As of April 2006, there are over 97 million mobile phone users in Japan, with 87% using the mobile Internet, a number surpassing fixed line Internet connections.

Mobile phone based research provides a new channel for accessing consumers, revolutionary in terms of its:

		Reach across the population
		Speed of response from the market (measured in hours)
		Specificity in terms of timing and respondent location

Mobile research therefore has the potential to close the gap between marketers and their consumers by offering the possibility of smaller, more frequent surveys with near to real-time response.

JMI has harnessed this power for 360-degree brand tracking in real-time; see Touchpoints-ROI. This provides marketers with hour-by-hour quantitative data of all the contact that happens between the target audience and their brands. In addition, it also provides multi-media qualitative data in the form of consumers' movies, photos and text comments based on brand Touchpoints.

JMI also uses mobile phones for in-store customer satisfaction (i-Loyalty) and other location-specific research such as event tracking using 2D bar codes to recruit respondents:

JMI's work in this field resulted in the company receiving the award for "Best new methodology" paper at the 2006 ESOMAR Congress in London.

For information about wireless customer satisfaction and event uses, please click here