Change Language

Home Services Global panels Technology Resources About us Contact us Request a quote

About us

Next steps...
GMI Newsletter signup
Receive GMI's latest news by email once a month.

RSS feeds

Demos & downloads
--Select--

March 2007 GMI Newsletter

Welcome to the March 2007 edition of our newsletter.

Clickers wanted for GMI ad testing!

Participate in our ad click testing challenge, and experience the power of this fast and easy interactive survey technique

GMI invites you to take part in a fun click testing exercise to get your feedback on some of its ads. Use this easy, yet powerful interactive technique to evaluate advertising and editorial in any media. Click testing allows you to quickly and easily test expensive ad campaigns, new products, publications, or websites before launch, saves both time and resources, and significantly increases effectiveness.

Click testing technology captures what people are looking at by tracking their eye movements. It provides insight into what consumers notice in a print ad, TV spot, webpage or billboard by simulating the real environment. From this information, you can see where the "hotspots" are and find out which part of the page attracts the most attention and in which order. Heat maps are generated as subjects click where their eyes fall first, which shows you the relative attention each element commands.

Compare ads side-by-side and evaluate logos, calls to action and creative execution. Evaluate package design and determine which design attracts the most attention on the shelf. Test web content to see what attracts the most clicks. GMI's customized reporting module delivers immediate results, and lets you study the clicks any way you want. Watch an animation of clicks in real time or in a specific sequence.

Click testing is easy to execute and provides immediate results for analysis. And because it's web-based, you can test more markets with a broader spectrum of respondents than traditional field research. The results closely mirror eye movement tracking studies, which are much more costly and time-consuming to execute.

Try click testing for yourself! Participate in our GMI ad test and see the results published in future GMI ads. Start now.

GMI Specialty Panel Spotlight: B2B

The GMI B2B Panel is now available, offering a member base of 3.9 million panelists worldwide. This panel brings together business professionals and decision makers with the companies that need their opinions to thrive. Reach executives who are committed to sharing market trends and details about the decisions they make for their companies. Contact staff members and find out if that new product is really useful in the field.

GMI has a B2B panel for just about every industry: aerospace, banking, financial services, telecommunications and many more. Once you've selected a market segment, panelists can be profiled according to the following categories:

Company's annual revenue
Number of employees
Basic demographics (age, marital status, ethnicity, children, education, etc.)
Household
Financial
Employment

Solve your problems with insights from business experts in nearly any field or country.

Art + Facts: Using online focus groups to enhance quantitative studies

Artafact shows how online focus groups can enhance quantitative studies. Learn how it's done and who is doing it!

"This year, shoppers who are planning to celebrate Easter (79.5%) are expected to spend 11% more than last year." On March 20th, 2007, the National Retail Federation's 2007 Easter Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey reported this finding. But WHY is this the case? Is it because consumer optimism is high? Because daylight savings time started three weeks earlier? Because retailers are offering cool new Easter items?

This is the "Art" of qualitative research: answering the question "why"? Knowing the "Facts" (planned spending is up 11%) is only part of the answer. Understanding why fuels ideas for marketing programs and advertising campaigns. That is Art + Facts.

Who is using online focus groups?

A major retailer is using online focus groups to understand the incidence of shopping online prior to conducting focus groups exploring cross-channel shopping behavior. This technique has also been used to understand the appeal of a new website for locating products shown in television programs and movies, and was followed by website usability testing with those survey respondents who were concept accepters.

Artafact, which provides software for conducting focus groups online, uses GMI's consumer and specialty panels for recruiting online focus groups, and GMI's Net-MR® online survey platform for screening the participants. Such screening delivers additional value to Artafact customers because they receive statistically relevant screening data from the online screener in addition to the findings from the online focus groups. For example, to seat six online focus groups with 10 participants each, 300 or more households would typically need to be screened. By collecting the data from all 300 households, Artafact can determine market interest and penetration prior to hosting the online focus groups.

Recruiting for online focus groups is easier with GMI's consumer and specialty panels

With access to millions of households in 200+ countries and territories from GMI, a company can easily screen thousands of households and businesses by email to recruit the exact target they want for their online focus group. Panel members receive incentives for completing the screener survey, and they don't know until the end of the survey whether or not they will receive an invitation to the focus group. Invitations can be extended in real time as the survey is conducted or after the surveys are completed, based on the screener data collected.

How to include online focus groups using GMI's Net-MRonline survey software

GMI's Net-MR online survey software tool allows you to easily recruit online focus groups directly from a quantitative study while the study is in progress or after the study is already completed. By simply adding a single question at the end of the survey, panelists can be requested to opt in and agree to participate in online focus groups as a next step.

By recruiting directly from a quantitative study, the only recruiting costs are the additional incentives typically offered. Incentives for online focus groups are comparable to incentives for face-to-face groups (approximately $50 USD for a one-hour consumer group), but are redeemed using GMI's MarketPoints, which are entirely managed by GMI just as they manage the incentives for quantitative studies.

Respondents register in advance of the online focus groups, allowing the moderator to preview the registrants and select those most highly qualified. Respondents invited to participate are automatically sent email login instructions.

The moderator prepares the discussion guide in advance of the focus group, which is uploaded to the software. The moderator, respondents and clients all click a link to login the day of the event and meet online in a secure environment.

Artafact's software completes GMI's offering, as it is based on web conferencing, allowing more advanced capabilities than any other chat software:

Embedded teleconferencing for integrated phone/web online groups
Drawing tools for marking up images, web pages, etc.
Ability to play multimedia Flash® files
Supports multiple languages

For your future focus group needs

Ask GMI to include Artafact's online focus groups in your next research project quote! You'll find the process seamlessly integrated with GMI panels and survey software. Plus, Artafact will provide a trained moderator or train you and your moderator on how to create an effective online discussion guide.

MindClick Consumer Global Warming Monitor™ powered by GMI

Today, the environment is constantly in the spotlight: McDonald's is blogging about it, Starbucks has designed a green-themed online game, and Hilton Hotels is linking manager salaries to making hotels greener. According to the first MindClick Consumer Global Warming Monitor (GWM) just released, awareness of global warming is now mainstream. Market research firm The MindClick Group used GMI Net-MR software suite to field the study, and the GMI U.S. consumer panel for a representative sample.

The study concludes that unusual weather is raising levels of fear and changing Americans' behavior. 95% of respondents believe the weather has been unusual over the past several months, and 70% agree that global warming has some connection to the unusual weather, which has caused 85% of U.S. respondents to experience some kind of lifestyle change. Business is feeling the heat as well: over 60% of respondents hold big business and government directly responsible for global warming.

Created in response to questions raised by industry leaders, MindClick's GWM provides business executives with targeted consumer insights to guide their response to environment issues. Using less energy, producing less waste, recycling and teaching customers to reduce heat-trapping carbon emissions are just a few of the ways companies can show they care about the planet.

News from the PMRG conference: 'Achieving global online healthcare research success'

Daniel Naimey, GMI's Managing Director of Medical Research, recently addressed the national conference of PMRG (Pharmaceutical Marketing Research Group) on March 19th in Las Vegas, sharing his perspectives on online medical research and what it takes to achieve success.

The medical research market is large and expanding rapidly. Over the course of the past 18 months, GMI has seen a dramatic increase in medical RFPs - up 677% between Q4 2005 and Q4 2006. Our new medical market research customer base has grown by 237% within that same time frame. More than 2,400 new medicines in clinical or later stages of development in the U.S. represent a growth rate of 104% since 1997, with 1,400 compounds in development in the European Union, and 500 in Japan. The average market research budget supporting a developing pharmaceutical product is nearly $5.5 million USD. Spending for compounds identified as having blockbuster potential can reach $12MM USD or more before Phase II trials begin. And medical market research continues well after approval. Combining pre-launch and in-market phases, the online medical research market is estimated at approximately $1 billion USD.

Yet, despite all the spending, research methodology often breaks down when:

Online surveys take longer than 45 minutes to complete
Screeners are used as miniature studies
Extensive or repetitive sections are related to "feelings"
Poor translations are not precise or fail to address cultural protocols
Heavy graphics bog down surveys

Researchers now have an opportunity to drive down the cost of research for pharmaceutical and biotechnology organizations while conducting research that enables better and faster market-based decision making. GMI provides all the essential ingredients for achieving online research success:

Domain knowledge

GMI is a technology leader in online research. We not only understand panel and profile statistics, we offer a unique combination of experience in medical market research and technology with an understanding of the drug development model, the physician's perspective, and the design and application of technology. This allows us to work creatively and collaboratively with our clients to meet their needs.

The most deeply profiled, and highly validated medical panels in the world

GMI offers access to 250,000 physicians, one million chronically ill patients and 250,000 nurses worldwide. We can recruit specific medical professionals for specific projects: board-certified, licensed practitioners, with variance in years practiced, number of patients seen, number of offices, patient population, therapeutic specialty, and much more. Our affiliations with agencies assist in cross-checking panel information, ensuring the most up-to-date panelist profile.

Global panel research best practices

GMI upholds strict compliance with international anti-spam laws, privacy laws, CASRO regulations and EU Safe Harbor Statutes. We support our panelists in 37 native languages with an engagement team that manages the panelists' experience 24x7x365. Our current response rate is 43% with each panelist's response quality evaluated after every survey.