panellists involved in in-depth discussions on panel membership issues, coupled by a high level of self-awareness. As already argued, self- awareness in respondents to online market research surveys is as much a consequence of market research having been established as a field, as it is an effect of online communication as a stage in conducting market re- search studies.
novelty of working online being worth the extra effort. “In the long run, both reasons result in unrepresentative results and in turnover after the novelty of the technology wears off”14
Three years on, not much seems to have changed. On the contrary, ac- cording to our latest findings, incentives are in 87.4% of cases not the rea- son for panel membership. Thus the overwhelming majority of members of access panels are not in it for the money. That said, incentives are as inter- esting an issue to panellists as to the market research companies involved in recruiting, maintaining and using access panels.
The online medium raises specific problems, on the one hand limiting the range of incentives the market researcher can afford to offer, while on the other it has great potential for adjusting the rewards system and enables the market research company to refine its incentivising policy. In practice, market research companies today are able to and do reward their online panellists in a variety of ways, with a refined incentivising policy being an index of well established maintenance policy (See chapter 1: subchapter 4, 4.7). How panellists perceive and rank these reward strategies is an issue which the focus groups – source of the verbatim above – have provided in- teresting feedback on. Their findings, however, are fully confirmed by the findings of the quantitative study: panellists prefer cash.
According to your interests, which is the incentive type that is most appealing to you?
Points 16.7%
Prize draw 8.9%
Cash 62.9%
Donation/Charities 3.3%
Receive topline report about some of the surveys you have
taken part in 5.2%
Other 3.0%
14 Sudman, Seymour, and Brian Wansink (2002), Consumer Panels, 2nd Edition, American Marketing Association, p. 99
Interestingly, online panellists are generally aware of all the problems as- sociated with this incentive strategy. Cash is liable to taxation; choosing cash may involve more difficulties for market research companies and smaller rewards for panellists. Still 62.9% of the panellists surveyed pre- ferred cash to any other incentive strategy. To market research companies this is a valuable finding despite cash being an incentive strategy avoided by default due to taxation problems and its being an unattractive form of rewarding people who generally share a non-pragmatic perception of their membership. The value of this information, however, can only be revealed by looking at things from the panellist’s perspective, which can be easily done by reversing the findings of the chart.
In the market research company’s view, cash has no place as an incen- tive strategy. In the panellist’s view, it ranks first with an impressive 62.9%. Given that cash is a strategy to be avoided by default, the ability to relate these two apparently irreconcilable views to each other and optimise the value of the information contained by each involves a shift of perspec- tive on the part of the market researcher. From the market researcher’s per- spective, the information is useless: if cash has no place in the context of incentive strategies, it can hardly be valued in the context of the incentive strategies that are in place. From the panellist’s perspective, however, it can be of some use and leads to a number of valuable conclusions: if cash is the strategy most panellists would go for first then all the incentive strategies in place should be reconsidered; while knowing that cash is an incentive strategy avoided by default by online market research compa- nies, this preference should be looked at as involving higher or lower lev- els of dissatisfaction with the incentive strategies currently employed. For instance, where people rank points as the number one favourite incentive strategy, the preference for cash implies that points is the least dissatisfy- ing incentive strategy. Likewise, instead of thinking that prize draws are ranked third on the most-wanted list, market research companies should acknowledgeprize draws as the second least dissatisfying way of reward- ing panellists, while the ability to receive top line reports about some of the surveys is not number four among preferred incentivising policies, ra- ther it is number four in the hierarchy of the least dissatisfying policies.
Finally, donations/charities are not the least wanted but the most unwanted rewarding system.
The result of this exercise of shifting perspective and transcribing the findings of the survey from the market researcher’s perspective to the pan- ellist’s perspective can be expressed as below:
Points 0.45%
Prize draws 0.23%
Donation/Charities 0.08%
Receive topline report about some of the surveys you have
taken part in 0.14%
Other 0.08%
Clearly, the above chart brings us closer to the panellist’s reality. The ad- vantages of the suggested perspective shift are quite significant. Essen- tially, it helps interpret an ideal picture (that of what the panellists would rather have) in the context of reality (of what the market research company can give). Besides offering insight into how what is offered by the market research company corresponds to the expectations and desires of the panel- lists, it also says a lot to companies for which a panellist satisfaction study does not end with acknowledging findings like those in the chart below:
Thinking about the Incentives you have received after completing our surveys, how would you rate the following criteria?
The opportunity to earn points 6.13
The opportunity to participate in prize draws 6.10 The opportunity to donate money to charities 6.23
The opportunity to receive gifts 6.22
The opportunity to receive shopping vouchers or cash/stamps 6.31 The opportunity to combine each type of incentive 6.27 The overall satisfaction with our general incentive policy 6.20
Findings, as those above, are clearly worth using as a first step in identifying the satisfaction of the panel members with the different incentivising strate- gies applied. They are, however, not of much use when it comes to judging the system as a whole and finding ways to improve it. Admittedly, what panellists first say by opting for cash is that each panellist is unique and that, if rewarded, they need to be rewarded individually. The fact that points is the least dissatisfying of the incentive strategies in place reinforces this state-
ment of uniqueness and individuality. Points offer a certain degree of liberty as they can be exchanged individually. Prize draws already introduce an un- democratic principle into the rewarding, making it even less eligible, while donations and top line reports involve interests of too private a nature to be easily applied to others as well. By considering the field of other incentive strategies envisaged by panellists as desirable, we are left with a varied range of choices from cinema tickets and mobile phone top up cards to dis- counted travel tickets. Though it may seem difficult to satisfy such differing tastes, the market research company can optimise the use of this information and refine its incentivising policy as much as possible in order to address as many categories of panellists as possible. Where neither individual incen- tivising nor giving cash is possible, segmenting the panel as much as possi- ble in terms of incentive preferences by age, sex, social class etc. is a good middle way. As already explained (see chapter 1: subchapter 4, 4.7), reten- tion levels with online access panels can easily be raised by refining the in- centive strategies applied to each individual panel. This refining and seg- menting policy, apart from increasing panel stability and strengthening panellist loyalty, can also contribute greatly to balancing the panel.