Online Panels
Online Panel Overview
An online panel is a group of pre-screened respondents who have agreed to participate in a certain number of market research projects over the course of time (usually six months or a year) in exchange for pay. Sometimes they're called a proprietary panel, or when they're assembled to answer questions for just one company's products they're called a customer advisory panel. Online panels have grown in popularity dramatically in the last several years because there is an economy of scale (respondents can be broadly screened once and that information can be used to qualify them for multiple studies) and because of that the turnaround can be very fast.
Most online panels are capable of conducting both qualitative and quantitative online research (typically online surveys, online focus groups and sometimes online bulletin board services. The size of the panels varies greatly with some having specialized groups with certain types of respondents (doctors, dentists, homemakers) and others are very large and have a broad variety of respondents.
Online market research panels vary greatly in the services that they provide. Higher end companies will work with the company to understand the business issues, help define the research objectives, recommend a market research method and take a pass at writing the screener and survey or discussion guide and provide a full slideset of presentation slides and even present the results. Other companies split out each step a la carte. Choosing the right company depends on the amount of market research experience that you have at your disposal and the amount of time/resources that your company is willing to put into the project. The other variable is whether or not you need an independent, objective opinion of what needs to be done - which could lead you to a full service facility.
Online Panel Pros
- The two primary advantages of an online panel are speed and cost. The cost of conducting research through an online panel can be a fraction of what it might cost through more traditional research methods.
Online Panel Cons
- With web surveys there is always the fear that you're not really sure who is taking the survey, although questions can be added to weed out respondents that lack fundamental knowledge about a topic.
- Web surveys are not a good option in all countries, and the penetration of high speed internet access is still very low in some countries (often depending on the level of the employee in the company, or the financial situation of the family)
- There is still debate about how representative online panelists are of the market in general. The truth is probably that they are very representative of some groups of people (markets) (in general younger, better educated and financially secure tend to be more familiar with online activities) and they are probably significantly different than other markets. So you have to see how well your target customer matches with the recruited participants of the panel that you are considering - if they're not well matched you may get an answer that is different from what the way that the market may respond to your product.
Timing
Online surveys are probably the fastest market research method available. As with other types of research the amount of time necessary depend primarily on 3 factors: 1) how well aligned the sponsor of the group is on the business issue that needs to be addressed and on what the research objectives should be, 2) How difficult a challenge it will be to find the required number of respondents (homemakers are easy to recruit and trial attorneys are a challenge to recruit). And 3) how much analysis is required.
Special Considerations
Ensure that you understand the recruitment criteria of the respondents and how many research projects the typical respondent has been involved with and what topics they have covered. You want to be sure that you don't have respondents who have become "super-educated" on topics that could effect your research results.
