Best Practices for Panel Management: Recruitment Sourcing (Part 1)
by Lisa Wilding-Brown, VP Panel Operations, uSamp
Recruiting and managing an online research panel is often a challenging and complex endeavor. The respondent lifecycle poses challenges every step of the way. Methodology, management philosophy, sourcing, rewards and technology all play a key role in generating high quality online sample. These fundamentals can be further complicated by the financial investment required to develop large-scale research panels. As clients evaluate panel providers, there are many standards that should be considered to ensure success from both methodological and financial perspectives.
Panels are not bottomless wells, and like anything that lives and breathes, they need to be nurtured and fed. The following blog series will illustrate the life cycle of a panel by addressing recruitment sourcing, registration, profiling, routing, incentives, and respondent engagement. Hopefully, this detailed look will encourage an examination of our industry’s health, and inspire future discussion for improvement.
Thinking Global, Acting Local: Why #MRX Needs to Renew Focus on Regional Differences
by Clif Fleitas, Senior Director, Technology Solutions & Inside Sales Development
Sample providers must thoroughly understand every market in which they work. There is no knowledge substitute for regional knowledge.
Survey Respondents Are People: Let’s Start Treating Them That Way
by Ben Leet, Sales Director, uSamp
I recently attended the MRS annual conference in London, and as usual it was an inspiring and thought provoking event. Of the papers or presentations that I was lucky enough to watch, very few were based on self-promotion and instead focused on what we as an industry can do to improve our craft. Topics ranged from gamification to NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), case studies on new or innovative methodologies, and of course, the odd interesting debate.
One thing struck me as distinctly lacking from any topic, and that is a very simple principle that uSamp has held for a long time – survey respondents are also people. People have a life outside of sitting on their computers / iPads / iPhones and taking online surveys. I really feel that the industry is losing sight of this. Maybe because there is no telephone or face-to-face contact with the respondent. Maybe because the appeal of mobile surveying has eclipsed attention to panelist experience (mobile does not mean that respondents are impervious to the invasiveness of answering questions that are poorly formatted to the medium). Maybe because we, as an online panel industry refer to our people as “assets”, “sources”, “panelists”, “traffic.” Whatever the reason, I’m calling on us as an industry to re-focus.
INFOGRAPHIC: Hispanic Social Media Habits and Privacy Concerns Study
Hispanics embrace social media such as Facebook, YouTube and Google+ more than the general population. But when it comes to sharing personal information about themselves, Hispanics are more cautious, according to survey results announced today.
uSamp, a leader in providing targeted audiences for global consumer insights, engaged 650 members from its newly inaugurated Hispanic panel, SúperOpinión.com, to survey participants on their attitudes toward social media compared to the general population. Here are the findings:
Understanding Acculturation & The Hispanic Market
by Vivian Acosta, Sr. Manager, Multicultural Insights, uSamp
In a previous post, Gregg Lavin introduced uSamp’s Hispanic Panel. A large part of getting access to the Hispanic market is tapping into the multiple segments. One can get very granular in segmenting the market by country of origin, but understanding acculturation level is critical. Why? Acculturation has a large impact on behaviors and needs which directly translate into specific purchasing behaviors and brand awareness.
It is important to understand and clearly define the unacculturated Hispanic segment because their consumer needs and behaviors are markedly different than the acculturated segment. Acculturated Hispanics have adopted the culture, and they are more likely to demonstrate consumer behavior, which is similiar to the general market. Conversely, the unacculturated population is comprised of those who have not relinquished the behaviors, attitudes, and traditions of their origin and as such demonstrate different behaviors, which brands certainly need to decipher. Simply put, when brands fail to segment the Hispanic market in this manner, they often fall short in their marketing and product development ventures.
How can market researchers better understand this complex and diverse audience? It is essential to gain expertise in this market, invest in tapping new, unique sources, in order to help clients glean the business insights that have been out of grasp for far too long.
Product Review: Google’s Consumer Surveys from a Market Research Perspective
by Matt Dusig, Co-Founder & CEO and Daniel Ross, SVP of Product & Technology, uSamp
When Google launches something new, it’s always a big deal-no matter how big or small. Within a matter of minutes, blogs are abuzz with speculation (“What is Google Up To?“). Spectators are overrun with whirlwind of emotions: excitement, fear, resentment, and praise for the powerhouse. Its latest innovation (or disruption-depending on which way you read it), Consumer Surveys, is not a surprising move for the company that holds the key to what Leonard Murphy identifies as the “ ‘Big Data’ aspect.” No doubt, Google has made its way into nearly every aspect of Internet life, and this move into the market research industry brings good visibility to on-demand SaaS insights. But if they want to be a true player in this space, there are a few key considerations to keep in mind.
- Google’s primary focus is to monetize premium content for publishers. In this vein, the solution is more polling than full surveying capabilities.
- Pricing is somewhat elusive. For demo targeting, it’s $.50 per response. But they don’t clearly tell you that a response is a single question. A 20 question survey with a screener or demo targeting will be a $10 CPI.
- Analysis of the relationship between survey questions is difficult and sometimes not even possible because of the question number limitation. Each person only answers 1 of the 20, and Google aggregates the data, which makes deep analysis harder.
- Targeting is limited to just age, gender and census region.
- Timeliness constraints such as completing the survey in a timely manner, publisher inventory at the time and competition with other surveys.
Their solution lacks many features that brands, insight directors and market research professionals would need and expect. But as we know, Google usually launches skeleton applications and builds upon them based on client feedback. And there are two elephants in the room – one which plays to their advantage: mobile (Android and the world of apps); and one which is potentially a bumpy road: data mining and privacy concerns.
Daniel Ross, SVP of Product and Technology at uSamp decided to take Google’s Consumer Survey insights program for a test drive. The following deconstructs the insights program from survey set-up to pricing to analysis. Ross researches a general population of individuals in the US that have gone on a cruise at least once in the past year. The sample size for this study is N=200.
Understanding the Purchasing Power of the Unacculturated Hispanic Market
by Gregg Lavin, Co-Founder & President, uSamp
One of the most fascinating things about working in Market Research is that the audience is continuously changing. One of the traits of a successful market researcher is the ability to nimbly react to these fluctuations.
Over the past decade, there’s been a significant change in the U.S. that is shifting not only the cultural demographics but altering the economic landscape. Since 2000, Hispanics have accounted for 56% of the U.S. population growth. In 2010, the Hispanic market represented 16.3% of the total U.S. population, and counted for 50.5 million. By 2014, one in every four mothers in the U.S. will be Hispanic. In five years, the U.S. Hispanics population is projected to have a purchasing power of $1.8 trillion (2007 Hispanic Market Monitor, Global Insight). Not surprisingly, organizations are keen to capitalize on the growth of this demographic. It remains one of the most challenging populations for Market Researchers to recruit.
Four Years of uSamp: The Men Behind The Story
As uSamp blows out its fourth birthday candle, co-founders Matt Dusig & Gregg Lavin discuss what the number four means to them.
What You Should Know About Tracking Studies (Part II)
by Scott Worthge, AVP, Survey Solutions, uSamp
Part II (read Part I)
Sourcing Respondents
These are just a few of the many issues that trackers bring to a researcher. At uSamp, we are frequently asked how the respondents for trackers can be sourced, what options are available and what are the benefits and drawbacks of each? Very generally, using an online panel, as well as an intercept methodology for a River solution, are both applicable. Here are some aspects to consider before making a choice about supporting ongoing data collection.
Taking the Pulse of the Market: What You Should Know About Tracking Studies
by Scott Worthge, AVP, Survey Solutions, uSamp
This is an introduction to our series on tracking studies. Over the next few posts we will be touching on some of the salient issues around this particular type of project. Why are tracking studies important? How are they executed? How are respondents sourced? And what key questions should you be asking your sample suppliers about their procedure? We hope you will share any examples, tips or opinions you have on trackers with us during this exploration.
