Companies often have a number of target segments they are hoping to learn more about using online research communities. As you can imagine, however, the cost and time involved with studying each segment in their own private research community can add up quickly. Inevitably, we are asked the question as to whether or not we can combine segments in a single research community to save a bit on the budget.

While the answer is ultimately “yes it can be done,” it’s a question worth seriously pondering first. It’s an important consideration, since it can be difficult (and expensive) to undo an upfront community design decision once you’ve started to proceed down one path.

There are many benefits and drawbacks to consider, as well as questions to ask yourself before combining segments. Read on for a list of some of these benefits, drawbacks, examples and questions, as well as our recommendations and “best practices” when combining segments.

Benefits of Combining Segments in a Single Research Community

Let’s start with the benefits of combining segments… Some of the benefits include:

• Cost savings - Combining segments saves money by allocating setup, design, moderation, analysis and reporting to a single community, rather than spreading these costs across communities. While it isn’t double the cost to create separate communities (as there are always economies of scale), it can save considerable amounts of money over time.
• Time savings - Along with cost savings, there are savings in time as moderators and client observers don’t need to spend time visiting each research community individually to view the research activities. While a single project dashboard helps with that, multiple communities still require time digging into each community.
• Diversity of opinions & ideas - Often times there are valuable insights and ideas that can be gleaned by combining people of different backgrounds in a single discussion and letting them speak openly about a topic. Think of it as a small-scale “Wisdom of Crowds” effect.

Drawbacks of Combining Segments in a Single Research Community

As with anything in life, there are always the drawbacks… Here are a few of the potential drawbacks of combining segments:

• Lack of shared background/focus - With multiple segments in a single research community, it can be more difficult to build a strong shared background/focus for members to bond around, particularly if each audience comes from widely divergent backgrounds.
• Alienation of one audience - It requires much more planning to ensure that the activities are balanced across each audience, ensuring that one audience does not feel left out from some (or all) of the activities.
• Moderation and community management - While combining segments eliminates the need to moderate and manage multiple communities, it still can be difficult to try and analyze responses from different segments on a per-activity basis. While we have capabilities in our research community platform that help us with this analysis, it still can require quite a bit of additional analysis that would not be required with individual communities.

“Good” and “Bad” Examples of Combining Segments

Here are just a couple of examples (among others) where it’s likely “safe” to combine segments in a single research community:

• Brand advisory research communities - Let’s imagine you want to setup a single branded research community that is designed as a private online community for current customers to discuss future products and services. In this case it would probably be fine to combine segments since they all share the common bond of being customers of your brand. The expectation would be that there are multiple types of customers in the community, which can be clearly explained in the community recruiting process.
• Shared product ownership (different versions) - It would be safe to combine segments of people who are using different versions of a single product, since they have the common bond of product ownership. It’s easier to separate them once they are in the community based on the version they own. We did this for T-Mobile when we developed a single research community for multiple variations of their Sidekick device.

Here are a couple of examples (among others) where it might be best to separate segments into individual communities:

• Segments with a wide age disparity - For example, combining Millennials and Boomers in the same community will work in some situations, but you’ll have to be careful. Large age disparities can make it difficult for members to find common bonds.
• Segments where one audience relies too heavily on another - An example of this would be patients and doctors. That would be a bit of a challenge to manage (and a potentially big legal headache), given that patients would likely be seeking out advice from doctors.

Question to Ask Before Combining Segments in a Research Community

Would I combine them normally? One question we like to ask companies who are considering combining segments in a single research community is whether or not they would combine these segments in a traditional focus group. If the answer is no (and you have clear reasons for why you usually separate these segments), then it’s highly likely you will want to consider separate communities.

Do I have the right tools to manage the analysis and reporting? Analysis and reporting on multiple segments in a single research community can get tricky if you don’t have the right tools to help you. Carefully consider your choice of a community platform before splitting or combining segments. For example, the PluggedIN Research Community Platform has “user list” capabilities that allow our moderators to carefully manage activities launched in the community. An “off the shelf” platform that is designed for other types of online communities may not have these capabilities.

Am I comfortable with user-generated content? In a research community there can be a lot of “across the table” discussion that can lead to positive and negative comments about your brand. You’ll need to be comfortable with people of all backgrounds sharing their positive and negative feedback, since you don’t want to artificially inhibit or sway their opinions. If you have serious concerns about what could happen if one segment negatively influenced another, then consider separating each segment into different communities.

PluggedIN’s Recommendations

If you have the budget, then we usually recommend separating segments in their own research community, particularly if that is what you would do in other research methodologies (e.g., focus group research).

However, if you’re going to combine segments in a single research community (after weighing the benefits and drawbacks carefully), here are a few “best practices” to consider:

• Transparency - Be as transparent as possible with members throughout the recruiting phase that they are joining a community with people from a wide variety of backgrounds.
• Diverse Activities - Try to mix up the research activities and content posted to the site so that one segment isn’t feeling “left out” at any given moment.
• Sub-Groups - Consider creating groups within the larger community for people of similar backgrounds to congregate and discuss topics independent of your research objectives.

There are also alternatives available, depending on the vendor you choose. For example, you may consider developing a research community with a key target audience, while using an omnibus research community (like PluggedIN Nation) to cost effectively gather feedback from other segments.

What do you think?

This post is designed as a starting point when thinking about combining segments in a research community (or really any type of online community for that matter). There are usually small nuances that might influence the recommendation to combine or separate segments, which we would be happy to discuss further given the chance. What do you think? Are we on target here? Are we missing any benefits/drawbacks based on your experience? Comments are welcome (and appreciated)!