Reflections about the online survey evolution in the marketing research industry
Posted by Dean Wiltse on Fri, Nov 16, 2007
I attended the CASRO (Council Survey Research Organizations) conference in Scottsdale during October. This was my 5th conference in the last seven years; my first conference was in 2001. It was held in Amelia Island during early October, a few weeks after 9/11. I drove from New York to Florida because I just wasn't ready to fly. I had flown flight 91 out of Boston many times and I had been in NYC the day before the attack. I also knew someone that lost her husband on that day. Flying wasn't an option for me then. It must have been a problem for many others too because the conference was not well attended.
At the 2001 conference we reviewed information collected from the industry that said most surveys were still conducted on the telephone and in malls. I recall in 2001 less than 10% of all surveys conducted in North America were via the Internet. Europe was even less.
What a difference six years have made. This year's conference had hundreds more people in attendance and I have never seen so many exhibitors at CASRO in the past. In 2001 Greenfield Online was the only company exhibiting that was talking about using their online survey panel to conduct surveys via the Internet. This year, E-Rewards, Survey Sampling, Research Now, Luth, Greenfield Online, GMI and even a couple of others were there to exhibit their online survey panels.
CASRO now reports that greater than 50% of all surveys are being done on the Web and the conversion to online surveys is happening around the world.
I believe we are entering a new stage of online survey growth. Companies love the speed and access to people at lower costs. Not only are they converting from other methodologies, but they want to do more and more online surveys as a result.