A natural match for the Web
By CHRIS YURKO
(JUNE 2) -- Market research is one of those subjects many businesses prefer not to talk about, except in the most general terms. That's especially true for businesses in the market research field.
Corporations often hire market research experts to compile statistics and demographics to help them better market their products and services. That often involves conducting polls and taking surveys and talking to consumers about their likes, dislikes, and "modus shopperandi" -- their buying habits.
"Everything we do is proprietary," says Cate Rowen, vice president of Market Street Research, a market research company located -- by no small coincidence -- on Northampton's Market Street. "People pay us to find information and tell them and nobody else."
Market Street recently conducted a focus group for a client Rowen would not name, in an industry she would not disclose, seeking information she would not describe.
Nevertheless, knowledge of those facts would not have been as interesting as the manner in which this focus group was conducted -- on the Internet. What a better place to gather information, after all, than on the information superhighway?
"We have always tried to keep up with the most efficient ways of gathering data," says Rowen.
After 21 years in the business, Market Street is not about to toss all its old methods out the window. Telephone surveys are still the most common research method in the industry, says Rowen, and there's no substitute for live focus groups and face-to-face interviews.
But the Internet does offer certain advantages and she expects market researchers will be using the new medium more and more.
"There's a danger of people becoming enamored of technology," says Rowen. "Using any research method, we try to make sure we don't do that, and we use the research method most appropriate for our client's objectives, and sometimes that's a combination."
According to Rowen, the Internet is a useful tool for gathering both secondary data -- information other people have already collected -- and primary data -- information privy only to the researcher.
The Internet is a vast warehouse of data collected by other people, businesses, and government agencies, says Rowen, such as census data, labor statistics, news articles, published polls from newspapers and magazines, public surveys and government statistics.
For instance, says Rowen, through the Department of Education's Internet sites, "you can get pretty much every bit of information you want about every public school in the state:" graduation rates, average SAT scores, how many graduates go on to college, etc.
"Five years ago you would have had to go to the library and look it up in a book," she says. "Now you can tap in from the office and get that information."
Using the Internet for primary research is really a new concept, says Rowen.
"A smaller subset of our clients are interested in that," she says, though she would not say what type. In general, Market Street works for clients in the health care, banking and high-tech and software industries.
"The Web is not appropriate for all groups," she said, "but Internet research may be the best way to reach certain populations."
For one client, a major teaching hospital, Rowen says Market Street used e-mail to survey physicians, who are generally hard to reach by other means.
"We suspect physicians prefer to communicate by e-mail," she says. "Many doctors use e-mail to communicate with each other and with other people within the organization."
An on-line focus group entails setting up a real-time chat room on the Web restricted to certain pre-selected individuals, who are granted access by secret password.
"That's to keep out the competition," says Rowen.
The researcher poses questions to the group. Participants respond by typing in answers through their home computers.
Some of the advantages of the on-line method are that it's less expensive and easier to organize than a live focus group; you can get a wider geographic sample of individuals; and you can host a larger group, up to 15 people at once, compared to eight to 10 for a live group.
The information researchers get from each is very different, says Rowen. Data from on-line focus groups tends to be less detailed.
"There's just that barrier through typing," she says. "It's a lot slower than talking, no matter how well you type. However, it does give people the opportunity to look at what other people have said and reflect on it."
This kind of Web research is not geared specifically toward high-tech companies but rather "Any business trying to develop a strategy for the Web," says Rowen. "A lot of companies see the Web as a potential source of revenue."
By surveying the people who use the medium now, the "early adaptors," these companies are trying to predict the future direction of the Web.
Though Market Street has only done two on-line focus groups so far, Rowen expects there will be many more.
"I feel like in the long term," she says, "it's going to be a major way of reaching consumers. I think some day the Internet will be the major place where people interact with the outside world."
Originally printed in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on June 02, 1997.
Back to News
| 
