EmergeSmarter Blog

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

Those of us involved in marketing and exploring how consumers make the decisions they do should always pay attention to new approaches and constructs.  If we didn’t, we would still be wandering cities, clipboards in hand, conducting man-on-the street interviews.  So, I am extremely interested in the growth and impact of neuroscience on marketing research.

In my effort to get up to speed in this area I have found Roger Dooley’s website and blog particularly useful.  He covers the breadth of the topic although there are fairly frequent references to those who question the approach, labeled “alarmists.”  And, it is true that there is a good deal of overheated reactions to the idea of marketers probing our brains for ways to make us buy products without realizing we want them.

But, there is reasonable questioning of neuromarketing, and in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “Brain Scan Overload” by Jonah Lehrer is an excellent example.  He focuses on the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, a device used to provide a picture of the brain as it reacts to different stimuli.  He points out several ways in which the use of the device in such research might be questionable:

• It uses blood flow as a surrogate for the activity of neurons in the brain.
• There are complex algorithms that separate the noise from the signal.  The result can be a simple picture of what might be a very dense psychological state, such as happiness.
• Various areas of the brain play a role in multiple emotions.  So, the insula plays a role in love, disgust, and bodily pain.  Lehrer points to research that associated a spike in activity in that region of the brain with love for the iPhone.  Why not disgust or pain?

But at the very end of his article, Lehrer makes a point about neuroscience that gives me pause.

“What's worse, the very fact that we're looking at a brain scan seems to inhibit our critical thinking. Deena Skolnick Weisberg, a psychologist at Temple University, has demonstrated that merely referencing fMRI research can bias the evaluation of scientific papers.

“When she gave neuroscience students and ordinary adults a few examples of obviously flawed scientific explanations, people were consistently able to find the flaws. However, when these same explanations were prefaced with the phrase ‘Brain scans indicate,’ both the students and adults became much less critical.”

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

The pace at which smartphones and other mobile devices are coming to define how we interact and communicate is amazing. We have noted it before and we see the impact intensifying where ever we look.

• The US Army is experimenting with smartphones in combat.  In the past, the military has spurred the development of communications devices, hardened for battle.  But, the economy and ubiquity of smartphones are just too enticing.  What is more, the familiarity of virtually every young soldier with these devices makes training and integration seamless.

But, using smartphones has the potential for fundamentally changing military culture.   Individual soldiers on the battlefield can receive real-time intelligence unmediated by the traditional chain of command.  Each soldier can know immediately the location of friendly forces as well as the enemy.  Information can be distributed instantly among all the soldiers in an area.  Hierarchies are flattened and communication is effectively two-way.

• On a lighter note, Rebecca Greenfield notes how the smartphone has eliminated the need for all sorts of devices we used to regard as essential — cameras, watches, iPods, wallets.  She calls this the “Smartphonication of Stuff.”  And, while we have had cameras and watches for some time, the iPod (and even its ancestor the Walkman) is comparatively recent.  The smartphone has rendered it obsolete in the space of a mere generation.
• Finally, as an example of how culture is bending to the ethos of smartphones, a theater in Seattle is planning to allow patrons use their phones during performances.  No more requests that all phones and recording devices be turned off.  As the theater’s executive director said, “Simply forbidding it and embarrassing people is not the way to go.

So we are wiring the building in anticipation of finding ways to make it work over time."

We all know that the march of mobile communications will change fundamentally how we conduct research, but these stories suggest how significant that change can be.

• Many of us can be quite enthusiastic about the ability of consumers to send their “answers” to us wherever they are.  We can eavesdrop on their reactions in the moment.  But, just like the soldiers in the army’s experiment, they will want to see the hierarchy flatten; they will expect more control.  Consumers will demand to frame the questions as well as provide the responses.
• The smartphone may have rendered the camera and the watch obsolete.  For many people, it will render the computer obsolete.  Reflect on how quickly netbooks faded from the scene.  We already had a much better “small computer,” our phones.  There was a time when any project began with the question, “Should we do it on-line or over the phone?”  Now we are asking, “Should we have a mobile component in the project?”  In a few years, we will simply take for granted that our consumers are answering on their mobile devices.
• We will need to engage consumers in a way that makes sense in the culture of the smartphone and the social network.  No longer can we expect to bend them to our style and approach.  Consumers accepted the “social science survey” and the “focus group” when the one-way interview defined the environment.  But, when environment is structured by the shout-out — “Who knows a great place for dinner and meet me there?” — a semantic differential just won’t cut it.

To be successful in the future, to be able to hear the voices of consumers in all their tones and timbres, we will need to adjust our ears to the new reality.  In fact, we are likely to become more listeners and collaborators and less askers and analyzers.  As the Seattle theater director said, we have to find “ways to make it work.”

By Darren Breese, Research Director

With all the talk of new technologies and the like in the air, we may overlook the basics.  Yet, one of the themes running through the recent Market Research Event was the notion of simply empathizing with consumers.  This is nothing new of course; it is the core of what we do every day — understand consumers, bring them to life, connect them to marketers.  Every day we put ourselves in the consumer’s shoes, or in some cases actually watching them put on their shoes. 

Sometimes it is hard for clients to truly empathize with their consumers, because quite often they aren’t in the same boat.  They may be more affluent, live different lifestyles, and have upbrings and life experiences that are poles apart.  Despite all of the differences — perhaps because of them — it is the researcher’s job to do as much as to connect marketers and their consumers, and to do this in a way that makes the experience as engaging as possible. 

A technique used successfully by one researcher at the conference was to force marketers to consume as their consumer does. 

• Shop on a strict budget (like many of their customers).
• Shop with children in tow, even if that means “borrowing” kids for a day.
• Immerse  marketers with triads of like-minded consumers
• Engage in other non-shopping activities common to the target consumers.
• And, of course, keep journals to drive their immersion home.

We know and do Immersion extremely well, but Immersion research only works as well as the client wants it to, so we have to constantly look for way to keep things fresh and fun. 

Another way insight managers are using empathy is bringing together cross-functional teams.  We all know how different right- and left-brained individuals think and process information.  It can be extremely difficult for them all to difficult to work on the same page.  By placing cross-functional teams together in the same room with consumers, and holding immersion sessions that help each team member empathize with their consumers, an insights manager got his team to think similarly—like their consumer.  He was then able to hold Ideation sessions that led to productive concept development work. 

In other words, walking in someone else’s shoes has the added benefit of forcing marketers to take of their own.

As we strive to provide marketers with actionable insights and help them connect with their consumers, we must also be consistently looking for new and innovative ways to help them foster empathy for their consumers.  Empathy makes insights real.

New Study Examines the TV Consumption Habits of Generations X, Y and i

Adults 18-24 and 25-34 Most Likely to Connect Social Media to TV Viewing; Teens Most Likely to Watch with Friends and Family

(National Harbor, MD—November 9, 2011) – A new study released today, “Watching Gens X, Y & i,” paints a detailed portrait of 13-34 year old consumers and how they watch television: often while taking part in up to four or five activities all at the same time, from eating, cooking and cleaning to texting, surfing the web, emailing, playing games or listening to music.

“Many 13-34 year olds are multi-media multitaskers, but their social media activities vary depending on age group,” said Char Beales, president and CEO, Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), and head of the organization that commissioned the study.

Younger generations have been raised in an entertainment world where content is available anytime, anywhere and on numerous platforms. This study exposes what teens and young adults are watching, with whom they’re watching, where, how often and on what devices.

Although about half of 18-24 and 25-34 year olds follow or “like” TV networks/shows, only 38% of those 13-17 do. The leading social networking activities while watching TV are looking up info (31% of 13-34 year olds), discussing shows online (29%), posting updates/tweeting (24%) and visiting a network or show page (22%). However, these activities are almost twice as likely to be conducted among 18-24 and 25-34 year olds compared to teens.

Click Here To View the Complete Article.

This research, conducted by C+R Research, was commissioned by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) to investigate the effect of lifestyles and life stages on media and technology usage of younger consumers. It included both qualitative and quantitative online phases in the summer of 2011, and also utilizes data from C+R’s comprehensive syndicated YouthBeat study to provide additional context. 2,124 total interviews were conducted as part of the quantitative phase.

By Hillary Stifler, Director

At the Market Research Event last week, one theme was played out in several presentations – categorization.  And it hit home, as I’m currently working on a study whose goal is to categorize over 100 products in a way that makes sense to consumers!  

Categorization was a major theme discussed by Sheena Iyengar, who spoke about “The Art of Choosing.” People make thousands of choices each day and, as she puts it, face “choice overload.”  She offers three solutions:  

• Cut duplicates and indistinguishable.

• Categorize the options.

• Condition the chooser for complexity by offering the easier choices first before working into the more complex choices.  

This advice is not only great for product offerings at shelf, but it is also great for business communications.

Ruben Alcaraz from Meijer spoke on data visualization and gave some great advice that I think ties into the power of categorization. He said, “It’s not that people don’t get it, it’s just that we [market researchers/those sharing our data] aren’t good at communicating it.”  

Really, categorization is communication.  A jumble of data on a page does not tell a story. Humans are visually-oriented and, to be an effective communicator in the visual realm, we must categorize our information in a way that makes sense to our audience.

So, Ms. Iyengar’s three pieces of advice also apply to reporting and data visualization:

• Don’t show duplicate data.

• Section off reports (or even parts of a slide) in a way that makes sense to the audience and supports your story.

• Start with the obvious, more general information and work your way into the deeper, newer information. 

Categorization is not a novel concept; we have grouped and framed information forever. However, I think it is a good reminder that information is far less powerful when it’s not organized in a way that speaks to the audience. And, when organized in a meaningful way, it helps people choose where to focus their attention and it helps the author to tell the story efficiently and with ambiguity.

By Walt Dickie, Executive Vice President

When my two college-age sons were younger they each went through a period of fascination with what I think of as “alternate reality” or “science fiction presented as fact” cable TV programs. Our house was awash for years in aliens hidden in secret government facilities, Sasquatch sightings, and paranormal activities of all kinds.

None of this bothered me too much. Although the sci-fi-as-sci-fact genre hadn’t been so popular when I was a kid, I had loved Erich von Dänigan, and devoured everything I could find about Bigfoot – once even giving serious thought (for a week or two) to writing my Ph.D. dissertation about Bigfoot lore before coming to earth on the realization that my paltry linguistic skills weren’t up to the challenge of the Northwest Coast languages.

But my kids were getting all this via cable at a much younger age than I was, and they didn’t have the grasp on the “science” part yet. I had to have some way of talking to them about what they were seeing that admitted its attraction while warning them about taking it all too literally.

Talking to my older son one day about extraterrestrial visitors, and struggling with the knowledge that the stories of little green men that he found so fascinating certainly had some scientific plausibility, I told him that I thought it would be so cool if it was true. And I saw that what I was trying to say had finally clicked for him. Of course he was fascinated, of course people wrote about this, went to conventions, and searched the skies (and their backyards) for aliens because it would be so cool if it was true. Once the aliens, Yetis, time travel, ghost sightings, and all the rest were seen as powerfully compelling stories, he got the point I had been trying to make about his fascination with them and my parental concern.

That experience had a real effect on me; it was the first time that I fully realized how our entertainment-driven culture has become fascinated by things that are cool to think about, even when we know at some level that they aren’t true. It’s not that we value illusions of truth, it’s that we value cool so highly. This is where internet memes are born – internet flash mobs playing all the variations on a theme that is experiencing its moment of coolness.

I think about that experience a lot these days; only I’m not thinking about possible remnant populations of otherwise extinct giant apes wandering around barefoot in the Himalayas. I’m thinking about the unceasing drumbeat of blog posts and articles hawking the embrace of all-out innovation as the only means of escape from certain commercial death.

“Innovate or die” has been with us since the tech boom of the 90s, and it has evolved from a taunt thrown out by a few hard-charging internet entrepreneurs to well-nigh the accepted gospel of modern business. It seems to be especially popular among bloggers and other bystanders; a hair trigger response to any commercial stumble, good for a quick post requiring little thought. Lately it’s become the war cry of the marketing research commentariat, who would have us toss off the shackles of hide bound, obsolete, research techniques – apparently abandoning clients and revenue streams in our haste to get out of long-standing but soon extinct business lines.

C+R and I both survived the 90s – by innovating – and I’ve had a lot of time to think about the events of those years and what they mean to our future. Our experience put me firmly in the pro-innovation camp, and I thought I was comfortable there. Then, a few years ago, my college alumni magazine, Technology Review, which has become a fairly successful commercial enterprise itself, announced that “innovation” would henceforth its theme, its be-all and end-all.

I found that strangely troubling. I’m an MIT grad, but I am not now nor have I ever been an engineer, scientist, or even a technologist in any very serious sense. I’m an anthropologist by professional training, and what technical expertise I have has always been harnessed to business issues.

But when Technology Review started to really harp on “innovation,” I found myself wondering about all of the engineers who had spent their careers improving processes, increasing the accuracy and speed of measurements, making things more efficient, safer, or economical. Certainly those achievements required something reasonably called “innovation,” but that kind of innovation wasn’t what the “innovate or die” crowd were talking about.

You don’t “innovate or die” just by improving something. You invent something “revolutionary.” You “change the world.” You overthrow the old and embrace the new. You cause a “paradigm shift.”

I have a visceral understanding of the allure of paradigm shifts. The voice of Thomas Kuhn, extolling the concept of “paradigm shifts” in the history of science during the 60s, sang as sweet a song in the corridors of academe as The Beatles or The Dead. We wanted to get high, get laid, and cause a paradigm shift that would overthrow the stodgy dogma of whatever we were majoring in – not necessarily in that order. I remember it well. And, like most young academics, I loved the smell of it in the morning.

So why, I found myself asking, does it bother me, 40 or 50 years later, that my alumni magazine has gone all innovation on me? Was I now backing the fuddy duddies? This question really bothered me, raising the possibility, as it did, that I was not only backing them but also joining them.

In the past few years I think I’ve finally figured it out. Kuhn was writing about big-S Science, and the Tech Review has chosen to concentrate more on Big-T Technology rather than the small-t technologists it used to write about. Paradigms are the right thing to think about when you’re talking about big-S, big-T stuff. I thought so in the 70s, and I think so now.

But if you’re a small-letter scientist, technologist, or marketing researcher, then the issue isn’t as clear. Should you, in fact, stop wasting your time on something that will be displaced by a paradigm shift?

Let’s imagine you live near Lake Michigan, as I do. It’s summer, it’s warm, and the sun is shining. The gorgeous blue waters and fresh breezes beckon. You know, of course, that the paradigm of gorgeous weather will shift, possibly very soon. And, this summer at least, you have every reason to believe that 60 mph winds and 20’ waves may make that shift very unpleasant indeed. For purposes of this little example, you have no access to any weather forecast of any kind. What do you do? Stay on shore or get in a boat?

The fact is that, until the advent of modern computerized weather models, no forecasting tools could consistently beat the prediction that tomorrow’s weather will be very much like today’s. Your best bet, then, in the absence of better information like an online satellite view, is to predict a continuation of more of the same. Shove off, hoist the sails, and enjoy the continuing lovely weather. At least in the short run.

Let’s try another analogy. You’re a marketing research company that has a good-sized survey research business. You’ve been doing well on survey research for many years, you negotiated the transition from phone and mall to the internet, and you’re doing well getting your head and hands around the mobile revolution.

But you see a paradigm shift coming. Big data could shift the paradigm and undermine the market for survey research because, given enough data, what people actually do as reflected in their searching, shopping, purchasing, friending, tweeting, and other choices on millions of web sites is a much more reliable indicator of their future behavior and their opinions. And a paradigm shift in cognitive science says that people don’t even know what they’re thinking when they’re thinking it; that what they think they think and whatever “thought” it is that drives action in their world are two totally different things, often in conflict with one another. Who will care about what people imagine they think in the future? Your survey research could be shifted right into the trash.

Or will your recent good results from survey research continue, like the weather, at least in the short run? For that matter, even if your business tanks in the long run, what exactly does “long” mean? Do you get out of the business today? Next year? Suddenly? Gradually? And what does “out” mean? Quit? Put less emphasis on selling and marketing? Stop developing completely and freeze everything just as it is today?

Since we’re talking here about you, a small-m marketing researcher, not the big-M marketing research industry as a whole, it’s pretty hard to know the right answer. Certainly these, and other equally large, evident paradigm shifts, are going to impact Marketing Research – or Consumer Insights, Decision Guidance, or whatever we wind up calling what we do. But what happens at big-M scale may not be what happens in your immediate neighborhood.

Famously, buggy whips went out a century or more ago, killed by the big paradigm shift to internal combustion engines, automobiles, and global warming. But there are still buggy whips being made and sold, and someone is probably making a nice living off them. Along about the same time that the horse-and-buggy went out, a huge industry based on fancy feathers for ladies’ hats, that had shipped tons upon tons of feathers annually, died out, swamped by a sea change in fashion. But there are still feather merchants to be found, and their industry, once dominated by sales to fly fishermen and Vegas-style costumers, is booming thanks to a fad for hairdos incorporating feathers. I remember reading a story a few years ago about a local firm’s turnaround – they had gotten out of their struggling “modern” electronics business and established themselves as the dominant player in the global market for replacement vacuum tubes for legacy equipment and were making record profits! Vacuum tubes! Who knew? And closer to home, there are still many phone rooms plying their trade for marketing research long after the online paradigm shift moved the industry in a new direction.

Let me be clear: I’m not arguing that it’s better, wiser, or more lucrative for your career or business to live on the backside of a paradigm shift, only that there are a lot more choices and possibilities than just “get with the new paradigm” or “drop dead.” Anyone who tells you otherwise has either never managed a real business or going for sensationalism over sense. Hooey!

It’s pretty clear why we’re so enamored of “innovate or die”– you don’t have to have paid much attention in any of your lib arts courses to recognize and understand the appeal of a story arc. We humans all crave stories and are fascinated by them, so condensing the complexities of actual life into the simple narrative of “innovate or die” is perfectly understandable, even if pretty much useless as advice. Innovators on one side – successful, profitable, with it, and future-oriented – and dead companies – foggies, fools, and bankrupt stick-in-the muds – on the other!

It is, I think, a winner take all fable for a winner take all age.  It would just be so cool if it was true!

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

Those of us who face the daunting task of sifting through mounds of verbal data — forty individual interviews or a three week on-line community — synthesizing all of those words, and presenting our analysis clearly, succinctly, AND with impact have been intrigued by word clouds.  They seem simple and elegant; they reduce all of those words to a picture of the important themes.  Now, there are numerous web sites to help us create word clouds, Wordle being only the best known.

So, why do I feel vaguely dissatisfied when I look at word clouds, even the ones I have created?  They often seem to miss the point or be overly simplistic.  Creating a word cloud sometimes feels like I have cheated myself and my audience.

Jacob Harris of The New York Times makes the case against word clouds and, in the process, gives a brief primer on how to report its data.  It is an incredibly useful article.

He begins with a concept that should become a mantra to market research professionals.  The critique of data clouds is based on the principles of data journalism.  When many of us began our careers, the model for reporting was the academic paper.  I wrote reports a long time ago with footnotes.  Now we strive for clarity and simplicity.  The magazine or newspaper (on-line versions, of course) is our guide.  Data journalism should be our art.

“Visualization is reporting, with many of the same elements that would make a traditional story effective: a narrative that pares away extraneous information to find a story in the data; context to help the reader understand the basics of the subject; interviewing the data to find its flaws and be sure of our conclusions.  Prettiness is a bonus; if it obliterates the ability to read the story of the visualization, it’s not worth adding some wild new style or strange interface.”

The ways Harris point out how word clouds go wrong provide us with a road map for good reporting or, rather, good data journalism.

• Word clouds are based on a very rudimentary textual analysis.  In most cases, a phrase-level or a thematic analysis would provide richer and more penetrating analysis.  The general lesson of this observation is that we need to focus on the concepts that knit the words together consumers use and not on the words.
• Word clouds are often used when textual analysis is not the appropriate tool.  As Harris says, in our analysis we should not confuse “signifiers with what they signify.”  We need to use the appropriate methods for getting below the surface of consumers’ comment.  Simply digesting their words will not do that.
• Word clouds have a dirty secret.  They really aren’t analysis.  They leave readers with the task of peering at the image and discerning the meaning themselves.  Word clouds make the assumption that the meaning is obvious.  But, any analysis worth its salt requires some explanation; it requires framing and focus.
• Finally word clouds miss the narrative.  I am not saying what we write or present should be long, dreary marches through the data.  Hardly.  We need to find the thread or threads that bring fresh insight to a particular area of consumer behavior.  There are often several reasons why two words might dominate a word cloud.  We need to create the story for the reader or listener that that makes just one of these reasons the most compelling and the most relevant.  And, incidentally, that narrative still can be visual.

A word cloud tries to make us believe its immediacy produces insight when, in fact, it may mask the narrative we “data journalists” should be creating.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

For as long as the phrase “Consumer Insight” has been used, I am amazed that I still see discussions of its meaning.  Don’t we all know what an “insight” is by now?

Well, maybe not.  The word certainly has been overused; every observation about consumer behavior and attitudes becomes an "insight."

And, unlike a mere finding, it has an air of inevitability, not to be questioned.  Perhaps, the use of "insight" is an example of language creep — using words of greater and greater intensity to describe our actions in an attempt to endow them with more importance than they deserve.  It is a bit like using wind chill factors to convince ourselves that winters are re-e-e-ally cold now.

Yet, the word is useful.  Who doesn’t want to get into the head of a consumer?  That’s what an insight is — an authentic vision of how consumers view themselves and connect with brands or categories.

So, here’s five ways to know you have a true insight and not a mere observation.

• An insight is clear and simple.  One short, declarative sentence is best.  If you need three sentences to explain it, you don’t have an insight.   Most of all, it can’t be a multi-layered, logical construct.  A syllogism is not an insight.
• An insight is a surprise. You may discover insights, but you can’t necessarily search for them.  Insights into the consumer give us new and fresh perspectives; they are unexpected.  Consequently, we are more likely to discover insights by being open and not wedded to particular methods.
• An insight is a game changer.  If an insight is a surprise, if it gives us an unexpected vision, it must drive the development of different products and different ways of communicating them.  The recognition that consumers wanted small indulgences in every category transformed the coffee shop into Starbucks.
• An insight is often a mash up.  How can you be surprised?  How can you be open to discovery?  If there is one rule to developing insights (I resist calling it a method), it is that you need to combine perspectives.  You might never have had that “Starbuck moment” watching people getting coffee in traditional coffee shops.  But, if you also observed them in bakeries and wine bars, the light would go off…insight.
• An insight is not immediately translatable.  We have spent most of our careers looking for “actionable results.”  It is a laudable goal and, in many circumstances, it is an essential goal.  What good would a taste test be without actionable findings?  But, if insights are surprising, game changers, they may not have a direct immediate utility.  We need to be prepared to follow the insight, to push the insight to its ultimate game-changing conclusion.

Check us out at C+R and discover how we can be your partner on that journey of discovery, from insight to game-changing conclusion.

By Juan Ruiz, Senior Research Analyst

Caution! What you said, what you meant to say, and what the other understood may not always be the same thing…

At C+R Research, we have a diverse group. Last week, it was the birthday of a Polish colleague. A few emails started going back and forth to see where we would take him for lunch. Then, one of our Hispanic colleagues sent an email that read “Szczęśliwy dzień urodzenia.” Clever as she is, she had used an online site to translate “Happy Birthday” to Polish. That email triggered a chain of emails – all in Polish, although no one other than the birthday boy spoke Polish. Later he mentioned that many messages sounded funny because computer translations can be excessively literal.

This made me think about the challenges we face every day translating questionnaires. Our Hispanic division, LatinoEyes® specializes in the U.S. Hispanic market where most of our studies require conducting fieldwork in the respondent’s language of choice (English or Spanish). Paying special attention to our translations is crucial. If respondents answering questions in English understand the questions differently than the respondents answering in Spanish, our data and our findings will suffer.

Now, making sure that nothing is lost in translation is not an easy task.  There are words that have different meanings in different Spanish-speaking countries, and even some expressions can vary significantly by length in different dialects.  All of this adds complexity to the translation process.

How do we do it at LatinoEyes®? Through lots of communication! It is key that the person responsible for the translation is on the same page with the person who wrote the English version. The translator needs to be a speaker of the target dialect. We debate; we come to consensus.  We have Spanish speakers from different countries of origin, and they have different levels of acculturation. They all share their point of view when needed.

How are you doing it?

ByWalt Dickie, Executive Vice President

Many of you may have probably seen the recent announcement of a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project on cell phone usage.  Reporting of the findings has been a bit hyperventilated, focusing on odd behavior, such as turning phones off to get a break from using it (between 26% and 32% for all age groups under 65) and pretending to talk on the phone to avoid talking directly to someone (30% of 18-29 year-olds in past month).  More about this last one later.

The report, however, highlights some genuinely interesting trends.

• The increasing dominance of cell phone use generally, but especially for text messaging and photography.
• The fact that African Americans, Latinos, and to a lesser degree those with college educations, urban- and suburbanites, and parents over-index on cell usage.
• The enormous difference between “Smartphone” users and other “Cell/Feature Phone” users.
• The diminishing differences between the ways different age groups under 65 use smart phones.

With 83% of adults owning cell phones, and ¾ of them using their phones for text messaging and photography, it is clear that research techniques based on text messaging and/or picture-taking should be considered as fitting quite nicely into “normal life.”  While text messaging can be seen as roughly analogous to writing or typing answers to traditional survey instruments, “picture taking” now has a place primarily in specialized methods such as ethnographies and MROCs.  But, as research becomes increasing mobile, might not the normal way to answer many typical questions be with a picture?  What groceries did you buy this week?  What do you use to clean the floor?  What snacks do you eat regularly?  There will be no forgetting key parts of the answer when it is a picture.

It seems equally clear that Smartphone Owners (35%) are a distinct segment of the population whose use of phones for messaging, internet access, games and entertainment, and retrieval of information needed “right away” index over Cell/Feature Phone Owners by anywhere from two to five times or more.  It seems likely that we will need a new survey grammar when we create mobile instruments directed at this more impatient target who craves immediacy.  It may not be the place to ask questions about the restaurants visited six months in the past.

Smartphone owners have a distinctive demographic profile, but age is clearly becoming a salient variable – although the youngest age segments over-index on pretty much everything, all Smartphone Owners under about 50 clearly share a core set of behaviors that is distinct from the behavioral set of Cell/Feature Phone Users.

By the way, if Smartphone Users are a distinct population, how will we talk to people about cell phones vs. smartphones?  Pew doesn’t seem to have a term for devices that aren’t smartphones. When they screen, they use awkward questions like, “As I read the following list of items, please tell me if you happen to have each one, or not. Do you have...a cell phone or a Blackberry or iPhone or other device that is also a cell phone?” The industry sometimes uses “feature phone,” but I’ve never heard a normal person use that term. “Dumb phone?” My son had a pretty nice phone with a touchscreen that wasn’t an iPhone, Android, or any other obvious “Smartphone” type.  He called it “a wannabe phone.”

Back to people who pretend to make cell phone calls to avoid contact with others.  Instead of wringing our hands about the end of civilization, we need to recognize what it truly indicates.  It is interesting that this is behavior of young adults, those most at home with all things mobile.  But, also no surprise.  Cell phones truly have become rooted among young adults.  The gestures of their usage have generally accepted meanings within the “culture.”  And, nothing demonstrates this more powerfully than the fact that faking a call works.