ActiSKU - Tag - ACTIPLAY

ACTIPLAY, now member of the prestigious ESOMAR

Bennet Holmes — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:54:00 +0100

Created in 1948 by 29 personalities of the research marketing sector, ESOMAR is the world organisation for enabling better research into markets, consumers and societies. With 5,000 members in 100 countries, ESOMAR’s aim is to promote the value of market and opinion research in illuminating real issues and bringing about effective decision making.

Studies: a sector that works twice as hards

Bennet Holmes — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:12:00 +0000

Studies or communication: you can’t slack off in a crisis !

Whereas General Management might be tempted to cut certain budgets and without thinking much about it, some on the other hand, keep up the pressure.

In these difficult times advertisers have been increasing their pitches on the net to promote the advantages of advertising and, in a more general way, all communication. At the same time they have to explain and clarify the nature of information exchange, guide consumers, etc. and, if possible, add some humour in order to provide some comic relief !

Research groups have less presence in this field and are not as involved in blogs. Budgets, in general, are being tightened but, in spite of this, the overall sales figures are still very significant!

There is no need to explain the importance of knowing the market and the consumer, especially his own, to any one in business. Research studies have been gaining in popularity for several years because they are becoming more and more reliable and major institutions, as well as smaller ones, are becoming increasingly effective at using the various methods and techniques.

More and more studies

According to the “Global Market Research 2008”* report published by ESOMAR**, the world research market had a sales turnover of 28 billion dollars in 2007, and has been growing continuously. This represents 6.5% growth between 2007 and 2006! If the entire economy had the same growth, how good would that be? If only government leaders worked effectively! If only companies made the right investments at the right times! If only there was a strong market with high demand!

Europe alone represents 43% of the world research market, with more than 10 billion dollars in sales!

So where does France stand in all of this? It is actually not doing too badly in this very competitive market. Our country is just behind two Anglo-Saxon countries (USA and Great Britain) and is positioned as 4th in the world in terms of sales turnover. Germany is the first European country but France is ahead of Japan! Who would have believed this?

This is proof that the research industry knows how to be appealing using methods that are more and more innovative and reliable. Even in a good market, it is critical to remain watchful. The larger and medium-sized research companies are always keeping an eye on every movement!

At ACTIPLAY, it is the same thing. The interest in ActiSKU since its launch in October, 2008 is proof of that. A dozen companies in this sector got together and almost all had the same response.

So where does “online” fit into all this?

All that industrial members, the media and most companies are asking for is that research institutions and study groups help them increase their sales turnover through a better understanding of their clients and the market. They want to direct their marketing and business efforts more effectively but they are also trying to anticipate future conditions.

Even if most of the methods used by research companies are still “classical” (in-field studies), this does not mean that the Internet is not a serious contender! It provides a quick turn-around time, significant participation numbers from respondents located world-wide, and costs that are finally becoming acceptable to clients. Online surveys are, in fact, actually bolstering the growth of this activity sector.

The arguments opposed to online studies, especially regarding the reliability and quality of the results, although justifiable in the early years, are steadily losing their validity as time progresses.

The main problems are due to the very nature of online sampling: non-representation, non- probabilistic sampling, “professionalisation” of respondents, and its collection method: Can an Internet surfer represent a non-Internet surfer? The “projectibility” of the results is also still being examined (external validity).

Today, with the development of online panels, created and maintained by companies that are becoming more and more specialised (ex: Panel on the web) along with the development of hardware, high-speed networks and the constant increase in the Internet penetration rate, these arguments are no longer as valid as they used to be.

On the contrary, the specialists*** are promoting its ability to provide “accessibility to numerous and varied targets, recruitment of rare profiles with low incidence rate, collection speed, sincerity and depth of responses, background information and pre-qualification of respondents”. In addition to this, the cost is often significantly lower than classical studies.

According to Esomar, “quantitative, online studies represented 25% of the studies in 2007” and 22%, according to the “Synthec Etudes de marché et d’opinion” (qualitative and quantitative online studies).

Making a return on your investment

In this rationale, it is not about diminishing the use of in-field studies, which still represent a large part of the market and which will always be important, in spite of their disadvantages which are both recognised and enumerated by the specialists: “For cost reasons: to limit travelling expenses, surveys are often limited to large cities; polls on the street are often limited to busy main streets some difficult suburbs are never visited (- this is also true for very posh neighbourhoods); including many entire areas where there are rarely any pollsters (the “centre of France”, and the rural areas in general). Field studies, which are often considered to be more “qualitative” are much more expensive to perform and are, in fact, rarely probabilistic”.

It is more useful to promote the use of online studies due to the continued development and democratisation of the Internet. A “shopper test” solution in a virtual environment, such as ActiSKU, shows that online testing does work and the results can satisfy the best industrialists. I would invite you to explore (or re-explore) what I wrote in my first article concerning the creation of ActiSKU. There you can read that Carlsberg, being careful to compare results obtained online and offline (in the field) using the same tests state that there is a correlation of more than 80% in the results.

According to a study conducted in 2007 with 4,427 panellists selected at random from an online XL panel (Kristof De Wulf and Sam Berteloot), the quality of the results obtained from in-field and online studies were compared and he concluded that there was no difference in the consumption behaviour (food, drink, equipment, leisure, political activities etc.). There was no difference in the quality of responses (consistency, depth), except among email recruits (fewer responses) and via the Internet (higher click rate) and no difference in the motivation to participate in the studies.

According to another study (Annelies Verhaghe 2007) conducted with 2,084 panellists by means of an online XL panel that used incentives such as random draws and charitable donations, 32% of those surveyed stated that they were participating in order to express their opinions and 27% merely to help the researchers!

Let’s talk about the future…

At Harris Interactive, SEMO 2008, the question was asked in the following terms: “For online studies, the current and future (r)evolutions are still numerous. Will the development of community tools change the method of polling consumers? Is it possible to gain a greater insight into their intimate world using new technologies? To what extent can one simulate reality using online studies? What about mobile phones? What can be done now? What can be done in the future?”

As has already been stated, Europe represents more than 40% of the research market and the rest is held by the United States and Japan. What can be done elsewhere? There are many emerging markets and there will be continued growth in the need for effective research especially in countries that are just beginning to industrialise.

Personally, I think that online methods are going to continue to advance because they increase the range of options available to industry and are economically flexible. ActiSKU is part of this context: modernity of media, adaptability to needs, flexible business model and reduced costs (definitely a “plus” at this time when budgets are being squeezed!).

I invite you to explore the excellent analysis of the development of online tools posted on the www.e-marketing.com site: click here

*Global Market Research” is a complete report on world-wide research trends. It provides information on sales turnovers, but also discusses revenue sources of institutions as well as the most favoured methodologies. It provides an over-view of the best 25 research institutions in the world and the financial numbers for the top ten.

**ESOMAR, with 5000 members throughout the world in approximately one hundred different countries, is a world-wide organisation that works to improve and to promote markets and discussions, reveals problems and offers tools to facilitate effective decision-making.

***Refer to the study conducted by Synthec Etudes, AFM on this subject

Visit : http://www.esomar.org/

The birth of virtual Test Shoppers

Bennet Holmes — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:08:00 +0000

Once upon a time...

A recurring issue in retail distribution and industry is how to evaluate in-store marketing for large-scale commercial operations and be certain that it will have the desired impact on sales. It is just such a typical, yet crucial question facing marketing and business departments that launched a project called “ActiSKU” 4 years ago. “SKU” is mass distribution jargon for a “product type”. In 2006, a manager with Carlsberg, a brewer present in more than thirty countries, met with ACTIPLAY, a company specialised in the production of 2D and 3D, real-time advergames… that is, video games and advertising sites!

What was the link between these two? Only that the brewer had an idea in mind, and specific needs, and ACTIPLAY mastered 3D technology. Nothing more was needed to launch an effective project between ambitious, visionary partners.

The meeting that started it all …

Carlsberg’s request was concise and might be summarised as follows: “Given advances in 3D technology and your own specialty (i.e. at ACTIPLAY), could software be designed that would allow Carlsberg to quickly and economically test the impact of advertising before a large-scale deployment?”

In other words: “let panellists located anywhere in the world visit a virtual 3D store in order to observe their purchasing behaviour and how it is influenced by in-store advertising created to boost sales.” This was asking quite a bit!

The need to observe and analyse customer facts and behaviour has been around forever. It is the very basis of marketing.

The methods used to measure these “facts and behaviours” are always the same in modern business: qualitative and/or quantitative consumer surveys, using real tests in actual stores that are set up for this purpose.

This does work, but the organisational effort and cost are prohibitive and many stores cannot (or will not) accommodate this.

The idea of creating online testing software using virtual stores was revolutionary – but much remained to be done because no one had yet figured out how to do it.

In the preceding years there had been some attempts to represent stores in 3D and have customers push a virtual shopping cart through virtual aisles – but never online. And having been on the other side as a manager in retail distribution, I can confirm that none of it was very exciting. Not much was out there – cumbersome, not very user-friendly solutions, unattractive 3D images and 2D photo simulation of shelves, prohibitive load times, ineffective tracking tools, etc.

Premature attempts? Certainly, and as a result, major players in the mid-2000s (agro-food and retail multinationals) who actively wished to see this type of tool on the market, if only to reduce their research costs, remained dubious… possibly for some time. At the beginning of 2007, a manager in charge of one of the major French distribution giants told me nothing different.

And after him, many others. It is a well-known fact that truly revolutionary technologies must often overcome the errors of the past in order to gain a decent foothold!

This is not the fault of companies who tried their hand in the early 2000’s, it is just that technology had not yet reached its 2007 levels! ACTIPLAY is certainly very talented, but was also one of the first to take another look at this market – because we believed in it and a large company expressed a specific demand!

Challenge as a business principle

“Real-time 3D” is ACTIPLAY’s specialty, so we were given the go ahead!

ACTIPLAY recognised from the outset that one of the most critical factors for success was to create sufficiently realistic online stores to ensure that the panellist experience be as close as possible to what it would be in a real, physical store – otherwise, the results would not be accurate. An ambitious challenge, but if we could succeed…

Some months later, the first versions were available. Based on globally recognised 3D development software from Dassault Système (3DVIA Virtools), ACTIPLAY proposed a set of applications that could be used to create 3D stores with an “online test shopper” function. As soon as first-half 2007, Carlsberg began tests using custom 3D store models. Their products were arranged using highly realistic virtual planograms; in-store advertising created by its agency was placed appropriately, and all other store decor and furnishings were included.

To observe how customers would react in this little scenario, panellists with “ad hoc” profiles were recruited and given “missions”, which they would carry out from their own homes. ActiSku took care of everything and recorded thousands of data points in real-time, which Carlsberg could analyse only a few minutes later through a back-office function.

The first results seem encouraging, but to validate ActiSKU technology and to give it the credit it deserves for these “virtual tests”, Carlsberg also conducted traditional tests (duplicates of the virtual tests). The results indicate a correlation rate between the two methods ranging from 80 to 85%, which Carlsberg views as an excellent performance (today, this figure appears in a Carlsberg Group PowerPoint presentation posted on the internet). From then on, ActiSKU virtual testing had proven its effectiveness, but the software could still develop further. ACTIPLAY has no intention of resting on its laurels!

A dash of gaming, a pinch of imagination…

ActiSKU works and it provides conclusive results! In spite of this success, all the stores created for Carlsberg were custom creations, which made its research group dependent. But ACTIPLAY is a gaming specialist, let us not forget, expert at the art of facilitating player-interaction in virtual reality.

The next step was to create a new version of ActiSKU that gives research groups more autonomy. It would allow them to create test environments very quickly (complete stores, target areas, virtual show rooms) by using a 3D tool-box of basic objects and then customising them for particular stores: wall colours and textures, floors, ceilings, location and number of aisles, cash registers etc. Pre-fab elements to customise yourself. This would accelerate the pace of testing and make ActiSKU a true marketing management tool. Easy to say...

To create online software that is flexible, ergonomic, easy for marketing and artistic teams to use and doesn’t require in-depth IT skills, software that is capable of loading thousands of 3D objects within an acceptable time-frame, etc. – the technical challenges were immense. Few specialists in the world would even attempt such an ambitious project. In particular, one of the difficulties that no one had yet attempted to solve was that of displaying thousands of products in 3D!

Contact was made with OSEO to obtain financing for designing this ideal tool. Convinced of the validity of this technological approach and of the unique software that would result from it, OSEO offered a first R&D financial package in 2007, and a second followed in 2008. A lifeline for ACTIPLAY, which could now create the revolutionary software of its dreams.

And the genie is out of the box

Coming up with store templates that are pre-configured with objects such that clients can use them to create their own stores depends above all on having a list of “typical” costs that represent world business practices as faithfully as possible.

To address this need, in May 2008 ACTIPLAY hired a French expert familiar with designing sales spaces for mass retailers. He identified the ideal dimensions for furnishings, aisles widths, the number and configuration of shelves, etc. This work lasted several weeks, but was indispensable for creating stores that up close resemble “real” stores and comply with the standards which apply in the real world. The realism of the final store determines the extent to which panellists can “immerse” themselves, and as I said earlier is a constant challenge. Today, this expert continues to guide us through change at ActiSKU

For more than a year, engineers at ACTIPLAY have had a second obsession: coming up with technical innovations that will allow the thousands of generic products modelled in 3D on virtual shelves to load and display quickly. This involves making hundreds of colours, textures, and virtual objects available in a database that clients can use to customise their own sales spaces, a feat that requires us to pool and mobilise all of the company’s brain power!

Today, a 3D store with 1000m² of floor space takes less than one minute to load completely using a standard ADSL connection. Who can say that? This was THE sine qua non for “democratising” virtual testing and making it appealing to an larger number of manufacturers, wholesale and retail distributors, and research and survey groups.

A test to validate new packaging can be created in less than half a day. Because of Carlsberg’s demand for this capability, ActiSKU greatly extended its territory in 2006,. The capability can be used to determine the ideal selling price for new products relative to competitor pricing. Packaging design companies can more easily analyse the choices consumers make when presented with new packaging. ActiSKU can also trace the “customer path” through a sales space and identify the “hot spots” where customers linger in the aisles. And all this information is available at a single click!

I am reminded of an amusing anecdote. In 2002 or 2003, the distributor for which I was working wanted to remodel all signage in all stores. Can you imagine the investment required to make such a change in more than 200 hyperstores? Not to mention the financial risk if the change did not work? To explain to us the design principles and help us assess the visual impact of the proposed design, the advertising agency created a cardboard mock-up of the store. It featured scale versions of the shelf tags and the placards which mark off the various groups of shelves – Drinks, Breakfast Foods, CDs, etc.in short . all the signage as it would look in the final setup. As a final effort to persuade us, the agency made a short film using a miniature camera, to show what would be seen by a customer browsing the various shelves. It was the early years following 2000. People used – with ingenuity whatever was on hand. Today, with the emergence of software such as ActiSKU, we can trace the customer path and simplify the process of making effective marketing decisions.

We’re off on an adventure, a business adventure!

ActiSKU began its business adventure well before the current version saw the light of day. This gives ACTIPLAY marketing personnel a significant advantage. In our various discussions with manufacturers, major research groups, wholesale and retail distributors (in France and abroad, particularly in the United States) we always, without fail, discover new uses for ActiSKU. The software is licensed per country. Then, a flat rate is charged per panellist who completes an assignment. We have chosen a simple and flexible business model that reflects the spirit in which this unique software was first conceived.

A potential distributors for ACTIPLAY in the United States says that for a year he has searched throughout North America for a tool capable of doing what ActiSKU can do. Once again, ActiSKU, the revolutionary, 100% French-made product, is experiencing what other software solutions that came before did: a launch attended by fanfare … but in a land other than its country of birth!

''*The author of this article: Hervé Bonnard, is a former newspaper journalist and publication manager. He has also managed communication/marketing teams for mass retailers. He currently serves in a management capacity at ACTIPLAY."