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Re-shaping Our Face-to-Face Protocols

June 18, 2020

The past several months has been a trying and disruptive period, both for our industry and the world. As the curve starts to level, more and more economic areas have begun the process of re-opening, marking both opportunities and challenges for us conducting in-person research.

Since March, many of us in the research world have closely monitored the recommendations of both our government and medical experts. Social distancing, disinfecting processes and general greater sense of awareness in public places have become the new norms. As consumers and research participants emerge from self-isolation into the new world, it’s important to balance our research needs with the safety and peace of mind of participants.

Our ‘COVID19 Omnibus’ showed us that a majority of participants recognize the importance of sharing their opinions at this critical time, and largely feel that now is an appropriate time to participate in research. As research leaders, it is our responsibility to ensure that appropriate quality control & safety measures can both still be implemented.

As we transition back from the lockdown, it’s important to take the following steps to ensure the health and well being of not only respondents but also supporting employees as it pertains to in-person research.

In-Person Facility Best Practices:

To ensure the safety of all individuals participating in research at in-person facilities, it’s important to ensure the following conditions are met:

Sanitize the equipment and furniture before each shift
Have respondents do a temperature check at check-in
Ensure that mask & sanitizing/washing stations are available for respondents & staff
Have respondents sign a travel & symptom waiver before entering the interviewing area
Ensure that desks / chairs follow Social Distancing rules – minimum 6 feet apart
Utilize floor signs as reminder of social distancing rules
Limit the number of participants in a room at any one time – with a staggered entry
Reconfigure facilities to ensure proper distancing between respondents & staff
Use an electronic sign in and sign out for the respondent
No hand-outs, all concepts / hand-outs will be presented electronically
Product will be served in individual self-serve units only
If utilizing HUTs after in-facility interview– sanitized product containers should be placed in carry out bags for respondents to take home.
For HUTs without in-facility interview – respondents should be pre-screened by telephone/on-line before being mailed/couriered the product to their home in a sanitized container.
If client viewing is required, a second room with monitors or virtual monitoring should be utilized.

In addition to the safety of respondents, it’s also important to consider the health and well being of employees supporting the research. The following should be used as best practices when conducting research in person.

Staff Best Practices:

Measure and report staff temperature before coming in for each shift
E-mail/text a daily travel & symptom waiver before coming in for their shift
Wear masks and gloves where possible, always while at the facility
Sanitize/wash hands frequently and after every interview
Always maintain social distancing rules – minimum 6 feet apart
Sanitize tablets / computers after each interview
For product test – materials (plates, cutlery etc.) are one time use only

The post COVID-19 world will be a vastly different one for in person interviewing. However, by following some of the best practices above we can ensure that both respondents and staff are able to conduct in person research in a safe and secure environment.

About Aref Munshi

As Vice President, Sales & Research Services for The Logit Group, Aref Munshi’s main responsibility is managing existing clients. In his current role, his main responsibilities include managing existing clients, where he is a client advocate and research problem solver; he has been providing qualitative and quantitative support services to clients across the healthcare, consumer & business industries. With over 30 years of data collection experience, Aref’s strength is his holistic market research skill set.

Communication is key: But how much is too much?

June 2, 2020

Without a doubt, one of the most important aspects of any project managers job is to keep clients informed about a project’s progress. Whether it’s programming questions, discoveries during testing, or issues encountered during field, it’s essential to keep clients in the loop so that they can make an informed decision. However, it’s equally important to understand when we cross the line from insightful questions to a perceived lack of preparation from our clients.
Every one of our clients is important and understanding that every project is significant goes a long way in building trust and confidence with them. Part of that trust and confidence comes from ensuring that clients are not needlessly stressing over project details that are outside their scope.
Following some guidelines for communication goes a long way and can set the project and client relationship up for success in the long run. Here are three key communication takeaways for ensuring a projects success:

Stick to a Schedule
At the outset of a project, come up with a schedule that works for both your client as well as your team. It’s a hard balance between quality and speed – do it right or do it fast? – delivering both is the new norm and it’s important to set everyone up for success by establishing timelines and expectations early in the process. Once the timeline has been established, work towards it by keep your team up to date and prompting clients for any materials needed.
Schedule Changes
As with many projects, there can be delays; be it on your end or the client’s. In any case, it is important to always include a buffer of 1-2 days. If you find yourself in a situation where that buffer has been used, inform your client and your team. Sometimes it’s possible to tell that there will be schedule changes once important deadlines have been missed. Determine next steps. When will outstanding deadlines be met? Will field time be reduced? Will the survey be shortened to reduce programming hours? Figuring out what needs to be modified will pave the way for a revised schedule. Communicate internally and let your client know the impacts of a schedule change.
ETAs
Like we established, things change. What is important is determining a rough schedule that outlines the time it will take to complete each stage of a project and most importantly, leave some buffer in the schedule. Letting clients know how long it will take to review their files, programming, field work, and any data/coding will take. Then also go a step beyond. If it becomes apparent programming will take longer, let clients know. Maybe the work they have sent over requires custom scripting that will take time to program and test. It is equally possible that an alternative solution is available and will take less time to program. Present timelines on both and allow your client to have the final word.

About Gurpreet Kaur

Gurpreet is a graduate of Humber College’s Research Analyst program. She’s been in market research for 2 years. In her current role as Project Manager at Logit she primarily oversees quantitative tracker and ad hoc web based studies with a focus on sports, financial institutions and travel.

Weathering COVID-19 – Business Development Strategy During a Difficult Time

May 13, 2020

I often thought the world would be a much better place if all politicians were, by law, required to have a history degree. The relevant knowledge and trends they could draw from to help shape insights, process and a successful path forward would really serve us all. As researchers, this is language that’s all too familiar to us…

With Covid-19, we’re in an unprecedented time, but we are uniquely qualified to handle this challenge.

With a growing trend towards sensationalized data and soundbites, we as a society are constantly inundated by main stream media with sobering assessments and un-fact checked hypotheses that drive fear and further enflame the situation. Covid-19 has become commoditized, making it easy to get caught up in the vortex around the pandemic. It’s important to understand that in these times, the best way to thrive is to think outside the box and to adopt a fresh perspective.

We need to focus on what we can control in an environment that has taken so much of it away. It’s difficult to develop business while managing our own personal feelings and worry for our families and colleagues, but we’re objective thinkers. We make decisions and recommend directions based on market conditions. We need to employ this thinking for ourselves and understand that there are growth areas, and in fact, it’s never been more important and a better time to conduct most lines of research.

The New York Times recently published this article that portrays the realities we’re seeing in field:

The Title:
Surprising Poll Results: People Are Now Happy to Pick Up the Phone

The Subtitle:
Pollsters are used to having their calls screened. But when everyone is stuck at home, a stranger with some survey questions can be a lifeline.

https://bit.ly/polling-coronavirus

The article focuses on the realities we’re finding on how ‘response rates have risen amongst people in typically tough-to-reach demographics, such as young people and those without college degrees, who are typically less likely to use landlines. Increased participation is also reported amongst cell phone users – particularly in the daytime, when in the past many respondents would most likely have been at work and unwilling to answer a call from an unknown number.’

The striking tone of the article and as those in CATI data collection research know, traditionally, older age groups take more time and are more receptive to research, more so than any other age group. With Covid-19 in our midst, we’re seeing increased cooperation across the board across all ages and ethnic groups. It’s incumbent on us to take the responsibility to continue research outreach and to help the population right itself. This example of an empowering reality can mobilize a lot of business decision makers into quick action. The question we all hear posed by Decision Makers is… ‘Is this the right time to do research?’ Yes in fact, it is.

Increased response rates are being reported across the board and span over all methodologies. Online survey response rates have surged, interactive IDI/Focus Groups are becoming the new norm and plans for onsite social distancing compliance for research are well underway and gathering momentum.

As business leaders, it’s our job to approach the emotional toll of a terrible pandemic in a clinical fashion as we’re revenue drivers. We acknowledge it’s our responsibility to create stability to ensure the health and growth of our clients. It’s also important for those who work for our Companies. It can feel heavy but I have found that shifting my focus to the emotional business needs of our clients has been helpful and very productive.

In times like this, we trust ourselves, trust the future and take charge of what we can control. Now, more than ever, it’s important to create a ‘diamond’ level experience routed in creativity and case examples that truly illustrate the state of the industry which is driven by respondents. Tasking yourself to this challenge will serve not only you, but us collectively as an industry well.

About John Wulff

John’s 25 year career has been focused on quantitative market research data collection. Holding senior positions representing some of the largest and best quantitative Online & Offline data collection companies with operations based in North & Central America and Asia.

Keeping Your Market Research Data Safe and Secure

March 2, 2020

Market research companies are faced with varying challenges and security threats when it comes to protecting their data. Over the last two years, there have been many breaches exposing millions of data records as cybercriminals have been targeting both the public and private sectors. According to IBM’s 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average cost of a data breach worldwide is $3.9 million. For the United States, that number soars to $7.91 million.

The burden of responsibility is widening as many international regulators are now holding organizations liable for any privacy or security breaches. As custodians of sensitive client data, market research companies have a responsibility to minimize the security risk for data both in motion and at rest.

Data in motion, as its name suggests, refers to information being moved from one location to another across the internet, along networks, or from storage devices or the cloud. Protection methods are particularly critical because this data in transit tends to be thought of as less secure than data at rest, which is information simply stored or archived on hard drives, devices, or networks.

Protecting data is critical not only for its own obvious sake, but also to reassure potential survey participants who might be apprehensive about participating in your market research project due to being aware of recent data breaches in other sectors.

Some recommended measures to be implemented include:

• providing staff with cybersecurity tools to ensure ongoing compliance with best practice policies and procedures;
• lowering risk exposure by implementing technology such as intrusion detection systems (IDS), intrusion protection systems (IPS), honeypots, and firewalls;
• regularly monitoring and auditing security procedures to meet developing cyber threats;
• implementing detailed security policies that entail procedures, rules, and roles so all staff members understand that data privacy and security are priorities (e.g. policies like handling procedures, usage, privacy, social media, and user responsibilities);
• keeping informed with all cyber-threat news, updates, and applicable security patches;
• investing in data-breach or cyber-security insurance; and
• conducting penetration testing—also known as “ethical hacking,” this the practice of testing a computer system or network to find security vulnerabilities that could be exploited.

Perhaps one of the most important data security recommendations comes down to always ensuring you are working with people whose approaches and practices you can trust. The Logit Group is continually implementing new measures that comply with industry best practices and address client concerns and requirements about data security and privacy while adhering to data protection laws.

Forbes graph: https://www.statista.com/chart/9918/the-price-tag-attached-to-data-breaches/

About Shane Scott

Shane Scott has over 17 years of notable success leading a broad range of corporate and government IT initiatives while participating in the planning, analysis, and implementation of solutions in support of business objectives. As the Logit System Administrator and Support Specialist, Shane has been championed to enhance the Security, Infrastructure and System administration as the company growth continues.

How to Gain a Competitive Edge Using MR

January 28, 2020

How to Gain a Competitive Edge Using MR

Since Daniel Starch developed his theory in the 1920s that advertising had to be seen, read, believed, remembered, and most importantly, acted upon, in order to be considered effective; companies have been using research as a means to gain a competitive edge on their competitors.

Research methodology and techniques have evolved substantially over the years most noticeably since the turn of the millennium. Conducting research has become faster, cheaper and more efficient; allowing companies of all shapes and sizes access to it. With companies conducting research in one form or another more than ever before, the challenge to gain meaningful unique data has grown ten-fold.

The pursuit of consumer insights has become an arms race, with the most successful companies finding ways to not only understand, but leverage insights at breakneck speeds. Those who have been able to harness the power of insights have flourished in the post brick and mortar retail world, while those who haven’t have faded into obscurity and obsolescence.

So how does market research play into the success of a company? And what are some areas of focus that companies can look toward in 2020 for a competitive edge?

Looking at Purchase and Usage Trends

To know where you’re going you need to know where you’ve been. By evaluating both purchasing and product usage behaviour of your current customers, you can understand the why, when and how of their consumption and through it can see trends and potential areas for change and enhancement. There are a few keyways to do this each with their own inherent benefits:

In Store Observations: Allows you to see consumers in their natural environment and gives you an understanding of their path to purchase.
Online communities: A small representative population of your consumer base. Gives you quick access to run both quantitative and qualitative data.
Point of Purchase / Interaction data: Short follow up quantitative survey delivered post interaction.
In Home Usage Tests: Diary / Log of a consumer’s interaction with your product and key takeaways of it’s use.

Gaining Competitive Insights

As important as it is to know how your consumers use your product / services, it’s also equally important to know how your consumers view you in relation to your competitors. Several ways to do this include:
MaxDiff Exercises: Respondents evaluate all possible pairs of items within the displayed set and choose the pair that reflects the maximum difference in preference or importance
Conjoint Analysis: Helps to determine how people value different attributes (feature, function, benefits) that make up an individual product or service

Leveraging Technology and Automation

As the speed of business continues to get quicker and quicker so too does the speed at which insights are gathered and put into use. The ability to leverage technology and automation has become more important amongst the ever-evolving business landscape. Here are a few areas where you can gain a competitive advantage.

Facial Coding: Allows you to capture a respondent’s emotional engagement to any stimulus in real time.
Chat Bots: Conduct qual style exercises at the size of quantitative studies

Through harnessing the research techniques above you too can ensure that your company has a competitive advantage. Want to learn more about how you can implement these on your studies, contact us to learn more.

The Importance of a Blended Methodology

November 28, 2019

Everyone thinks you need a certain personality to be a market researcher, but you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes for a successful career in this field. Of course, some skill in observation and investigation—and a keen interest in people—can certainly go a long way.

Many people can get a bit lost when it comes to choosing which research methodology to use between qualitative and quantitative strategies. In some cases, blending the two can be a good approach. However, it’s important to know when and how this works in the real world.

While blended research is neither new nor extraordinary, it is often overlooked when designing a research study because clients are requiring cost-effective research conducted 24/7. However, one of the appeals of a blended methodology is that it can help triangulate our measurement strategy, using different measures of the same concept to provide a more robust overall sense of understanding.

But what if the results are not consistent?

One of the major challenges for using a blended methodology is the different types of expertise required. Most social researchers can manage adding some qualitative questions to a primarily quantitative survey, or can collect some quantitative indicators in a qualitative project and then analyze the results. That said, given the time and training required to develop advanced expertise in ethnography, in-depth interviewing, survey research, statistical analysis, or any advanced method, most researchers are going to specialize.

This means developing a strong blended methodology often demands collaboration of different researchers with different types of expertise. It requires more time and more attention to project design and management than may be necessary in a single-method project. Researchers with different methodological commitments may also have different research philosophies—potentially making collaboration more challenging.

Overall, it doesn’t actually matter if you choose quantitative or qualitative research or a blend of the two. The most important questions to answer are why are you conducting market research and what would you like to understand? Then, you can create a research study that answers your questions while putting the audience at the heart of it all.

It’s important to mention that whichever methodology you pick, blended or not, good research needs excellent recruitment. Being successful means never forgetting that the respondents you recruit are people first and participants second.

Depending on your methodology and techniques, you should go and visit the respondent in person. You will see where and how they live and observe their environment and habits, while getting to know them better. Even more importantly, the respondent meets you, too. This builds trust and respect for each other and your research—two items even more important than being Sherlock Holmes.

About Jake

Jake Pryszlak, commonly known as the Research Geek, is a 3-time award-winning market researcher, blogger and speaker. He’s a current Forbes columnist who is active across a plethora of social media channels. His aim is to share his market research knowledge with others in the industry. You can find his blog and social media channels here.

Top Three Research Lessons From Election Season Polling

October 17, 2019

With the Canadian Federal Election taking place on October 21st and the US Presidential election slated for 2020, it’s a perfect time for us researchers to reflect upon sampling, declining response rates, margins of error, and questionnaire wording for federal election polling surveys.

Those of you who are not researchers or analysts have probably been wondering, how truly representative are election polls, and can they still lend credibility to predicted election results in a world of declining response rates?

Looking back on previous elections and their results, it’s clear that there are important takeaways and learnings from how election polls are conducted. These takeaways not only ensure that future election work is as representative as possible, but they also lend themselves to takeaways that can be transposed to other research projects.

Ask the right questions to the right audience.

Political polling highlights the importance of asking the right questions. The wording of both the questions and answers will affect the outcome in different ways. For example, here are some considerations:

Should you ask respondents for whom they will most likely vote for when the election takes place? Or who they would vote for if the election was held tomorrow?
• Should your question use the first names of the candidates, as they will appear on the ballots, and/or should you refer to each candidate’s party affiliation?
• Who are the intended respondents? (All registered voters? All adults of voting age? Anyone intending to vote? Only registered voters who voted in the past election?)

To answer any of these questions, you need to have some clear goals and objectives of why you are conducting the research. There are many types of political polls, and multiple reasons for conducting them. Trying to measure consumer or voter attitudes is different than trying to predict behaviour, which in turn is different from trying to forecast voter turnout.

First know the why, then determine which method will get you there.
Most political polls are subjected to a huge amount of methodological analysis and critique. Was the poll conducted online or by phone? Did the pollster use live interviewers or automated dialing with interactive voice recordings? Was the sample selected through random digit dial (RDD) or targeted listings?
Questions like these offer insights into the most important methodological challenges facing the research industry in a time of rapid technological and social change. It reminds everyone that the method is so important. The challenges are not just about qualitative versus quantitative or surveys versus focus groups, but also about design, fieldwork, respondent recruitment, data collection, statistical analysis, and interpretation.

Think about the story rather than the numbers.
Search online for “elections results” and you’ll find a multitude of different polls released on a weekly basis. Most of the results are in alignment with each other, but a handful are notable in their approach because they make the story just as important as the outcomes.
In those cases, the content is relevant, interest is high, and the stakes are made to feel huge. The story is moving, and it feels like you are one of those individuals they were reporting on. While every poll has the support from PR, marketing, and communication campaigns, it is always nice to see those select few polls that report on things, or from angles, that nobody else has explored yet.
Conclusion

When it comes to political polling, the aims and goals are so important that you need to know your approach before you even begin to start thinking about the method and the potential questions. However, once you have your direction, it becomes critical to do more than show the numbers—you must also show the story behind those numbers to make your content relevant and interesting… and to really resonate with your audience.

About Jake

Top Four Tips for Boosting Sampling Response Rates

September 5, 2019

It might sound obvious, but your sample is the most important part of your market research project.

Too often, it seems like the survey participants’ experiences and opinions of market research are somewhat overlooked. However, our industry relies heavily on individuals giving up their own time and effort to respond to long questionnaires. If they don’t enjoy the experience or gain any benefit, then why should they bother participating?

Businesses rely on customer data to guide their decision making and provide a sense of direction when making a change in terms of a product enhancement, service overview, or even a new product range. Therefore, reduced response rates ultimately mean less insight or fewer data-driven outcomes.

How can you help your participants enjoy the experience of giving you feedback?

1. Treat people the way you would want to be treated

It is important to ensure your research invitations and reminders clearly outline what you are asking. This may include information on why you are conducting the research, incentives on offer (e.g. gift cards), and an explanation why their feedback will be so valuable.

You should try to personalize communication to an individual as far as possible with the resources you have available. For example, most email marketing tools allow you to directly customize how you address emails to individuals rather than impersonal form letters.

Far too often, researchers leave participant communication to the bottom of their list of priorities. I think this is totally wrong. Ask yourself whether you would complete a particular survey if you yourself received the email you’re about to send.

2. Go mobile

So many people in the industry mention the use of mobile surveys that it must get boring to always read about it! Still, the reason we all say it so much is because we still continually find surveys that have not been mobile-optimized and are not responsive to being answered on a phone or tablet. It can be challenging to get participants to complete a survey while they are watching TV, and an even bigger task to convince them to answer your questions when they are hard to read on a cellphone screen.

We know a high proportion of individuals are “second-screen watchers,” which means they may be watching TV while also texting on their phone. By making a survey mobile-optimized, you increase the likelihood of someone completing it as a second-screen experience instead of never bothering to take part.

3. Never be boring

Can you remember the last time you wanted to complete a survey that consisted of 40 questions? I can’t… and I am sure your participants feel the same way.

Neither researcher nor participant benefits from excessively lengthy and tedious questioning in either qual or quant research. When survey participants are bored, they are more likely to flip through the survey questions, rush and give false answers just to complete it. Having a seemingly endless list of questions also increases the likelihood of dropouts throughout the survey, negatively affecting your representative sample.

You should be developing short and lean surveys that take participants less than five minutes to complete. This can give you the essential information you require while also increasing the likelihood of a large sample size because of the short length.

4. Don’t sit on your feedback

After completing a quantitative survey that has a sample size of 1,000+, the worst thing you could do is just ignore all that feedback and not act on any of the new intelligence.

Participants want to feel valued—not just from a gift or reward point of view, but also emotionally. They want to know whether or not their feedback has truly helped, and they really want to see what you, as a brand, will do with the insight and opinions they shared. Offering participants feedback allows them to see the true value of completing a survey or a piece of research for you. It means they will be far more likely to take five or 10 minutes of their own time to complete something for you again.

Conclusion

By making surveys short, sharp and to the point, you give participants less work to do and your business still gains valuable data and information. The four tips outlined in this article are only a handful of ways to boost response rates. However, implementing even one of these suggestions will help improve the research experience for your participants. Happy and rewarded participants mean quality data outcomes for you that can lead to data-driven decision making.

About Jake

Should you combine Quantitative and Qualitative research?

July 18, 2019

When undertaking a research project, the first question people often ask is whether to conduct quantitative or qualitative research. However, both of these methodologies actually complement each other! In other words, while it can be useful to think of them as single approaches, there are also times when you should combine them for even clearer data.

What is Qualitative Research?

Qualitative research, or “qual,” seeks in-depth, freeform answers from respondents either in person or via open-ended responses. As recently as only five years ago, I would have said this was usually carried out with small groups in the form of in-person focus groups, telephone interviews or detailed surveys with free-text responses. Things have changed. While qualitative can still be conducted in person, the vast majority of qual is now done online. (As I’ll explain later in this article, this allows someone to conduct qual research at a quantitative scale.)

images Qual research is often a go-to method for an insight department trying to gather anecdotal views and opinions. It offers a deeper understanding, with the ability to explore topics in more detail., which would usually come about via unprompted feedback. Qual can be a great approach for anyone looking to expand or start a brand-new product line because it allows you to gain honest responses and comments from your target audience.

Three to five years ago, you could argue that qualitative research was hard to measure, but there are so many different tools out there to analyze open-ended comments (as well as video responses!) that clients can receive results within hours of their research project getting underway.

The only thing I do find potentially difficult when conducting qualitative research is its statistical robustness. This is because you are generalizing to your broader audience, rather than having thousands of data points to analyze.

What is Quantitative Research?

On the flip side, quantitative research is, as the name suggests, all about the numbers! It tends to involve a large group of people (usually at least several hundred, but often thousands) completing a survey. While the approach is heavily numerical, this also means the results are clear and are harder to misinterpret. The survey can also be easily repeated and you can reliably track changes over time, such as in a tracker study. Then comes the analysis of your data—as you are asking closed questions, your data can be collected more quickly.

images (1) However, dealing with numbers means you need a large sample of the population to deliver reliable results. The larger the sample of people, the more statistically accurate the outputs will be.

I always like to remind researchers that when they are creating online surveys, the wording is crucial. To be confident in the results of quantitative surveys, you have to be confident that you’re asking the right questions, in the right way, with the correct answer-options included.

Final Thoughts

Quantitative and qualitative research both have their place in market research, and a blended approach should be carried out whenever you’re extending product lines or launching something new because it can give you a holistic viewpoint on what your customers are thinking, rather than just from one data point. Both methods can work hand-in-hand; brands can use qualitative research for developing concepts and theories, and quantitative for testing pre-existing ones.

You can also use freeform qualitative research to guide the creation of more structured quantitative surveys. Following quantitative surveys, turn to qualitative to better understand the context of the responses! There are so many opportunities!

Technology advances like open-response video and heat mapping also mean that qualitative research is getting closer to the quantitative price point. As a result, more and more organizations are able to use both approaches during their work.

You no longer have to choose a methodology based on cost because there is now value for the money within the sector. The real question you should be asking is not over which approach but rather how to best use both to provide insights that can have an impact on the bottom line.

About Jake

Jake Pryslak, commonly known as the Research Geek, is a 3-time award-winning market researcher, blogger and speaker. He’s a current Forbes columnist who is active across a plethora of social media channels. His aim is to share his market research knowledge with others in the industry. You can find his blog and social media channels here.

Using Chatbots for Your Market Research

July 9, 2019

Using Chatbots for Your Market Research

Are you familiar with chatbots? The basic concept is a computer program designed to have actual, realistic conversations with people over the internet. The technology can be so realistic that you may have chatted with one while using a website and not even realized it wasn’t human.

These bots might sound like they’re straight out of a science-fiction future, but they’re already widely used. In other words, if you’re wondering today whether or not your business should consider using a bot down the road, then you’re asking yourself the wrong question. Using chatbots and other inclusive research methodologies isn’t a strategy for tomorrow—it’s already a strategy today.

Clever use of chatbots on a website can be critical for brands looking to establish real, genuine connections with consumers through technology. Unfortunately, market researchers tend to have a terrible habit—we often are quick to grab on to new ideas but are not as quick to implement them in a practical manner.

There’s no need to overcomplicate it. A bot or an inclusive survey methodology is nothing more than a computer program that automates certain tasks, typically by chatting with a consumer through a conversational interface.

The most advanced conversational bots are powered by artificial intelligence, helping the program to understand complex requests and personalize responses. You probably have already taken part or used a chatbot or something similar via Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber, or numerous other websites.

The chatbot survey experience requires you to rethink the survey process. Messenger-type chats between humans or between bots and human are generally short, to the point, and designed to gather as much information as possible in a short period of time. This is counter-intuitive to general online market research methodologies, where we continually develop longer and more complicated surveys. However, the industry is beginning to recognize the importance of respondent experience as cooperation rates start to fall. chatbots

When to use chatbots

When thinking about data collection, chatbots have limitations like any other methodology. Just as a mobile interface is not well-suited to many of market research’s staple question types (e.g. matrix, sliders, and lists), a chatbot through a Messenger-type app will suffer the same issues to some extent. However, the types of questions and the language you use when talking to someone via an app should be very different from a general opinion survey.

One area for which chatbots seem particularly well suited is in mass qualitative research. In terms of thinking about natural language and opinions, chatbots have the ability to probe deeply, similar to a human moderator or a face-to-face interview.

When taking into account the cultural differences in conducting research in multiple states, a chatbot can actually ‘learn on the job’ by using the responses it receives to generate other intuitive responses and probes. This approach is something that could be missed using non-bot means—especially from a tired human moderator or one-on-one interviewer!

Final thoughts

Chatbots and other inclusive market research methodologies are not new to the market anymore. They are being used throughout many industries, from collecting email addresses to conducting market research. Just like every data collection technique, chatbots and other inclusive methodologies have forced the industry to adapt and ultimately provide us with another tool to use.

About the Logit Group

The Logit Group is a leader among data collection firms, and our ongoing commitment has been to develop and administer industry-best technologies as the basis of our research execution. We offer online and offline services including; Global Panel Sourcing, B2C Phone Research, Mall Intercepts, In-depth interview (IDI) recruitment, Focus group recruitment, customized reporting, and more.

For a full list of our services, please visit our website here and to submit a bid request, please see our Bid Request form.

Category: Information