Datadash - 2008 EMI Looks At The Year Ahead

With each New Year comes a new trend in fashion, food, music, and…… online market research!  While we can never be exactly sure what lies ahead, EMI would love to share a few trends that we think will be prominent in 2008.

Trend #1: Online Qualitative

While the standard quantitative survey still acts as a cornerstone, new methods of measuring the voice of businesses as well as consumers are offering fresh and unique insights.  As internet usage and broadband connections continue to increase worldwide, researchers are constantly creating new tools to provide more qualitative and interactive data.  According to a national industrial trend survey¹, the growth of bulletin boards and online focus groups is overwhelming.  Over 80% of qualitative research companies used online sample providers to recruit for studies at some point in 2006.  The major factor in this growth and overall acceptance of online quantitative research is speed and reduced costs or the forbidden word…price.

Trend #2: Balance Quality with Price

The old business adage is to never sell on price.  However, in the trend survey mentioned above, it was found that cost is the driving force in choice 96% of the time¹.  In order for online research to succeed long term, we must continue to invest in top quality data while driving efficiencies within the model, which leads us to our next trend in 2008.

Trend #3: Increase Profiling to Increase Incidence

EMI is looking into 2008 as the year of optimization and execution!  One key point we are stressing with our panel partners is to continue to add unique profiling questions that help increase the incidence of each study.  For example, targeting IT decision makers who specify server type allows us to price lower than using a 20% incidence among general IT professionals.  Our special sauce at EMI is turning lower incidence projects into higher incidence in order to offer our clients better pricing and feasibility all around. 

Trend #4: Globalization

Our final trend for 2008 is the continued increase in the globalization of research.  It is no surprise that US companies are looking for partners who can supply research services in Europe, APAC, and Latin America in addition to the US.  In 2006¹, 69% of revenue/projects came from market researchers working with panels to explore international sample.  EMI has a multitude of international online sample partners and in 2008 our hunger for the newest and most unique international panels will continue.

We are interested in any feedback you have regarding the above trends, either in agreement or disagreement.  Please feel free to share any trends you see in the future that we did not mention!

We wish you all a great 2008 and hope to have the opportunity to help you get there!

Sincerely,

The EMI Team

¹ Rockhopper Research. “Research Industry Trends 2007,” December 2007