A Quick History of Rewarded Surveys

Online panels and market research have evolved throughout time.

Our members frequently inquire about how the online survey came to be. They are perplexed as to why businesses are willing to pay for opinions. We enjoy responding to queries from our members, so here's the scoop.

Companies are looking for feedback!

Did you know that businesses place a high value on our input? They're in the business of resolving issues. Their products must address an issue for their clients in order to sell. Consider the items we all buy and the problems they answer. That list could go on indefinitely, but the bottom line is that everything we buy serves a purpose. We are on the lookout for items that will make our lives better and easier.

Companies are yearning for information about our purchasing habits. Companies can use surveys to get answers to their inquiries regarding consumer buying habits. These questionnaires aid in the identification of a target audience for advertisements. Marketing campaigns are shaped by our opinions.Companies place a high value on employee opinions. As a result, they conduct surveys to get feedback and learn from it.

Marketing comes in different kinds and sizes in the digital world. Some businesses have their own internal marketing department that manages continuous marketing initiatives. Many startups enlist the assistance of an outside marketing agency, at least in part. In both circumstances, there are many balls to keep in the air at the same time: email marketing campaigns, social media marketing (SMM), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, and so on.

Regardless of whether you're talking about a startup or a well-established company, good marketing requires rigorous, precise, and relevant market research. Startups frequently introduce new products without conducting appropriate market research beforehand. In highly competitive businesses, taking the effort to truly understand your clients is critical to success. Throwing together a few hackneyed client personas and calling it a day is no longer an option, thanks to the rise of big data. A thorough, nuanced understanding of who your consumers are and what they want may make or ruin a company, especially if it's a new one. We'll look at the history of market research as well as where the industry is headed in this two-part blog series. Part one delves into the history of market research, demonstrating both how far we've come and how far we still have to go.

Market Research: A Brief History

This is an exciting time, whether you're a startup looking to use market research or one of the many organisations that provide market research services. The industry has come a long way, and there is still a lot of room for innovation and expansion. This can be seen by looking at the history of market research. Prior until roughly 1920, the term "market research" was unheard of in the corporate world. However, between 1920 and 1950, pioneers such as Daniel Starch and George Gallup began to study the effectiveness of advertising messaging transmitted via print, radio, and (eventually) television. Companies began dedicating more resources to the challenge of knowing their customers in the 1950s. Market researchers could utilise numerous statistical approaches to obtain important data relating to customers' preferences and purchase behaviours by gathering information directly from consumers via interviews.

Following technological advancements in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, market research grew more interdisciplinary. Marketers wanted to know how customers thought, felt, and acted now more than ever. All of this culminated in the post-Internet tech boom of the 2000s and 2010s, leading to the extremely complex, big data-driven market research world of data.

Market research has been done in a variety of ways over the years. New research methodologies were established as new technology was produced. Some research methods have been shown to be more effective than others, and each has its own set of benefits and drawbacks. The in-person survey, which dates back to the days of Starch and Gallup in the first half of the twentieth century, is possibly the oldest type of data collection. This interview approach obviously lends itself to acquiring a lot of very specific information, and it can lead to a very deep understanding of a certain customer. However, there are significant drawbacks to consider. For one thing, conducting in-person interviews is quite costly. Imagine having to collect data from thousands of consumers one by one, one by one, in person.

To accomplish this, a big staff would be required, and it would be prohibitively expensive for all but the largest companies. However, it is not only a matter of cost that must be considered; it is also a matter of efficiency. In-person interviews provide a degree of depth that is rarely required for effective market research, and acquiring this level of data is extremely time intensive. Telephone surveys later became a more efficient and cost-effective technique of collecting data directly from customers. On the one hand, the benefits of doing a telephone poll over conducting in-person interviews are obvious.

While working from a single location, a single interviewer can reach hundreds of potential responders. Telephone surveys, on the other hand, have lost a lot of their usefulness in recent years. Why? Consider your reaction to receiving a call from someone you don't know. Do you pick up the phone if it rings and you don't recognise the number? If you do, you're probably ready to hang up at the first indication of a sales call from a telemarketing company. Anything that even closely resembles a telemarketing call will turn off most customers, and they will refuse to participate in phone surveys. It has recently been shown that the phone survey response rate has dropped from 30% in 2000 to only 13% in 2020. Another approach is to conduct consumer surveys via mail, which some researchers continue to do. Mail survey response rates can exceed those of phone surveys, depending on the sector and the type of survey being undertaken. However, the contrary is also true: mail surveys can have low response rates. Furthermore, the cost of doing mail surveys is frequently prohibitive.

The Online Survey's Expansion

In-person and postal surveys are generally prohibitively expensive, while telephone surveys are frequently unproductive. However, in the last decade, a new technique of gathering market research data has emerged: the online survey, which promises to reduce expenses while increasing response rates. Respondents appreciate how quick, straightforward, economical, and handy online surveys are. They can be completed in a couple of minutes by customers. Market researchers can drastically enhance response rates by introducing a minor incentive. Furthermore, online surveys may be easily modified and updated as needed. The growth of the digital survey scene hasn't been all good, unfortunately. There are simply too many survey companies out there, as well as a slew of poor surveys. As a result, respondent dropouts have reached new heights. The issue is actually quite straightforward. Researchers have lost sight of what leads to high response rates and excellent responses: they've forgotten that the respondent's experience must come first, rather than the results.

Also Read: https://www.rapidoreach.com/blogs/b/rapidoreach-diy-research-tool

Before the Internet, there were surveys.

Companies employed different means to obtain consumer information even before the internet existed. Consumers were frequently sent questionnaires to complete and return. Some corporations convened focus groups, bringing together a diverse collection of people in a central area to answer questions. Telephone agents would occasionally call and solicit feedback from members of the family.

Issues with Non-Digital Survey Methods

These old techniques of acquiring data were effective, but they were time-consuming and expensive. For their sent surveys, companies spent a lot of money on postage. People were paid to participate in focus groups.

And after they obtained the data, they had to spend time putting it all together in a usable fashion. They had to decipher difficult-to-read handwriting. Plus, all that paper generates a tremendous quantity of waste. While businesses may recycle the surveys, consumers typically regarded them as junk mail and tossed them in the garbage.

Telephone polls were likewise not as effective as hoped. People who answered the phone frequently mistook the caller for someone trying to sell them something and hung up before providing any information.

Because of these setbacks, businesses were willing to try something new. They intended to make their information-gathering operations more efficient.

Companies began to rejoice as the Internet grew in popularity and accessibility. They realised that a digital poll could help them:

• Didn't generate any garbage
• The expense of soliciting opinions has been reduced.
• Validation was a lot easier.
• The same information was provided as with more traditional approaches.
• It was just what they were looking for. 
• Companies could reach an even larger audience with digital polls. They were not limited by printing or postage costs.
• Online polls are becoming increasingly popular.More companies joined the bandwagon after the initial testing of digital surveys was completed. They began creating virtual surveys to gather feedback.
• Companies needed to discover a solution to enhance response rates as customers become overwhelmed by surveys that appeared unexpectedly in their inboxes.
• Survey sites arose, allowing companies to connect with people who wished to contribute their thoughts. As a way of thanking the customer for completing the survey, rewards began to appear.
• And, as they say, the rest is history!

RapidoReach is a market leader in rewarded surveys and online surveys.

At RapidoReach, we understand how critical it is to strike a balance between user experience and cost, response rate, and response quality. Our user-centric platform helps market researchers get better results, and our guaranteed payment structure strikes the right balance for responders, publishers, and researchers.

Do you want to learn more about RapidoReach? To get in touch with us right now, click here.