Editor's note: Ravi Iyer is executive president of Technometrica, an Emerson, N.J. research firm.

Have you ever wished that customers would call you to describe what they like or dislike about your client's product or service? This scenario is not as utopian as it might sound. In fact, a way to convert consumers from reactive to proactive is already here. It's called the Internet - and it may have arrived at just the right time.

Only a little more than a year ago, Edwin Artzt, chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble, sounded a wake-up call to the advertising industry to find alternative methods of delivering the message to the consumer. Perhaps no one so prominent has issued a similar warning to the marketing research industry, but clients have been dropping hints to marketing researchers for some time to find and use alternative methods of researching customers' attitudes.

In the short term, most research will continue to be based on traditional data collection techniques -- mail, telephone and personal interviews. Marketing research firms, however, must at least be aware of, and preferably ready to use, the interaction opportunities presented by advances in electronic technology.

Some of the common electronic capabilities are audio and video on-line conferences and group discussions, automated dial-in telephone surveys and E-mail communications with respondents and clients. The most promising medium for marketing researchers among these is the Internet.

The Internet & the World Wide Web

The Internet is also known as the Information Superhighway because it connects and ties together innumerable smaller electronic sites located throughout the world, each one containing a computer network of its own. It began as an experimental research project funded by the government primarily to share data among government agencies and academia and for years was used almost exclusively by universities and defense agencies. Commercial usage of the Internet began with the emergence of the World Wide Web (more commonly known as the Web), which opened up a powerful medium for obtaining various kinds of research data, selling products and services, and communicating with customers.

The Web has made accessing the Internet much easier than before. It does this by allowing easy access to the Internet's individual segments, called Web sites, and subdividing these sites into logically arranged categories which can be easily reached by using the standard mouse to click from one level of information to another. Web sites can be designed to incorporate software technology that allows two-way communication between the user and the site using a mouse and easy to follow cues on the monitor. This interaction feature and the availability of the software needed to browse Web sites has helped to make the Web the fastest growing part of the Internet and has stimulated the explosive 10 percent per month growth rate of the Internet itself.

Most Fortune 500 companies and several research organizations have established themselves on the Web. Nearly all have incorporated features that allow visitors to interact by responding to surveys or by asking and answering questions. While collecting data about product/service purchase and usage habits in this manner may not be a reliable means of analyzing consumer behavior, it represents the first step being taken to conduct research on the Internet. As the programming and methodologies become available it seems almost inevitable that greater attempts will be made to design reliable Internet friendly research studies.

The pros and cons of Internet research

The use of the Web presence to conduct research offers both advantages and disadvantages. Some of the advantages are:

  • Lower communication costs. The Web's broadcast capabilities allow surveys to be fielded to a larger population almost instantaneously. Reminders and follow-up of surveys can also be broadcast rapidly without incurring large expenses. This will allow larger portions of the research budget to be dedicated to analysis.
  • Fast responses. Survey respondents can transmit their completed questionnaire electronically immediately upon completion rather than by mail. This rapid response makes an on-line survey a good method of evaluating promotions that are run for only short periods of time.
  • Electronic capture of data. The responses to survey questions are received in an electronic format. Thus the researcher does not have to worry about data entry and verification (although some cleaning may be required). The data can be downloaded to databases and analytical software immediately and can also be transmitted to clients directly.
  • Respondent queries can be answered right away. Respondents who may have questions about the survey or how a question is to be answered can be provided with immediate feedback.
  • Round the clock access. Researchers and respondents have the capability to communicate round the clock. This flexibility may encourage more people to respond to surveys at their own convenience.
  • Monitoring usage. Several Internet service providers (ISPs), companies that provide turnkey Web site services, offer software packages which measure usage of their clients' Web sites by tracking geographic distribution, names of organizations and duration of users' visits to the most frequently accessed sections of the site. This enables close monitoring of the effectiveness of the on-line information and facilitates the tracking of respondent interest. With this information, modifications can be made to the Web sites.

On-line surveys, however, do have their share of disadvantages.

  • The first and foremost disadvantage is limited usage. Despite the rapid proliferation of personal computers, only a small portion of households have access to the Web.
  • Electronic questionnaires sent to Internet addresses can be deleted by recipients. Just as regular mail considered "junk" is discarded by recipients, surveys sent electronically could be "cyberjunked."
  • Privacy issues limit the detailed identification of respondents unless they volunteer this information. Currently there are no known services that provide a list of E-mail addresses along with the demographic variables of users.

On-line research also has some other disadvantages. For example, it cannot replace random-digit dialing and it cannot provide the nuances an experienced interviewer can glean from an in-depth interview or a focus group session.

Despite some obvious limitations, the Web enables researchers to streamline the task of fielding surveys, providing rapid feedback to clients, and providing answers to respondent queries in a quick and efficient manner.

How to establish a presence on the Web

Setting up a Web presence on the Internet involves designing and formatting the informational content of the Web site and establishing an electronic connection to the Internet. This can be accomplished in one of two ways:

1. Establish a Web site at your own location. This option involves setting up a dedicated Web server to handle the traffic, using dedicated telephone lines (T1 or smaller bandwidth), a router to direct traffic, CSU/DSU (channel service unit/data service unit), software for the operating system, server software and software allowing the creation of pages.

This option should be considered if the anticipated usage will be heavy, if the funds to establish the site are available and if a small but dedicated staff can be assigned to the project.

2. Share the Web site of a service provider. ISPs offer a wide range of Web services that can be tailored to meet on-line research needs. This option eliminates the need to purchase equipment and maintain a dedicated staff.

In addition to ISPs, several local and regional computer companies and developers offer complete turnkey Web services. These service providers who require their client to provide them with only the contents of the home page do all the required programming, testing, launching and maintaining of the home page.

The opportunity for researchers

The vastness of data and the speed with which it can be tapped is the main source of new opportunity for marketing research companies. Until now, marketing research as we know it has usually been the domain of the client's marketing research department, with the actual research conducted either by an in-house staff or assigned to outside marketing research companies. Now clients who have their own home pages can collect information on customers who are interested in their products/services, their purchasing habits, their likes and dislikes and other demographic and psychographic data and use this information to classify, segment and create target-specific products/services. This raises the possibility that with on-line information and analytical capabilities available to anyone in the client's organization with a desktop computer, data will be obtained and analyzed internally by the various departments within the organization, without the need for external market research. Therefore, market research companies should have the capability to provide the same types of services that clients can insource, lest the need for independent marketing research diminish.

Research on the Web has its disadvantages and cannot completely replace conventional data collection methods. But on-line research is moving rapidly from being "alternative" to mainstream -- and the transition will be completed sooner than anticipated. There will also probably not be a warning to embrace the new technology. Marketing researchers have to take the initiative themselves.

What marketing research companies can do

Marketing research companies can take several steps to exploit the opportunities provided by this new medium.

First, establish a presence on the Web.

Second, use that presence to publicize your firm, your capabilities and your branded products.

Third, make your corporate brochure and other pertinent literature available on your Web site for clients and prospects to read, download and print. The availability of instantaneous information about who you are, where you are and what you do is crucial.

Fourth, monitor the number of visitors to your Web site through one of several software programs available, analyze this information to help you determine the productivity of your site and make any necessary improvements to increase its effectiveness.

Fifth, begin conducting surveys on the Web. You can expect criticism from users who dislike the contents of your surveys or who simply object in principle to conducting surveys on the Web.

To overcome the first criticism, make your survey interesting - you might even liven it up a bit with some jazzy graphics. Also pay special attention to the language used by other Web sites - is it less formal and more colloquial? Accept the fact that your user demographics are not 100 percent accurate, while realizing that the results will still provide a fairly accurate understanding of the characteristics of your respondents. Use this as a building block to refine existing methodologies and devise newer ones. Sixth, update the information on your Web site, in particular the introduction or "home page." There is nothing more boring than a site that does not display any new information month after month.

Blurring of boundaries

The advent of surveys on the Web will result in a blurring of the traditional boundary between the marketing and marketing research functions - most surveys on the Internet are added to home pages which aim primarily at disseminating information and receiving sales orders. Thus, surveys on the Web are done in an environment that seems to offer the visitor some incentive - namely information on the sponsoring company. Perhaps this might lead to a gradual disappearance of the traditional line separating sales and research activity within a company's organizational structure.

In the past, marketing research companies operated in an environment of incremental change. The rapid evolution of the Web represents a paradigm shift that offers tremendous opportunities to researchers who embrace it and recognize its potential.

The age of instantaneous on-line information, available at the click of a mouse, is upon us. The question is not whether we as marketing researchers will fight it or ignore it; the question is only how soon we will join it, use it and make it work for us.