In-the-moment feedback

Geo-location has been a much talked about addition to the market research world, facilitated principally by the rise of smartphones. Currently used as a quant tool in the main, it also offers huge benefits to qual.

Zomato, a restaurant review and location app, uses GPS to offer users eating solutions near to them. The app seamlessly links to Facebook to make these reviews more personal if you have other users in your network. After all, who do you trust more: the app or your mates?

We know that user feedback plays a really important role in the customer journey and apps like Zomato that tap into this in a live way prompted us to think about the potential for adapting its usage as an alternative to approaches like mystery shops. Who better to measure store performance than people who are in the moment? Being prompted by geo-tagging to offer a written review of experiences enables retailers to gain instant feedback and interact with customers in a more conversational way even after they leave the store.

Lots of us love reading and writing reviews online and now the smartphone has given us the power and opportunity to take this into the high street and into the moment.

For more about Zomato
www.zomato.com

Darren Till
Research Consultant, Discovery

This article was first published in InBrief magazine, November 2013
Copyright © Association for Qualitative Research, 2013