Comments on: Online Research Getting Tested By Big Spenders

By: Rob Killough, Project Manager

Rob Killough, Project Manager — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:12:48 +0000

You are spot on, Wesley. Clients want the cheapest, fastest, and best quality for everything. The problem is, you can’t always get all 3!! While the web survey is certainly the cheapest and fastest, no matter what quality control practices you implement to catch the ‘professional surveytakers’, you will always have some measure of data quality compromised. In the end, cheaper sometimes just yields cheaper results — the best practice for marketing researchers in the future will involve multi-modal approaches utilizing online communities, quantitative web/phone/mail studies, online focus groups, etc…

By: Wesley

Wesley — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:51:05 +0000

Good post. I agree. Many studies yield flawed results when cost is the only sample/mode decision driver. Sometimes the nature of the custom research / full service research study requires RDD phone sample even when it’s twice the cost of a web study. Other times, web sample is fine. In still other cases, the web might be best but you can only get the sample via phone. Finally, a custom panel can be a great source of sample for the right types of studies. In the end, you need to trust your marketing research partner to make sample/mode recommendations based on what’s best for your study, not just offering the lowest cost.