Benefits for Companies
- Audience understanding - Over time, research communities help companies develop a deep understanding of community members and their lifestyles, needs and opinions on a wide range of topics.
- Ideation of new concepts - With an ongoing research community, members have a venue to share ideas behind the secure environment of a private online community.
- Increased research capacity - By speeding up the research cycle, companies are able to get more qualitative research accomplished in a shorter amount of time.
- Exploration of new topic areas - Communities change the research
dynamic away from a moderator controlled conversation to a free-flowing
conversation partially guided by participants.
- A resource for the entire organization - Research communities provide stakeholders from across the company with a single venue for obtaining research insights.
- Quick feedback - Communities can cut the research cycle time from 4-6 weeks to 1 week (or less).
- Cost efficiency - An ongoing research community can save thousands in facility rental, recruiting and travel costs.
Benefits for Market Researchers
While
traditional focus groups and online bulletin boards help researchers
get a point-in-time perspective, communities allow for a much deeper
exploration of an audience and research topic over an extended period
of time. This allows researchers to build rapport with participants,
learn about the context of their answers and backgrounds, explore
topics from multiple angles and make more insightful recommendations
for clients.
Benefits for Research Participants
In today's "Web 2.0" world, more and more people are accustomed to sharing their feedback, blog posts, photos, profiles, etc. online. Research communities take advantage of this trend, by offering participants an engaging and interactive venue to share their thoughts.