• by Laurie Petersen , July 3, 2007

Moms Insight Network (MIN), an online community set up specifically as a research forum for marketers, officially opened its doors to subscribers on Monday.

 

While community-focused sites from iVillage to Moms Online have positioned themselves as a market research tool for years, the new network from San Francisco, Calif.-based Market Tools purports to be the first community established expressly for the purposes of market research.

An $80,000 annual subscription gets a marketer a quarterly report in one category along with the opportunity to conduct a quarterly survey. Marketers can also pay $24,000 on a per-quarter basis. Each additional category can be purchased at a 20% discount.

In addition to its 10,000 online "ZoomPanel Moms," MIN also partners with a blog analysis firm and offers an Internet-wide text analysis of moms' conversations from 50 million web sites, according to Emily Morris, director of product marketing for panels and communities at Market Tools.

Marketers get the chance to put questions to the community through moderators. Product and service categories range from baby care and education to toys, games and health and wellness. More will be added based on client demand, Morris says.

Clients can get reports based on specific audience segments such as special-needs moms, moms of elementary school students and so forth. The age of moms, the gender of their kids and demographics are the most predictive segments, Morris says. MIN researchers can identify participants by their self-selected style of parenting -- experimental or rigid -- and then track their attitudes across the forum on other issues, she adds.

Here are some of the emerging trends now being discussed:Packaging and how it plays a role in the environment.

• Moms are looking for environmentally friendly, reusable and recyclable packaging -- particularly in cleaning and laundry products. They're also looking for easier-to-pour packaging with better labeling.
• Play time is viewed as a way to make up for shortcomings at schools. So there are demands for toys and games that offer exercise as well as a chance to develop thinking skills and problem solving.
• Concern about society driving kids to grow up too fast. From weaning to potty training to reading, moms want to savor the age their kids are at and let them grow up on their own schedules.
• Nutritional issues. There is confusion about what constitutes healthy eating and why it's necessary to include all the food groups in a diet.

  DelMonte Foods is one company already tapping the conversations about food and cooking to get at the values moms attribute to foods.