Growth in Proprietary Panel Research Continues
According to Inside Research August 2008, spending on proprietary panels kept up at a high growth trend, up 50% in year ending June 2008. Forecast growth for 2009 is anticipated to be even higher, up 54% to $104 million globally, as popularity of this type of online research continues.* Why are proprietary panels so popular, and getting even more popular? In a nutshell, a proprietary panel is a faster, more insightful way to help your company understand key attitudinal indicators that drive customer satisfaction.
What is a proprietary panel?
A proprietary panel, also known as a custom online panel, is a set of survey panelists – typically customers or prospects – that have opted-in to receive a series of web surveys from your company over time. Panelists typically participate either to receive some form of compensation, or to have a louder voice in guiding your company’s decisions as it relates to future services, products or changes to service delivery methods.
With proprietary panels, all historical survey and profile response data collected from panelists are available for cross-tabbing, analysis and correlation. Also, because you know which panelists responded to which survey and profile response questions, and what each response was, you have historical data to that lets you target future surveys to a select subset of your proprietary panel. That means that surveys to your proprietary panel can be shorter and more relevant to each recipient, increasing response rates over time.
How can I build a proprietary panel?
Proprietary panels are typically created and maintained by market research professionals – whether they are an internal market researcher, or an external agency. The proprietary panel should be built to be representative of a broader population, so there is some special skill required in building proprietary panels.
If you’re interested in building a proprietary panel of your customers, contact us and we’ll show you how to do it yourself using our enterprise feedback and panel management software, or help you do it with our Professional Services team.
* source: Inside Research, August 2008
