Online Market Research

Market research is an important tool for any organization seeking a commercial opportunity, particularly for small firms looking to grow their business. From discovering a gap in the market to ensuring customer satisfaction and planning effective marketing campaigns, research can provide the market intelligence needed to encourage success, enhance competitiveness and maximize profits. An increasingly popular way to undertake market research is to conduct surveys via the internet and that is called Online Market Research. The continuing growth in online technology has had a positive impact on market research, offering clients a fast and cost effective method for researchers to reach their target audiences. And that is the basic foundation stone for Online Market Research companies and their trends.

A half-century after telephone surveys became commonplace, another market research channel is making waves. Online Market Research is growing an impressive 50 percent annually. An Acorn study for IIR revealed that 75 percent of research decision makers in the U.S. have now tried Online Market Research and expect to use it again in the future. The Internet has made it possible for businesses of every size to conduct meaningful Online Market Research and has caused the largest paradigm shift in the industry not seen since the late 1950's. For example, Microsoft's MSN.com conducts up to 50 Internet surveys a month to gauge user attitudes about its Web site. Many of its surveys last only two days and draw as many as 3,000 answers in that time, according to the company.

There are a range of options using the Internet to conduct Online Market Research: You can e-mail a "paper" survey and receive a reply by e-mail, or record your survey and answers with a diskette by e-mail using FTP downloads. You can have either static or dynamic HTML surveys using browsers. Utilizing Usenet, chat focus groups can be conducted online and newsgroups can be mined to find information and individuals. Message boards allow for dynamic real-time communication among numerous participants.

Advantages of Online Market Research:

There are a number of benefits to commissioning Online Market Research, including:
· the fact that large numbers of respondents can be surveyed at one time
· international boundaries no longer need to be an obstacle to research - worldwide
· surveys can be conducted at the click of a button
· it can be an inexpensive way to conduct large surveys - it is possible to get thousands of responses for just a few thousand pounds
· Pre-screened panels. Most large agencies have access panels which provide an easily accessible, reliable respondent base which can respond promptly to on-line questionnaires
· it allows for a very rapid turnaround – research can be undertaken and results received within a few days. Already, some US companies are offering same-day delivery of results

Online Market Research is also proving to be a valuable pre-qualification tool. Online testing to pre-qualify respondents for an online survey, including auto-validation of participants through screening questions, is now being used by organizations to better track its audiences.

Online Market Research makes the possibility of real-time feedback unlimited. For example, Online Market Research allows one to have different versions of surveys depending on how a respondent answered on a test (one for novices, one for intermediate and one for advanced, for instance). They take the test and then automatically the correct survey is presented. All the results are immediate.