Research Travel survey

Marketers wish to know not just the characteristics of a single advertising panel but of the cumulative effect of a number of such panels over a given period of time. What percentage of the target market is covered by the campaign? This is often referred to as either "coverage" or "reach". How often on average will members of the target market see the campaign? This is usually known as "average frequency".

To determine the overall reach and frequency for a campaign consisting of a number of posters sites, it is necessary to have an understanding of travel patterns.

Travel surveys are undertaken on a region by region basis. The most recently updated areas have been London, Central, North West, East and Southern England.

The survey also covers questions on demographics, exposure to other media, the use of technology, shopping habits, the use public transport, air travel and so on. It is from this that we obtain a depth of understanding about the type of person who sees the various poster formats and locations.

To date, individuals have been interviewed using the computer aided personal interview (CAPI) technique. Basically this means that the interviewer and respondent use a laptop as the prompt for the questions to be answered and to collect the replies. After completing the standard questionnaire, the detail of their recent travel routes is collected electronically using computer mapping techniques. The sample is split to cover travel over the previous 24 hours (70%) and the previous 14 days (30%).

The fieldwork is carried out by Kaleidoscope (the interviews) and Longdin & Browning (the mapping).

In 2007 we carried out an experimental study to compare the existing methodology with that of GPS data collection. We have placed here summary documents from the research partners in the project - Beacon Dodsworth, Kaleidoscope and MGE Data.