A new group of presentations is starting with the first presenter being Klaus Dull from Pretioso. His topic is sales force integration in pharma. He has started by talking about the challenges:
- Standard platforms are elusive. Blackberry is something of a business standard but we are seeing more and more Android-based devices.
- Connectivity is key but it often is elusive (in different locations and inside buildings) and likely will continue to be so for the near future.
- Usability is a problem. Devices and apps vary in how easy they are to use.
- Integration with other corporate systems is also important but often lacking.
All of these problems need to be dealt with if one is going to do mobile B2B research. It appears he has now lapsed into a sales pitch for their mobile-based forms product that solves some but not all of the above problems. He is getting deep into database and standards issue but it's not at all clear to me that there is any real research application here, just straight sales force automation. Now he is into another not very crisp demo. It seems to be a railway survey. Not clear what this has to do with sales force integration in pharma. I am feeling confused about this purpose other than to show us his system. I've tuned out.
Now another panel, this one on the implications for mobile of the decline in landline use. The panel has Marek Fuchs (again) and Richard Windle from IPSOS. Tim Macer from meaning, ltd. is moderating. Tim has started by overviewing the impact of wireless substitution in the US. He also has shown us how CATI has been declining over the last five years. So two trends: declining use of landline and declining use of CATI. Are these related? What is the role for mobile?
Marek is starting by talking about coverage bias in landline telephone surveys. His data mostly come from the Eurobarometer. No surprise that the roughly the same pattern we see in the US is playing out in almost the same way across the 27 European countries—declining landline use and increasing mobile use. As he points out, this would not be a big deal if the two groups where not very different from one another. He also has introduced a relative coverage bias measure across the 27 EU countries in the Eurobarometer. It does a nice job of showing the levels of error we are likely to get on selected characteristics if a study only uses landline. This is a neat measure to drive home the impact of coverage error. He is very methodically walking us through the possible adjustment techniques and my guess is that the goal is dual frame as the only viable solution. And now that's where we are. But he goes on to hypothesize that in the not too distant future it may make sense to do single frame design, but that design being the mobile frame! We still will get landline people but also pick up the mobile only people. This may happen very quickly in countries like the Czech Republic where mobile phones are now in the 90s.
Richard Windle is elaborating on dual frame designs and getting really pure by interviewing not just mobiles but screening for mobile only. This can be serious money but as he points out the real differences are mobile only versus everyone else. He is showing a number of different surveys in which getting mobile-only people is essential. Students, at the moment. Try them first by oline via email, then paper and pencil, but then mobile.
What we have had here is a panel of two guys very schooled in the principles of survey research who view the problem from a scientific perspective who have been brought to the stage by a moderator who also gets it. It's not sexy and innovative like other stuff we have heard, but it has the feeling of the heavy lifting some in the industry have to do in order to deliver representative research.
In the Q&A Paul Lavrakas is responding to a request from the presenters to add some US flavor and Paull is obliging. He is detailing all of the obstacles to calling and interviewing on mobile which have been sort of glossed over in the presentations. These include sensitivity to the respondent cost, lack of geographic detail, differential refusal rates by age, not automated dialing, etc. It continues to be a very tough problem.