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| Online Research Overview
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| By Allen Hogg |
| Allen Hogg is a director in the research management organization of the Chicago office of TNS. He has led workshops and given presentations on online research for the American Marketing Association, the Marketing Research Association, the Advertising Research Foundation, ESOMAR, and numerous other research organizations, as well as at client companies and university venues. His writings have appeared on the pages of Marketing News, Quirk's Marketing Research Review, and the annual journal of the Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO). |
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The Growth of Online Research
Marketing researchers’ use of the Internet is exploding. The newsletter Inside Research, which has been surveying firms to track the amount of money spent on online research efforts, estimates that less than $3 million was spent in the United States in 1996. By the year 2000, Internet research was a global phenomenon with estimated spending of $461 million. This suggests an annual growth rate of more than 250 percent.
Despite the volatility of the stock price of Internet firms, the use of online methods to conduct marketing research shows no sign of abating. Inside Research reports that online research will account for almost $800 million in spending this year.
Some types of online marketing research are pure products of the Internet era. These include:
- Measurement of Web-site audiences and “surfing” activity;
- Testing of the effectiveness of online advertising; and
- Gauging reactions to Web sites themselves.
A growing majority of online marketing research efforts, however, represents a migration of more traditional research activities, such as:
- Concept testing;
- Customer satisfaction studies; and
- Focus group research.
Relationships With Research Providers
Industry spending figures only count research efforts directed by professional firms. The president of the Interactive Marketing Research Organization has said that there may be three to four times as much online research conducted in-house by companies relying solely on their own staff members.
Although many organizations have always conducted their own research, the development of the Internet may make it easier for firms to “do-it-themselves” than it was when they had to rely on such methods of research as telephone surveys, mail questionnaires and diaries, and face-to-face interviewing.
Organizations that do not wish to do it all in-house have many options, with providers willing to perform a variety of levels of service:
- License software. A company can buy a Web-survey package, but still host the research on its own servers and handle all the study design, programming, and analysis;
- Use an ASP. Company researchers can design studies themselves and program them via the Web using offerings of application service providers. The application service provider will then host the study on its Web servers and often can present results via online reporting tools;
- Use a service bureau. Some providers will take companies’ fully developed survey questionnaires and program them as well as host them on their servers.
- Use a full-service firm. Companies can still, of course, rely on a full-service research provider to guide them through the entire study, program and host surveys, and provide reports and analysis through online and offline means.
Companies Conducting Online Research
Inside Research estimates that, in the United States, 75% of Internet-research spending is devoted to better understanding of attitudes and activities of consumers, while 25% is spent on business-to-business efforts. Major companies that have talked about their Internet research efforts at industry conferences include:
- Firms devoted to the Internet, such as Expedia and Yahoo!, and
- Such high-tech companies as Intel, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems.
Online research is not confined to these types of organizations, however.
Consumer packaged good giants like Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, and Kraft are also taking advantage of the Internet to conduct research. General Mills, in fact, has forecasted that 60% of its 2001 research budget will be allocated to studies using online methods.
Online Research Appeal
General Mills has concluded that using online methods has reduced the time it takes to complete a typical survey by two-thirds and has produced an average cost savings of 50 percent.
A study conducted by Thomas Miller and Abhilasha Gupta at the University of Wisconsin’s A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research tells a similar story. More than 300 research providers and users responded to their survey. These research experts said that—compared to traditional methods such as face-to-face, telephone, mail, and mall surveys—online research:
- Has a lower total cost;
- Has a lower cost per respondent;
- Is speedier;
- Can reduce interviewer bias; and
- Makes it easier to examine data as they are collected.
People also would prefer to take surveys over the Web. Burke Interactive has found that, when given a choice between taking a survey over the telephone or the World Wide Web, as many as 90% of people with Web access will say that they would rather do it via the Internet.
In one parallel Burke study, the same survey was administered over both the phone and the Web, with people randomly assigned to take a particular version. The people taking the study online were significantly more likely to indicate that they definitely would participate in similar research in the future.
One reason might be because Web surveys generally take respondents less time to complete. In the parallel study a survey that took, on average, 19.4 minutes to complete over the phone took those responding online an average of just 12.5 minutes.
It is not always faster to go through an online questionnaire, however: A survey that asks respondents to type in answers to a lot of “open-ended” questions can tend to take more time than the same survey administered via the phone.
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2001 MarketingPower.com Inc. Contents used by permission of the author. |
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