Lessons Learned From NASA Mishandling of Air Safety Survey

Damage control is an art form, best left to public relations professionals. While pharmaceuticals and other giants have learned from years of safety recalls (i.e. Tylenol, Vioxx, B&L MoistureLoc) what to do and not do in the face of media viciousness and consumer outrage, NASA fumbled terribly. Read more

Teens on MySpace

Whether or not MySpace accounts are mainly teens to twenty somethings is highly debatable. One school of thought is that MySpace registered users skew much older than the demographics suggest, because they may lie about their self-reported demographic info.

But this TRU research survey mentioned below specifically sampled teens about their destination choices. Those participants indicated MySpace as one of their top destinations. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really suggest what the up and coming new alternatives to MySpace will be.

For further information:
TEENAGE RESEARCH UNLIMITED
Rob Callender
707 Skokie Blvd., 7th Floor
Northbrook, IL 60062
(847) 564-3440

Dec. 13, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TEENS’ SPACE: MYSPACE TOPS TEENS’ LIST OF ONLINE DESTINATIONS

Northbrook, Ill. – Six months after achieving a major upset over more-established websites, MySpace (http://www.myspace.com) continues to solidify its position as teens’ most-visited web destination.

According to a new TRU survey of more than 2,000 teens aged 12 to 19, more than one-third of respondents (34%) listed MySpace as one of their two most-visited websites. Runner-up Yahoo collected 19% of teens’ votes, while third-place Google claimed 14%.

MySpace’s achievement is even more impressive than the numbers suggest because the responses resulted from a write-in question, TRU Trend Director Rob Callender said.

“The internet offers virtually unlimited content,” Callender said. “So the fact that more than one-third of teens were able to agree on a single web destination—without the benefit of a list of choices—speaks volumes about the impression MySpace has made on teen life.”

And MySpace has been able to build this consensus with impressive speed, Callender said.

“MySpace made its TRU Study debut one year ago. At that time, nine percent of teens listed it as a favorite—good enough for third place. Six months later, it vaulted to first place with mentions from 24% of teens. This fall’s results show MySpace consolidating its lead even further.”

The TRU Study reveals some interesting demographic differences:

» MySpace takes top honors among each age group (12- to 15-year-olds, 16- and 17-year-olds, and 18- and 19-year-olds) but significantly more of the oldest teens say it’s one of their most-frequented destinations compared to other age groups.
» MySpace takes first place among both guys and girls, but significantly more girls say they visit the site most often.
» MySpace is the most-visited website among African-American teens, Hispanic teens, and white teens. Interestingly, significantly more Hispanic teens claim MySpace is one of their most-visited sites compared to the other ethnic groups.

The Fall 2006 TRU Study also reveals that nearly six teens in 10 (58%) say they’ve checked out someone’s profile on a virtual-networking site. Nearly half of teens (49%) say they themselves have profiles on a virtual-networking site. MySpace again leads: 40% of teens say they have a MySpace profile, compared to 10% for Xanga and nine percent for Facebook.

This research data is part of The TRU Study. The largest study of its type, The TRU Study provides a twice-annual profile of teen attitudes, values, lifestyles, consumer behaviors, and trends. The research is based upon responses from more than 2,000 teens nationwide. The sample is representative of the overall U.S. teen population in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, and region of residence.

TRU, based in Chicago, is the nation’s pre-eminent market-research firm specializing on the teen market. Last year, TRU conducted 1,000 qualitative-research sessions, in addition to many in-depth interviews and customized quantitative studies. Over the past 24 years, TRU has interviewed nearly one million teenagers.

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Article: Consumers Punishing Physical Stores for Sins of Online Counterparts

eWeek reports: Consumers Punishing Physical Stores for Sins of Online Counterparts

“Nordstrom, for example, has a reputation for delivering extremely personalized and attentive customer service for people visiting their stores. That high-touch attribute is quite difficult to replicate online, setting the company up to disappoint online visitors. Those disappointed online visitors could then potentially punish the brick-and-mortar locations.”

“Retailers have been very slow to understand that, to the consumer, it’s one brand.”

“The retail brand today transcends the channel. When [customers] have a poor Web experience, as in poor page loads [or] unsuccessful transactions, it’s taken out on the storefronts, too. Consumers don’t understand the complexity of delivering an optimal Web experience.”

Key take away: A company must work hard in both the physical and online worlds to deliver a consistent message and high user experience. Failing in one environment will discourage the consumer to interact with the brand in the other.

-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at NewMediaSandbox.com and Chaos365.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Use Yahoo Answers for fielding simple questions

Your a marketer, you need some quick opinions and you have no budget for formal market research. What can you do?

Yahoo! Answers is an easy solution to add to your personal marketing arsenal.

It is a community of registered Yahoo! users that participate in answering questions asked by other Yahoo! users.

Benefits:

• Fielding a question is quick and easy to do.
• You have a wide range of categories and sub-categories to submit your question to. (i.e. Beauty & Style, Business & Finance, Entertainment & Music, Health, Society & Culture, Technology , plus many more.)
• You get relatively instant feedback.
• It’s free.

Limitations:

• You have limited ability to target demographically or geographically. Although Yahoo! collects self-reported information (i.e. gender, age, location) from its registered users, we users can’t take advantage of that to target our question(s). Basically, you can select a category of interest and add some descriptive text (e.g. “Teens only please”).
• The answers you get are in no way statistically significant. But at least you get verbatim opinions, which do have value and provide unanticipated insight. Also, some people post answers solely because it helps them gain more personal points, not because they want to be helpful or enjoy expressing their opinion.
• You’ll get the majority of responses in the first 12-24 hours, then little else. Since so many people are submitting questions, yours will be push down fairly quickly.
• Most responders do follow your instructions, but be prepared for some nasty responses. There are a small group of people who are beligerant, but you have the ability to report them to the Yahoo! Answers administrators.

Of course, nothing is completely “free.” You have to invest a bit of time…

• You need to create a Yahoo! acount
• You have to participate by answering other questions to earn points. Those points allow you to post your own questions and have advanced functionality.

In summary, if you need to get some quick opinions from the community, or validate an assumption, try posting your question on Yahoo! Answers.

I hope you find this useful.
-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at NewMediaSandbox.com and Chaos365.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.