From door-to-door to the Internet

Editor’s note: Janet Savoie is director, client development, at Harris Interactive Service Bureau, Nashville, Tenn.

It’s 1963. A client calls. His company has a great new detergent it wants to test in your market. Your job is to get the product into the hands of 50 qualified respondents and convince them to do two follow-up surveys about how the new product performed. Sounds like a product placement you might be asked to do today. The difference is that today you could do this using one of several methodologies. Back then the choice was pretty much limited to door-to-door.

Glyna Kilpatrick, field director at the Nashville Research Group in Nashville, remembers those door-to-door days and the procedures researchers had to follow for sampling, security and follow up:  Normally women were the interviewers and often traveled in pairs for safety. They would be assigned a neighborhood and were given an exact pattern to follow. They worked to the right, knocking on doors, screening mostly women, who back then had not made the mass migration to the job market. Once they got a placement they would skip over a set number of houses before they knocked again.

Looking back, she says it is still amazing to her how many people invited them into their homes, sometimes two to three times over the course of a study, for no incentive other than the product itself. She also remembers some of the crazy things that she experienced, including having the clipboard jerked out of her hand, or the time she was chased down the street, or when a naked man answered the door!

Twenty years later, in 1983, if those same specs came across your desk, you had choices. Between 1960-1990 telephone interviewing replaced much of face-to-face interviewing in industrial countries. During that time there was also growth of mail panels and mall interviewing. Although there was early resistance to the new methodologies, the timing of their emergence was perfect, as door-to-door was becoming a thing of the past as people became more security-conscious and women left home to join the workforce. It was now possible to pre-recruit by phone or mail, then mail the product or send respondents to a central location or mall for pick-up. Follow-up surveys could be completed by phone, mail or in-person at the mall.

Nowadays, you receive an e-mail with those same specs. And there’s a new kid on the block: online data collection. Initially online was embraced by some as a viable alternative and rejected by others who saw it as a non-proven technique. Acceptance of online research has been going through the same stages that phone did in the ’60s. However, with a large percentage of the population now online at home or at work, more and more researchers are finding their comfort level. Initially used for low-complexity customer satisfaction surveys with client lists, the Internet can now handle the most complex designs and deliver a sample of the general population.

The scope of the projects fielded online has grown to include product placements. Recruits can successfully be found online for placements for everything from granola bars to toilets. (Yes, I said toilets. It has been done.) What online brings to the table is one-stop shopping. Rather than dealing with a number of malls and perhaps a WATS vendor, the online service bureaus can recruit in all markets, and do all the follow-up surveys. In addition to the data collection, they can provide sampling, programming, incentive fulfillment, coding and tabs. They don’t usually ship the product, although they provide contact information for those respondents who have agreed to participate. The partnering of an online vendor and a mall facility is another alternative. The malls actually do the recruit, screening and product placement. Respondents must have an e-mail address as they are sent an e-mail invitation to participate in the recall surveys.

What’s the right method?

With all the data collection choices available for product placement, what’s a researcher to do? I actually asked several researchers that very question. The consensus seems to be that the “right” method, as always, depends on research objectives, timing and the budget.  But since it’s hard to find a methodology that is always “faster, better and cheaper,” usually trade-offs have to be made.

Their opinions on the issues of quality, cost and speed are documented below (two responded via e-mail; the rest were interviewed by phone) and then summarized by method in accompanying charts.

• Recruiting the right audience

Gerry Cain, president, TIP Research, Kansas City , Mo. (via e-mail): “From a methodological standpoint, online product placement may make more sense over mall/CLT if diversity in participant recruitment is an important factor. The publics in a mall are ‘conveniently’ gathered and generally demographically similar. But there is a large percentage of the population that avoid mall atmospheres (i.e., skews mostly women), or the available public may skew racially (fewer minorities in suburban malls; fewer non-minorities in urban settings), by income, or some other less visible way.

“A concern about Internet product placement is the lack of availability of a large, accurate e-mail list from which to recruit, and the reality that there is still a large portion of the population that has neither e-mail nor Internet access.”

Lynda Manning, vice president of sales, Universal Survey Center , New York : “I don’t put products in malls that require all males. For example, men’s hair color is not a good fit. Higher-end products also don’t work as well in the mall but are great online.”

Beth Fischer, president of The TCI Group, Minneapolis : “When sight screening is a factor — looking for plus sizes, for example — the mall is best. However, mall traffic is not always a good read of the market as most attract shoppers within a five-mile radius.”

Dianne Littlefield, field director, de Kadt Marketing & Research, Inc., Ridgefield , Conn. : “I prefer the mall because I’ve always done it that way and I know what to expect. I know who my audience is. I worry about the representativeness of an online panel.”

• Response rates

Lisa Doyle, vice president, C&R Research Services, Inc., Chicago (via e-mail): “It is our experience that recruitments and placements made via the Internet yield a much higher response rate than more traditional methods. First, a recruit/placement made via an online panel yields a captive, interested audience. Second, the completion of the follow-up survey is done at a time that is most convenient for the respondent. Third, higher response rates mean that our clients can produce less product which, in cases where prototypes are produced by hand, can be a huge ‘win’ for the client and their budget.”

Beth Fischer: “It’s easier for the respondent to disengage if it’s not in-person. However, people are becoming more used to engaging in a virtual world.”

Lynda Manning: “If a respondent has been recruited at a local mall, they know where to go if they need help. That face-to-face contact makes them more committed.”

• Cost

Lisa Doyle: “First and foremost, the issue of cost is probably one of the biggest areas of advantages to an online product placement. We’ve found that the cost of an IHUT [in-home use test] recruited and placed through more traditional avenues can be cut in half when recruited via the Internet, which is quite appealing to clients who face budgetary constraints and cuts on a daily basis.”

Dianne Littlefield: “The cost of product fulfillment has to be factored in. It’s one shipment per mall vs. hundreds of individual shipments if it’s done online. A disadvantage of the mall is interviewer error. You have to rely on them to give the correct product to the correct respondent. Mis-placed products or products placed with non-qualified respondents is a waste of time and money.”

Lynda Manning: “The trade-off might be that the shipping for online is higher but the recruiting costs are low enough to make it more appealing.”

Beth Fischer: “You must always consider your research objectives, but most trade-offs are driven by price.”

• Speed of data delivery

Gerry Cain: “For obvious reasons, online makes sense if quick turn-around time is critical.”

Lisa Doyle: “The shortened recruitment phase is another prime benefit for recruiting an IHUT via the Internet. Recruitment from an online panel usually takes about a week, with incidence of the group you are looking to target playing a small role.”

• Quality of information

Gerry Cain: “An advantage of mall/CLT is the presence of an interviewer, who is able to clarify questions or responses, if necessary. There is also an element of ‘instant validation,’ which is difficult to achieve online. Survey respondents tend to report greater satisfaction in their involvement in surveys if their participation is active — engaged in mall/central location testing or interacting with computer — rather than passive — listening on the telephone. Increased satisfaction among participants translates into better responses and hence, better marketing intelligence.”

Diversity of tools

What I learned from talking to my colleagues is that they are not totally committed to any one methodology. They evaluate each project, weighing the necessary outcome with the advantages and disadvantages each method offers, and make thoughtful, educated decisions. There also seems to be a movement towards mixing methodologies. Researchers today are armed with a diversity of tools in their briefcase and this is what clients want and expect in this 21st century world of choices. I’d love to hear from readers with comments or from those who wish to share their experiences with product placements.