Welcome to the Listening Post!

How Online Research Communities Work for Consumers Invited to Participate

Tweet

 

Ray Poynter of The Future Place presented "It works for us but does it work for them? How online research communities work for consumers invited to participate" at the ESOMAR Online Research 2009 conference. Researchers and community-platform vendors assume that "communities provide the authentic Voice of the Customer" and "participants love communities". The benefits we assume for participants are that communities make it easier for participants to get their views across, more empowered, with greater convenience, feel the effort is more worthwhile and more enjoyable.

With Lou Rubie of Mars Food and Steven Cierpicki & Daniel Alexander of Colmar Brunton, Poynter did research in Australia, with 1,082 online panel interviews, four focus groups and engaged members of online research communities with discussions, polls and live chat. One hundred percent of respondents to the online survey had done a survey online (whew!), 50% had done a telephone survey (in fact, some had done 10+ telephone surveys), 16% face-to-face interviews, 21% had participated in a focus group (higher than a study of the general population due to the use of panels to recruit participants) and 17% of panel members had participated in online communities (though panelists had broader definitions of communities than MROCs).

Why do only a third of the sample always enjoy participating in communities? From the qualitative research, comments were:

• "I am putting in my own views but not hearing back from the client"
• One community was too slow to change with too little content
• Another community had too much content, with a participant's comments quickly scrolling off the page
• The belief that other people participating weren't being honest
• People disagreeing with the participant

Communities are less convenient than expected. Why aren't they more convenient? For short-term communities, researchers ask participants to log in four times a day; for other communities, they are asked to upload photos, which is "fun and rewarding but not necessarily convenient!" Researchers give participants a sense of duty: "remember they have a small chance to win a tiny prize!"

Honesty in online surveys comes from the lack of direct observation. In communities, people are conditionally responsive based on what others are saying; it is important to give community members other channels were they can make themselves heard.

Respondents were asked if they were likely to take part in future ORCs (Online Research Communities): of those who had never participated, 96% were interested; of those who participated, 80% were interested in participating in another community.

Caveats:  Australia is different from the U.S. and U.K, let alone other countries, so these results may not apply to your market. The results might change in six months to two years, as research communities are evolving so quickly.

For a final report card, Poynter concluded, "Good start but must do better!" Communities are exciting, with wonderful potential "but we are resting on our laurels, we need to do a better job." His five key recommendations:

1. Ask participants how the experience was for them
2. Benchmark against "best in class"; don't just compare to other communities but to other experiences and other methodologies.
3. Make communities as enjoyable as focus groups, even though this is a goal that we may never reach.
4. Make communities as convenient as online surveys: be more flexible and tailor communities around member preferences.
5. Make communities as fulfilling as having a real person there: consider doing an offline event where the community gather together or provide visits to the factory to get a tour on how the products are made.