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Benefits of using online market research panels

Learn why and when you should use online panels

In today’s highly competitive world, your products and services are bound to fail if you are not truly connected to the voice of the customer. Market research, thus, has become indispensable today for businesses. In this brief, you will be introduced to market research panels, one of the most effective means to source respondents for your research and help brands to improve their products and services.

Market Research Panel Explained

In the simplest terms, a market research panel is a pre-recruited set of persons who have agreed to answer surveys, usually in return for some incentive(s). The demographic, household, and behavioral data of these individuals are recorded to make targeting and conducting future studies easier. The market research panel recruitment and survey administration were traditionally done offline. But with the advent of the Internet, a growing proportion of market research services is now being conducted online. Online market research panels are increasingly seen as reliable and cost-effective services to reach out and understand any market researcher’s target population.

For brands, It is a great way to listen to the opinion of your consumers and collect valuable feedback from them and improve your product or services. Market research can be conducted in various ways such as online surveys but also with product testing at home or even focus groups. For every market research project, the participants will receive an incentive to reward the time they have spent doing surveys or other research activities such as focus groups.

Some large corporations prefer to maintain their own market research panel. But for smaller companies, it is a no-brainer to go for a third-party market research services agency maintaining multiple panels. Unless you need a very niche respondent base that existing panel providers are not able to meet, using a third-party market research panel provides advantages of speed, cost, and wider pool compared to own panels.

More than online surveys, the scope of services proposed by research supplier panels can be very large. Their core business is data collection services than includes a questionnaire and survey design, scripting, fieldwork and data processing but some others like TGM Research can also propose data visualization and many other research services such as qualitative online (focus groups, online communities, usability testing), mystery shopping, product testing or panel services and activities (branded panel for end-clients, meter app, and many others...).

Benefits of Using Online Consumer Panels services

Research panels make things quick and easy by providing pre-screened respondents who are ready and willing to participate in research surveys with zero effort. Besides, the deep profiling ensures that appropriate filters can be put to ensure that the most relevant respondents answer to your surveys. With the spread of the internet and mobile phones, third-party market research panel providers have a reach that was previously unheard of. Just contracting one single agency like TGM Research, for example, gives you a reach of 3 billion respondents across 120 countries. Whether a general audience is needed or a niche audience with specific ethnicities, occupations or age groups, this large reach ensures that you find the required number of respondents with the desired profile. If you plan to undertake multi-country research projects and services, online panels are the only feasible solution giving advantages of time, cost and process consistency compared to traditional offline methods.

How do you participate in market research?

Participants for paid market research are people who voluntarily join a research panel to take part in the research. Online panel participants can share their opinions on various topics, and they will be part of a consumer panel. Anyone can take part in a research project and make their voice matter. They can register to research panels by completing a short profiling questionnaire so that they can be later on invited to research projects/market research studies. The scope of research methods is large; participants can either be invited for qualitative research like focus group, products or services testing, in-depth interviews.

People for research are also invited by online panel companies to do quantitative research and take part in online surveys, mobile surveys, and other services and give research opinions regarding a brand, products, services. For brands, it is a great way to listen to the opinion of your consumers and collect valuable feedback from them and improve your product or services. Market research can be conducted in various ways such as online surveys but also with product testing at home or even focus groups. For every market research project, the participants will receive an incentive to reward the time they have spent.

For good data collection and research data quality, participants from the research need to match the targeted population we are interested in so the research findings can be statistically representative of a larger audience. For this, market research companies will select research participants based on demographics and other profiling and panel segmentation.

Why TGM Panels & Research Services?

In a market with many players and products, it is often difficult to zero-in on a market research panel to collaborate with. Given below are some research factors to consider, along with reasons why TGM Research will be the best-suited research panel to meet your business needs and conduct your project through a large range of research services.

Multisource Recruitment: To ensure that research panels are truly representative of the population for each market, TGM Research sources its panelists from a wide variety of sources including affiliate networks, email opt-ins, marketing campaigns, loyalty programs, social networks, mobile apps, and many other online services. This removes selection research bias due to specific sources skewed to specific profiles. 

Blended Sampling Approach: While TGM Research is flexible to client specifications, we always recommend not taking research respondents solely from a research panel. A mixture of panel respondents from online panels and dynamic sampling usually works best. Dynamic sampling counterbalances the “professional survey taker effect” as the research respondents are recruited at the moment’, are generally not a part of any research panel, and have never answered any online surveys before. Respondents will most likely be more spontaneous when they will answer online surveys.  

Strict Quality Controls: TGM Research employs a wide range of technology-enabled quality controls to ensure that data collected is genuine. These measures include advanced digital fingerprinting to ensure there are no duplicate responses, catch questions to detect careless respondents, check for human vs. bot, and extensive geo-location control among others. TGM Research complies with all the ESOMAR regulations, including a double opt-in process for panelists, and its regulations for data collection. Those panel quality controls are important when you have to choose a trustworthy panel partner to conduct your research in a new market.  

As respondents might be sourced from multiple avenues (TGM Panel, TGM Dynamic Sample, or TGM Panel Partners), each respondent is first directed to a pre-screening questionnaire to ensure that he/she is fully QCd before being redirected to the main survey. This is how we ensure the best quality coming from multiple panel sources.  

Deep Profiling: TGM Research goes way beyond the general demographic profiling details to ensure that the clients can get the most relevant research sample. Hundreds of market data points are collected and stored for each panelist e.g. company revenue/industry, drinking preferences and frequency, health conditions, education, electronics ownership, travel history, and preferences to name a few.  

Panel Engagement and Respondent Experience: It is imperative to ensure that the panel members are interested and involved to get meaningful responses to the surveys. TGM Research puts a lot of effort to ensure the same by providing attractive incentives, a good interface, mobile-friendly questionnaires, and ensuring diversity of tasks among other things. The responses are regularly monitored, and respondents who lose interest are dropped from the market research panels. 

Data Privacy: TGM Research complies with the ICC/ESOMAR standards for data security. All data and project materials provided by TGM Research panel members and clients are stored on secure servers. The server premises are secured from unauthorized access using firewalls, data encryption, IP based permissions, CCTV, and swipe entry access control among other security measures. Besides, TGM encrypts file paths or video content to prevent and reduce the ease with which material can be taken from a survey. TGM does not sell its data to anyone and is GDPR compliant as well. Panelists have an option to unsubscribe anytime. 

For your next project and whatever research services that you need; from surveys to focus groups, usability testing to product testing, recruiting the right participant is one of the most critical parts of any research. Having now a good understanding of panel research services will help you to find and select the right panel company. TGM Research is a full-service mobile market research agency providing its customers with a global reach across 120+ countries. The consumer research agency itself runs 85+ proprietary mobile/online panels around the globe.

TGM can also support you in emerging markets where many companies struggle to find good quality respondents. Online research can be conducted anywhere around the globe and TGM will make sure you get access to your market. Any hard to reach audience becomes easy to reach out to. If you ever wanted to reach out to a specific target group based in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, or in Kuwait where usually offline methods are used, it has never been so quick and easy to conduct research in those markets with online panels! Reach out to the team now!

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TGM Academy aims to educate on the transformative potential of market research and insight technology. On this website, you'll find articles covering everything from research design, sample selection to analysing results.

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