Many businesses rely on market research, but it may be too faulty for many. Companies need simple questions answered, but the research project can make them even more complex. Newcomers may often skip the fundamentals and miss out on a lot of opportunities because of the complexities that they need to deal with.
Questions like “how does it work?” and “what is its significance?” are often ignored. If you’re a business owner, you may tend to be frustrated with the entire thing, and you don’t emerge out of them completely satisfied. In essence, the studies should not be hard to understand, and you should be able to access them whenever you want.
This is why you may want to revert to other forms of marketing strategies. These are the consumer panels and knowing why you need them will give you more success. Before jumping in, here are some things that you need to know about them.
What is a Research Panel?
In essence, these panels are made up of individuals or groups that an organization carefully selects to provide feedback on services and products. These are done for research and other purposes that can help the company to improve its current operations.
The panels are very useful for discovering consumer behaviors, testing hypotheses, feedback, and gaining insights for a more controlled methodology. In its basic form, it’s fundamentally formed to get a lot of data for their research.
Most of the activities are often focused on answering questionnaires, surveys, interviews, and more. This is done with a specific type of demographic, or it can be done in smaller groups. When a business decides to gather a small group of people inside a room to discuss something, the result will be a lot of costs and a more labor-intensive process.
However, when using the right incentives and technologies, most people are more than willing to provide their input and high-level of engagement to their customers. This is done through the distribution of a lot of surveys to many respondents. It does factor in the costs indeed. The panels may range from 100 up to a thousand respondents. Read more about the panels on this site here.
Who Do You Get?
Many of the consumers can represent a wide demographic and cross-section of the population. However, businesses are more inclined to choose the audience that reflects their current target demographic for a more accurate result. Some examples are the following:
- Stores that are advertising make-up that’s looking to ramp up their research may want only to get the women as their panels.
- A popular and national supermarket chain tries to understand its customers’ shopping behaviors. They can opt for the national representative panels that often cover a large portion of their customer base.
- A beverage company wants to launch a new product for the younger generations. They may decide to have a panel that ranges in the age groups of 18- to 35-year-olds.
Other demographics include location, age, alcohol drinker, finances, social status, the parent or not, and many others. In these types of studies, the possibilities are endless. Capacities to target the high-level detail make these panels unique, and they tend to stand out from the rest.
What Makes these Panels Different?
You may be thinking about distributing surveys to different people or the more convenient way of posting online questions and surveys. Some send these to their mailing lists and social media connections. This is all down to the quality of the results and the avoidance of confirmation bias.
These biases show themselves when one tends to recall information, interpret, favor, or search for information that supports their initial values or beliefs. There’s no point in doing all of these if you can’t challenge your customers’ assumptions.
For further illustration, you may want to imagine yourself trying to make improvements to your company. It won’t make sense if you only get responses from the people following you on social media because they might have already been familiar with your branding. Read additional info about branding in this link: https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2015/10/what-is-branding-definition/.
Your reach or would-be target customers who are not too engaged with you on social media and let them understand why. When you try an outsource research panel company, this is quickly done where you’ll get a list of consumers who will give you new insights and fresh perspectives on the things you need to improve.
Why is this Important?
There should be more than enough data and evidence to back this up when you make business decisions. Most of the instincts and assumptions don’t usually give you long-term success. Trust your data and ensure that any confirmation bias has not influenced it.
Another thing is utilizing the Hawthorne effect. This was discovered when researchers noticed that engaging more people in your research will lead them to advocate your brand more, and they will show loyalty. They tend to feel more critical, privileged, and valued, and this is what panels will open up to you.