Online marketing research is the process by which companies use the Internet to gather data, to evaluate how well a product or service is selling to consumers. It is the administering of a research survey via the internet or email.

The information provided by a careful market analysis conducted online can:

		help identify popular trends that can assist a company in creating a strategy that will get better results.
		be an effective tool that a company can use to experience higher revenues.

Online research can be both qualitative and quantitative.

		Quantitative internet research can be performed as a web-survey where the respondents reply to questionnaire-based emails. This means that with the click of a mouse, the results are back in the inbox of the researcher ready for analysis.
		Qualitative research can be carried out in a variety of methods including setting up group forums on the internet, or by setting up group discussions using web-cams, thus mimicking the conventional group-discussion format. Qualitative research is also being conducted using blogs, and/or an instant message type system to communicate with respondents, to name a few.

Online market research is usually conducted using a custom online panel.

A custom online panel is a group of pre-screened respondents who have expressed a willingness to participate in surveys and/or customer feedback sessions. The custom online panel is also known as a customer advisory panel, proprietary panel or an online research panel. Respondents become "panellists" by completing a profiling questionnaire. The profiling questionnaire data collected includes demographics, lifestyle characteristics and media habits, which provides a basis for future survey participation.

The online panel can range in size from 100 to 1,00,000 or more people. Unlike renting sample, this is a dedicated group that market researchers can engage with and learn from over time. At a moment´s notice researchers can investigate the attitudes, behaviour and opinions of existing or potential customers using interactive surveys, discussion forums and 3D retail environments. Plus, results are available instantly and responses can be tracked over time.

Quantitative Research Techniques:
The Internet has made more inexpensive means of quantitative data collection and analysis possible. With the help of software or Web-based tools one can perform research through customer surveys and collect visitor use patterns through Web logs. Following are some of the popular quantitative research techniques.

		Customer Surveys The most commonly used quantitative research technique is the use of online customer surveys. The internet has made conducting surveys quicker and less expensive. Options range from do-it-yourself programs to research services with screened panels. One can use surveys in a variety of ways-segmenting your customers, improving/developing your product or site, and gauging brand awareness, for example. Online survey research can be conducted using one of the many excellent and inexpensive research tools available such as Zoomerang, ConstantContact and SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey.com, for example, is a revolutionary tool to create and publish custom surveys in minutes, and then view results graphically and in real time. It allows the user to set up a small-scale (100 or fewer respondents) online survey for free, or he can plunk down the $20 monthly fee to run a larger survey. Some of the common features of the various online survey tools are:
		All major providers offer excellent tutorials to get one started and explain the ins and outs of effective research methodology. Although one may want to hire a consultant, one must be able to do all or most of the work.   All of the tabulation is automatic and can be exported to spreadsheets if necessary. No programming or design skills to crank out professional reports. If one is surveying own clients and prospects, from whom one has email addresses, one should not have to spend more than a few hundred dollars to survey as many as several thousand prospects. If one needs to research a broader universe where one has no e-mail contact information, Zoomerang, for example, provides a great service that will give a guaranteed number of responses for a fixed price. For example, one can expect to pay just $2,000–3,000 for a return of 200 qualified responses.  That´s a big enough response rate to give actionable research. One can expect to have 90% of responses completed within a week of the survey.  This compares to a snail mail timeframe of three to four weeks or more. All of the major research tools provide easy and automatic reporting tools so that even a novice can generate filters and crosstabs that permit an in-depth understanding of your results.
		Use Patterns Another approach to quantitative research on the web is to look for visitor use patterns such as, routes taken through your site, pages viewed, or ordering behaviour. By studying Web logs you can know which pages are most popular, how visitors navigate through your site, common entry pages, and where visitors often leave the site. You can also determine the number of different visitors to your site as well as the percent of visitors converted to customers. By using a traffic analysis service or software—often available through your hosting service—you can streamline the process.

Qualitative Research
Qualitative research techniques, such as online focus groups and feedback forms, are also increasing in prevalence.

		Online Focus Groups Online focus group services are more economical than offline focus groups. An online focus group is essentially a formal chat session. A trained moderator leads a group of participants through a pre-determined discussion over the Internet. Participants are often recruited through a research firm´s own panel and are paid a fee for participating. One can even conduct a focus group on his own without professional services by setting up a chat room and recruiting your own participants. Be sure to test the chat room service first, paying attention to perceived professionalism and any glitches your participants may encounter. Also, for best results, one should consider hiring a trained moderator to conduct the online focus groups.
		Electronic Feedback Forms Another simple way to conduct ongoing qualitative research is through a feedback form. One can gain valuable insight by asking your visitors how you are doing, asking them for suggestions, and/or asking them their opinions. One can do this through a form directly on one´s website and/or via email to those on the opt-in list.

The use of internet research has grown massively over the last few years due to the increasing popularity and expansion of the internet for both business and personal use.

Some of the benefits of using online research are as follows:

		Large number of respondents can be researched at one time using online research.
		Broad geographical coverage. International boundaries no longer need to be an obstacle to research. Worldwide research can be carried out at the click of a button.
		Quick turnaround time. Online survey studies usually have a faster turnaround than most traditional surveys. Information can be collected, tabulated, and disseminated at a faster rate than most traditional surveys. Many research suppliers now offer same day delivery of results.
		Pre-screened panels. Online surveys provide an easier recruiting method. Most panels include respondents who have opted-in and are willing to receive e-mail invites to participate in online surveys.

Online panels are a growing phenomenon in the market research industry. An online panel can replace, or supplement, many traditional forms of research such as: telephone and mail surveys, focus groups and on-site interviews. Using online panels provides the following benefits:

		Timely responses: Online panel research yields results within 72 hours, whereas telephone survey results can take 3 weeks
		More cost effective than traditional research: Depending on the nature of the sample source, online research savings are between 50 and 90 percent of the cost of telephone based approaches
		Accelerate screening processes: Because online panels consist of existing, pre-screened groups who are homogeneous on a range of characteristics, online panels can accelerate the screening process for an online marketing research study. And because they persist over time, extended studies can be conducted
		Quality/reliability of information: Perceived anonymity afforded by an online discussion increases respondent´s willingness to be more frank in discussions/surveys. Furthermore, respondents who may by nature be intimidated or reserved in face-to-face group are much more likely to speak up during online focus group discussions when they are not directly in contact with other respondents. Online panels allow respondents to take their time in considering their responses to questions, and to other respondents' comments. This differs from in-person focus groups, in which the conversation can move on before some respondents have had the opportunity to express their views, and in which dominant members of the group can more easily influence their colleagues.
		Better spread of respondents: Online panels provide the ability to assemble respondents in different geographical locations. This means that there is a new opportunity to bring respondents with a similar interest together in markets with a sparsely spread audience
		Convenience to respondents: Respondents can dip in and out of an online conversation at their convenience, returning to issues of interest as extra comments are added. In face to face focus groups, clearly all respondents must be gathered in the same place at the same time and for the same length of time

Traditional business owners know that market research plays a vital role in the success of any marketing campaign. However, in the current cost cutting era, online research offers a cheap, fast and effective alternative to almost all. The do-it-yourself approach using online research tools rather than the traditional outsourcing to a market research firm is fast becoming an attractive option.

Online research can be used effectively by:

		Entrepreneurs: For an entrepreneur starting his business, understanding the target market of his potential customers is extremely critical. Market research helps entrepreneurs to understand straight from the customers what their interests and needs are. While he can chose to spend a lot of money to get professional help by outsourcing to a market research firm, it is much easier and more cost-effective to conduct online surveys using tools such as SurveyMonkey.com. He can use the online survey to answer some critical questions such as "Is there a market interest or need for my new product?", "What products are people using currently?", "Are they willing to switch?" among a few.
		Small and medium-sized businesses: Online research can also be used by small and medium sized businesses that do not have the deep pockets to outsource market research to market research agencies. Till a decade ago, market research necessary has been difficult, complex, time-consuming and expensive and all these reasons may have prevented small and medium sized business to conduct market research. However, now with advent of online surveys, small and medium sized businesses have no reason to complain. They can prepare online surveys, conduct online focus group discussions to gain consumer insights, use electronic feedback forms to understand what their customers want and how to improve their product to better cater to their target audience needs.
		Brand marketers: Brand marketers can benefit from using online market research tools by using the information to maintain relationship with their current consumers, as well as understand the needs of new potential customers.
		Organizations/Educational institutions/Individuals can use electronic surveys on their website to gather feedback regarding their products or website or service.

Sydney Opera House

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE DEVELOPED ENGAGED ONLINE RESEARCH TOOLS TO DEVELOP ONLINE SURVEYS ON THEIR WEBSITE TO MEASURE CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SATISFACTIONS LEVELS

Home-care and hygiene giant Unilever runs a product centre in Trumbull, Connecticut, for gathering feedback on new products and proposed changes from local residents. For years they relied on printed forms to get feedback from their take-home testers—until, in late 2003, they replaced that process with online survey. It's faster, it's more efficient, and it saves them money.

About Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House is a global landmark and one of the busiest performing arts centres in the world. With over 4 million people visiting the site each year, it is one of the most popular visitor attractions in Australia. To consolidate its position as Australia's leading performing arts centre, the Sydney Opera House is significantly increasing the profile of its own programming and nurturing the development of new artists and audiences.

The Challenge
Presenting thousands of events and accommodating literally millions of visitors every year, Sydney Opera House needed a fast, simple and cost-effective way to gather feedback from its customers. The aim of the research was to gain an understanding of the ongoing needs of their visitors and identify areas where improvements could be made. With a large workforce, mainly focusing on customer service, Sydney Opera House was also looking for a way to measure the performance of each department over time.

Sydney Opera House identified several key objectives for the project:

		Provide a simple survey that could be completed by customers unassisted.
		Personalise the surveys according to questions answered.
		Integrate the branding of the survey with their existing look and feel.
		Build a profiled database of interested visitors for future research.

Offer a simple and cost-effective alternative to traditional research methods.

The Solution
Sydney Opera House engaged online research tools to develop a web-based survey to measure customer service and satisfaction levels. Simple and affordable, the solution offers a range of features and benefits.

		Online market research tool assisted with creating a user-friendly survey that was personalised based on the respondents answers.
		Fully-hosted and managed by the online service, the survey was re-branded and integrated directly into Sydney Opera House's existing website.
		Automated data collection and storage means no time is wasted collating and re-keying data as with traditional research.

Real-time detailed reports can be easily generated with colour graphs and clear tables for simple analysis.

The Results
During the course of the ongoing survey, hundreds of people provided valuable information on their perceptions of the Sydney Opera House, along with their reasons for visiting this great Australian icon. Other data was collected from the survey participants, including their gender, age and when they last visited the Sydney Opera House. A database was also created with respondents who would be willing to participate in future market research.

The overall results were returned in an easy to read, useful format, so Sydney Opera House can efficiently use this information to target its programming more effectively in the future.

"Not only are we saving time and money by running our surveys online, it also means we are likely to get more responses than by using other methods such as face-to-face interviews or telephone research. And, with such a large number of visitors each year from all over the world, it makes our customers easier to reach."

The Sydney Opera House is planning to continue ongoing surveys in the future so they can track customer responses overtime. "Our success depends on our visitors, so the more feedback we can get from them, the better", said Ms. Dickerson.

Unilever

TIRED OF PAPER FORMS, UNILEVER PRODUCT TESTERS TURN TO ONLINE SURVEY FOR ELECTRONIC FEEDBACK

Home-care and hygiene giant Unilever runs a product centre in Trumbull, Connecticut, for gathering feedback on new products and proposed changes from local residents. For years they relied on printed forms to get feedback from their take-home testers—until, in late 2003, they replaced that process with online survey. It's faster, it's more efficient, and it saves them money.

Most important of those, says Principal Product Scientist Alan Kessler, is how quickly you can get the results. "In terms of time-saving, I like it from the point of view that once I've placed the test, we can check on site and see how it's coming along. And then once the numbers have built to a certain point, I can download and process it; I don't have to keep calling the test centre," he says. "As someone often pressured to get results as quickly as possible, it's a nice feature. If you want results fast, don't do a paper survey—use an electronic one."

Kessler's group tests mostly personal products—shampoo, perfume, and so forth. But another group, responsible for household products such as detergents, has recently started using online survey for the at-home tests they conduct.

"We have about 10,000 people on the panel at any given time," Kessler says. "The individual tests aren't that big - fifty or sixty people, up to at most about two hundred." In a given year, Unilever conducts "maybe a couple of hundred tests, including in-house field teams and central location tests." About half of those are done through Key Survey.

"In an electronic survey, your respondent's location doesn't matter." Testers are called into the centre, given the product—in an unlabelled jar—and a sheet of paper with the URL of the survey and a login. To prevent any unconscious bias, they're not told that they're testing Unilever products - and the survey they fill out is generic, without Unilever's name or logo.

"We'll ask them to give an overall rating to the product," says Kessler. "Sometimes a couple of questions like that on different scales. Then we'll ask what, if anything, you liked; what, if anything, did you dislike. Just in case we want to read through to see if we're missing some aspect that we could be asking about. There are the usual kinds of scaled lists of attributes, and they could be anything from how it applied to how well it worked to how it felt on them. Generally speaking, we ask twenty or thirty questions like that."

Before online surveys, Unilever had employed people to manually enter the data from the print questionnaires—a slow process, because they had to be mailed and sorted first. And inconvenient, because it was hard to tell what the status of a given survey was. Now, that's no longer an issue. At any time, Kessler or another executive can go online and see the exact status of a project.

Alongside the improved speed and efficiency, the cost savings and better data flow, online survey has another benefit to Unilever: the respondents preferred it. "A lot of the testers," Kessler said, "are housewives, who're not necessarily used to using their computers. At first they were reluctant to get on their computer, but once they started doing it, they found they preferred it to doing a paper survey. It was neat-looking and they didn't have to write or check anything. We found fairly early on that people divide into two groups—those that were computer-phobic, and we lost some people but not many. The rest liked it better. It made them more willing to do tests, and they tend to fill out the questionnaires more quickly and more readily."

In the News:

2007: Unilever shifts 80% of its market research to web research
The percentage of Unilever's US research conducted online more than doubled to 80 per cent in five years till 2007. This was part of a long-term policy by the company to exploit the speed and low cost of the web to research customers' behaviour.

The shift to internet projects by Unilever, which spends an estimated €400m (£272.2m) a year on research, reflects the web's accelerating impact on the global market research industry. Internet research advocates believe it produces results more quickly and cheaply than phone or face-to-face interviews and focus groups. Chet Henderson, vice-president of Unilever Insight, the group's research division, said the catalyst for putting projects online in any country was the point at which half the population had internet access-a figure the UK achieved in 2003. Mr Henderson said, "As soon as we get to that, we can get the benefits of the speed of internet research."

Mr Henderson said that according to Unilever's internal data testing, internet responses also tended to be more honest than those gained by traditional methods. "In some countries, people are far more honest on the internet," he said.

The move to web research by big consumer groups underlines the business opportunity for internet-only research companies trying to grab business from established research networks. Webcams and online chat rooms are sometimes used to create virtual focus groups.

In Unilever's case, it believes the web could be 10–20 percent cheaper than traditional methods. Senior Unilever brand executives think that greater use of technology has gone hand in hand with a broader change in research approaches. Mr Henderson said: "Where you lose is in not being able to have a conversation. People type in a lot less than they say and online you miss the non-verbal way people signal their reactions." Nevertheless, Unilever believes it can exploit the web to conduct increasingly sophisticated research.

Facebook enhances intelligence but Twitter diminishes it: Psychologist

Spending time on Facebook could strengthen ‘working memory’ of a person but using Twitter and watching YouTube could weaken it, claims Dr Tracy Alloway, a psychologist from the University of Stirling in Scotland. Of course, digital agencies in India have their own views on the same.