Why do market research on line.
It is absolutely essential when doing market research to get good data. Really any kind of research requires good data. We need a good sized sample that is representative of the population, because faulty data leads to faulty decisions. Right now the best place to get that data is online.
Online market research is the best medium with which to reach respondents. Nearly everyone uses the internet. My Grandmother even bought a cheap computer so that she can use email and visit her church’s website. People are even starting to spend more time on line than they are watching television. Now that’s a big deal. In fact you can probably reach a larger selection of people online than you can any other way, except for maybe door to door. Not just can you reach all these people but it is a lot cheaper than doing phone calls or going door to door. There is also the benefit of not annoying the crap out of individuals with that phone call that always seems to come right during family dinner, or their favourite TV show for that matter. With an online survey you can invite someone to respond to your survey without actually interrupting what they are doing at that moment. Not to mention that it is easy for the respondent to stop in the middle of the survey (even closing the survey) taking care of something else they needed to do and then clicking on the link again and finishing the survey.
Granted there is some worry about data integrity. Every one worries about some freak taking the survey over and over again messing up the results. But some market research survey software, such as Qualtrics, gives you the ability to turn on ballot box stuffing, or even better to individualize each survey link for each respondent, ensuring good quality data. There are a large quantity of online survey software providers that can be used to perform online market research. Admittedly some of them don’t look very attractive for the survey builder or for the respondent. But some (Qualtrics once again comes to mind) are pretty intuitive and even offer personalized survey skins for clients.