Panel Management & Online Communities
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Sun, Feb 07, 2010
For many organizations, panel management is the first step on a path to building online research communities. Once panelists have become accustomed to being surveyed, a natural next step for them is to log into an online portal where they can interact with one another. While not every panelist wants to take the time to participate in an online community, a vocal minority does; their participation will give your organization a rich source of qualitative information.
The great advantage of an online community over a panel is that community members will raise and discuss issues that your organization would have never thought to have researched. This is a wonderful way to develop a broader understanding of your customers. That said, just because an issue becomes
a popular topic in your new online community does not mean that it is an issue across your customer base.
The word quantitative in quantitative research means that you can quantify the wider population based on the research results. The reasons most communities are not representative is because of the self-selection bias for joining the community (similar to the self-selection bias that makes online polls unrepresentative). Even in closed communities, those who agree to participate in communities may represent positive or negative extremes, since agreeing to participate in a community is even more time consuming than agreeing to take a survey. Further, most community managers do not ensure that the community demographics match the overall audience demographics.
For all these reasons, to achieve representativeness, and determine how widespread views of the community are in your wider customer base, you must reach beyond the active community members.
Properly performed panel management can provide a critical source of quantitative research for B2B market researchers and ecommerce sites. In fact, panel management remains of critical importance even after--especially after--an organization has formed online communities.
The best mix of qualitative and quantitative research is to use the online community for qualitative research and to then use the panel for quantitative research.
Want to learn how to set up your own customer panel? Download a complimentary copy of my white paper, Customers as Confidants: Customer Panel Management Made Easy.