The focus group (online or in person) is a tried-and-true method for gleaning qualitative insight from a subset of your target audience.  One of the most attractive benefits of the focus group is the presence of a trained moderator, who can direct and manage conversations so as to target specific questions. The answers to these questions can produce valuable insights that drive marketing decisions and fuel additional quantitative research, both of which ramp up business performance.

But what are your options when you need qualitative reactions from a larger group of people?  Or if you’re not exactly sure what your focus should be?   What if you don’t even know what issues you need to address?  How do you reach your target audience and get them talking freely about what they like, what they don’t like, and what they’d like to see in the future?

For many companies, the answer to this dilemma is to develop an online community. In an online community, your customers can interact not only with a moderator, who sets the ball rolling on precise exercises, but also with each other.  This produces dual benefits. First, it lets researchers drill down on specific issues. Second, it provides ample opportunity for community members to raise new topics that may not previously have been considered priorities.  Keeping these communities invitation-only allows researchers and their clients a way to interact with customers within the proverbial “walled garden.”

FGI’s suite of community products offers additional twists on the private online research community: the opportunity to run topic-driven sessions for short periods of time to deal with a specific set of concerns, or to run the community as a permanent website that is always available to members.  The short-term session is an excellent method both for defining the parameters of an upcoming quantitative study and for identifying future research paths to be explored. Long-term communities, meanwhile, let customers bring up concerns as they arise, allowing businesses to monitor subjective feedback in real time. Each type of online community has specific advantages that respond to different needs. Whether your intent is to keep a constant eye on customer satisfaction or to gauge their opinion on a time-sensitive decision, FGI can help you build a community to satisfy your objectives.

Heather Woodward
Director, Online Research
FGI Research

To learn more about online communities with FGI Research, contact one of our representatives. You can also join FGI’s own SmartCommunity, our proprietary online community where SmartPanel panelists contribute to independent qualitative research and offer their views on the latest trends.

Most media leaders concur that print media is floundering. Trends in technology, communication and markets reflect that fact (Steve Jobs just ushered in the next wave of online content readers with Apple’s iPad). An entire genre of journalism seems to have emerged just to cover the decline, not only in print but online. According to the New York Times, sixty-two percent of journalists think the Internet has forever altered their profession’s principles, eroding the standards of good journalism and the relevance of print publications alike. Still, new data from FGI Research indicates that print may yet have an audience. While 67% of consumers surveyed say they see a decline in the use of print versus other types of media to stay informed, 74% say they “would not prefer that online publications eventually replace print publications completely.”

Subscriptions to and circulation of print media first began to drop in the 1920’s, when print started competing with radio for audience. The rise of television put a bigger dent in newspaper market share and ad revenue. But high-speed Internet has by far been the biggest threat to traditional print media, since online publishers offer content in a variety of formats that are not only easy to access but, for the most part, free. FGI Research asked consumers to tell us where they get their information, what they think about the decline of print media and whether they would be willing to pay for online subscriptions.

Rupert Murdoch comments on the rapid change in communication technologies.

Where News Comes From
Notwithstanding the rash of stories about how online sources threaten print, FGI’s data show that 1 in 3 (33%) consumers still use print publications “most often” to stay in-the-know, compared to 28% who use online content most often. 39% use both equally often.

“Which of the following sources do you rely on for information?”

Meanwhile, two thirds (69%) of respondents say they “use online publications to supplement print publications,” while 20% say they rely solely on online sources for information. 11% say they never use online sources. These results indicate that, while consumers may turn to online content for some information, they have not abandoned print altogether. Indeed, some do not even use online sources. It follows that traditional media still has a market. In fact, a little over half of consumers (52%) said they purchased print sources from newsstands and stores, compared to 48% who did not.

Consumers Still Read Some Print
This begs the question: what kinds of print media do readers use? In terms of subscribers, local newspapers and national magazines are the most popular, with 52% of consumers saying they subscribe to local newspapers and 46% saying they subscribe to at least one national magazine. Some print sources clearly are not experiencing the same losses as others. However, other print sources are in big trouble.

“What kinds of print media do you subscribe to and pay for?”

National Newspapers, Local Magazines Lag
According to the graph above, only 10% of consumers surveyed subscribe to a national newspaper. 11% say they subscribe to at least one local magazine. Meanwhile, 29% say they neither subscribe to nor pay for any kind of print media, though that does not guarantee that those consumers use online sources instead (they may simply not look at the news at all). Even so, the data suggests that some print sources have been hit harder than others.

Online Subscription Fees Not the Solution
Most readers use both online and print sources for information. Two thirds use online content to supplement print. This is partly the reason why print newspapers are worried about declining readership. Consumer opinion suggests they are becoming less relevant –and that they do not provide everything consumers want to read. Declining ad revenues and profits exacerbate newspapers’ anxiety.

At the same time, subscription fees are not attractive to media consumers. National newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, whose print readership has declined, but whose online content is king, have considered charging an online subscriber fee to stay afloat. But FGI Research’s data show they would have some convincing to do: 70% of consumers say they are unwilling to pay a fee for online content. Indeed, part of the attraction of online content –at least until now –has been the fact that it costs nothing.

The Search for the Perfect Subscriber Fee
Even if they had to pay to read, the vast majority of consumers (87%) say they “should be charged less than what [they] pay for print publications,” because of perceived lower production costs. Since “publishers aren’t spending money on paper/printing,” readers believe they should not have to pay a price reflective of those costs. Only 10% think they should pay “as much as” they pay for print subscriptions because they consider the services “comparable.” The remaining 3% think they should pay “more than what [they] pay for print publications” because of the wider array of information available. For the most part, consumers are opposed to the idea of paying for online content. This puts today’s print media in a bind. How can they satisfy all of their readers while generating enough revenue to turn a profit and satisfy shareholders?

Actionable Insights
Declines in subscription, circulation and other performance measures have given today’s print media plenty of reasons to worry. However, FGI Research’s study indicates that they may still have an audience. As for how to respond to readers who have migrated online, while consumers may balk at the idea of a subscriber fee, some may sign on at the right price (less than what they pay for print). Overall, this data gives the print media industry some hope for the future –if they act now. How should publishers respond?

• Conduct research to find out what demographics use which sources, and organize content accordingly. Target your content and publications for the right audiences.
• Using qualitative as well as quantitative data, find out the ideal price of an online subscriber fee. Begin testing now.
• Use qualitative data to find out what draws readers to one publication over another, and respond to those data to maximize readership no matter where you publish. Use qualitative data to fuel future quantitative studies.

Next Steps You Can Take

• Learn more about the results of this study: complimentary access to the data in this report, including cross-tabulated results, is available upon request from FGI Research.
• Contact FGI Research: click here or call us at (919) 929-7759
• Explore FGI Research’s market research solutions, including custom panels, full service research, and our online sample (SmartPanel).
• Join FGI Research’s online panel to participate in future studies.

Survey Methods
Respondents: 300
Date of Survey: April 7th-14th, 2010
Sample Source: FGI SmartPanel

This nationally-representative sample consists of adults aged 18 and up and is balanced to the US population using recent census data. One can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

FGI Research clients choose our full service solutions because of our reputation for quality, insistence on best practices, innovative use of custom platforms, and our dynamic approach to insight discovery and mining.

Questionnaire Design

FGI Research brings extensive experience to the design process and we always look for ways to improve the questionnaire. Whether the questionnaire is one your organization has designed and the only need is refinement and consultation, or we construct the questionnaire, we design questionnaires that tap only the most useful, actionable information. In addition, we have a proven methodology for migrating studies and questionnaire from telephone to online.

Surveys and Data Collection

FGI Research excels in all areas of the survey data collection process. Using online panels and web-based surveys or our 90-seat phone center, our clients rave about our ability to deliver high quality data for some of the most complex surveys. Regardless of the mode (online, phone or mail), FGI Research designs and collects data for a broad range of survey methods, industries, and applications. Every survey we conduct, from quick polls to highly complex surveys, is supported by experienced project managers and programmers, sampling experts, and strict quality control procedures. In addition, we use our proprietary sampling method (iGAGE) to deliver the most representative results possible. FGI is experienced in programming and delivering data for the most basic, linear surveys to segmentation, conjoint and discrete choice model methods.

Analysis & Reporting

FGI Research produces topline, executive summary, and descriptive analytical reports as needed. We also offer a range of full service custom reporting. Our custom reports not only describe data, but they identify key findings and supply actionable recommendations. FGI Research provides guidance in using and interpreting the data, not just a summary of the data.

Customer Satisfaction Measurement and Competitive Benchmarking

Our approach to customer satisfaction measurement and competitive benchmarking is flexible and can be tailored to your needs. We do not have a canned approach, but rather a starting paradigm. We also believe that customer satisfaction measurement should “peel back the layers” to examine the key drivers of satisfaction and loyalty.

Our approach to competitive benchmarking is similar to our approach to customer satisfaction measurement. It is impossible to compare your organization to the competition unless you have an accurate picture of the market, your competition, and your organization’s role in that world. The competitive benchmarking study can be combined with a customer satisfaction study to develop a picture of the competitive landscape.

Awareness and Usage Gap Analysis

Through a proven, powerful survey methodology, FGI measures a product’s awareness in the market, and quantifies the reasons for the gap that exists between that awareness and adoption. We measure the specific barriers to adoption, and compare the results for your products and services to those of your competitors. The gap is measured and described through understandable, meaningful, and actionable insights our clients may use to close that gap.

The unprecedented growth of the Internet in general, and social media in particular, is giving market researchers a powerful new source of information to better understand their customers and targets. By the end of 2009, according to a report by Forrester Research, more than 85% of online consumers in the United States will be reading social media content. Based on current trends, each year 156 million people will Tweet, 200 million people will use Facebook, and 133 blogs will be active.

Ignore the “Cloud Conversations” At Your Own Peril

In order to gain the most continuous and comprehensive view of the market, today’s market researchers must incorporate web monitoring and social media mining into their toolbox. When social media are ignored, researchers miss out on millions of ideas, issues, opinions and trends that are expressed every single day. So, the real question is not “if” but rather “how” you should incorporate social media into your marketing research.

Plug Into the Web…Plug the Web Into Your Research

Social media monitoring is best used as a listening tool that is combined with existing market research methods to uncover ideas and trends, accelerate learning, and expand the quality and depth of insights. Using advanced technology for capturing and processing social media mentions, market researchers can continuously spot trends, gauge positive and negative sentiment, and quantitatively validate and segment the trends and sentiments. Using this approach, social media immediately provides real value in a wide variety of research applications including trend tracking, concept tests, awareness and usage, customer satisfaction and more.