Community Platform for Market Research

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According to an early peek at the 2009 Tribalization of Business survey, the top two reasons for creating an online community are "market insights/research" and "idea generation". So market research (which includes ideation) has become the most popular reason for organizations to sponsor proprietary communities, yet rarely are organizations turning to online community software built specifically for this purpose.

The Vovici Community Builder is one of the few community platforms designed for gathering market research. A common database coordinates information for panelists and community members across major components:

• Panel Management - By empanelling everyone your organization can email, you can reach beyond just those who participate in your online community to build samples that are more representative of all your customers and prospects.
• Online Surveys - The ability to build and field sophisticated questionnaires to members and nonmembers allow you to conduct detailed, extensive survey research. Community members see the surveys they have been invited to from a pane within the community, while nonmembers receive only email invitations.
• Business Intelligence - Integrating operational data and CRM information enables you to perform sophisticated analysis.

Vovici Community Builder also has the features you would expect in a community platform:

• Customize communities to maintain your corporate identity
  • Add, delete, and modify pages, content, and modules using our visual interface-no coding required
  • IFrames embed dynamic content from other websites or documents inside your community
• Use a variety of social tools to connect with your audience and understand perceptions, promote co-creation, and keep a pulse on sentiment.
  • Forums - collect ideas, opinions and comments with moderated or un-moderated forums
  • Suggestion Boxes - gather sentiments and ideas directly from community members
  • Multimedia - add images, audio and videos directly into your community
  • Blogs - communicate with members and even enable members to post comments
  • Events - provide a social calendar where key events can be posted for your members to view

For those community platforms that lack built-in feedback management, the robust API of Vovici v4 can be used to integrate with standing communities to provide the robust market research capabilities that are driving the usage of proprietary communities.