7 Key Trends Fuelling the Growth of Mobile Ethnography

Introduction to Mobile Ethnography

Mobile ethnography relates to the use of mobile phones to capture in-the-moment photo and video footage. It is a form of primary qualitative research, representing a nice counterbalance to the explosion in quantitative analysis in recent years (in part due to the huge increase in both the access to data and volumes of data being generated). So what are some of the drivers fuelling the growth of mobile ethnography for everything from diary studies to customer journey mapping?

“The more businesses digitise their offerings, the further they unwittingly distance themselves from their customers and hence the bigger their need to reconnect with their customers using mobile and video-based research. Contextual, media-rich, digital ethnography is increasingly being used to humanise their analytics and to bring to life the people behind the pie charts.”

Eugene Murphy Founder & CEO, Indeemo

The Factors Fuelling the Growth of Mobile Ethnography

We have seen significant growth in the area in recent years due to the following factors:

1. The Smartphone Revolution

The explosion in the market for mobile ethnography as an attractive qualitative research methodology has largely been fueled by the ubiquity of smartphones and their improved performance. Not just any smartphone, but the more recent versions with enhanced audio-video capability.

Smartphone penetration now means researchers can access a global pool of respondents in a matter of minutes. It also means the audio-video capability is now of a sufficiently high standard to enable researchers to easily gain rich insights from this data.

Taking the iPhone as an example, the first iPhone was introduced in 2007, and early versions had a fixed-focus 2.0-megapixel  camera on the back, no optical zoom, flash or autofocus, and did not natively support video recording. The iPhone 4 introduced in 2010 had a 5.0-megapixel camera that could record video at 720p resolution, which was considered high-definition. So in many respects, the video capability needed to produce high enough quality footage has only been available for less than 10 years. The iPhone 11, is a  dual-lens camera system and includes an f/1.8 6-element 12-megapixel wide-angle-lens (26mm focal length) and an f/2.4 5-element 12-megapixel ultra wide-angle-lens (13mm focal length). Pretty powerful.

Finally. from a behavioural point of view, applications like Facetime, Skype, WhatsApp, WeChat, TikTok and Snapchat have also normalised the action of taking these cameras out in public and filming with them. The net result is the respondent pool can consist of millions of geographically dispersed individuals capable of producing high-quality audio and visual files consisting of their own insights.

2. The Appeal of the Gig Economy

 While the gig economy is synonymous with the likes of Uber and Deliveroo, it’s reach is much wider, with online research panels representing a relevant example in this instance.

More and more young people are seeking income from multiple sources, and are happy to have portfolio careers consisting of diverse streams.

Similarly, much of the friction associated with transaction costs have also been reduced and it is now possible to sign up for gigs and to get paid electronically with minimal effort.

 As a result, it is much easier to sign up respondents, reducing the cost of acquisition and transaction costs associated with more formal approaches to qualitative research like focus groups.

 Respondents thus get paid to participate in research studies for clients of ours and are doing so in growing numbers, recognising that frictionless research is a productive use of their time.

 The benefits for researchers are also compelling, access to significant numbers of respondents, located all around the world who can provide compelling insights on a diverse range of offerings. Add in the video transcription and language capability of mobile ethnography applications like Indeemo, and it is easy to see why Gig economy participants are also fueling the growth of the research approach.

3. Increased Ubiquity of Wifi and the Emergence of 5G

WiFi ubiquity is a key issue for those who are not on “all you can eat’ mobile data packages i.e. those on “pay-as-you-go” contracts. Many people rely on WiFI to access the internet so as to not have to pay phone providers for access. It is now standard in most bars, restaurants and shops which was not the case 2-3 years ago. Certain demographics including Millenials are happy to jump on WiFI to upload videos so there is no cost for them to do so.

Consider how you use mobile devices on 4G networks today: keeping up with friends and family members via social media, calls and texts. Perhaps you use video conferencing to connect remote coworkers, or play games and stream movies. With 5G, you can expect to be able to do everything you could do with 4G, but faster, while it will also enable new technological capabilities that were not feasible on the traditional 4G network. (Source Verizon)

5G is not simply another G. If I may misquote Henry Ford, it's not simply a faster horse, 5% in truth to 4G is what the automobile was to the horse, what TV was to radio. Fundamental change. So if you are familiar, as I'm sure you all are with this concept of a 10 x engineer or developer,  think of 5g as the 10 x technology to harness all that talent.  It's so powerful, that in truth, the best way to think about it is that it is in fact, a wholly new technology, ushering in a new era of transformation.

Ronan Dunne, Verizon

The key point here is that you could move to real-time video feedback. The hardware, software and infrastructure are all improving at a phenomenal rate ensuring that the core value from mobile ethnography applications is getting better over time.

4. An Explosion of Social Media Applications like WeChat and TikTok

TikTok is a Chinese iOS and Android social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos. The app was launched in 2017 by Chinese developer ByteDance, for markets outside of China. ByteDance has previously launched Douyin (Chinese: 抖音) for the China market in September 2016. TikTok and Douyin are the same but run on different servers to comply with Chinese censorship restrictions. The application allows users to create short music and lip-sync videos of 3 to 15 seconds  and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds. It is popular in Asia, the United States, and other parts of the world. TikTok is not available in China, and its servers are based in countries where the app is available.

 In 2018, the application gained popularity and became the most downloaded app in the US in October 2018, the first Chinese app to do so. As of 2018, it is available in over 150 markets and in 75 languages. In February 2019, TikTok, together with Douyin, hit one billion downloads globally, excluding Android installs in China. Source (Wikipedia). Again it demonstrates that capturing video is now a very popular activity for a growing cohort of smart-phone users.

 Of course, TikTok, is one mere application with a focus on photo and video, as WhatsApp, WeChat, Snapchat and Instagram all rely on a rich interactive experience where users are recording video and sharing it with friends. It is perfectly natural to record on your phone be it walking down the street, or taking selfies in front of tourist attractions.

5. The Emergence of the Experience Economy

We believe that augmenting basic feedback systems like those in airport security with an ability to scan a QR code and upload in the moment feedback will soon emerge as a much richer use case. Again this aligns with our view that layering mobile ethnography on top of existing research methodologies offers a means to create much more valuable insights.

7. Improved Unit Economics for Qualitative Research

We are all drowning in a sea of data - quantitative data has been to the fore in recent years, and the amount of data generated has exploded. However, increasing numbers of researchers are recognising the inherent flaw in having quantitative data without some accompanying qualitative data. Applications like Indeemo’s add a qualitative research layer ensuring researchers can gain rich insights from real-life behaviours. As the Founder of Virgin, Richard Branson recently claimed “ We were discussing how decisions are becoming more and more data-driven, as technology and artificial intelligence advances. However, as we rely more and more on analytics to make our decisions, we’re losing touch of our human instinct and we’re taking human reasoning out of the equation. We all agreed on the danger this presents and the importance of looking at every decision with a human lens.”

Currently, to undertake in-context Qualitative Research, Agencies and Brands literally fly Researchers all over the world to meet their users and consumers face to face. The costs in terms of travel, accommodation and lost time are immense. With Indeemo, researchers can utilise the mobile application to gain real, in-the-moment behavioural  insights from around the globe regardless of location without ever leaving their desks.  This represents a massive step forward for researchers thus explaining the growing demand for solutions like Indeemo as early adopters share the results from their findings with their colleagues and peers.

In short, Indeemo helps overcome the traditional problems associated with qualitative research - that is is too time-consuming to collect, too expensive to run and too difficult to do at scale.

Summary & Conclusion

In summary, with the growing ubiquity of SmartPhones, improved recording capability, the emergence of rich mobile ethnography applications like Indeemo, and increased access to 4G (and soon 5G) the limitations of qualitative research have largely been eliminated. Instead of paying a lot of money to run focus groups in big cities like London, Beijing, Tokyo, New York and Chicago, we can now access a global audience directly through their phones. The problems associated with research duration and costs have largely gone away. This is the world of mobile ethnography, and this is where Indeemo is emerging as a leading player.

We have now arrived at a point where:

• Over 5BN people have a mobile device

• 5G - all you can eat data is coming soon

• Wifi access is ubiquitous

• Camera, audio and recording functionality is of high quality

• Recording video in public space is a social norm

These factors and others mentioned above have resulted in a collapse in the cost of undertaking qualitative research thus accounting for the huge growth taking place. At last researchers can understand real motivations hearing these first hand rather than having to try and infer ‘the why’ from the data, or without worrying about the costs associated with primary qualitative research spiralling out of control