"My phone is much more than just a gadget, it is a mirror of my life. It holds my contacts, my messages, my photos and videos, my favourite music. It helps me easily check my networks, keeping track with my Facebook, my Tumblr, Instagram or Twitter. It is my most precious object which follows every step of me and knows about me more than me."
- Man, age 18, September 2015, Greece
The Internet and the increased usage of smart phones has opened up a wide range of new ways to examine human interactions in new contexts.
Technology, at the first stage of its development, has been mainly faced as a medium to provide efficiencies in market research, in terms of economy and speed. However, the most important contribution of technology in identifying productive market truths that challenge the reality as we know it, is the way it can permit us to go deeper than the consciousness of the studied person. Mobile phone is the tool that facilitates us to do so: by becoming a true tool of ethnography and observation, of higher quality interaction, of immediacy in the very small moment where the true behavior happens.
At times when markets, technologies and trends shift rapidly, consumers are more informed than ever before and look for products that can make their life easier and more exciting. However, the conscious collection of information that comes from consumer discussions, -even when reaching its full potential in recruitment quality, design and experience- usually enlightens a good part of the reality, while leaving untouched the power of the unconscious self in the very moment that a specific consumption behaviour takes place.
Consumer needs and feelings, similarly as behaviors, are not always fully imprinted in the conscious mind. This leads to poorer situation assessment, when market understanding is exclusively based on consumer narrations that have a time lag from the moment of truth.
Moreover, it is official that people are massively educated to live with and within Internet; from just information seekers, they become e-citizens: chatting, talking, buying, sharing. This means that there is an increasing need for contemporary market research to gain access in consumers e-habits and lives, meeting consumers in their "physical" space and roles and talking with them in their favourite language of communication: on the small screens.
The increased presence of smartphones, together with the fact that consumers have high involvement in tasks related to their mobile, opens tremendous opportunities for real-time exploration in market research.
That is why Truberries has its own mobile research platform, over which specific research methodologies have been developed, offering to numerous clients and their problems better access to truth.
