Tag Archives: online research

MindField Facebook Fan Update for September

Once again, we have updated the Panelist Reviews page with a fresh batch of, um, panelist reviews from happy MindField Online Facebook fans. Lets take a look at them, including this white-hot chunk of satisfaction from Timmie – who seems to like exclamation points as much as WE do!

Timmie says: It sure makes you proud when you go to the store & find the product you tested knowing that you helped make it available to others!! Also, there’s a bunch of fine fun folk here. No auto response computers! Amazing what a relief it is to talk to real people!! You guys make this panel fun!!!!!

Read the rest here. And THANKS, MindField friends!!

Blogging Year in Review, el parte dos

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Yesterday we began our two-part blogging year in review looking at the various pieces we did about the consumer testing industry in general, and MindField Online in particular. Today, let’s recall the ways we reached out to panelists like YOU!

We announced fun cash and prize giveaways, like

And when we reached those milestones and held the drawings, we featured the names, pictures and bios of as many of the winners as we could:

Early on, we reached out to long-time members and asked them to tell their stories:

We really wanted to do more of these, but we found that people are generally shy about too much attention.

Meanwhile, we began collecting satisfied members’ comments on Facebook. Back when we had about 5,000 fans, we made a blog post with a bunch of these comments. We kept updating them about every month or so, and finally decided they needed their own page. We update the Panelist Reviews page monthly, and it’s coming up next week!

Well, that’s the year in review! Thanks for everything, MindField Online friends and family…and stay tuned!

Blogging Year in Review, el parte uno

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This week marks the one-year anniversary of MindField Online jumping into the world of social media, including the blog, our Facebook page and Twitter feed. In social media, old stuff tends to get buried under new, and useful info sometimes gets lost. So for this reason (as well as misplaced nostalgia) we take a two-part look at the past year.

We took time to learn about Consumer Testing. Some of it was “inside baseball,” as they say, others were pretty useful!

Along the way, we took time to discuss features, changes and improvements to the system, including

Looking back, one thing becomes clear: we use a LOT of exclamation points! Anyway, this is just SOME of the excitement we have perpetrated in the past year. More tomorrow, and THIS time it gets personal! Exclamation point!

Labor Day Open Discussion

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OK, your humble blogger is north of 40 in age, and he remembers when almost nobody’s mom worked outside the home. Then, when mom got a job, it was to get out of the house, or to have some personal spending money. Now, 66% of moms with kids have jobs!

Check out the chart to the left, From The Two-Income Trap

Now please, always take statistics with a grain of salt. As Homer Simpson said, “People can make statistics say anything they want, and 54% of people know that!”

Basically, it says that while incomes have close to doubled, we have nearly half as much money left over than we used to.

I guess my point is, times are tough. We all have to work, more or less. So how do you make it work in your family? Cut back on frills? Clip coupons? Join online consumer panels and complete surveys for money and prizes? Let us know!

Coupon Crazy!

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A shopper snags $4,000 worth of razors and pays zero. Couponers dive into Dumpsters in search of newspaper inserts. They purchase $1,000 worth of groceries and pay a few dollars. One man has a “wall of toothpaste” with 1,000 tubes. Twin sisters brag they have cleaned out a store’s supply of dental floss. Others boast of lifetime supplies of paper towels and toilet paper.             Palm Beach Post

So, did the coupon craze inspire that wacky “Extreme Couponing” show on TLC? Or has the show inspired the couponing craze? Seems like it’s true both ways.

Somehow I managed to catch the premiere back in the spring (in between shows about guns and monster trucks!) Much of it was pretty interesting. First of all it was shot in my hometown of Cincinnati – I recognized the Kroger that lady shopped in, and her neighborhood.

Anyway, there were some really practical aspects to the show, and couponing in general. Who doesn’t like to save money, especially these days? Other aspects gave me a “Hoarders” vibe. Couponing as an obsession, you know. Still other aspects made me angry. I worked in a grocery store once. You get to tie up a register, and a cashier, and ten carts for two hours, AND crash the computer system, just so you can get $1000 worth of groceries for twenty bucks? Grrr.

Anyway, in this economy, I don’t think couponing is going away anytime soon. What do you think? Practical? Obsession? Menace to grocery stores everywhere? Let us know!

Steve Jobs Passes the Torch

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Steve Jobs will be remembered as the Edison of mobile: his numerous Apple products have impacted the work, home and play lives of hundreds of millions of consumers worldwide.  …MobileMarketer.com

People weren’t exactly stunned by this week’s news about Steve Jobs. His health has been a long-running concern for the past several years. The day when he would take a big step back in the day-to-day operations at Apple had to come eventually, and so it has.

Mobile Marketer pulled together a bunch of quotes from industry types about Steve Jobs’ influence on personal computing, entertainment, marketing…it goes on and on! Here are some highlights:

With the iPhone, Steve Jobs reimagined what the smartphone could be and ushered in a new level of sophistication in mobile marketing.

Before Steve Jobs, mobile phones were about making phone calls with a few peripheral features. Now, voice calls are the peripheral feature.

He knew he could get people excited about products they didn’t know they wanted and almost certainly don’t need.

…he has turned Apple Computer around to become just Apple – the leading consumer technology brand in the world.

He did this not because he’s a great developer, engineer or even product designer, but because he’s probably the greatest marketer and showman in technology.

He provided true market leadership that not only transformed Apple but forced all of their competitors to innovate.

I might even say, that aside from Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin, there might not have been a more significant contributor to changing so many aspects of our world.

Those are some highlights. There are plenty more quotes HERE.   So what do you think? Is Steve Jobs a genius? A master showman? Completely overrated? Have his products “changed your life?” Let us know!

All About the Cashout!

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Have you ever wondered how the MindField Online cashout process works? Mind if we tell you anyway?

MindField Online bean-counters collect all of your cashout requests throughout the week. Then, first thing Monday we process them and either send you a check, deposit into your PayPal account, or send you an Amazon.com redemption code via email.

Now, the Amazon.com option is pretty new, and it’s proven to be pretty popular! So, it’s taken us a couple of weeks to get a good, smooth system down for processing those requests.  But here we are! As of Monday, August 22, all Amazon.com cashout requests will be up-to-date, and will be processed weekly just like the checks and PayPal requests.

Once again, an Amazon.com cashout will come as a form letter with a redemption code number delivered via email from [email protected].

We hope you are enjoying the new Amazon.com cashout options. More MindField innovations will be coming your way in the future!

MindField Fans Speak (again!)

Time to update our satisfied Facebook fan comment page for August. Check it out, including this gem from Kirk: “MindField is the best reliable survey company out there. I started about 3 years ago and I love sharing my opinion and testing new products, and the incentives are great! I have never had a problem with them – they are trustworthy!”

Follow this link: Panelist Reviews

The Sound of Savings

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You won’t hear it with the human ear, but the next time you are in a big chain store, Shopkick may be calling out your name!

According to a recent article at Forbes.com, Shopkick is a location-based customer loyalty app like Foursquare or Gowalla, but with an important difference:

…it doesn’t use the phone’s GPS. Instead, Shopkick uses a different technology. It plugs in a small box inside each participating store. The box emits a high frequency sound that humans can’t hear. When the Shopkick app is opened, it recognizes the sound so that it knows that the person is actually in the store.

The bottom line is engagement. Remember a few posts ago we were talking about the difference between TV ads that are just on, shooting dumbly out into the atmosphere, versus web ads that tease you and make you click? If you click the web ad, you are already interested in the product. That’s engagement, and the same principle applies with Shopkick. You physically go into the store, you turn on the app, and you wait for the deals to come to you. And Shopkick claims a success rate of 45% that, if it’s true, is a really high number!

For now, because it requires hardware, Shopkick is mainly in large chains like Target, Best Buy, Macy’s, Disney and so on. Foursquare uses existing satellite tracking, and it is popular with smaller independent stores. But of course, they are looking into copying Shopkick’s success. Hopefully the winner will be YOU.

So have you used Shopkick? What do you think?

Get ’em While They’re Young

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…in the pursuit of new customers, companies are shifting their marketing strategies to target a younger and younger demographic. First, “youth marketing” was the buzzword. Then, it was fine-tuned to the “tweens.” Now, newborns are the new base.         Beneath the Brand Blog

Yes, newborns.  A few years ago, some genius figured out that while a child must learn language and verbal skills in order to communicate their preferences, they are forming preferences even before that. Really, it goes all the way back to Walt Disney: ever notice how you can tell who’s the hero and the villain just by the way they are drawn?

And speaking of Disney, they are jumping into the marketing-to-babies thing in a big way. Now, at nearly 600 maternity hospitals in the US, Disney gives away “cozy, adorable bodysuits — often decorated with famous Disney protagonists —[for free], so long as Mom is willing to sign up for email updates from DisneyBaby.com, the new corporate initiative.”

Meanwhile, Ronald McDonald is one of the most recognizable figures to even the youngest kids – and Ronald is taking a lot of heat for supposedly wrecking your kids’ health and making them fat. So, there’s a downside. Anyway, there are further examples in the article online. So what do you think? Good? Bad? Dumb? Inevitable?