My industry pick this week goes to Leslie Townsend of Kinesis for her frank discussion regarding mobile research. Mobile isn’t something you force fit into the current market research process we use today. Mobile is its own category of research and those that approach it from this overall perspective – not merely as the connection piece of the process – will be the ones successfully interacting with their mobile audience.

Simply put, taking a standard survey, making it shorter, changing a couple of questions and pushing it out to a mobile device is not mobile market research. Leslie highlights an industry issue when saying till now most of the talk around mobile has focused on making it fit into our current process. I heard this many times during The Market Research Technology Event held in early May.  Are we doing mobile market research right? Thoughts from TMRTE 2012 provides the highlights around that mobile discussion.

Bottom line, those taking the time to define each step of the market research process from the perspective of being mobile – from initial planning of the project scope through data analysis – are the ones that will be successful in the mobile world.

Mobile is not about getting a survey on your phone. It is about connecting with a person living and functioning in a mobile environment. Think about it, the person taking the survey is mobile. They’re busy, they’re on the move, they’re multitasking – develop research that fits their mobile lifestyle not just their mobile device.