlighting text and so on.

I found this interesting as I blogged yesterday about Chris Anderson's new book Free and commented that I had paid for a conventional book, rather than accessing a free copy online. At the time I wrote the post I wondered if that was because I was not one of the young net naturals. But I suspect that eBooks are simply not sufficiently far down the road yet. I think they will replace books one day, but it might be a while yet before that happens.

My suspicion is that we need to see two separate developments. 1) ePaper, with ePaper you could get the equivalent of a newspaper that you could read on the train or in a waiting room, but the content could be readily updated. 2) a system based on small screens (like an iPhone) with moving text, and readers who have grown up reading moving text. With a small screen the conventional way of reading, where the eye scans across and down is always going to be a problem for fast readers, too much of the time is taken using the fingers to move the text. Either the text will have to be moving most of the time, or it will need to track the eyes in some way to 'know' when to move.