News

Surveys seen moving online

As the internet population grows, online market research will replace telephone and face-to-face interviews because of the lower costs in gathering consumer information, according to Mr Toby Hill from market research company The Leading Edge.

The Leading Edge has formed a joint venture with online loyalty club company EmailCash, which gives the research company access to its 130,000 members and rewards them with points they can redeem for goods and services when they participate in research surveys. TLE has also established a proprietary panel of 10,000 people to learn more about consumers over time.

Mr Hill said although there were still issues with internet consumer panels, online research was the way of the future.

"It will largely replace other forms of market research... Until internet penetration gets to 90 per cent plus, those other forms of research will be there for nothing else than benchmarking. As time goes on, it makes no sense to ring someone or send them out doorknocking when you've got an extraordinary method of getting information at a much lower cost," he said.

Face-to-face research costs an average of $100 a person and telephone research costs $20, compared with online research which costs only $1 a person. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics information, the market research industry was worth $400 million, of which half was data collection costs.

"If all [research] went online, the cost to clients would halve. The implication is if costs do come tumbling down, demand will increase dramatically," Mr Hill said.

My belief is that over the next 12 months, 50 per cent of our work will be online and the other 50 per cent will be projects where the category or sample requires an offline approach."

The Leading Edge has conducted 25 studies using EmailCash's database for clients including Microsoft, GlaxoSmithKline, Commonwealth Bank, United Distillers and Goodman Fielder.

The other benefits of an online panel were timeliness, the use of interactivity and graphics, the removal of interviewer bias and high response rates.

"We are achieving a 60 per cent response rate on average compared with 10 per cent offline," Mr David Lord, who established TLE's online research unit, said. "Almost 80 per cent of those who respond do so within the first 48 to 72 hours, so the data can be collected very quickly. The quality of responses is also very high because the respondents are willing participants."