Why do you need panel research?

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There’s no doubt that the way of conducting market research is continuously changing. As the research industry has evolved due to technological advances like mobile phones, social media, etc., it’s high time to conduct panel research for collecting insightful data easily and quickly. But, the thing that matters over here is: the quality of your data relies on the quality of your panel.

On gaining access to individuals that can participate in your surveys (such as customers, employees, patients, students, etc.), you can effortlessly recruit as well as manage a research panel of your own. However, if you create a survey but don’t have respondents to participate in it, you can consider buying a sample from any third-party research panel.

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What is panel research?

Panel research can be defined as a method to repeatedly collect data from a pre-recruited group of individuals. These people usually provide behavioral, demographic, as well as household data to simplify the process of conducting future studies. The inception of the internet has certainly revitalized the panel research methodology which has made it easy to access large numbers of respondents. Panel research offers companies various advantages like cost savings, quicker turnaround, and higher participation rates. Through quantitative data, organizations can gain actionable insights into their products’ pricing, utility, as well as sales projection.

Why does panel research matter?

Developing a high-quality research panel is extremely crucial because your data relies on it. By leveraging an effective research panel, it becomes easy to develop rich member profiles that ensure your reporting generates quality responses. In case you’re planning to launch a new refrigerator, you would prefer targeting the panelists who are really interested in buying refrigerators to gather more informed responses. In fact, using a rightly managed and effective panel of pre-recruited respondents leads to a higher response rate because the participants are already interested to participate in the survey by joining the dedicated panel.

What are the benefits of conducting panel research?

As panel members willingly sign up for participating in the research process, the rate of gathering responses is amplified.
It lets you discuss various aspects of a specific subject with the panel members whereas, with other research methods, you can only discuss a single topic at a time. Due to this reason, panel research is considered to be more effective & less expensive.
A panel with a considerable number of respondents empowers marketers to seamlessly track the behavioral changes across various demographics due to the diversity it offers.
As panel members are likely to have a better understanding of the research subject due to the profiling, screening, and validation at the time of recruitment, it helps to capture more insightful details.
A well-recruited research panel can maximize the effectiveness of qualitative market research methods like online interviews, focus groups, discussions, etc.
By sending out online polls and surveys to a research panel, quantitative market research can be easily conducted for soliciting insightful data as well as metrics-based inputs.

Are private panels and online communities the same thing?

Sometimes people get confused and they consider private research panels similar to an online community. A private research panel usually involves thousands of participants whereas an online community is much small in size (having hundreds of members only). A private research panel is estimated to have a longer life as one panel can be repeatedly operated for years. An online community comes with a limited life (usually for some months or a year) for reducing the risks that arise due to respondent conditioning. In a private research panel, members cannot interact with each other while in an online community, members are allowed to interact with each other. The online communities are considered to be less expensive as compared to private research panels as the number of members is less & a similar set of members is used again and again. Also, there are minimal sampling controls required for communities whereas it can get rigorous for private research panels.

Features to look for in a research panel tool

With the continuous change in customer behavior, it has become imperative for researchers to gain a holistic view of their target audience by gaining effective insights in real-time. This can be achieved with the help of a robust & automated panel research tool. Here are some factors that you need to consider before choosing a panel research platform for your business:

Online Project Management

An effective research panel tool should ensure effective project management by helping you track project details like LOI, IR, and N size. Leveraging a research panel tool like Voxco Audience, you can seamlessly manage quotas by vendors or across the demographics. It also empowers you to add pre-screening questions of various types for boosting targetable IR. You can also track your project specs vendor-wise in real-time.

Panel Vendor Management

An ideal research panel tool should help you manage all vendors simultaneously under the same roof. It should be easily accessible and come up with central storage for managing the panel contacts. With Voxco Audience, you can effectively manage redirects and perform deduping across panels when needed. Moreover, it comes equipped with vendor-specific routing that allows you to ask screening questions according to the vendor.

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Security Checks

In order to ensure top-notch security and optimum quality, your panel research platform needs to be power-packed with various checks such as CAPTCHA (to prevent bots), duplicate IP check (to discover replicated IPs), MaxMind Score (for proxy protection), and secure encryption (through secure client callback).

Omnichannel Capabilities

With Voxco Audience as your panel research tool, you can reach out to panelists anywhere, anytime. Be it online surveys, telephonic surveys (CATI or IVR surveys), or face-to-face interviews, the omnichannel capabilities of our state-of-the-art panel research platform ensure you get in touch with them through the medium they prefer!

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