Category Archives: QuestionPro

Survey Pocket Now Available for QuestionPro and Survey Analytics Users

Posted on January 23, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Are you going to a trade show or an event where you’d love to get feedback or use surveys as a lead generation tool?  Now is your chance.  The folks over at SurveyPocket are making an offer you won’t want to refuse!

Now all Survey Analytics and QuestionPro users will have access to this wonderful tool.  If you have an iPad, you will be able to use this feature for free and if you DON’T have an iPad — read on.

[Editor's Note:  This post was originally published on the SurveyPocket blog.]

SurveyPocket is such an awesome system for mobile field data collection, that we wish any researcher could use it anytime they’d like.

However, the sad reality is that some projects require more than just a couple of tablet devices.

Not everybody has a stack of iPads laying around, waiting to be used for research.

Except us, that is.

Yup.  We’re so excited to get you rocking on your next mobile data collection project, that we went out and bought 20 iPads specifically so you can use them for your next research project.

All our iPads are pre-loaded with a copy of SurveyPocket.  And of course, we provide you support along the way.

Call us impetuous.

Call us crazy.

But whatever you do, make sure to call us to arrange to use our iPads for your next project.

 

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Posted in News, QuestionPro, Survey Analytics

8 Even Better Ways To Designing Online Surveys Without Questioning Yourself

Posted on January 9, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Surveys are very powerful tools that help you figure out how to market and what your market really wants.  You can improve your decisions, by simply following this process:

1.       Establish survey goals:

First off, be very specific on what you are trying to find out. Be sure to write out your goals.

  • What do people think about your web page?
  • Is your target audience business owners?
  • Are they part of small businesses or large companies?
  • Where do they hang out most online?

2.       Decide who your sample audience will be:

Ask the following people to go through your survey:

  • People that visit your home page
  • People that visit your product page
  • People that read your newsletters
  • Get the word out by putting up your ads in Ezine.

3.       Decide which survey method going to use:

There are various choices of survey methods that range from the least expensive to the most expensive ones.

  • Personal Interviews – You can use your online survey tool to conduct phone interviews.  Instead of having the respondent fill out the online survey, you use the online survey as a discussion guide and you write in the answers to the questions.  This is a terrific method to use if you are doing exploratory research or have a longer survey.
  • Standard online surveys – This is the most common survey type.  Remember to keep your questions short and sweet.  Don’t let your audience spend more than 3 minutes answering your survey.
  • Mail – This method is rarely used.  It’s often expensive and doesn’t offer as much control as other methods.  The most common application is to send respondents a postcard with a link to an online survey or to print the link to your online survey on receipts or invoices or other forms of printed marketing materials.
  • Telephone surveys – This method has also become increasingly difficult because of do-not-call lists.  It’s generally expensive but can be effective if you are contacting customers who have opted in to receive information from you or with whom you have a relationship.

4.       Carefully plan out your research:

Once you know the method of survey you’ll be using and who you’re surveying for, you’ll need to:

  • Build a timeline for how long it’ll take from the survey design to the data analysis.
  • Estimate the cost involved.

5.       Design your survey:

Write your survey based on the survey method you’ve decided to use.

DO NOT try to make your survey all things to all people.  Remember, respondents will not want to spend more than a few minutes at a time answering questions.  Instead of breaking up a long survey into sections, consider breaking your sections into individual surveys.

6.       Pre-test analysis:

Carry out a pre-test analysis of your survey before the actual test. Pretesting helps determine if the survey is easy for the audience to understand, whether they’ll be able to successfully fill it out and whether there are any problems that are likely to occur. Remember, you may even need to rewrite the survey.

You can initially decide to pretest your survey to around 15 to 20 people, who you are fairly sure would respond (these could even be friends or family). At the end of the test, you’ll have a number of results what will tell you how your survey will perform with a larger number of audience, as well as the faults in the survey.

7.       Test:

Carry out the actual test once you’re done with the pretest. Collect and organize the data in an ordered format.

8.       Analyze your survey:

If the information you are using is quantifiable, you will be able to analyze it using statistics. However, you may need to dedicate sometime to learn how to use statistics first. And if you are well experienced in the use of statistics, you’ll want to develop a more qualitative survey based on basic reasoning and inferences.

Overall, your goals will shape out the questions to your survey and the answers to those questions will determine how your marketing plan should be, as well as the strategies you should employ.

 

 

 

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Posted in Best Practices, QuestionPro, Training

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4 Measurement Scales Every Researcher Should Remember

Posted on January 4, 2012 by | Leave a comment

One of the standard features offered by QuestionPro’s online survey software is a wide variety of scales that you can use to measure customer response.

At a first glance all the different scales that might seem similar and easily replaceable by each other. However, as you study them in depth, you realize the diversity of their natures and differences in their uses and their findings. There are over 20 different types of scales that are used by researchers in online surveys.  They can be categorized in two classes – comparative scales and non-comparative scales.

There are a number of factors you might consider when deciding on which scales to incorporate in a questionnaire and which ones to use while analyzing data. Some of the factors are:

  • The type of data that is required from the respondent – ratio, interval, ordinal or nominal.
  • How the information will be used once it is acquired.
  • Number of divisions in the scale – odd or even.
  • Types of statistical analysis methods to be used after data is acquired.
  • The physical form of the scale – vertical, linear, horizontal, etc.
  • Details to be provided in the scale as labels.
  • Whether or not response to a question is mandatory.

Since non-comparative scaling techniques are easier and simpler to understand, we’ll introduce to you the most important four scales. You’ll be delighted to see how easy it is to understand and use them. Those who already know about it them are encouraged to comment on the post and let us know any tips that might further help our readers in using these scales.

1.     Graphic Rating Scale

A graphic rating scale, also known as a continuous rating scale usually looks like the figure drawn above. The ends of the continuum are sometimes labeled with opposite values. Respondents are required to make a mark at any point on the scale that they find appropriate. Sometimes, there are numbers along the markings of the line too. At other times, there are no markings at all on the line.

2.     Likert Scale

A Likert scale typically contains an odd number of options, usually 5 to 7. One end is labeled as the most positive end while the other one is labeled as the most positive one with the label of ‘neutral’ in the middle of the scale.

The phrases ‘purely negative’ and ‘mostly negative’ could also have been ‘extremely disagree’ and ‘slightly disagree’.

3.     Semantic Differential Scale (Max Diff)

A semantic scale is a combination of more than one continuum. It usually contains an odd number of radio buttons with labels at opposite ends.   Max Diff scales are often used in trade-off analysis such as conjoint.

MaxDiff analysis can be used in new product features research or or even market segmentation research to get accurate orderings of the most important product features. The SurveyAnalytics platform help’s you discriminate among feature strengths better than derived importance methodologies. Like other trade-off analyses, the analysis derives utilities for each of the most important product features which can be used to derive optimal products, using market segmentation to put respondents into groups with similar preference structures, or to prioritize strategic product goals.

You can have your respondents perform Forced-choice nature of the tasks, where in SurveyAnalytics MaxDiff can disentangle the relative feature importance in cases where average Likert-style ratings might all have very similar ratings.

4.     Side-by-Side Matrix

Another very commonly used scale in questionnaires is the side-by-side matrix.  A common and powerful application of the side-by-side matrix is the importance/satisfaction type of question.

First, ask the respondent how important an attribute is, then ask them how satisfied they are with your performance in this area.  QuestionPro’s logic and loop functions also allow you to run through this question multiple times with other alternatives that the respondent might consider.  This yields benchmark data that will allow you to compare your performance against other competing alternatives.

Here is an example of data from an importance/satisfaction question.  The importance rating is the line and the performance ratings are the bars.  With this type of data, you can actually see where your company needs to increase its efforts to more closely meet the needs of the customer.

While there are many online survey tools and online survey software to choose from, you’ll find that not all of them have these different types of scales available to them.

As you’re designing your survey, be sure to offer a variety of scales.  Using different scales in your survey will engage the respondent more fully and prevent them from clicking the highest, lowest or middle rating all the time.  Another benefit to using different kinds of scales in your survey is that each scale provides you a unique perspective on the data that you are analyzing.

Before designing your survey, review the different types of scales and question types inside of your online survey tool and be sure to pick the one that will best help you make your decision.

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Posted in Best Practices, Feature Enhancements, QuestionPro

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6 Save-Your-Marketing Butt Strategies

Posted on November 23, 2011 by | Leave a comment

The best laid plans often end up failing.  But failing is a great thing.  When something isn’t working, you jump into action and often come up with terrific ways to improve the process or the system.

Rather than pout or rage about what isn’t working, take a look at this menu of six marketing strategies and see which ones will save your butt. 

  1. Drop Unprofitable products.  Profitability is more important than sales.  Evaluate your product lines and drop products that aren’t passing profit muster.  Another option is to raise prices on products that are unprofitable.
  2. Try new sales incentives and commission structures.  Sales people spend effort where they will make the most money.  Take a close look at your commission structure and make sure that you are rewarding sales people for profitable sales.
  3. Change how you sell.  Don’t just assume your current sales strategy is optimal. Consider using affiliates, partners, home parties, catalogs, internet, etc.
  4. Change or adjust your sales process or system.  Your sales process might be out-dated.  Take the time to explore new strategies such as Craig Elias’, Trigger Events or Jill Konrath’s  SNAP Selling.
  5. Develop or focus on lead generation program.  Where are your leads coming from and are they good leads.  Take a good hard look at your conversions from trade shows, web sites, etc and start optimizing all of them to attract your ideal customer.  For help, check out HubSpot – they are masters of inbound marketing.
  6. Develop a personal follow-up program.  Most sales are lost because our follow-up systems stink.  Map out your sales process and develop a follow-up system that touches your customer at least 7 – 10 times.  For help, visit Constant Contact, aWeber and InfusionSoft  and the new Nimble.

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Posted in Essay, QuestionPro, Survey Analytics

Who Says You Can’t ‘Tinker’ With Your Products?

Posted on November 14, 2011 by | Leave a comment

A new year is coming up and the really terrific thing about that is that marketers the world over have opportunities to turn something old and stale into something new and exciting.

I get that generating new products is really exciting — and it can get expensive too.  So here are some ideas on how you can create something new  from something old.  Think of it as recycling.

  1. Test higher and lower prices in different markets. You don’t have to charge the same price in the same market. Different markets have different needs, charge accordingly.
  2. Offer different sizes at different prices.  Pricing expert and author of 1% Windfall, Rafi Mohamed says that people will buy at price points that are appealing to them (assuming they have a need or interest in your product).  Give your customers the opportunity to try and buy.
  3. Change the name to reflect new market. If you’re launching into a new market, change the name of your product to better reflect the benefits your product provides.
  4. Develop new, more varied uses for your product.  We wouldn’t know that there were millions of uses for baking soda if Arm and Hammer didn’t pull them together and advertise them.
  5. Bundle products.  McDonald’s is king of the bundle.  Create a value offer that moves product at good margins and gives customers great value.
There is nothing like taking a whole new look at your products and services and making some basic tweaks and adjustments.  You’ll find that these recommendations actually cost very little and only take time in doing a little research and implementing the results.

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Use Survey Timer to Spice Up Engagement and Response Rates

Posted on November 11, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Survey Timer has been a feature on Survey Analytics for a while but it’s now moved over to those of us who use and love QuestionPro.

I have to admit that when I heard about it, I didn’t quite get it.  I didn’t understand the potential benefits that having a timed survey would offer.

So to get a little more information and clarity on the subject, I talked to Aditya Bhat, our director of sales.  Here’s a peek at our conversation.

What is Countdown Timer?

Countdown timer is a feature that actually sets a time limit on a survey.  Respondents literally have to complete the survey within a certain period of time.  When the timer runs out — the survey closes and the responses are marked as incomplete.   The minimum time limit is 1 minute and the maximum is 60 minutes.

Why would you ever want your survey to time out?  

Believe it or not, answering a survey under a given time frame actually increases the quality of responses in terms of capturing the first thing that comes to the respondents mind. A classic use case would be a quiz survey.

A Quiz Survey?  

Of course, surveys aren’t just for finding out what people think, they can be an ideal tool to find out what people know.  And using a timer increases their concentration on the material.  Too often, respondents are disengaged from surveys – they simply click on the extreme ratings; lowest, highest or right down the middle.  Often these responses can’t be used. Adding a timing feature increases their engagement and full participation.

What’s the benefit of this?

The biggest advantage of this feature is to reduce drop out rates. The respondents have to complete the survey as soon as they start it as there is a timer. They can not leave it and walk away from their desk etc.

Who do you see using this feature the most? 

Market Researchers and people running Employe satisfaction surveys.  When you have the employee answer the survey in a give time frame will get you more precise data as they dont have much time to think and alter their answer.

Countdown timer follows the gaming trend

If you’ve been reading our articles, you know that we’re big fans of making surveys more engaging and more fun — the industry calls it Gamification.  Big brands are using games to get their customers and fans more involved and online and mobile surveys have jumped into the fray as well.

If you haven’t tried the countdown timer feature in your surveys — be sure to give it a try.  Follow the help link to set it up: http://questionpro.com/help/610.html

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Posted in Feature Enhancements, New Features, QuestionPro, Survey Analytics

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Virtual Market Research Event Starts This Week

Posted on November 2, 2011 by | Leave a comment

The following is a re-print of an announcement from our new editor of Research Access

By the time the Festival of NewMR reaches its tenth anniversary, the novelty of online-only conferences may have worn off.  But it hasn’t yet.

Such online-only events are increasingly becoming part of the market research thought leadership scene, with entries in the past year from the American Marketing Association (AMA) and Market Research Global Alliance (MRGA).

While online-only conferences lack the appeal of traditional face-to-face interaction, they offer the advantage of allowing researchers who cannot travel to attend conferences the opportunity to participate, both as presenters and participants.  Online conferences open up the conversation beyond the “usual suspects” who attend multiple research conferences each year.

In year two of the Festival, last year’s organizer, Ray Poynter, who recently accepted the position of Managing Director UK with Vision Critical, has been elevated to Festival Chair, while last year’s deputy, Sue York, serves as this year’s Festival Organizer.

This year’s event is more even more ambitious than last year’s inaugural event.  The conference has activities all week from October 31st through November 4th.

The meat of the Festival is the so-called “Main Stage,” a twenty-three-hour marathon on Thursday, November 3rd.  Other activities include a Young Researcher Competition, a Training Day, and anInsight Innovation Competition.

This year’s Main Stage is comprised of seven consecutive sessions, spaced at three-and-one-half hour intervals.   A single registration is required for attendance at as many Main Stage sessions as desired.  The presentations chosen for the Main Stage were selected by online vote.

See below for the full November 3rd Main Stage program.

Poynter will be speaking to kick off Session 3 of the Main Stage at 7:30 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time on Thursday, November 3rd.  His topic is “NewMR, a View of the Next Two Years.”

NewMR previously used Ning as its website technology of choice, but this year they have switched to WordPress, which does not require users to register for membership.  The Main Stage program is being delivered via GoToMeeting technology.   

Principal sponsors of the Festival of NewMR include Survey Analytics (Silver), GreenBook Blog(Media), ESOMAR (Bronze), ASMRS (Bronze) and Q Analysis Software (Bronze).  If you are a “member, supporter, customer, or fan” of a Festival sponsor, you can attend the Main Stage at half price.  Sponsors also are contributing to an innovative e-Exhibition page on the NewMR site.

We hope to see you at the Festival of NewMR!

FESTIVAL OF NEWMR
Main Stage Schedule
Thursday, November 3, 2011

Session 1 – 00:00-02:00 (GMT)

Jeffrey Henning, Affinnova
Crowd-Shaped Surveys: Adapting the Experience Based on Prior Respondents

Annie Pettit, Research Now
On Social Media Research

Alastair Gordon, Gordon & McCallum
Surveys Without Scales – NewMR and Facial Imaging

Victoria Gamble, WorkINProgress Qualitative Research
Taking Qualitative Online: What I wished I’d known before I started

Session 2 – 03:30-05:30 (GMT)

Mike Sherman and Neil Gains, SingTel and Tapestry Works
Less is More: Getting Value (Not Just Reams of Data) From Your Research

Sue Bell, Susan Bell Research
How to use discourse analysis in market research

Christine Walker, Alliance Strategic Research
2011 What a Disaster!

Jess Whittaker and Steve Nuttall, Buzz Numbers and Colmar Brunton
Are social media and research meant to be together?

Session 3 – 07:30-09:00 (GMT)

Ray Poynter    
NewMR, a view of the next two years        Vision Critical

John Griffiths, Spring Research
It takes two baby!

David Penn, Conquest Research
Neuromania and why we need to re-humanise research

Session 4 – 10:30-12:30 (GMT)

Mark Earls, Author of HERD
Less is more: how pattern spotting can save us from ourselves

John Kearon, BrainJuicer
Let’s Get Emotional About Advertising; Evidence from the frontiers of behavioural economics about how ads really work

Rosie Campbell, Campbell Keegan
Case of the Dead Cat:  Curiosity not to Blame

Ian Ralph, Marketing Sciences
The Rise of the Digital Shopper: New ways to shop require new ways to research

Session 5 – 14:00-16:00 (GMT)

Robert Kozinets, Author of Netnography
Anthropology Goes Online: Why Cultural Insights Still Matter

Diane Hessan, Communispace       
Online Communities: Mistakes, Misuses and Challenges

Paul Child, Join the Dots         
Life outside the ivory tower

Felix Koch, Promise Communities
What next? 5 predictions about the future of online co-creation

Session 6 – 17:30-19:30 (GMT)

Finn Raben, ESOMAR
Update on Privacy and Ethics

Bernie Malinoff, element54
The Road to Survey Extinction

Jon Puleston, GMI
The ideas that are transforming market research

Ross McLean, Egg Strategy
Digital Ethnography – Revealing Human Truths through Smartphones

Session 7 – 21:00-23:00 (GMT)

Reg Baker, Market Strategies
Survey Gamification: Old Wine in New Bottles?

Steve Rappaport, ARF
Listening as Foresight: Detecting Emergent Consumer Trends

Leslie Townsend, Kinesis Survey Technologies
2016: A Market Research Odyssey

Leigh Caldwell, Inon
Behavioural economics – new new or new old?

About  - Dana is the Editor-in-Chief of Research Access.

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Posted in QuestionPro, SurveyAnalytics - News

Measuring Customer Engagement as a Predictor of Profitability

Posted on October 26, 2011 by | Leave a comment

How are you currently measuring your marketing effectiveness?  If you’re like most people, you might measure your marketing effectiveness by looking at your sales and profit numbers.  And that isn’t wrong.  It’s also not the only way to measure the long-term success of your marketing program.

Steve Jobs and his biography have been the topic in the news this week and one of the conversations inside of these interviews has been his decision to keep Apple a closed platform.  There was a time when just looking at Apple’s sales and profits numbers would have made him wrong.  Yet, in the long term, his marketing strategy of having a closed platform allowed for a smooth, effortless and seamless connection across multiple devices.   Jobs took a stand and focused his efforts on building an engaged and loyal customer following.  Without his dedication to his customer evangelists, his strategy would have failed miserably.

This is a great example that while dollars are one way to measure success – there are other ways and this is where measuring feedback either in the form of a survey or crowd sourcing project will give you some of that additional marketing contexts within which you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

You can measure customer engagement or loyalty as recommended by Gallup and Reicheld’s net promoter score.   Customer engagement and loyalty are infinitely more powerful predictors of profitability than what we’ve been used to. It’s easy to poo poo questions that measure a customer’s emotional attachment because they aren’t perceived as hard data.

But now that we know from all the extensive brain science research that every purchasing decision is, in fact, emotional — then shouldn’t we be measuring emotional attachment to our brand?

Customer engagement is also a wonderful tool for developing long-term brand strategies because it will show you where and how to differentiate your offer to your most profitable customers, inspire your target customers and connect in a way that builds relationships with them.

Here are the 11 Questions Outlined by the Gallup Customer Engagement Survey

  1. Overall, how satisfied are you with [Brand]?
  2. How likely are you to continue to choose/repurchase/repeat (if needed) [Brand]?
  3. How likely are you to recommend [Brand] to a friend/associate?
  4. [Brand] is a name I can always trust.
  5. [Brand] always delivers on what they promise.
  6. [Brand] always treats me fairly.
  7. If a problem arises, I can always count on [Brand] to reach a fair and satisfactory resolution.
  8. I feel proud to be a [Brand] [customer/shopper/user/owner].
  9. [Brand] always treats me with respect.
  10. [Brand] is the perfect [company/product/brand/store] for people like me.
  11. I can’t imagine a world without [Brand].

Ideas on How to Apply Customer Engagement to Your Feedback

There are obvious benefits to following the Gallup methods and licensing their process.  But if you don’t have the dollars for that, look at ways that you can apply the principles behind customer engagement to your own process.

One option is to create a basic matrix question using these 11 attributes.  It’s easy enough to insert into an existing survey or to simply run on its own.  For more detailed information on how to use customer engagement, you can read this article from Gallup that discusses the intricacies of measuring customer engagement.

What other ways are you measuring your marketing success?  Share your strategies in the comments below.

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How to Use Surveys to Generate Leads and Customers at Trade Shows

Posted on August 5, 2011 by | Leave a comment

So, you’re going to a trade show.  That usually involves sitting down and brainstorming ways to bring qualified leads to your booth and converting them into profitable customers.

Here is a quick check list that you can use to make sure that you’re covering all your bases to get the most customer conversations out of your trade show events.

One of the most obvious materials you will need for everything on this list is the trade show web site and list of attendees.  You’ll also want to be sure that you can get either a mailing list of the attendees or that you will be able to reach the attendees via email – either the show gives you this list or you give them the information that you’d like to send.

Focus on your sales and marketing goals.  The very first thing is to define what goals you’re after.  It doesn’t always have to be about gathering leads.   Here are a few sample objectives:

  • Get face to face time with the following clients that we only know via email.  You will need that attendee list or list of companies so that you can see if any of your customers will be there.  If you’re not sure, reach out to the ones that you know from the list.
  • Generate “x” number of qualified leads per day.  For this objective, you will need a clearly defined list of what a qualified customer is. Use your Survey Analytics platform to create a qualifying or profiling survey.  You can also use SurveySwipe to do this and funnel all your visitors into a research panel.
  • Schedule or deliver “x” number of demonstrations.
  • Find out what our biggest competitor will launch next year
Set a theme for the year.  One of my favorite strategies is to set a theme for a series of trade shows.  Find a theme that features what you are selling and combines it with something that’s important to your customers.  If you make your theme unexpected or extreme, people will stop to your booth just to SEE what’s going in.  One company that was in the medical industry chose a 100-yard dash as a theme.  Their trade show booth features HUGE pictures of runners crossing a finish line, their promotional items were running hats and water bottles and their sales message was around a new product that allowed doctors to cross the finish line and meet a medical records deadline for converting to software.  It was a HUGE hit because they were the only exhibitor that didn’t feature pictures of doctors and nurses and hospitals.

Reach out to as many customers before the show.  If you have the time, definitely send out a direct mail piece or invitation to customers or prospects that you want to meet.  Instead of sending thousands of mailings – target just those companies that will help you achieve your marketing goals.

This is a great opportunity to use a survey!  You can create a qualifying survey that gets attendees engaged by asking them qualifying questions that focus on the 5-7 key frustrations that they may have that your product or service can solve.  Think about working the survey questions like a quiz — people LOVE that.

Then, when they answer the last question of the survey and click “Finish” or “Submit” you send them to a customized landing page for the trade show that provides a mini report based on the responses that they might have given to the survey.  This would look like the Quiz answer page in a magazine and say things like “If you answered “c” to question #1 that means that you have the most common issue, be sure to stop at booth #123 and try our wonderful product created just for that problem.

Use Survey Analytics to deliver the survey.  When they complete the survey, use the “Finish Options” to send them to a landing page that goes directly to a special page that you created for that show.

Another idea is to have them PRINT the landing page and bring it to your booth for a prize.

Use the same survey at the booth and profile people who stop in.  After they complete the survey, give them one of your promotional items.  Keep those promotional items hidden and only give them to people who complete your survey.

Use the survey to drive your selling process.  This is ideal for companies who have new or inexperienced people working the booth.  All they have to do is follow the survey and use the survey results as talking points to guide the customer to the call to action — either sale or sale appointment.

Follow up with survey results from the show.  Take the results from the survey and write them up into a report and then share that report with everyone who came to your booth.

Make sure to write that report in a way that takes that prospect or customer through the areas that are important and how your product or service solves the problems that people in the survey had.

Bet you’ve never looked at surveys as a lead generation tool?!  But they really are so effective, so subtle and focused purely on what the customer needs.  Not only that, but the very act of taking customers through surveys at a trade show gives you the opportunity to engage them and gather important data that you can use later.

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Focus Groups Going Green Makes Good Business Sense

Posted on October 25, 2010 by | Leave a comment

eco leaf touching waterThe Green agenda is on the forefront of everyone’s mind these days.  Not only for the obvious environmental reasons of reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions, but also to reduce costs and improve company reputation.  Many companies today are including a green strategy within their corporate culture and treating it as an investment into their future.

Vancouver-based Inception Market Intelligence (IMI Group) is focusing on making market research greener with their new PULSE48 reports, at a fraction of the cost of a traditional focus group.  IMI Group offers over 20 years in the field of market research for companies worldwide.  The purpose is to provide market research focus group type reports in an eco-friendly, cost-efficient manner.
PULSE48 software technology is identified as “precision and recall” theory which scans the internet on a prescribed topic and comes back with a collective public opinion on the topic. This is different from word recognition that most analytics utilize. Focus groups can cost over $10,000 per location where the same results can be completed for $2,000-4,000 per report.
Gathering opinions from a focus group requires time, energy, and resources.  A traditional one can take weeks even months to conduct, requires multiple participants, and add to this the significant cost to a business and it can be unreachable for many small businesses.   PULSE48 completes the work in a timely, energy efficient manner. The reduction in the paper trail alone will account for a greener environment within a company.
As companies implement green strategies, the focus is often to move towards online technology.  The natural progression would be to move focus groups online; a focus group that has inadvertently already happened.  “PULSE48 reports are more efficient than focus groups because our technology eavesdrops on public conversations on the internet “, says Robert Greene Director of Sales and Marketing for IMI Group (www.inceptionintel.com).
“The beauty is that you can track opinions and attitude and how they change over time without calling back participants, dealing with scheduling and additional costs.  For companies conducting market research who have green initiatives to fill, PULSE48 is the logical choice.”
Sustainability has become an integral part of many organizations and companies realize the concept of going green extends to every aspect of their business.  Sustainable and eco-friendly business practices can make a company more desirable than their competition.  A traditional focus group can yield hundreds of pages of research that need to be reviewed and analyzed where a PULSE48 report can provide that same information in less than 20 pages.  Just as focus groups can eliminate undesirable participants, PULSE48 can rule out internet chatter, paid bloggers, and non-users.  Meaning resources such as paper and energy consumption are reduced.

 

Finding success by implementing sustainable initiatives needs to extend to every aspect of a business. Organizations who have felt market research was beyond their reach can now have software that will scan social media sites and collect an opinion on what is said about them in a sustainable, eco-friendly manner.

 

About the Author: Robert Greene, from his 10 years sales and marketing experience, has authored many white papers and articles in the areas of green marketing, sales, customer service, and business development. After working in the green energy and not for profit sector, he is currently the Director of Sales and Marketing for Inception Market Intelligence.  You can reach him at robert@inceptionintel.com or follow him on Twitter, @Pulse48

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