Business And Leadership, Ireland's Business News Service

The whole future direction of panels was questioned, with the programme committee chair, Niels Schillewaert, saying he believes that classic access panels are currently overheated. “Opportunities lie in the evolution towards a combination of high-quality, dedicated (eg branded, in-house) panels, and sourcing new platforms that rely and embed the web’s newest semantic developments (eg social media),” he said. “The future of the market research industry needs to embrace collaboration and connections between end-users, agencies and participants.”

He said he believed the conference would in future see more papers centred on communities; mobile research; engaging participants; the convergence of research, social media and conversations; and dedicated in-house panels. “Therefore, we may consider repositioning and renaming this conference as we need to move on to the next generation of sourcing and panels.”

While online panels clearly have the advantages of speed and lower costs, they have not been proven to always provide accurate data, said Anne Crasswell of NADbank and Judy Rogers of Research Solutions & Consulting, Canada. They were outlining the results of a recent Canadian experiment to determine, among other things, how online results resembled or differed from current telephone survey methodology and the consistency of different online panel suppliers.

The experiment involved collecting five sets of data – four online and one from a random telephone survey – to measure daily newspaper readership in three Canadian cities. Findings from the experiment, according to the speakers, indicate that a web-based panel does not provide a representative sample and that different online panels produce different results. “It would not appear to be the time to move from the current telephone survey platform to the type of online panel used by commercial market research firms for multiple clients,” they said.

“Next steps will be to explore alternative mechanisms for recruiting online panel members so that they more closely resemble a random sample of the population at large,” they continued. “It is still early days and a great deal of exploratory work will need to be done to assure ourselves that the new research protocols provide businesses with the data they need to make sound decisions.”

In his keynote address, Lorenz Bogaert of Netlog in Belgium spoke of the benefits of virtual social communities which, with 600 million users, offer the largest research panel on earth. He said that brands on social networks simultaneously reach core buyers, ambassadors and influencers.

Matthew Rhodes of FreshNetworks, UK, said the industry needs to understand how online research communities work alongside panels. “The two approaches have different characteristics and add value in different circumstances. It is not as simple as: panels are dead, long live communities. “Whilst online research communities are perhaps better suited to some research tasks than panels, there are also cases when the two work together. To keep ahead in the industry we need to understand when each of these situations applies and have the appropriate solution.

“If they are used to most effect, online research communities are going to fundamentally change the way we do business. The relationship between respondent, agency and client or brand will shift and a new way of working is needed.”

Elsewhere, Reg Baker of Market Strategies International, US, advised cautious use of online methods and panels. He pointed out that despite the fact that most online panels were not built using probability sampling, online now accounts for $4bn of research spend worldwide. He said online panels had made it possible to execute complex research designers quicker and at a lower cost than many in the research community may have ever thought possible. “But they are not the answer to every research question, and even when online may be the right choice, strong execution and interpretation informed by the broader context of available information and industry issues are essential,” he said.

Speaking as the keynote on the second day, meanwhile, Robin Pearl, vice-president, market research worldwide for Estée Lauder, warned that better management of online panels is needed. Better quality control is required to ensure that the data is robust, she said.

Case studies from EasyJet and MomConnections illustrated the benefits of online research. Sophie Dekkers of EasyJet, UK and Graeme Lawrence of Virtual Surveys, UK, said the establishment of the EasyJet community, which is a panel of 2,000 people who have flown with the airline in the past 12 months, has created a blueprint for ongoing dialogue with customers and is likely to be the future for forward-thinking organisations.

Cheryl Wilbur of The Parenting Group at Bonnier Corporation, US, and Leslie Rimmer of Resource Systems Group, US, said they refer to MomConnections as a research community rather than a panel. They went on to discuss the content and user experience of this community in the context of its utility as a powerful communications, research and business tool.

They said they had learned a number of lessons. “Bigger is not better. 5,000 provide large enough cells in post-analysis for most purposes. A branded site is important but the integrity of the brand must be protected and the brand’s own content site cannot be cannibalized. Respect for the panel members is critical and the ability to react to short turnarounds creates market advantage.”

Pictured: Niels Schillewaert, programme committee chair for the conference