2. 8.3 INTERNET MARKET RESEARCH

Traditional marketing research
 Consists
of focus groups, interviews, paper and
telephone surveys, questionnaires and secondary
research


Findings based on previously collected data
Online marketing research
 Faster
option for finding and analyzing industry,
customer and competitor information
 Provides relaxed and anonymous setting to hold
focus-group discussions and distribute questionnaires

3. 8.3 INTERNET MARKETING
RESEARCH

Segmentation
 Can
be based on age, income, gender, culture and
common needs and wants
Demographics
 Statistics
on human population, including age, sex,
marital status and income
Psychographics
 Can
include family lifestyle, cultural differences and
values

Traditional focus groups can allow customers to
touch, smell and experience products or services

4. 8.3 INTERNET MARKETING
RESEARCH

Online focus groups





Online surveys




Conducted to allow current or potential consumers to
present their opinions about products, services or ideas
Comfortable setting for participants
Leader of the focus group cannot interpret a participant’s
body language as a form of communication
SurveySite
Conducted from Web site or through e-mail
InsightExpress.com, GoGlobal Technologies and
QuickTake
Test your site and marketing campaign on a smaller scale
with focus groups and trials
Data collected from a company’s Web site

5. 8.3 INTERNET MARKETING
RESEARCH
Evaluate campaign results
 Measure costs and benefits of campaign

 Helps
with development of a budget for marketing
activities
 Identify growing and most profitable segments

Marketing-research firms
 Forrester
Research, Adknowledge, Jupiter
Communications and Media Metrix

9.
A proper online market research helps a business in the
following areas
Making advantageous marketing decisions in order to quickly align with market
patterns in terms of users’ demands, habits and target audience.
Surviving the competition by knowing the activities and patterns of competitors in
market. Analyzing the target audience and their product /services helps a business to
take practical actions to attract the audience towards their brand.
Deciding the target market, before any launch of a new product it is desired to approach
the concerned or target population first. Online market research helps to figure out the
target population in order to achieve the high conversion rate of prospects to the
customer.
Maximize profits with online research by gathering reviews of a product. This helps a
business to attain the value of product in terms of money, which customers are ready to
pay, and interestingly, it could be far higher than the current price.

10. advantages of online market research
Precision: Results approximation errors are usually low in online
market research over conventional research because of digital
computation of data and research patterns.
Cross border activity: International census and research data about a
product or service can be gathered in order to study the impact and
performance, overseas. It can provide a hint about the habits and
responses of population to a particular product in a large area.
Fast: Data analysis and data collection can be easy and fast using
online market research. Storage and retrieval of digital data gives a
pace to the process of

11. analysis. A company providing IT Infrastructure
services recently conducted a poll to understand the sentiment of
people regarding the use of cloud applications. A sample of
10,000 people attended the poll in just 2 days and the company
had all the information they needed.
Reliable: Internet allows the collection of proper and correct set of
data results with an automated system of data collection. It reduces
the cases of human-error in data and any other kind of discrepancy
and redundancy.

12. Disadvantages:
Slow internet connections can cause difficulties. If the companies build too
complex or too large websites, it will take too long for users to check them or
download them and they will get bored eventually..
The e-commerce doesn’t allow the user “to touch” the merchandise before
purchasing it. Because of this, some salesmen are starting to guarantee the
possibility of returning the product. In Germany, where a law that regulates ecommerce and guarantees the customers the total refund of the money exists
since 2000, the electronic commerce is very popular.
Other factor is the payment: many users still don’t trust in the electronic
methods of paying and give up buying online because of this.
One of the major disadvantages may be the lack of trust of the users because
of the constant virtual promotions that appear to be frauds. This is an aspect
that deteriorates the image and reputation of quality and honest companies.

13. Other disadvantage is the cash on delivery system, since it doesn’t guarantee
the 100% purchase of the product. This is also the case of thousands of users
that dedicate themselves to daily mock big companies by ordering on the
internet using false identities.