Business Trends

In reaction to the shrinking budgets available during the current downturn, companies offering market research services have turned to the previously untapped potential in web communities.

For decades, research firms who trade in insight on business trends and consumer attitudes have offered clients the option of large scale research, based in paper forms or “qualitative” information based on recruiting rooms full of people or “focus groups” to gauge attitudes.

When the web arrived, nothing much changed. Some savvy researchers had focus groups working online and email surveys allowed increases in respondent numbers.

But the obvious potential of web communities to simultaneously generate both qualitative and quantitative information is only just now being tapped.

This change is so profound that it essentially dictates the complete restructuring of a major business sector.

All marketers of goods and services, all trackers of social, cultural or political trends, need to source research. Traditionally this involved large budget decisions concerning the choice between “quantitative” or “qualitative” approaches.

Now the low cost option of creating a web community of people with a common interest is on the table.

The new entry has been tagged Market Research Online Communities or MROC.

The companies touting the MROC state that the benefits go beyond the obvious cost savings. Communities range between fifty and fifteen hundred members and can be set up for any length of time.

Being able to monitor attitudes and trends in real time is a major advance in the field and has marketers struggling to come to terms with the implications.

Researchers using traditional methods had techniques for “steering” respondents toward desired outcomes.

But web communities give participants scope for total freedom of expression. They can share images, movies and do so without the control that a focus group held them under.

The result is that the end users of the gathered information get sharper insights into their customers’ attitudes and desires. It isn’t always what they hoped to hear.

Another side effect is that the web community members enjoy the participation more. With the ability to chat and start up discussions at their leisure, they take the role of stakeholder rather than “subject”.
Research industry pundits seem to be in agreement that the MROCs have the potential to tear up existing rule books and deliver better quality information quicker and at much lower cost than previous methods.

As compelling as these benefits appear, the greatest attraction to researchers might bee the ability to play “fly on the wall” in the communities.

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Market Research Online Communities have turned the world of information gathering upside down

Compared to traditional techniques, the new web based method offers better quality information faster and cheaper than before possible.

Most importantly MROCs allow participants to give spontaneous and honest attitudes without the controlling influence of a research moderator being in the same room.