Interview with Beat Fischer, intervista “Smartphone tracking will replace classic mobility diary studies”

Smartphone tracking is becoming increasingly popular in market research. The Swiss agency intervista uses the tool to drive mobility research. What is happening in the field and what challenges will the industry face in the future? Let's talk to Beat Fischer, intervista. Beat will also tell you more about his WoM22 session on the topic.

Week of Market Research Interview: Beat Fischer, intervista

“Smartphone tracking will replace classic mobility diary studies”

Smartphone tracking is becoming increasingly popular in market research. The Swiss agency intervista uses the tool to drive mobility research. What is happening in the field and what challenges will the industry face in the future? Let's talk to Beat Fischer.

 

The topic of your WoM22 web seminar on May 16 is "GPS-Tracking with a smartphone app". What will the participants learn that is new?

Beat Fischer: What certainly is new about this approach is that with mobility research is reaching the next level thanks to smartphone tracking data. In the web seminar, we first show how precisely mobility behaviour can be recorded with a smartphone app and how this methodology generates a huge treasure trove of data. After that, the participants will learn about the various areas of application with the help of concrete examples from practice.
 

► Sign up for Beat Fischer's web seminar: "Mobility research with smartphone tracking data" – to be held in German on Monday, May 9, at 2 pm

 

What has changed in mobility research in the last two years? In your opinion, would these changes have occurred even without Corona?

Beat Fischer: During the Corona pandemic, mobility behaviour changed very strongly and very suddenly. Numerous stakeholders from politics, business, science and the media urgently needed up-to-date data. Innovative approaches such as tracking with a smartphone app were predestined for this purpose. Therefore, it is probably fair to say that Corona, as in many other areas, has also accelerated the digital transformation in mobility research.

 

Data protection plays an enormously important role nowadays. Especially in smartphone tracking, panellists reveal a lot of sensitive data. What impact do you notice of this topic in your panel? How do the participants differ from the representative population?

Beat Fischer: The issue of data protection is of course very important in such tracking panels. For the willingness to participate, it proves to be very helpful that we inform the potential participants very transparently about the purpose of the data and also clearly show them the benefit of this research for our customers such as authorities, universities, public transport and companies from the private sector. Nevertheless, not every person has a smartphone, of course, and not every person is willing to be tracked via their smartphone. This has an impact on the representativeness of the sample that can be studied with this methodology. However, since we can cross-check our data with census data, we know that the limitations in terms of representativeness are only slight.

 

If you were to make three predictions for the future of smartphone tracking, what would they be?

Beat Fischer: The method has such weighty advantages that, in our view, it will become even more important in the near future and replace, for example, other classic mobility diary studies. The development of the technological possibilities will continue to advance, which will also allow the measurement quality to be increased even further. And the data will also be in greater demand in many applied areas such as billboard, consumer and tourism research.

 

What is the next objective for your mobility tracking? Is a rollout to other markets planned?

Beat Fischer: A major objective is for our methodological approach to be integrated into the largest mobility research projects, thereby increasing their accuracy and application possibilities. On this path, we recently reached an important milestone: we were commissioned to develop a smartphone tracking app for the future survey of the Microcensus Mobility and Transport. Now we have to successfully realise this project and also push ahead with other projects in parallel, e.g. in the area of distribution keys in public transport or topics from the field of sustainability such as CO2 consumption of individual mobility. As a technology supplier, we already started the rollout in other markets a while ago; for example, in Germany, our technology has been used in the geolocation tracking panel GIM Traces since 2019.

 

How is your approach fundamentally different from others?

Beat Fischer: Our approach includes not only a tracking app, but also complex and precise models that capture mobility in detail. We have also found a way to make the tracking very battery efficient, which makes it suitable for long-term studies. We have many users who have been continuously tracked for more than 3 years. Compared to data from mobile operators, for example, we have the advantage that we can link background variables - e.g. socio-demographics or interests - with the measured data and thus generate even deeper insights.

 

In your opinion, what challenges will mobility research face in the future?

Beat Fischer: As in many areas, the need for data is also increasing in the field of mobility research. Here it is important to use the opportunities of digitalisation and thus collect more and more precise data. Of course, the issue of representativeness also remains particularly relevant. The good thing about a panel approach is that you know the structure of the sample in great detail and can compensate for any bias.

 

Who absolutely shouldn't miss your web seminar?

Beat Fischer: Everyone who is interested in innovative research methods and especially in the topic of mobility research.

 

 

Beat Fischer is a member of the management board of intervista and a constant innovator in the field of market, social and mobility research. He has already won the GOR Best Practice Award twice in 2017 and 2021 and is very knowledgeable about digital research methods.

This interview was originally published in German on marktforschung.de (March 25, 2022) – here

 
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