Being in the mobile technology business, every time I see pen and paper I think of rands and cents going down the drain. It's a real shame the majority of market research companies have not realized the tremendous potential mobile technology has for their industry, but all is not lost.
I realise that a few research firms equip some field workers with expensive PDAs but why choose PDAs when there are almost 25 million cellphones in the country and every student you employ to fill in paper questionnaires on weekends has one?
USSD is possibly the most promising mobile technology application in the research space. This is a data bearer that does not require any settings to be installed, or any changes to be made to a compatible handset.
It is as easily accessible as making a voice call. After dialing the USSD code, a menu appears on the cellphone screen. Conducting research via USSD is as simple as responding to the menu prompts. When the respondent has answered all the questions, there are no reams of paper to be coded.
SMS (Short message service) is another example of a mobile application that could take the research world by storm. A mobile messaging technology enabling the transmission of 160 characters of text between cellphone users, SMS can be used to send a virtual voucher to a respondent's cellphone as an incentive to complete the USSD questionnaire.
The virtual voucher could be relevant to the research client's product or service and take the form of a discount to be redeemed in-store. Alternatively, the incentive could be a top-up of a prepaid respondent's airtime.
Even MMS (Multimedia Messaging System) has applications in the research environment. Often referred to as 'SMS on steroids", this is essentially a souped up version of SMS. It allows the exchange of picture and photo messages between cellphone users, for example, and made the evolution of camera phones possible.
Combine MMS with USSD and respondents can be shown pictures of potential new packaging designs and asked to vote for which they prefer. They could even watch video clips on the field worker's cellphone and rate the client's new television commercials.
We all know how difficult it is for field workers to find willing respondents. This task could be made a lot more efficient by using Bluetooth to search for other Bluetooth-enabled cellphones, offering their owners an incentive to come over and answer a few questions via USSD.
Practically any organization can benefit from mobile value-added services because the opportunities to incorporate mobile technology into one's business are limited only by creativity. Whether the organization is a government department, a non-governmental organization, a non-profit company or a private enterprise, mobile value-added services apply to every industry and every business function.
