The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, that beloved story from our childhood, actually teaches an important ethic of research:
Never sacrifice steady, long-term gain for immediate results.
In Aesop’s imagery: Don’t kill a goose that faithfully lays one golden egg a day because you won’t wait for two or three.
To apply to market research, never design surveys or other instruments that maximize insights today, if it’s done at the expense of more and/or better insights tomorrow—and all the tomorrows thereafter.
The point: If market research doesn’t sufficiently account for the needs and wishes of research participants, then the industry is trading short-term gain for long-term loss.
Such research is not sustainable.
2017 CPR Report: Sustainable Surveying
The recently-released 2017 GRIT CPR Report doesn’t mince words:
“[The market research] industry does a poor job of putting the respondent first, despite having the means and knowledge to do so. We should capitalize on that and bring the participant experience to the forefront.”
Based on surveys with more than 6,000 consumers across 15 countries (2,005 in the U.S.), the CPR Report draws several important conclusions about—what we at Field Agent call—sustainable surveying.
Respondents, the report finds, want surveys that are:
- Mobile-friendly: there is, the report states, “an ever-growing mobile-first respondent base”
- Shorter and less exhausting: 54% of respondents identified 10 minutes or less as the “ideal length” of a survey
- Well-designed: The majority of respondents said poor survey design negatively affects their willingness to participate
Research participants, the report also shows, prefer cash incentives. Forty percent favored cash as their preferred inducement, followed by virtual gift cards/prepaid cards (22%) and redeemable points (21%).
The Field Agent Advantage
Since 2010, mobile solutions firm Field Agent has operated in accordance with the respondent-friendly principles above.
1. First, our surveys and other studies are administered entirely on mobile phones, via the Field Agent app. Let’s face it: Increasingly, consumers are spending much of their lives on their smartphones.
Good research methodology meets respondents where they are—and, today, that’s on smartphones.
2. Our surveys are brief and can generally be completed within 10 minutes. Thus, respondents are more likely to answer our clients’ questions willingly and accurately. Not to dread “one more question,” but to enter each question alert and sharp.
3. Among Field Agent’s experienced researchers, survey design is—and will remain—a salient concern.
We believe how you ask a question is critically important to how respondents answer.
4. Field Agent pays cash. In this way, our researchers strive to achieve what the GRIT Report calls a “fair value exchange.”
Clients get respondents’ time and opinions; respondents receive cash, serving as an important source of supplemental income for many.
Field Agent: Win-Win Research
Named the 2016 MRMW “Research Agency of the Year,” our research team is committed to a philosophy of win-win research. We strive to:
Design research instruments and studies in a way that (1) achieves clients’ specific objectives while (2) treating respondents in a manner that ensures they’ll complete current and future projects accurately and enthusiastically.
Clients win.
Respondents win.
We all win.
