The Power of Crowsdsourcing
According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of Crowdsourcing is as follows: The practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. atem.
If you are in a position where you are tasked with gathering on-going data for market research, consumer insights, customer experience measurement, or even operations management, crowdsourcing can be a powerful tool in gathering actionable customer feedback. If you then combine crowdsourcing with mobile app technology, it gives you a great research platform that allows customers to feel empowered because they can have a direct impact on the performance of your brand(s).
Think about some of the current methods of research that are being used by retailers, restaurants, and hotels. Whether they are small regional chains or large national companies, most of them use such methodologies as customer surveys, guest intercepts, mystery shopping, and panel group research to gather insights for both on-going and one-off projects. Why not complement or enhance these methods with data from real customers?
In the case of mobile market research, crowdsourcing works because you are not asking the customer to do too much. They are already at the location so it’s not as if you are asking them to go out of their way to complete a task or survey.
According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 81% of Americans own a smartphone. Where there’s a smartphone, there are people using apps, especially those from popular brands in the retail, restaurant, hotel industries.
So why not take advantage of the technology that is right in front of you?
With LiveShopper SDK, we offer our clients a software development kit (SDK) that allows them to easily take our technology and directly plug it into their existing mobile app. Once it has been implemented, all the LiveShopper SDK features are readily available for you to gather actionable data directly from your customers through crowdsourcing.
One major benefit of using the LiveShopper SDK with your existing mobile app is that you can then connect the research to your existing customer loyalty program. When a customer completes a task/survey, you control the reward being delivered to them. Why not reward your customers with loyalty points? If you want to go in a different direction, you could use a more general incentive like a discount on their purchase, or even a free product. This becomes even more powerful when the incentive is only redeemable on the customer’s next visit to help drive repeat business.
Also, it’s important to keep in mind that even though the LiveShopper SDK, the end client still controls the questions being answered by the customers. They can be customized by brand, region, or even down to the location level. Whether you are in Marketing, Operations, or Research, our DIY platform will benefit your exact needs.
Because LiveShopper SDK has mastered the power of crowdsourcing with mobile research, now is the time to move your research into the “next generation”.