FreshNetworks Blog

We’ve had market research panels for years. Selected groups of people who meet some screening criteria and are sent surveys at periodic intervals during the year. Panels are a great way of getting surveys completed. You know that the respondents on the panel have been screened (meaning you can choose who might be apropriate for your survey), the contact details are correct (so less wasted time) and the respondents have a history of wanting to answer surveys (so ar, perhaps, more likely to respond). Panels are effective and efficient ways of doing large-scale quantitative surveys and building time-series data from the same or comparable respondent groups. Panels are not, however, communities.

In an online research community members (rather than respondents) talk to each other - they exchange ideas and discuss issues with each other. Unlike a panel this lets you watch how people interact and let them raise the questions you want to ask. You can get richer responses because you get to see how members talk about issues, what language they use. You see what questions they ask each other, which may not be the ones you’d choose to ask them. It’s all about seeing members in their social context. Without this interaction, this sense of community, you essentially have a panel of respondents. People who answer the questions in isolation of each other. You don’t see how they interact with others and can’t understand why they give the responses they do.

Communities are always-on. Members can log-on and contribute at a time that suits them rather than having to take part at a time that suits the research agency. This is a major difference and a major benefit. By encouraging conversations that occur constantly and people can contribute to in their own time you remove a significant barrier to taking part in market research. The need to incentivise respondents diminishes and so you stop paying people for their responses, but encourage an environment where people want to take part and respond.

Communities are great for getting real insight rather than just facts. People can respond to and build on the comments of others. They can return to their own comments and expand upon them when they’ve had an opportunity to reflect a little more on their thoughts. You get a much rounder and more reasoned set of responses and the insights you can draw are a lot richer. If a panel can typically report findings, a community can report understanding.

Finally an online research community offers a way for brands to truly enter into a conversation with customers rather than getting a research agency to ask the questions for them. People respond more thoughtfully when they know the brand is definitely listening and so the comments you get from a research community will be better thought out and argued. Because the brand is engaging with the consumers through the community you also get the right of reply. You can close the feedback loop. Let people know what you thought of their responses and what you did with the results. People like to know that they’re contributing towards something and feeding back to them, in a properly managed online community environment, will be incentive enough.

Online research communities are different to research panels. They allow you to do different things in different ways; getting a dept of understanding and richness of insight that just isn’t possible with a panel. Sadly, some of the online ‘communities’ on the market at the moment feel much more like panels than real communities.