Tame Organic Offline Word-of-Mouth Traffic to Enhance Consumer Insights
Naturally occurring and offline word-of-mouth (WOM) comments about brands are referred to in the market research industry as organic. Word-of-mouth activity is an important source of consumer insights in which companies have keen interest, yet find difficult to access and track. The avenues available to market researchers for connecting with consumers have diminished. Telephone surveys are notoriously ignored through caller-ID and circumvented through do-not-call restrictions. Shopping malls are substantively less receptive to leasing space to market researchers and have heavily limited the ability of market research interviewers to move about inside malls and approach shoppers. The primary sources for word-of-mouth activity are through connections with consumers in online environments and mobile digital platforms.
How Is Organic Word-of-Mouth Consumer Activity Tracked?
Where large customer databases exist, representative samples can be pulled from the records in which consumers have indicated that it is okay to contact them in the future for research purposes. Establishing a customer panel in this manner is cost-efficient, time-efficient, and effective. Organic word-of-mouth activity is carried out by both senders and receivers, roles that are indistinct throughout the WOM communication chain. Naturally, the originator of the WOM communication is of particular interest to the market research community. Critical to this type of analysis is the capacity to identify a distinct WOMUnit that can be tracked over time and throughout the organic network of consumers. The focus is placed on certain key metrics: Actions, participants, venues, and the WOMUnits themselves.
Analysis of organic word-of-mouth traffic can function as a stand-alone market research activity, or it can be integrated with other brand tracking metrics. Comparison and analysis of word-of-mouth traffic and traditional measures of brand and advertising can generate a more robust understanding of the senders and receivers of word-of-mouth activity. Moreover, customer segmentation can be informed by word-of-mouth measures. The details of consumer profiles can be enhanced through a deeper understanding of the attributes associated with high-potential word-of-mouth consumers. An effort to better describe senders and receivers of word-of-mouth activity can lead to better recruitment targeting for word-of-mouth and social media networking campaigns.
Willing consumers identified as being senders and receivers of word-of-mouth traffic can be recruited for future online consumer panels. Product and advertising research with these WOM consumers can include testing of advertising, concepts, and products. Also, WOM consumers can be a good source for new product or service ideation and brand innovation, particularly when intensive market research approaches, such as ethnographic studies, can be implemented.
Market Research Trend Reports Underestimate Platform Migration
It comes as no surprise that surveys research has migrated to online platforms, but the magnitude of that migration is stunning. According to Inside Research, nearly 40 percent of all U.S. based surveys research is not conducted online, resulting in the creation of an industry that generates about $1.4 billion annually in recent years. What is most interesting about this figure from Inside Research is that it is from 2007.
Consider that the market research reports from this and similar companies are revenue-generating deliverables, a prospect that generally means the reports are unable to keep up with a fast-changing industry. The up-take of surveys research to mobile digital and online platforms is staggering and seems to show no signs of slowing. The reader can safely assume that both the percentage of surveys currently conducted online and the revenue generated from these surveys has increased radically in the five to six years since the Inside Research conducted its survey about online surveys.
Consumers Tend to Prefer Online and Digital Mobile Surveys
The prospect that traditionalists will be able to hold the line in surveys research by arguing that in-person surveys research is superior to online surveys research is doubtful. Successful surveys research depends on the willingness of consumers to participate. The fact of the matter is that consumers are increasingly less interested in participating in traditional, in-person research. As with so many other aspects of consumers’ lives, there is tremendous appeal to going digital when responding to market research initiatives from brands.
A strong benefit of online and mobile digital market research is the geographic reach capacity. Typically, online market research involves the use of panels that are accessed through companies that establish and maintain consumer panels, most of which can be customized to reflect specific target markets. Mobile digital market research tends to be based on inbound marketing activity and has the added benefit of geo-location capacity.
By Gigi DeVault
http://marketresearch.about.com/
Naturally occurring and offline word-of-mouth (WOM) comments about brands are referred to in the market research industry as organic. Word-of-mouth activity is an important source of consumer insights in which companies have keen interest, yet find difficult to access and track. The avenues available to market researchers for connecting with consumers have diminished. Telephone surveys are notoriously ignored through caller-ID and circumvented through do-not-call restrictions. Shopping malls are substantively less receptive to leasing space to market researchers and have heavily limited the ability of market research interviewers to move about inside malls and approach shoppers. The primary sources for word-of-mouth activity are through connections with consumers in online environments and mobile digital platforms.
How Is Organic Word-of-Mouth Consumer Activity Tracked?
Where large customer databases exist, representative samples can be pulled from the records in which consumers have indicated that it is okay to contact them in the future for research purposes. Establishing a customer panel in this manner is cost-efficient, time-efficient, and effective. Organic word-of-mouth activity is carried out by both senders and receivers, roles that are indistinct throughout the WOM communication chain. Naturally, the originator of the WOM communication is of particular interest to the market research community. Critical to this type of analysis is the capacity to identify a distinct WOMUnit that can be tracked over time and throughout the organic network of consumers. The focus is placed on certain key metrics: Actions, participants, venues, and the WOMUnits themselves.
Analysis of organic word-of-mouth traffic can function as a stand-alone market research activity, or it can be integrated with other brand tracking metrics. Comparison and analysis of word-of-mouth traffic and traditional measures of brand and advertising can generate a more robust understanding of the senders and receivers of word-of-mouth activity. Moreover, customer segmentation can be informed by word-of-mouth measures. The details of consumer profiles can be enhanced through a deeper understanding of the attributes associated with high-potential word-of-mouth consumers. An effort to better describe senders and receivers of word-of-mouth activity can lead to better recruitment targeting for word-of-mouth and social media networking campaigns.
Willing consumers identified as being senders and receivers of word-of-mouth traffic can be recruited for future online consumer panels. Product and advertising research with these WOM consumers can include testing of advertising, concepts, and products. Also, WOM consumers can be a good source for new product or service ideation and brand innovation, particularly when intensive market research approaches, such as ethnographic studies, can be implemented.
Market Research Trend Reports Underestimate Platform Migration
It comes as no surprise that surveys research has migrated to online platforms, but the magnitude of that migration is stunning. According to Inside Research, nearly 40 percent of all U.S. based surveys research is not conducted online, resulting in the creation of an industry that generates about $1.4 billion annually in recent years. What is most interesting about this figure from Inside Research is that it is from 2007.
Consider that the market research reports from this and similar companies are revenue-generating deliverables, a prospect that generally means the reports are unable to keep up with a fast-changing industry. The up-take of surveys research to mobile digital and online platforms is staggering and seems to show no signs of slowing. The reader can safely assume that both the percentage of surveys currently conducted online and the revenue generated from these surveys has increased radically in the five to six years since the Inside Research conducted its survey about online surveys.
Consumers Tend to Prefer Online and Digital Mobile Surveys
The prospect that traditionalists will be able to hold the line in surveys research by arguing that in-person surveys research is superior to online surveys research is doubtful. Successful surveys research depends on the willingness of consumers to participate. The fact of the matter is that consumers are increasingly less interested in participating in traditional, in-person research. As with so many other aspects of consumers’ lives, there is tremendous appeal to going digital when responding to market research initiatives from brands.
A strong benefit of online and mobile digital market research is the geographic reach capacity. Typically, online market research involves the use of panels that are accessed through companies that establish and maintain consumer panels, most of which can be customized to reflect specific target markets. Mobile digital market research tends to be based on inbound marketing activity and has the added benefit of geo-location capacity.
By Gigi DeVault
http://marketresearch.about.com/
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