Innovative market research companies in Denver

This past Friday morning I had the pleasure of attending a DU marketing roundtable that featured four innovative qualitative marketing research companies. The focus of the event was highlighting businesses that are pushing the qualitative research envelope using technology. Technology has traditionally been the realm of quantitative research but these companies are moving qualitative forward. I’ll list out the companies I was most fond of first.

JetJaw – CEO, Mark Salsberry has created one of the coolest companies I’ve seen in a while. He’s piggybacking on a group of people I refer to as mobile influencers to help amplify positive sentiment or diffuse negative feedback when it’s most critical (point of purchase, etc) via mobile device. His system also has the ability to gain insight into what users are thinking that aren’t on opposing ends of the spectrum: very happy vs. very pissed off. Those outliers provide great insight but are not the average user having the most common experience. He shared results from a current contract with Schlotzsky’s. Using their system, they’ve seen a 600% increase in responses to Schlotzsky’s questions and 75% of those came from mobile devices. Here’s a video the help explain details around the service.

Qualvu – CEO, John Williamson’s company allows consumers to send video via Flipcams that Qualvu provides or smartphone video of them interacting with the product. Again, the immediacy is what makes this powerful. Companies such as HP actually hear Voice of Customer directly from their mouths. HP used Qualvu to find out what role technology played when college students were considering buying a new PC. This was an interesting example given HP’s recent decision to get out of the PC industry. I wouldn’t be surprised if those videos showed students talking about how much they wanted iPads.

iModerate – COO, Jen Mason Drolet’s organization utilizes online chat to collect qualitative data. Customers have the option of a having the client (listen only) in on the conversation with the consumer and the moderator. This allows for a more cost effective method of collecting data and real time adjustments instead of anecdotal changes.

GutCheck – CEO, Matt Warta talked about how his company automates recruitment for marketing research. They are incredibly flexible and far more cost effective than organizing focus groups. He spoke of an example where a client used their service to iterate through a potential offering by breaking 45 people into groups of five and then getting to the heart of what their offer should be.