Online Communities
Market Research

Online research communities bring together groups of consumers or businesses online and carry out various market research activities. Clients are able to access perceptions, insights and feelings throughout a short or long period of time.

Our communities are mobile accessible and do not require an app (browser based) so they are easily accessible to users and can be accessed at any time.

Research communities can be used for a variety of tasks to glean insights and keep panellists engaged, for example:

• Vox pop/video diaries introducing themselves
• Pre-tasks before events such as video diary keeping or submitting Vox-pops on a particular topic
• Online discussion forums to reflect on issues, share and discuss findings from other research and answer follow-up questions from clients
• Image review: We can provide static images, videos or audio to participants and they can then ‘mark up’ these with positive or negative emotions, as well as more detailed comments outlining their reasons.

The community features a range of ‘set piece’ tasks – which we can set – as well as an open discussion forum to which we can pose questions, as can participants. We can also provide access to clients so they can login and see what is being said live. Some involved tasks require appropriate incentives but other ‘lighter touch’ tasks such as quick polls are possible without an incentive.

The majority of tasks (excluding things like Quick Polls for instance) can be answered utilising either written words or video replies by respondents. The range of available task types are illustrated below:

Over an extended period, we can deliver a range of research exercises focussed around pre-planned discussion points and activities or (more likely toward the latter stages of the community) include developing questions (borne out of the emerging insights), even ideation and co-creation to explore ideas. We can also capture ongoing routines and behaviours in rich detail by having respondents document their experiences through the use of diaries/journals.

Real-time chat rooms and discussion forums can be useful for following up on and reflecting on previous thoughts. We can create a wide range of activities using various interactive question types including open text, media uploads, image and video mark-up, card sorting, fill the blanks, quick polls, grids and more.