Custom Panels

Needs Assessment

We work with a number of organizations who have developed custom online panels and use them effectively on a regular basis.  We also work  with a few organizations who have moved away from using their custom online panel, after spending a lot of resources developing them.  The difference lies in each organizations’ internal systems, their market reach and the specific need for information.

Before you invest in a custom online panel, we meet with you to determine if a custom online panel is in fact the most effective tool to meet your research needs.

If used sufficiently and effectively, custom online panels are designed to help your organization:

•  Target hard to reach audiences
• Get results quickly
• Stretch your market research budget
• Analyze data over a period of time to accurately measure changes in the marketplace (e.g. Customer behaviour, competitor influence, etc.)
• Get quick and real-time reporting

Design

If a custom panel is an effective use of your organization’s market research budget, the next step is to define the target audience. Key considerations are:

• Make-up – We will help you identify the ideal composition of your panel – who should qualify to be part of your panel; what should the demographic, regional, and behavioural distribution be?
• Size – We will help you determine the appropriate number of panelists per subgroup, giving consideration to the number of surveys per year per subgroup.
• Decide if the panel will be branded or blind
• Consider the source – Internal database, Purchased list, Telephone/direct mail recruit, Advertisement (online, offline)
• Profiling questionnaire – Approx. 15 minutes, Qualifying questions, profiling questions, contact info
• Develop a panelist portal and invite qualified respondents to register via this portal
• Offer incentives and establish contact within a week

Maintenance

Frequency of Contact – We allow panel members to request how frequently they will be interviewed. If not provided, members will receive at least one and no more than two communications in a month.

Engagement – We will use proven strategies to reduce attrition.

Ongoing Recruitment – We will continually recruit additional members as necessary, based on churn.

Use

Our personnel who manage each stage of a project have direct experience in all aspects of research, including: scripting, sampling, and quality control.

Questionnaire capabilities are limitless and include new technologies such as respondent video/audio response.

The key considerations during this phase are:

• Meeting the budget and timeline requirements
• Maximizing response rates
• Quality control checks for accuracy of the survey logic
• Review partial results to verify appropriate design

We combine our research expertise with extensive reporting capabilities to produce highly effective , capable, and user friendly reports.

Reports are customized to meet our clients- unique needs. The key considerations during reporting are:

• Answer questions for which the research was commissioned
• Present the information in an organized and logical manner
• Keep reports simple, concise and to the point