Pollfish Marketing Team, Author at Pollfish Resources

How to Conduct Grocery Market Research Like a Pro

Whether you own a grocery chain or a small supermarket, grocery market research is a powerful practice when it comes to understanding your target market, improving your offerings, and investigating this industry at large.

In recent years, the grocery industry has undergone unprecedented change due to the advent of online shopping and the emergence of mega-retailers, like Amazon and Target Business owners who wish to succeed must stay abreast of changes; market research is the most data-driven and accurate way to do so.

This article will teach you how to conduct grocery market research like a pro so you can stay competitive and meet your customers’ evolving needs.

The Purpose of Grocery Market Research

Market research describes the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data in order to better understand a certain market. Grocery market research is a fundamental tool in:

Identifying and catering to specific customer segments via market segmentation Consumer behaviors during their digital experiences
Competitive analysis of your sector
Current trends and growth opportunities
The success of marketing campaigns and how they can be improved
The demand for new products, services, and experiences
Desired distribution methods
Geographical demand for your services (allowing you to venture into other geographical regions if the demand is high enough)

A successful market research project will help you make better decisions about how to improve or grow your business. There is an inherent risk in starting or making changes to your grocery business, but market research can provide assurance about the changes you need to make.

The Makeup of Grocery Market Research

Market research involves two data types: primary and secondary research. Primary research is highly-specific information that has not yet been collected, and thus has to be collected and analyzed by the business owner. Some examples of primary research are:

Survey research (online or by mail)
Focus groups
Interviews (phone or in-person)
Observation studies
User testing (more relevant for online grocers)

Secondary research involves the gathering and analysis of existing, publicly-available data. This includes free and paid-for resources. Secondary sources of information include:

Market research reports
Case studies and white papers
Government statistic sites
Industry reports
Research companies
Search trend sites (Google Trends) and SEO platforms

Once both information sets have been gathered, you will need to spend time organizing and analyzing the data in order to make conclusions that are relevant to your business.

How to Perform Grocery Market Research

Like other types of market research, there is a certain process you can expect to follow while undertaking grocery market research. However, there are some considerations that are unique to the grocery industry. By understanding these unique aspects, you will be better poised to collect the right type of primary and secondary research.

Your general approach to grocery market research should cover the following:

Identify your target market. Understand who your potential customers are. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you will need to consider the demographics, needs, preferences, and aversions of those in the surrounding area to understand spending patterns and their unique needs. Online stores will need to take a broader look at consumer behavior to identify their target market. Survey research, including quantitative and qualitative research, can help you identify and scrutinize your target market.

Understand your target market’s behaviors. The goal is to understand the spending habits and preferences of your prospective customers. By understanding their behaviors and motivations, you can create more targeted and precise marketing campaigns that are relevant to your customers.

Analyze consumption and saturation. Secondary research, such as the examination of spending statistics and employment statistics, can help you assess how much demand there is for your grocery store and current market saturation. The goal is to identify a niche where the demand is high, but the market is not yet saturated.

Identify the competition. Understand what your competitors are doing so you can offer a better or varied experience. Consider how their marketing strategies and messaging are succeeding or failing. Use secondary research and visit your competitors’ digital and brick and mortar properties in order to better understand your competition.

Outline your unique value proposition. Even in a saturated market, you may be able to differentiate yourself to offer a competitive grocery shopping experience. For example, you might offer certain product lines that your local competitors don’t. Or you may offer a free delivery service within a certain radius. If there is plenty of local competition, try to identify at least one way you are different and then plan your marketing strategy around those differentials.

Once you have finished this process, you should have a better idea if your business can meet the needs of your target market. If you have unanswered questions or need to dive deeper into the specifics of your niche market, consider deploying a survey to get clarification.

Secondary Research Sources

We have compiled some of the leading reports about the US grocery industry to help you get started on your grocery market research.

MarketResearch.com’ Grocers Market Research Reports: This website is an excellent source of market research reports. Search for grocery market research reports at a broad level or for more specific subsectors. Also available are U.S. and worldwide outlook reports, along with country-specific reports.
IBISWorld’s Supermarkets & Grocery Stores Industry Market Research Report: IBISWorld is a global company offering in-depth market analysis from trusted industry experts. Their supermarket industry report covers key topics including historical and projected growth, revenue forecasts, market size, industry trends, and profitability analysis.
Online Grocery Market Outlook & Key Findings: This report focuses specifically on the online grocery industry and provides a global perspective on the industry growth. The report includes an analysis of how COVID-19 has shifted consumer behavior and the long-term outlook for this industry.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Food and Beverage Stores: The BLS is a treasure trove of free data about the food and beverage stores industry. Explore employment and earnings figures, workplace trends, prices, and more.
Progressive Grocer: This grocery industry magazine has been publishing articles and reports for the retail food industry since 1922. It is a trusted source of both news and published research reports.
Grocery Trade Shows: Trade shows are an excellent way to learn more about the latest trends and growth opportunities. Thanks to COVID, many of these can be accessed right from your living room indefinitely.

Using Survey Research for Grocery Market Research

The grocery market industry has undergone rapid change and growth during the unprecedented era of COVID-19, raising the demand for market research in this industry. Established retailers are scrambling to meet the needs of their customers, while entrepreneurs search for openings in a competitive landscape.

Grocery market research should be an indispensable part of your marketing and planning strategy for the coming year. From providing a clearer picture of how the market has changed to providing insight into your customers’ evolving needs, market research is an invaluable tool that you can use to intelligently guide your efforts.

From traditional to online, grocery store owners must ready themselves for more change. If you are trying to identify ways to remain relevant or seize an opportunity for yourself, now is the time to start your market research.

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

Diving Into the Customer Satisfaction Survey

Customer satisfaction. This lofty achievement is often, if not always, the main objective for businesses small and large.

It goes without saying that this concept is attributed to revenue, continued purchases, customer loyalty and brand awareness (via reviews and mentions by happy customers).

So how can your business accomplish customer satisfaction? By putting the customer satisfaction survey into practice.

This survey is specifically tailored to gauge customer satisfaction within your niche, and most importantly, within your company. This article will explore this survey type and how you can optimize it for all your business needs, including market research, marketing and more.

Defining Customer Satisfaction

This term appears to be self-evident, but for business purposes, it is best to understand it precisely before you venture out on any efforts to perfect it — or if you’re a startup — to reach it.

Customer satisfaction denotes the measurement that ascertains the degree to which customers are satisfied with a company’s products, services and experiences. In short, it reveals whether your customers are happy with your offering and by how much.

Your business can determine its own levels of customer satisfaction with the customer satisfaction survey.

The Customer Satisfaction Survey & its Applications

As its name implies, a customer satisfaction survey is a survey developed for businesses to understand what their customers think about their products, services and company at large.

As such, this kind of survey can cover all the bases of customer satisfaction, such as user experience, mobile experience, customer support and all the other facets of doing business/ interacting with your company.

The customer satisfaction survey can take the form of a questionnaire, or a ratings-based survey (think numerical values, stars and other icons used to express good or poor satisfaction).

This kind of survey can be used in a number of different campaigns, based on their macro applications. These include:

These applications may seem too broad to be used for uncovering customer satisfaction alone — and they are. These macro applications serve as the starting points of survey research, which in turn can be used to buttress them. The same applies to a customer satisfaction survey, which can be used in relation to these campaigns.

For example, you can test how satisfied customers are with a product, as it relates to an advertising campaign around it.

Or, perhaps you need to test your customer support satisfaction for branding. You may conduct a survey that asks about specific wording your representatives may have used.

There are several ways to form a customer satisfaction survey.

5 Types of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

You can design these surveys in a number of ways, but there are five main types of formats that these surveys take. Each survey type provides a different kind of angle into customer satisfaction. As such, they should be used at different points in the customer journey.

Net Promoter Score Surveys (NPS)

Conceived in 2003 by Fred Reichheld, of Bain & Company, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey has become prominent across industries. This score-based survey asks customers to rate the likelihood of their recommending your business, on a scale of 0-10.

The respondents who ranked their likelihood between 0-6 are known as the detractors, those who are generally unhappy with your product, service or experience.

Those who respond in the 7-8 range are called passives, as they are not impressed with your company, but aren’t dissatisfied either. They are situated in the middle of this score, despite their numbers going slightly past the mid-section.

Respondents in the 9-10 range are the most ideal, as they represent the promoters of your business; they are on the higher end of satisfaction.

To calculate your NPS, subtract the percent of detractors away from the percent of promoters. For example, if 60% of responses were Promoters and 15% were Detractors, your Net Promoter Score would be 45. (The NPS is expressed as a digit, not a percentage.

Pro tip: Always add a follow-up open-ended question, so that your customers can explain why they selected their rating.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The CSAT represents a customer’s fulfillment in a particular situation. This is where you can apply this survey to a wide range of applications. For example, you can assess customer happiness during an interaction with a salesperson or with a product feature.

The Customer Satisfaction Score is made up of two parts: a numerically-based question and an open-ended question. The numerically-based question is a scale representing satisfaction.

The CSAT can ask, for example, to rate satisfaction with an experience from a scale of 1 (very dissatisfied to 5 (very satisfied).

To calculate the CSAT, use the following formula: The total number of satisfied responses / total number of responses) x 100. Round the result to the nearest whole number.

Respondents who answer this with either 4 or 5 are considered to be satisfied customers.

Pro tip: Use the CSAT to understand your customer sentiment at a specific point in time. This includes after a product demo, after a technical support call, after visiting a service center or store.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

This type of survey measures the amount of effort that was required for a customer to take part in an action. This survey focuses solely on the process of achieving an end result. Also called the effort, measuring the process determines how easy or difficult the flow is in your product/service.

As such, even if the result may be enjoyable to the customer, the process itself may not be.

This service is important, as brands today must provide quality experiences; the product or service alone is not enough. To fully satisfy customers, brands must make it smooth and easy to complete any process, whether it’s signing up for a subscription or ordering a product.

To calculate the CES, use a 5-point scale to gauge the ease of the customers’ actions. For example, it is common to ask: “how easy was it to find this product on our site?” The options should range from “very difficult,” to “somewhat difficult,” to “somewhat easy” and so on.

The answers on the “disagree” side of the spectrum would be number 1 and 2. 3 would be neutral, while 4 and 5 would be on the “agree” side. The CES is centered around the “agree” answers.

As such, to find the CES add all the “agree” answers (either 4 or 5), then divide them by the total number of respondents.

For example, if 100 customers replied with a 4 or 5, but there are 200 of them who took the survey, 50% of them are in the “agree” range. That means your CES score is 50. Brands ought to aim for high CES scores, as it points to customers happy in achieving an intended outcome.

Visual Rating Surveys

Also called emoji surveys, visual rating surveys allow customers to respond with graphic, rather than with a number. All the choices they can select are composed of a graphic and there are various ones you can use.

Each answer shows a different amount of each graphic to express the level of satisfaction. For example, a question on how satisfied customers are with a service can range from 1 to 5 stars or other emojis.

Here are a few examples of the types of visual rating surveys:

Star surveys
Heart surveys
Thumbs up/down surveys
Smiley surveys

These kinds of surveys are visually appealing, easy to complete and take little to no time to finish.

Custom Surveys

Best used to understand how and why customer satisfaction was exceeded, met or failed to reach expectations, these surveys are often used as follow-ups to previous surveys.

Custom surveys include questions that delve further into customer satisfaction to discover specifics that other surveys could not make readily available.

To piggyback on previous surveys or previous responses, you can ask follow-up questions by way of advanced skip logic. This will automatically direct your respondents to different question paths, depending on the answers they provided.

You should organize your custom survey feedback into three segments: fix now, fix later and fine as is. This will allow you to see which issues and experiences are the most pressing and which can be amended later.

6 Types of Questions to Use in a Customer Satisfaction Survey

The types of questions you use will largely depend on the kind of survey type you implement into your customer satisfaction campaign.

However, since they all fall under the same research campaign and measure virtually the same thing, there is going to be a lot of overlap between the questions you use for each survey type.

The following lays out the 6 question types to use for measuring customer satisfaction.

Multiple-choice questions: limit the number of answers a respondent can use. Little effort is required to answer (as opposed to open-ended questions).
1. They can include rating scale questions, binary scale questions, nominal questions, Likert scale questions, and semantic differential questions.
Rating scale questions: use multiple-choice questions that correspond to a scale, such as the CSAT, for customer support, or the probability of product recommendation (NPS)
1. These are also called ordinal questions.
Binary scale questions: Allow for only two answers, such as yes or no, or a thumbs up or down.
1. These are used to cut back on obscure results.
  An example of a binary scale question
Nominal questions: Use different categories of answers with no numbers attached.
Likert scale questions: Questions on a 5-7-point scale to assess customer sentiment.
1. 1 represents the lowest end of the view (strongly disagree) while 7 is at the highest end of the opinion (strongly agree)
Semantic differential questions: Uses a 5-7-point scale, but goes beyond agreeing and disagreeing.

Using this Survey to Lure in New Customers

Unlike other surveys, which are used to scrutinize your target market, identify it or segment it further, the customer satisfaction survey deals solely with customers, ie, the segment that has already bought from you.

Not everyone in your target market is a customer, as this group denotes the people most likely to buy from you — not the people who already made a purchase.

Customers are every bit as important to study as prospects, as they help you discover what your company exceeds at and where there’s room for improvement. Measuring customer satisfaction will inform your business on how to better prepare your service, experiences and offerings for everyone in your target market.

As such, you’ll know how to better lure in new customers and upkeep their satisfaction. But most importantly, a customer satisfaction survey helps bridge the gap between one-time purchasers and loyal customers. Retaining your customers is key to keeping your business afloat, as they represent a continuous stream of revenue and revenue opportunities.

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

The Complete Survey Response Rate Guide

In a survey, the survey response rate is a unit used to measure the accuracy of the data that you collected, making it an important factor to consider when interpreting survey results. After taking the time to plan and create a survey, a low response rate can be very disappointing.

Even worse, a low response rate may result in the incorrect interpretation of survey data, leading to a major misstep in business planning.

When planning and creating a survey, you should aim to maximize the survey response rate by paying attention to factors that may hinder respondents from starting or completing your survey.

This guide will help you understand why the survey response rate matters and what you can do to improve the response rate of the surveys you create.

Understanding the survey response rate

Also referred to as the completion rate, return rate, or simply the response rate, this unit is crucial to survey research. The survey response rate and its affiliated monikers are used to indicate the percentage of people who completed a survey compared to the total sample size (people who received the survey).

For example, if you sent out 1,000 surveys and received 150 completed surveys, your response rate would be 15%. When looking at the response rate for a survey you conducted, you will need to assess whether the response rate is poor, average, or good.

There is not a standard “good” survey response rate because it varies greatly based on several components, such as the industry, survey type, and the method of distribution (e.g. phone, in-person, email, live site or app).

Why the survey response rate matters

Calculating the survey response rate is straightforward, but interpreting its effect on survey data is more nuanced. As such, it is vital that you carefully consider this metric when analyzing survey data.

A low response rate usually increases the likelihood of sampling bias. Sampling bias is the term used when the results of a survey do not return random results. The lower your response rate, the more likely it is that you will experience sampling bias.

An example of potential sampling bias due to a low response rate:

Let’s say that a company wants to know what incentives are most appealing to their employees. They decide to focus on softer incentives like free lunches, happy hours, and other team-building activities. They send the survey out to 200 employees and receive 32 responses, giving them a 16% response rate.

When examining the data, the HR team noted that 94% of these respondents expressed great satisfaction with the team-building incentives. With such a positive response, the team could be tempted to assume that these incentives are a valuable asset to current and prospective employees.

Fortunately, knowing that the survey had a low response rate that could result in sampling bias, the team decides to look closer at the results before drawing conclusions.

While reviewing the data, the HR team sees that most respondents were in the 22 – 28 age group, leaving them with new questions. Were younger people more likely to respond because they like these activities and want them to continue? Does this age group have more interest in voicing their opinions?

With more questions than answers, the HR team decides to revisit their survey and try to improve the response rate before making changes to their incentive program.

5 ways to improve your survey response rate

Here is the most important part of this guide. Since the response rate is an indication of survey quality and can improve the accuracy of results, you should do everything you can to promote a higher response rate.

Here are our top tips for creating a survey to improve your response rate:

#1: Understand and state the purpose of your survey

Before you create screening criteria or questions, think deeply about the purpose of your survey. What do you hope to learn by conducting this survey? What are the top questions you want to answer for your business? Revisit your purpose before, during, and after your survey development to ensure you stay on target.

For even better results, share some of this information with your respondents. Instead of asking someone to “answer a few questions,” you may get a better response when your respondents understand why they are being asked to participate.

#2: Design your survey well

A well-designed survey offers a better user experience (UX) for respondents and increases the likelihood that they will complete the survey. Survey design covers both the physical aspect of the survey as well as the questions within the survey.

Some best practices for survey design include:

Create a visually appealing survey. Questions should be laid out nicely and responses should be easy to select. Include images if necessary.
Make sure the language of the survey appeals to your target audience. Use language that is clear and appropriate for the audience. The questions should be easy to understand with responses that make sense within the contact of the question.
Since many people will complete an online survey on a mobile device, verify that the survey works as well on phones and tablets as it does on a computer.
Personalize your survey to your target market. Further audience segmentation will help organize your user base.
Add advanced skip logic so that respondents are routed only to relevant questions based on their answers.
Use a variety of question types. Varying your question types between multiple-choice, rating, and open-ended can help increase your survey response rate.

#3: Keep it short

Long surveys are less likely to be completed, making survey length one of the primary factors in survey response rate. Ideally, you will keep your survey short and focused – a survey that takes longer than 5 minutes to complete will not perform as well as one that takes 3 minutes.

Of equal importance, let your respondents know how long it will take them to complete the survey – and make sure your estimate is accurate or you may notice that respondents start the survey and do not finish it.

#4: Reach the right audience

In order to increase the number of people who complete your survey, you need to reach them and offer them a survey that they can complete on their own terms. A professional survey platform can help you reach a bigger, more relevant audience, thereby increasing the odds you will find the right people to complete your survey.

With a larger number of prospects, it is also important to carefully consider your screening questions to filter out those who are not in your target market, area of study or are less likely to complete the survey. A good survey platform will make it easy for you to screen users before they begin taking your survey.

#5: Choose the right incentive

While some people truly enjoy filling out a survey, the vast majority of respondents are reluctant to spend valuable time answering a survey without some type of incentive. There is no “one size fits all incentive” – the type of incentive you offer must be attractive to your specific survey group.

B2B customers are more likely to be motivated by intrinsic incentives, such as eventually receiving the results of your research or understanding that their response will help you improve their experience.

Other survey audiences are better motivated by extrinsic rewards, such as discounts and coupons. If you have an online shop, offering a 10% discount on a subsequent purchase can help dramatically improve your survey response rate.

An appealing introduction:

In our scenario above, the HR team could encourage responses from a wider demographic if someone explains the importance of the survey during a company-wide meeting and again when distributing the survey.

Here is an example of an introduction that could improve the survey’s response rate:

“Hi Sam. We know that incentives are a powerful tool to retain employees and attract the best talent to join our team. We want to understand if the incentives we currently offer are appealing to all of our employees.

The survey will only take 3 minutes to complete. Your responses will help us update our incentive program to ensure that our incentives are relevant to all of our employees.”

Improve your survey rate, improve your market research

In many cases, using a survey platform will make it easier to maximize your survey response rate. For example, the platform should make it easy to add an attractive visual design that works well on any device.

It should also come with a call-out (a button or banner that prompts users to take the survey). Additionally, the platform should give you advanced tools to select your desired target audience by way of demographics options.

Another important benefit of a professional survey platform is that you can understand your survey’s response rate in real time, allowing you to respond quickly to correct a survey with a low response rate. The ability to course correct can save you time, money, and provide higher accuracy of results, so you can be confident about making business changes based on the outcome of your survey.

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

How to Get Insight from Consumer Panel Surveys: 10 Tips

Alongside focus groups and ad-hoc questionnaires, consumer panel surveys are a popular tool for businesses looking to gain insight into what their audiences – and consumers at large – are thinking.

Using pre-recruited and pre-screened groups (or panels) of respondents, consumer panel surveys have specific advantages over alternative consumer research methods. You can control your audience, for example, and return to the panel over time to collect data repeatedly from the same set of people. This lets you dig deep into highly targeted audiences – and, crucially, compare changes in attitude over time.

Yet, as with all research methods, to get real value from consumer panel surveys, you need to refine your technique. That’s why, in this article, we’re sharing 10 tips and best practices to get the most from your consumer panel surveys. We’re talking how to shrewdly recruit and screen respondents, how to ask questions that elicit authentic opinion, and how to use the right analytical methods to yield deep insight.

Note: Don’t forget, Pollfish has created a new consumer research methodology that works a little differently. One that fulfills the promise of consumer panel surveys, while keeping bad data to a minimum – and making access to deep insights easier and more efficient.

Where to Start with Consumer Panel Surveys?

Consumer research can deliver highly valuable insight for your business. Whether you want to test how an ad campaign will land, or get feedback on a new product line, opinion from authentic consumers – and potential customers – can be priceless.

Yet, you can’t just go and fire questions around at random. This won’t tell you anything of value. Rather, thinking through who you are asking and why is crucial before you start.

Here are three tips on how to get that done.

#1: Gain Clarity on Your Research Problem and Goal

We’re starting with the basics, yes. But a true understanding of what you want from your research is an essential element that too often goes overlooked, particularly by businesses conducting research themselves. If you want insights that have value for you, you need absolute clarity on your larger goals.

Do you want to boost sales, refine a specific product, or determine brand positioning? A robust research objective will help you sculpt questions that deliver sharper insights – and save you time asking questions that don’t deliver value.

#2: Refine Your Research’s Scope and Scale

Once armed with a research objective, you now need to assess the desired scale of your research. This can get a little complex – but it ultimately shapes the reliability of your research.

Of course, the ideal survey would consult 100% of your target population – whether that’s marketing graduates in Scotland or cyclists among your company staff. While this scale would yield data on which you can surely rely, this is usually not possible in practice. Even if your target population is very small.

However, the further from 100% of the population, the greater the likelihood of inaccuracy. What you need to decide as a business is what margin of error you can tolerate. If you are making high-stakes decisions, you want data you can trust – and the larger the sample size the better.

#3 Source and Speak to the Right People

For authentic insights that deliver value for you, speak to the right audience. You can’t take this for granted. Before you conduct any survey, you need to recruit respondents that suit your target demographic.

This is what screening questions are for. These filter out respondents who aren’t right for you. However, as our resident expert, Jim Theodoropoulos, notes, using screening questions can be difficult to get right. These need to be combined with demographic targeting to narrow in on your audience.

Using Pollfish, for example, if you are seeking mothers who are runners, you can use the “gender” and “number of children” filters, before asking a screening question about preferred exercise. Like this, you can access deeper insights into specific audiences – and keep the professional panelists to a minimum.

Asking Questions that Deliver Real Value

The way you ask questions – and the form in which you receive answers – affects the quality of your data. And avoiding bias and panel fatigue, for example, can make conducting consumer panel surveys a bit of a minefield.

This is why many businesses use options like Pollfish to help design the questions. But if you’re going it alone, below are some tips on how to ask good survey questions and get answers you can trust.

Note: For more on this, check out our article on how to ask good survey questions.

#4 Ensure Neutrality

Bias is a bad look in consumer research. For surveys to yield data that is actually valuable, they need to tap into the authentic opinion of respondents. Not reflect the prejudices of the researchers.

That means avoiding leading questions, those questions that direct respondents to specific answers. For example, “How would you rate our award-winning customer service?” has the potential to skew responses by including the qualifier “award-winning”.

However, even “what problems do you see in our customer service?” distorts the insights you will receive – as it assumes problems, whereas none may have been seen by the respondent.

This also means providing multiple-choice responses that reflect the range of opinion. If “how would you rate our customer service?” is your neutral question, the possible responses need to achieve similar neutrality. “Extremely helpful / Helpful / Neither helpful or unhelpful / Unhelpful / Extremely unhelpful”, for example, keeps the balance between positive and negative options while keeping framing consistent.

#5 Use Strategies to Mitigate Panel Fatigue

During surveys, and particularly during panel surveys, it’s not unlikely that respondents will become bored or disengaged – even though they sign up to participate.

When respondents are asked too many questions, we call this panel fatigue. It’s one of the biggest downsides to consumer panel surveys. Respondents might lean on “don’t know” or they might start “straightlining” – where they choose the same response for every question.

To avoid this, change up your question formats and shuffle questions around. It boosts engagement. It ensures more trustworthy responses. And it ups your completion rate – making data more reliable overall.

#6 Be Specific – and Remember Your Research Goal

Every question in your survey should provide an insight into your audience’s opinions, attitudes, and behaviors. Those that are irrelevant or too vague are not going to deliver the insights you need to make effective business decisions.

In this way, if you are a gaming app, an open question like “what do you like to do in your downtime?” is not focused enough – and it doesn’t direct respondents’ thoughts to gaming. As such, it won’t provide data that will be of use to your research goal.

Understanding Insights from Consumer Panel Research

You’ve asked the questions. Now, you need to understand the responses.

This will first mean collating recurring answers, identifying patterns, and highlighting anomalies – a process that can be hugely time-consuming if you are doing it alone. That’s why Pollfish, by the way, delivers automated analytics in real-time. More on that later.

Once you’ve arranged the data, you need to analyze it. Here’s how to get started.

#7 Compare Your Data to Larger Trends

Numbers, let’s remember, are all relative. And getting valuable insights from them is difficult when they are viewed in isolation.

Your survey tells you 80% of respondents said that they were happy with your customer service. But for this to be valuable to you, this needs to be put in context. How does this compare, for example, to other businesses of your size in your industry? Or to your results from last year?

Larger trends are your friends – and they help make sense of your customer panel survey. If this is your first survey of its kind, let these results be the benchmark from which you understand future developments. If you have numbers from previous surveys, use these to assess your progress.

#8 Cross-Tabulate – and Dig Deep

Similarly, when you are reading your results, the big picture isn’t always the most useful view.

Say that 65% of respondents in a general population survey said they found your new ad campaign funny or very funny. That might feel like a win. However, these numbers could be disguising insights of more specific value.

That’s what cross-tabulation is about. Using crosstabs can let you see how different data fields overlap – and this is an indispensable tool for analyzing your data. For example, maybe the ad landed much less effectively with women. Or the joke was completely lost on 21-30-year olds.

This matters. There may be an insight you need to address. You just need to dig deeper to find it.

#9 Keep on Researching

In a world in which business competition is sharp, a single survey won’t do. As a result, there’s one tip that needs to be stressed: keep returning to your audience to do more research.

The unique value of consumer panel research is that going back and asking questions is easy. Your panelists are there, pre-recruited, ready, and willing to respond. Make use of them. There is really no such thing as too much data.

#10 Use Pollfish to Make Deeper Insights Easier

At Pollfish, we’ve moved beyond the traditional consumer panel survey. We’ve developed a research methodology that makes gathering insights into consumer opinion easier. It makes recruiting panelists and understanding insights faster, more cost-effective, and less labor-intensive, too.

For example, our consumer research platform sources insights from over half a billion engaged consumers, connected via our network of 120,000 app providers. We screen every participant based on pre-collected demographic, biographic, and behavioral data – as well as your screening questions – to take the stress out of finding the right audience.

Pollfish makes setting research objectives and framing questions easier too. We give you some of the most common research goals and pre-crafted question templates to choose from. To keep bias to a minimum and ensure participant engagement, all you have to do is select.

Finally, analyzing data is easier with Pollfish, too. Our advanced data tools let you filter your findings in real-time. All admin is taken care of, so that you can dedicate yourself to visualizing your insights – and ultimately putting them to work.

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

What to Look for in Online Survey Tools

Online survey tools are invaluable for market research. In today’s digital world, these are the chief drivers of primary market research, as they allow you to obtain your own results.

Many brands don’t have market researchers on board; thus they don’t have the means to perform self-conducting research. As such, surveys are a vehicle of ease into primary research.

By their very nature, online surveys allow brands to explore the minds of their consumers and prospects.

But choosing the correct online survey tool can be a feat, as there is a slew of survey software available. Navigating the muddy waters of the internet, in which you’ll be constantly inundated with ads, social mentions and other promotional content, can make it difficult to steer you in the right direction.

That’s because all survey platforms will claim to provide the best experience and results for your business. But is any of it true? Don’t learn the hard way; instead, read this article on what to specifically look for in online survey tools for all of your needs.

Macro Applications for Online Survey Tools

Understanding the utility of survey software involves understanding all of the disciplines and campaigns it can be applied to.

Hence, before we delve into the individual capabilities you should seek in a survey platform, you should consider some of their more high-level applications.

Not every survey platform you come across will be able to provide the same value across these areas, so you ought to consider the functionalities of the survey platform you choose. But before that, let’s examine the macro applications your survey tool should aid you in.

Branding: Branding involves developing a reputation and an image, along with increasing the recognition of your company. A survey should help you in the following for branding:
- Seeing the reception of content, whether it’s visuals or messaging
- Finding the images to use for a campaign (including placement of logos)
- Testing your unique value proposition
- Testing a slogan
- Identifying brand awareness levels
Marketing: Marketing is an umbrella term that involves all the processes of raising interest in your brand and promoting it, including advertising, distribution methods and sales. A survey should help you in the following for marketing:
- Determining the state of your industry and niche
- Identifying your target market
- Applying market segmentation to your target market
- Seeing if there is a demand for your product or service
- Doing an analysis of your competitors
- Unearthing the attitudes around issues you can later use in your messaging
- Finding the shopping habits of your consumers
Advertising: Advertising is a form of communication that uses overtly sponsored messages to promote or sell a product or service and is one of the main disciplines within marketing. A survey should help you in the following for advertising:
- Forming the bedrock of an ad campaign based on consumers’ opinions
- Figuring out which topical subjects are too touchy to include in the ads
- Finding ideas for individual ads
- Narrowing the most consumed advertising mediums from your target market
- Testing the efficiency of ads
Site Traffic/Visitation: Gaining site traffic is a critical campaign in itself. So how would completing a survey — which can be seen as a chore — help on this front?
- When surveys are tailored correctly towards your target market, site visitors will enjoy taking them
- Surveys with images and interactive elements will create engaging experiences
- Users may feel appreciated for taking your survey if you offer thank you emails, incentives, etc.
- Surveys that deal with topical issues may reel in user interest when visiting your site

Features that Make Market Research Easy

A survey tool needs to be useful for market research. A key part of marketing, this kind of software should have the following:

Multiple categories for demographics: this will help you reach your target market more precisely and accurately.
Adding quotas to any of the demographics to reach your desired amount.
Multiple sub-categories of demographics to reach your segmented personas.
Various language options to apply to different countries and speakers.
The addition of at least 3 screening questions.

What to Look for in the Survey’s Environment

The environment of the survey has to be vast and easily made visible to any demographic of respondents. In addition, it should be able to be widely distributed automatically. Here are the features to look for, for the most fitting survey environment.

Software with a vast network of publishers: preferably popular websites and mobile apps.
A wide pool of users associated with the publisher channels.
An easy to detect element (button) to reach the survey.
The capability of being supported by over a hundred countries for global reach.
An easy to integrate API or coding.

Individual Survey Capabilities

These specific features are the micro aspects of the applications to look for in your survey platform. They are immensely important, as they largely involve unique capabilities that distinguish one platform from another. Additionally, these capabilities can be put in use for the aforementioned macro applications (advertising, etc). The following lists individual features you should seek out in your survey provider:

Configuring question types in a number of ways (multiple-selection, single selection, open-ended, ratings, stars, etc.)
Adding media to your questions (images, GIFs, videos)
Adding predefined answers to save you time.
Utilizing advanced skip logic so that participants are only moved to questions that pertain to their previous answer, i.e., are relevant to them.
An estimated completion time for all quotas to be met/ for the survey to conclude.
Handling a large pool of survey participants (reaching into the thousands).

Simplifying the Process & What Else to Look For

It is understandable that the above lists seem rather intimidating in terms of finding in an online survey tool. Moreover, you may find a survey software that you feel comfortable using due to the ease of the interface, one that does that necessarily tick off all the capabilities in this article.

This is okay, as the needs of your business will differ from that of others. However, if you want to amass as many as these features and utilities as possible, here’s a few tricks to simplify the process:

Look for the specific features (not the macro applications) in a survey platform by checking its website and social channels.
Watch demos if need be.
If you don’t get all the specifications you’re looking for, contact the survey provider
Or.... just use Pollfish!

Luckily, the Pollfish online survey tool allows for all the macro applications so that your surveys can help your market research, marketing, branding and all other campaigns as needed.

The platform provides all the features and capabilities listed in this article. But there’s more!

We also offer 24/7 customer support from a dedicated team of product experts, so you never feel like you’re going at it alone.

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

How To Conduct Technology Market Research Like a Pro

technology market research

Technology market research is a vital aspect for start-ups and established tech companies in a fast-moving industry. While the rapid rate of change in the technology sector provides ample opportunities for growth, it requires companies to act quickly if they want to claim a significant share of the market.

In addition, businesses that seek to undertake technology market research must be prepared to put their findings into practice quickly, before they become irrelevant.

Wondering where to start? Our latest market research guide will help you understand how to use primary and secondary research methods to analyze the competitive landscape and identify areas for growth.

Technology Market Research Overview

Market research is the term given to the process of collecting, analyzing, and understanding information about a particular market. Technology market research is conducted for a variety of reasons, which includes:

Gaining a deeper understanding of the target market
Understanding the competition in your sector
Identifying and growing in new subsectors
Understanding if a new business idea is feasible
Understanding how new marketing trends are applicable to your business
Gauging the demand for an existing or potential product and/or feature
Improving marketing and promotional campaigns through a better understanding of the customer

The end-goal of conducting market research is to help you make informed decisions about how to scale your business. Market research can help you feel confident about developing a new feature or how to market to a new audience that’s part of your target market.

The Makeup of Technology Market Research

Many entrepreneurs choose to manage the market research process in-house. With some careful planning, anyone can undertake effective and useful market research.

The process of planning and conducting the research alone can often give you a deeper understanding of your company, product, and vision for growth. As a deeply invested business owner, you may relish the opportunity to dive deeper into the mindset of your consumers.

When planning your technology market research, you will need to consider the two data types of market research – primary and secondary sources of research.

Primary Research

Primary information is the unique data that you collect yourself. While more time-consuming to collect, you have complete control over how your data is sourced and analyzed.

Examples of primary information include:

Focus groups
Surveys completed by your target market
Interviews (by phone or in-person)
Observational studies
User testing

Secondary Research

Secondary information is data that has been previously collected and is available for review online or offline. The data may be published in white papers, market reports, trade journals, newspapers, or websites.

Secondary information is relatively easy to collect; however, you cannot control how the data was collected or interpreted. Additionally, the information you find will also be easily accessible to your competitors.

Good sources of secondary information in the technology sector include:

Published market research reports can be a treasure mine of information. There are market research reports to cover nearly every sector of the technology industry. Accessing these reports is a cost-effective way to conduct market research and gather valuable insights. The technology and media market research report section from Marketresearch.com is a good place to look for relevant reports.
Consumer reports and industry reports are a valuable starting point when researching your target market and trends within your sector. Statista is a reliable source of reports covering a wide range of topics within the technology sector.

SEO and keyword research can help you understand how users are searching for similar products or ideas online. SEMRush is one of the best tools available for SEO, keyword research, and competitor analysis, which can provide you a broad view of the competitive landscape and your own performance within it.
Government statistics are typically free and readily available online. These statistics can help you understand topics that may be relevant for your business, such as economic trends, market saturation, and job growth in certain sectors. The US government’s Business Dynamics Statistics is a good place to start.
Competitors’ websites are often a valuable starting point for your market research. Publicly traded companies will publish annual reports and other presentations for their investors, which can demonstrate how an established company is faring in your targeted sector. Both public and private companies typically reveal a lot of information about their services or product offerings – you may be able to leverage decisions they made when performing their own market research!

Unique Considerations of Technology Market Research

technology market research

Primary information will be critical to your success when developing a new product or considering how to market an existing one. While secondary sources can be helpful, you may not be able to find information that is uniquely relevant and valuable to your company.

While certain types of market research, such as retail market research, are able to rely on established trends and concepts, many technology companies are working to establish completely new products, so it may not be possible to leverage secondary research.

Online surveys and focus groups can be particularly helpful for technology market research. You will likely need to plan a series of surveys and focus groups to ensure you are adequately covering your bases.

After taking the time to understand what consumers are looking for you, you should plan to develop detailed personas about each of your consumer segments. These personas will help guide the development of your product or plan your marketing efforts.

Another important aspect of technology market research is speed. Technology is one of the fastest-paced industries – your market research must be conducted and analyzed before it is irrelevant. This means that efforts should be planned over weeks rather than months. When the results are in, you will want to act on them quickly before consumer trends change again.

Secondary Research Sources for Technology Market Research

technology for market research

To help you get started, we have compiled a list of resources that will be helpful for conducting secondary market research for your technology business:

Forrester market research reports - A leader in customer-centric research, Forrester is a trusted source of original technology research and reports.
Crunchbase - A subscription to Crunchbase gives you access to live company data that you can use to power your own market research.
TechCrunch - Helps you keep your finger to the pulse with TechCrunch. Stay abreast of recent technology breakthroughs and consumer trends.
CompTIA.org’s IT Industry Outlook report - This comprehensive report sheds light on the trends shaping the tech industry. Published annually, this free report provides an in-depth review of the industry.
Marketresearch.com’s technology and media reports - This is an excellent source of market research reports and white papers covering a wide variety of topics in the technology sector.

Wrapping Things Up

Perhaps more true than in any other industry, technology market research should be an ongoing component of your business. Do not assume a yearly review will be sufficient – much more frequent assessments and check-ins with your target audience will help you understand if you are on track.

Fortunately, there are so many resources available to business owners who are committed to understanding how their customers think. Social media, for example, gives you direct access to the people who use and love your product, making it easier for you to pay attention to feedback and trends as they arise.

Few things are more valuable than online surveys for quickly understanding recent changes you have made. Thanks to the existence of high-quality online survey platforms, it has never been easier to deploy surveys, analyze their results, and connect to your customers.

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

How to Get More Survey Responses: 8 Strategies From Survey Experts

Every market researcher, marketer and business owner seeks to get more survey responses. Some studies claim that the average response rate for surveys is around 30%.

The number sounds intimidating because that means only every third person will participate in a survey.

Fortunately, there’s a lot of room for improvement. With a carefully planned and executed survey you can double and even triple the number of responses you get.

Our eight tips will help you get as many survey responses as possible without affecting the quality of your results.

#1. Keep Your Survey Simple

Whether you’re surveying your target market on complex or more general subjects, always strive to keep your survey as simple as possible. Every confusing or wordy question challenges participants’ will to focus and continue. The following includes advice on how to keep your surveys simple and engaging:

- Keep it short. Research shows that response rates are lower for longer questionnaires, so keep the number of questions in your survey in check.
- Don’t use too many open-ended questions. Asking open-ended survey questions requires more time and energy, so limit their number to maximize response rates.

Eliminate jargon and complicated terminology. Abbreviations and jargon cause extra confusion, especially when you’re dealing with a general audience.

#2. Improve Your Targeting

It’s far more interesting and engaging to answer questions that speak directly to you rather than generic questions that could be answered by anyone else.

That’s why enhanced targeting works so well for boosting survey response rates. Suppose you’re asking a group of people about their opinion on the latest baby food product — you’ll get far better response rates when targeting parents rather than more generic sample groups.

#3. Make It Easy To Participate in Your Survey

The way you distribute your survey plays a major role in the number of respondents that will take part in your survey.

Compare these two scenarios:

Scenario #1. To participate in your survey, a participant has to open an email message, click the link, open a new website, sign up, confirm their email and then be routed to the survey.

Scenario #2. A survey starts directly in a mobile app that the person is using at the moment.

The problem with the first scenario is similar to the traditional marketing funnel conversion problem: every additional step lessens the possibility that the participant attempts the desired action.

The second scenario is rather straightforward and minimizes the number of people who opt out of the survey before it starts. Thus, to make it easy to access your survey, make sure to eliminate as many barriers to it as possible.

#4. Add Interactive And Visual Elements

Adding visual elements to your questions serves two distinct purposes.

For starters, visual content makes your survey questions easier to comprehend as 65% of humans are visual learners.

Secondly, images make your surveys more engaging — research shows that colored visuals increase people’s desire to read content by up to 80%.

Make sure you accompany your question with visual and interactive elements such as:

sliders
graphs.
GIFs
Short videos

Despite the engagement levels visuals present, don't overpack your questions with them.; Only use imagery that is relevant to your questions. There is no need for extra stimuli in leu of decorations, especially when you have several questions that feature visual elements.

#5. Keep The Flow Going

Research shows that it is becoming harder to capture respondents’ attention; over the last two decades, the average attention span decreased from 12 to 8 seconds. With so many distractions around, it’s easier than ever for respondents to drop your survey in the middle of the process and switch to their social media or web browsing.

To help you keep the engagement high, treat your survey as a narrative: create a flow where every question leads to the next one or builds around it.

For example, if you’re surveying people about phone gadgets you might start with broader questions about what phones do they use and then gradually introduce more specific questions about their apps or user preferences.

Another effective way to keep the audience engaged is to start with the most engaging and easy questions to encourage completion.

If your survey contains sensitive or private questions, save them for the middle or the end, otherwise, you risk setting the wrong tone for the whole survey. The same goes for demographic questions — you risk tiring participants by putting too many demographic questions at the beginning.

#6. Personalize Interviews

Personalization is another great way to boost the number of survey responses — studies show that personalization may increase the survey response rate by at least 8.6%.

There are several ways you can create a personalized survey experience. If you’re surveying people over email, email software allows you to automatically insert people’s names into the subject or body of your message.

And if you target a specific audience, you might greet your participants with a custom message such a “Hello young parents” or something of that nature.

Try finding ways to personalize your surveys without making the experience artificial or affecting people’s responses.

#7. Provide Incentives

Incentives can get you more survey responses, and research shows that incentives may increase response rates without affecting the quality of answers.

But there’s a catch: the correlation between is not that direct. In one study there was no noticeable difference in response rates between two surveys that promised $10 and $20 rewards respectively.

So if you want to get more responses, consider adding incentives, but track your expenses and first apply the advice from other sections in this article.

#8. Go Mobile

US adults spend almost 3 hours on their smartphones every day, and we’re only talking about active use.

In reality, our phones are always somewhere near. Which makes mobile surveys one of the most effective and fast ways of reaching out to your target audience.

Make sure that your participants can fill the survey on their mobile phones and you’ll enjoy a surge in response rates.

How To Get a 100% Response Rate

There’s a surprisingly easy way to achieve a 100% response rate for your surveys: pay only for completed responses.

Using Pollfish you can design survey questions, specify the target audience, and then get as many responses as you need.

We partnered with thousands of providers to ensure that your responses come directly from your true audience.

Check out how our next-generation survey platform helps you get survey insights you can count on.

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

Demographic Survey Questions to Reel in Your Target Market

Demographic survey questions are the backbone of much of today’s survey research, as customer data has become increasingly important to businesses.

Although questions about age, marital status, education, or gender may seem simple on the surface, the data they provide is invaluable for segmenting your audience, targeting specific groups, and gaining profound survey insights.

But demographic survey questions are tricky; if you ask too many in your survey, you’ll annoy your participants. If you use a poor word choice, you risk making your audience suspicious or even offended.

In this article, we gathered the most common and useful demographic questions, examples of how you can use them in your surveys, and tips on making the most out of each.

Demographic Question #1: Age

How AGE information can be used:

Create and polish generational-based personas. Age is often the defining factor in how people interact with your products, make decisions, or view things. No wonder there are so many age-based customer personas such as “40 y.o. office worker” or “17 y.o. college student.”
Obtain age-unrelated insights. We often use age to segment different groups because we often perceive generations as different. But obtaining information about age also allows you to see when age doesn’t have any impact at all, making discoveries about how similar different age groups can think about the same things.
Combine with other age-related available data. There’s a vast body of research online that focuses on behaviors and insights about different age groups. “Millennials more often…”, or “Generation X opposes…” You can combine this data with age-related insights from your surveys to obtain even more deep insights.

Tips on asking about the AGE:

- Use ranges. Age is sensitive information, so you’ll have a much higher response rate if you ask people to choose a range (e.g. 18-23) instead of providing a specific number.

Use broad ranges or narrow ranges. If you survey the general audience, make sure you provide age ranges to cover all groups. (e.g. below 18, 18-23, 24-33, … above 65) If, however, you know that you’ll be surveying a group of young people and need more detailed age information, you can add more narrow ranges (17-18, 19-20, 21-23, other).

Example of AGE demographic question:

What is your age?
Below 18
18 – 24
25 – 34
35 – 44
45 – 54
Above 54

Demographic Question #2: Gender

How GENDER information can be used:

Form gender-driven insights. Beware of jumping to conclusions when it comes to gender-specific insights. Often, survey data might surprise you.
Expand to other audience groups. If you know that the target audience of your product is of a specific gender, you might target other gender groups to expand to other markets (e.g. popular men-driven gaming publication is looking for ways to expand its female audience)

Tips on asking about the GENDER:

Don’t go all-in. Healthline currently lists 64 terms for gender identity, and if you ask participants to choose one out of 64, your survey will probably end sooner than you expect. List 5-6 most common options and cover the rest with “other.”
Provide the way out. Gender is a sensitive topic, and some people might not want to share their details on it with you. Make sure to add the “Prefer not to answer” option to keep them in.
Gender is not sex. Sex refers to biological distinction. Gender refers to the social or identity distinction. Don’t use “sex” and “gender” interchangeably in your questions.

Example of a GENDER demographic question:

What is your gender?
Male
Female
Trans-gender
Non-binary
Prefer not to answer
Other (please specify)

Demographic Question #3: Ethnicity

How Ethnicity information can be used:

Diving into the cultural background of a specific group. Ethnicity may play a big role in people’s lives and affect their opinions by way of the traditions and customs they follow. As such, their views may occur through the lens of the culture that’s tied to their ethnicity.

Enrich location-based surveys. There might be locations where a certain ethnic group holds the majority. Collecting information about ethnicity helps you discover hidden correlations or their absence by comparing survey data with data from larger audience samples.
Target message to a specific ethnic group. If you have a business and want to join a message that resonates with certain ethnic groups, ethnic-driven surveys might be a great way to obtain actionable insights.

Tips on asking about the ETHNICITY:

Make sure people can check off multiple answers. In the age of 23andme, more and more people consider themselves belonging to several ethnic groups, so provide your respondents with the ability to select several answers or you risk turning them away.
Remember that ethnicity and race are different. Although closely connected, race and ethnicity are different. “Race” defines the largest categorization of people, while ethnicity is a subgroup, tied to a nationality. For example, “White” is a race, whereas “Irish” is an ethnic group falling under that race.
Eliminate the words “ethnicity” and “race” if possible. Race and ethnicity are sensitive topics and often serve as a basis for discrimination. Try using the word “category” and let people choose the answer from groups as the following example shows.

Example of ETHNICITY demographic question:

What category describes you best?
White (e.g. Polish, German, English, Russian, etc.)
Hispanic Latino or Spanish origin (e.g. Mexican, Puerto Rican, Mexican American, Cuban, etc.)
Black or African American (e.g. African American, Haitian, Somalian, etc.)
Asian (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese)
American Indian (e.g. e.g Navajo, Mayan, Aztec, Nome Eskimo community, etc.)
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
Middle Eastern or North African (e.g. Syrian, Egyptian, Lebanese, etc.)
Some other race, ethnicity, or origin

Demographic Question #4: Marital Status

How MARITAL STATUS information can be used:

More often than not, the information about marital status may not appear to be necessary, as other demographic questions will provide much clearer insight into your target audience’s choices and behaviors.

But there are cases where it can be an important differentiator, e.g. when you want to target very specific demographic groups, such as recently divorced people, etc.

Tips on asking about MARITAL STATUS:

- Beware of misinterpretations. It’s easy to jump to conclusions based on people’s marital status, especially with so many stereotypes and anecdotes floating around. In this case, it’s better to trust your data and numbers than the gut.
- Consider if you need this information. As with almost any demographic question, better ask yourself how you are going to use his data before adding the question.

How to appeal to this demographic: To make the most use out of this demographic, consider the products, services and shopping behaviors of married respondents. These may be more willing to spend on vacations or activities designed for two.

Example of MARITAL STATUS question:

What is your marital status?
Single
Married or in a domestic partnership
Divorced
Widowed
Other

Demographic Question #5: Income or Employment

How Income or Employment information can be used:

- Obtain the economic profile of your audience. Income and employment are both strong differentiators for almost every survey as financials play a great role in how people choose what they buy and what they do.

The differentiator in finance-specific surveys. If you are conducting a survey about finances, e.g. asking people about how they manage their personal spending habits, both income and employment will have a great impact on the results of your survey.

Tips on asking about EMPLOYMENT and INCOME:

The money is in the follow-up. Research shows that if you ask participants to provide a specific income number with the “Don’t know” option, and then follow up with a question with income ranges (e.g. $10,000 – $20000), you’ll get more responses and than merely asking income range off the bat.

Estimate based on other data. Not all people like to share their income details, but you might obtain income-related data indirectly. For example, if you already asked about respondents’ location and employment, you might check average salaries for that area and come up with an approximation.

Example of Employment survey question:

Full-time employment
Self-employed
Part-time employment
Underemployed (wage is below industry average)
Full time freelancing
Unemployed (looking for work)
Unemployed (not looking for work)
Student
Unable to work

Example of Income survey question:

How much total combined money did your household earn in 2020?
Less than $20,000
$21,000 – $30,000
$31,000 to $40,000
$41,000 to $50,000
$51,000 to $60,000
Above $60,000

Making The Most Out of Demographic Questions

Demographic questions help directly identify your target audience along with obtaining unique insights about a specific group of people.

Just make sure you only use those demographic questions that you really need for your research. For example, if you know that your audience is predominantly students, there’s rarely a need to ask for age, education, and type of employment.

With online survey platforms, demographic criteria can be specified before the survey starts.

If you want to take your surveys to the next step and collect even more actionable data, why not target groups that you want to survey from the very beginning?

With Pollfish you can target the right survey audience in 160 countries with over 20 various criteria such as age, gender, marital status, income, education, and even mobile device manufacturer.

Try Pollfish now and finally get advanced market insights that you can rely on.

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

5 Types of Survey Respondents to Keep an Eye On

When conducting a survey, it is essential to understand that, no matter how sophisticated the platform you use is, not all survey responders are keen on taking it the way you’d like.

That is to say that there will be some respondents who speed through a survey to be done with it as soon as they can, while others will take it more diligently.

These different kinds of survey respondents are not necessarily bound by a demographic; rather their style and behavior when taking surveys gives rise to their labels. Oftentimes, this is something that you can’t narrow down on a survey’s screener. You can, however, question responders on their survey-taking behaviors.

There are five types of survey respondents worth noting in your market research endeavors. They are personas — survey respondent personas to be exact — in their own right. Learn about the five respondent personas so that you can understand how your survey will be received.

The Survey Aficionados

To start this roster on a positive note, we begin by introducing the survey aficionado. Usually categorized as one of the good kinds of survey takers, survey aficionados make it their business to take surveys — they treat it as their job, or at least a source of supplemental income.

They manifest their devotion to survey-taking by taking them frequently and consuming them across websites and mobile apps. This is usually a positive behavior for marketers and market researchers, as aficionados provide sought-after participation.

However, survey aficionados can also hurt surveys, in that constant participation can yield biased results. This is especially true if they take part in surveys that deal with similar subjects.

How to attract and avoid this persona:

To attract survey aficionado respondents, offer an incentive in exchange for taking your survey. This is usually the draw of taking so many surveys for this persona, as there’s something in it for their gain.
To avoid survey aficionado respondents, screen them by asking if they’ve taken part in a recent survey on a related topic.
- If you can’t do this in the screening stage of your survey, choose a platform that allows you to apply skip logic in your questionnaire.
- This mechanism allows you to move a respondent to your question of choice based on their answer to a question. This way, you will avoid asking them certain questions or end the survey right then and there if they’re a bad fit.

The Flatliners

Also called straightliners, these responders engage in negative behavior when taking a survey. Flatliners tend to regularly respond as either extreme on a Likert scale survey (a survey that measures the magnitude of attitudes, opinions, or beliefs on a scale of answers, such as “highly likely” to “highly unlikely”).

As such, it is in their nature to habitually respond either on the positive end of the scale (with “strongly agree”) or on the negative side (with “strongly disagree”). Or they may respond with another answer type — continuously.

The motivation for behaving in such a way is often to complete a survey as soon as possible, making this persona a predominant kind of speeder.

Another underlying motivation for flatliners is an innate bias, such as acquiescence bias or dissent bias.

How to avoid flatliners:

Lay off of grid or matrix questions, as they are the most likely to knuckle under the behaviors of this persona.
Use one question per page (or find a platform that does this).
- If you use a platform that applies multiple questions per page, make sure they are similar.
Implement more open-ended questions that deal with the matter. Additionally, use skip logic to lead respondents to answer why they chose a particular answer to a Likert Scale question.

The Fakers

These respondents’ behavior is self-evidently negative. This persona deals with responders who do not provide genuine answers, only fake ones, hence the name. The motivation is usually to reap the reward for taking a survey.

The Fakers operate in three ways:

They create multiple accounts on a website to repeatedly take the same survey.
They use one account to take the same survey multiple times.
The most technically savvy and malicious fakers create bots to take surveys without doing the work of a survey.

Weeding out fakers has become increasingly easier, as both survey panels and platforms rely on advanced restriction functionalities.

How to avoid the fakers:

Use a platform with built-in anti-bot technology.
Use a platform that bars responders with the same IP address from taking the same survey more than once.
Ask more open-ended questions. These will easily spot fakers, as they require longer, more thought-out answers, which are much more laborious than selecting an option.

The Rule-Breakers

Much like the cheaters, and as their name implies, rule-breakers don’t adhere to the directions of a survey. While some are just looking to cause trouble and some want to finish the survey quickly, other responders may be breaking the rules unintentionally.

This is usually the result of not fully understanding a question or completely misconstruing it. Rule-breakers are a nuisance, but like the other personas, they too can be avoided.

How to avoid the rule-breakers:

Use several screening questions to prohibit the wrong kinds of respondents.
Discard respondents who manifest their lack of attention in open-ended questions.
Use skip logic to avoid possible rule-breakers, by moving responders to relevant questions only.

The Posers

Not to be confused with the fakers, posers also provide false feedback, but not because they are bots or manage multiple accounts to take the same survey more than once.

Rather, they provide dishonest responses because of a social desirability bias, a kind of inclination to answer questions in a way they believe will be viewed more favorably. This means their feedback can over-report “good responses” while downplaying the “bad responses.”

Posers do not necessarily act as their moniker in every situation, instead, they may only behave as such when answering questions on certain topics. Due to this, posters can be hard to pinpoint, but they can still be avoided.

How to avoid the posers:

When dealing with particularly sensitive topics, assuage your respondents by telling them that they are not being judged (especially in the beginning).
Assure your responders that their answers are anonymous.
Remind your responders of the importance of the accuracy of their answers.

Handling Survey Respondent Personas

With surveys becoming ever so dominant in market research, there have been evaluations on how respondents behave during their participation. Thus, the birth of five unique survey respondent personas was born.

You may discover other names for similar behaviors when reading up about these personas. Regardless of what they are called, they each present unique challenges to your market research study.

These personas may not all relate to your pool of respondents; that is why it is important to assess your surveys and look for behavioral patterns.

This is not as tedious as it appears, as some behaviors may be more obvious than others. It’s also important to rise to the challenge of understanding your customer base. You can do so by conducting the right surveys. If you can’t spot any of these personas, it is still worth sticking to the aforementioned best practices as they can prevent the “bad” types of respondents from influencing your study.

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

Growing Your Business with Survey Data Analysis

Don’t let the term “survey data analysis” intimidate you – organizing and analyzing survey data so you can make actionable decisions to grow your business is easier than it sounds.

You already know that a well-executed survey can help identify areas for improvement in your business, but you may feel intimidated about the daunting task of analyzing your survey data.

After all, pages and pages of data will not help you upgrade your business unless you know how to meaningfully analyze the data and draw conclusions.

The good news is that you do not need a degree in data science to analyze your survey data like a pro!

This article explains how to execute survey data analysis, proving that the data you reap helps you draw conclusions about your target market and your industry. We broke down the process into four steps to make it easy to analyze survey data.

Step 1: Review your top questions and consider the responses

Start at the beginning by reviewing the goals you set for your market research survey. (If you are still in the planning phase, it will pay off later to carefully design your survey and set goals). Take the time to list out the top questions you want to answer during survey data analysis. This will keep you focused as you begin sifting through the data.

You also need to consider the types of responses your survey generated. Did you ask close-ended questions (yes/no or multiple-choice answers) or open-ended questions (fields with text entry allowing for a more elaborate response).

Close-ended questions let you generate empirical data that can be useful for drawing conclusions. Open-ended questions require careful review, but can reveal richer insights than empirical data can alone.

Let’s consider a sample scenario where a business owner wants to know how they can improve their ecommerce business. A top research question in this example might be: “Are customers happy with the checkout experience?”

It is easy to find the answer to this question since it was asked directly during the survey:

Were you satisfied with the checkout experience?	%	Number
Yes	74%	148
No	26%	52

In this scenario, the majority of users are happy with the checkout experience. But what about the 5 respondents who are not happy? How can we use data to understand how to improve the checkout experience? For that, we need to dig deeper.

Step 2: Review, filter, and cross-tabulate your data

If you are using a survey platform like Pollfish, you will have access to a powerful dashboard that allows you to view and filter your survey data. From the dashboard, you can filter and segment your survey results in real-time. For an advanced analysis, you should study it in a variety of formats, such as graphs, charts, and spreadsheets. You can use the latter to create crosstabs.

What are crosstabs?

Crosstab (short for cross-tabulation) is a special type of report that is used to explore the relationship between variables. It is essential in survey data analysis because it lets us segment survey data and examine responses for different segments. For example, we can examine satisfaction levels of the online shopping experience based on the subjects’ age, education level, payment type, etc. Pollfish provides crosstab functionality within the results dashboard, which streamlines the process for you.

Going back to our sample scenario, let’s see how we could determine which payment method is giving users the most problems. To do this, we need to crosstab the results to view payment types and satisfaction levels.

We are looking at two sets of data:

The type of payment method used by respondents
Whether they were satisfied during the checkout process

Payment Type	Satisfied (yes)	Unsatisfied (no)
Visa/Mastercard	86% (128)	6% (3)
Apple Pay	11% (17)	6% (3)
PayPal	2% (3)	88% (46)

The crosstab report reveals that customers who used PayPal overwhelmingly expressed dissatisfaction with the checkout process, providing insight that something in the PayPal process is falling short.

In the same way, you can apply crosstabs to examine the satisfaction levels voiced by other segments. Are people who shopped on their mobile devices happy with the checkout? What about an older segment of users compared to a younger one?

Step 3: Understand the statistical significance

Before drawing conclusions about your data and investing in changes to your business or website, you must crunch the data to understand if the results can be trusted. An important aspect of survey data analysis is assessing the statistical significance of your results. In the realm of data analysis, statistical significance is what helps us determine how accurate our data is.

To do this, you need to consider these factors:

Sample size refers to the number of respondents in your survey. The larger your sample size, the more confident you can be about the results.

Effect size describes the amount of difference between the data you are comparing. If you have a small effect size, you would need a larger sample size to understand if the difference is statistically significant (and worth acting on) or a result of chance.

In our online shopping example, the dissatisfaction voiced by PayPal users is significant and should be explored further. The percent of dissatisfied customers who used a credit card or PayPal is low enough that exploring this is unlikely to yield meaningful results, unless you can determine a third factor in this subset (for example, 100% of the dissatisfaction comes from mobile users).

Step 4: Draw conclusions and create a plan for improvement

Now for the fun part! After you have organized, reviewed, and understood your data, it is time to draw conclusions and determine how this information can be used to improve your business.

Go back to your original research questions. Sift through the data until you are able to answer each of these questions and draw conclusions.

In some cases, a course of action will be very obvious. In our sample scenario, it is clear that this business owner needs to uncover issues in the PayPal checkout experience.

It may be harder to understand why other segments feel unhappy with their shopping experience.

For example, you may understand that those aged 65+ stated dissatisfaction but cannot find a clear relationship that explains why. In these cases, your open-ended questions may reveal insights that may help you interpret the dissatisfaction voiced by this segment.

With your theories and conclusions in hand, create a plan for systematically improving each area of concern. In our example scenario, some changes to how the users move from the store to PayPal may improve the experience and overall satisfaction levels. Once you have made changes, you can understand their impact by running another survey and using your new data analysis skills to understand the change.

Pollfish makes it even easier

At Pollfish, we provide our clients with a dashboard that makes survey data analysis easier – you can review your responses in real-time and access visual data directly in the dashboard. You can view your data in classic mode or in a number of visual sources (thinks charts and graphs). You can also export your data for official reporting and set up cross-tabs. Ready to launch your survey?

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

Pollfish Marketing Team

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