1. Introduction
2. Sampling
3. Fieldwork
4. Response rates
5. The questionnaire
6. The data and the database
7. Ascription of the Digit Life data
Defining target markets in EMS and EMS Digital Life
The media landscape today is becoming more diverse, fragmented and complex, driven by technology, and as a consequence its audience is becoming more sophisticated and technology savvy. The importance of websites in our day to day life is becoming more and more substantial. Besides that, the growing number of digital media platforms used is also making the media landscape more fragmented.
To ensure companies to stay ahead of the game and continue to be in control of their media exposure, the EMS Media and Marketing Survey expanded to cover affluent digital consumers.
Starting June 2007, EMS probes into the digital media consumption and lifestyles of well-off consumers and top business decision makers in Europe.
The first step taken to address the changing media environment was to also include website R&F questions in the EMS telephone questionnaire. The addition of digital media to the current TV and print audience measurement will make EMS a full cross-media planning tool.
At the same time the EMS Digital Life survey was launched. This new survey is covering a broad variety of digital topics, from the usage of digital media through the usage and ownership of digital devices such as cell phones, PDA, iPod and Laptops. By including a diary section, EMS Digital Life is aiming to provide our clients an even better understanding of the rapid changes in media usage and to demonstrate the impact these developments have on our daily lives.
EMS combined with EMS Digital Life will provide our clients with a very rich data set covering cross-media R&F data, additudinal and marketing data, detailed online behaviour, sites visited and the influence of the web on purchase decisions in a very upmarket target group.
With the addition of the digital landscape to the EMS Survey, the EMS Summer 2008 release is tailored to new needs of the media industry, adding usage of websites & Digital Life to the existing wealth of print readership, TV viewing & marketing information
The EMS Digital Life Survey has been designed as a re-contact study on the European Media and Marketing Survey (EMS). All respondents that have been invited to participate in this follow-up survey have also completed the full EMS telephone questionnaire. EMS Digital Life covers 19 countries (all EMS countries excluding Russia).
All respondents from the EMS 2008 Summer data set who were willing to participate in future online surveys and who gave a correct e-mail address were eligible to be selected for the EMS Digital Life survey. Afterwards an extra filter has been applied to make sure that the respondent did indeed fall into the EMS Digital Life universe; that is to represent all people from the EMS survey that use the internet for at least 1 hour per week.
Synovate conducted the EMS Digital Life fieldwork from 30 July 2007 – 31 March 2008. For the EMS Digital Life survey Synovate used an online questionnaire as the data collection method.
The e-mail invitations were sent out in fixed percentages per day to ensure an even spread of the diary data per weekday and weekend day. After the initial invitation e-mail, respondents were reminded up to 3 times per e-mail to fill in the questionnaire.
To guarantee an extra contact with the selected respondent, in case of faulty e-mail addresses and to avoid spam filters, an additional letter was sent to all respondents who also gave their postal address. This access letter contained a link to the secure online data collection platform as well as a personal login code and username to access the questionnaire.
To boost the response a telephone recall has been part of the fieldwork process. If respondents did not complete the questionnaire within 7 weeks after the initial invitation e-mail, they were approached by telephone to check their e-mail and postal address. If necessary the invitation e-mail and access letter were re-send to these checked and corrected addresses.
The response rate and the number of the online follow-up EMS Digital Life interviews achieved are given in the table below.
EMS Digital Life 2008 response rates
|
|
EMS Digital life sample
|
|
|
2007
|
|
Eligible Sample
|
16,400
(100%)
|
|
Successfully recalled
|
4,987
|
|
Entered questionnaire
|
3,539
|
|
Interviews achieved
(interview response rate)
|
2,803
(79%)
|
|
Effective response rate
|
17%
|
The EMS Digital Life questionnaire consists of a set of life style questions, designed to give more insight in the use and consumption of digital tools and products, and a diary part. The diary part captures the “yesterday” behaviour of the respondents; where people were, what they did, what devices they used, the preferred content and what they did at the same time simultaneously (multi tasking).
The average length of the life style questions is approximately 10 minutes.
The diary part takes approximately 24 minutes.
5.1 The Digital life lifestyle questionnaire
The life style part of the EMS Digital Life especially focusses on:
· Digital products owned / in household
· Connection digital devices to home networks
· Awareness of Digital features
· Social/professional networking
· Media consumption
· Communication with others
· TV features used
· Online features used / online features used mobile
· Online activities
· Music consumption
· Ecommerce
5.2 The Digital Life Diary
The EMS Digital Life Diary provides companies with detailed insights of what a ‘day in a life’ of affluent Europeans looks like:
· What media content their target audience is actually engaging to
· What time and place the media content is being accessed
· What devices are the target audience using to access the media
content
· The amount and nature of multi tasking when consuming media
content
In some cases when people were on a trip in the past 4 days, they were asked to answer for that specific trip day instead of yesterday. This was done to make sure that the ratio between trip days and ordinary days was respected. The diary questions were asked for 20 different day parts, covering the full 24 hours of that day.
The EMS Digital Life data set has been fully incorporated in the EMS Summer 2008 database by assigning it to the latest 12 months of the regular EMS data set (fieldwork 2007). All media and marketing data that are available in the EMS Summer 2008 database are also available for EMS Digital Life.
Since EMS Digital Life has been designed as a follow-on survey to the EMS survey, and afterwards has been linked to each respondent’s telephone interview by means of a unique serial number, there was no need for additional weighting and projection of the database to adjust for the EMS Digital Life Universe. Individual respondent weights, combined with an extra Digital Life filter will provide the user of the database with the correct EMS Digital Life Universe.
The EMS Digital Life database consists of 15,755 respondents, representing a total universe of 38.8 million affluent Europeans
Not all respondents who participated in the 2007 telephone interview completed the EMS Digital Life questionnaire. For those who did not, the information has been ascribed.
The missing variables have been ascribed to the non-respondents of the EMS Digital Life follow up questionnaire by using sophisticated statistical techniques. The resulting database contains the full set of variables for each telephone respondent.
The ascription process is conducted after several external conditions are set as to on what basis donor A is to be married to a recipient B: to find the best donor for each recipient. In this complex process we have made sure at least 6 variables were respected when assigning the data from a donor to a recipient. In practice this meant that no less than 112 matrix cells had to be taken into consideration.
The variables below were unconditional when performing the ascription process:
· Country groups:
· Austria, Bel/Lux, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands,
Norway, Sweden and Switzerland
· UK and Ireland
· France, Italy, Portugal and Spain
· Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland
· Gender: male, female
· Employment: working, not working
· Internet usage: heavy user, medium/light user
· Age groups: age below 40, age 40+
· Household composition: single person household, without children
under 16, family (or single person) with child(ren) under 16
EMS is an extremely rich database enabling you to define your targets, not only demographically and geographically but also according to ownership/recent purchase, brand/company awareness and image, attitudes and opinions, lifestyles and interests. The addition of digital media in 2007 to the current TV and print audience measurement will make EMS a true full cross-media planning tool.
EMS Digital Life, containing the digital life style and diary data, gives even more depth to the very rich EMS Summer 2008 data as it covers detailed online behaviour and the influence of the web on purchase decisions. Furthermore, it gives you a very good insight on how much “digital” has already been incorporated in the daily life of affluent and upscale target groups.
