Forrester Blogs › Category: MROC

One Size Doesn’t Fit All For Health Tracking

Posted by Lindsey Colella on the Data Insights Professionals Blog on January 28, 2013

Lindsey Colella

In a new report out today, my colleague Sarah Rotman Epps writes about the emerging but limited market for fitness wearables like the Nike+ FuelBand and the Jawbone UP. The report finds that only 4% of US online adults, or about 8 million consumers, fit a target profile predictive of buying a fitness wearable. Why so few? It turns out that mainstream consumers’ attitudes are very different from the health-conscious tech optimists buying these products today.

A few months back, we set out to understand how mainstream consumers feel about these devices using our Market Research Online Community (MROC) of 1,500 general US online consumers. As I’m using a wearable health-tracking device, I was excited to learn whether these consumers saw the same value that I saw in these innovative products.

Well, they don’t. In fact, “excited” isn’t even in their vocabulary when it comes to wearable devices. “Waste of money” was more how they described them.

Consumers feel that they know what to do to maintain a healthy lifestyle and use the concept of “moderation” to monitor their health, rather than fancy devices. In general, though, they lack self-awareness of their own unhealthy habits, they don’t feel accountable for their own health, and they expect their primary care doctor to monitor their well-being over the long term. Their perception is that wearable devices are for people who are chronically ill, need help with weight loss, or have obsessive personalities.

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Fresh Off The Press: What Did Consumers Do On Black Friday And Cyber Monday?

Posted by Lindsey Colella on the Data Insights Professionals Blog on November 29, 2012

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Lindsey Colella

Some of you may not be aware that Forrester manages a market research online community (MROC) comprising 1,500 US online consumers recruited from our quantitative Consumer Technographics® surveys. While our Technographics surveys tell us what consumers do, the proprietary data we collect from our MROC completes the story by highlighting why consumers behave that way.

This year, Black Friday saw a record 89 million shoppers, up 3 million from 2011, according to a survey conducted by the National Retail Federation. In anticipation of this behemoth shopping day, we recently tasked our online community members with telling us anything and everything about their holiday shopping plans. This past Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we fielded a few short surveys to capture what our members were doing at that moment — what they bought, who they bought for, where they bought, and how much of their holiday shopping they accomplished.

At the end of this year, we will post a comprehensive report on our findings for the full holiday season. But to give you a small preview of what’s to come, here are a few “fresh from the field” insights that intrigued us right off the bat.

On both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, consumers primarily shop for their children and spouses. However, consumers are also shopping for themselves as well.

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Hold Your Community Together With Social Glue

Posted by Lindsey Colella on the Data Insights Professionals Blog on June 15, 2012

  • 338 Recommendations
Lindsey Colella

Talking to someone you have nothing in common with isn’t fun, and this is even more true when you are online. This is something you need to take to heart when you’re thinking of launching a community. Apart from coming up with a content plan, you need to take the time to clarify your objectives and participant pool.

The objectives of the community (i.e., what you want to learn from your community) and your participants (e.g., the people who will help you accomplish your objectives) are what we market research online community (MROC) experts call the “social glue” — they bond your community together to ensure it has a proper foundation to build upon.

The stronger the social glue, the better engagement you will have. It’s easy to start adding to your objectives and demographic requirements for participants, but it’s better to hold back. Sticking to one point of focus will get you the most in-depth and detailed results. A recent blog post by iModerate highlights this point for research objectives: “We tell many of our clients from the outset that they can either snorkel (cover more range, but stay shallow) or scuba dive (cover less, but go much deeper). If they want the richness that comes from thorough exploration, they need to follow our lead and we as researchers need to stay focused and diligent.” This also applies to the participants you select. Essentially, the broader the pool you have, the less in-depth your results will be because you have such a diverse group that you only can cover a wide variety of objectives superficially.

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