What is Survey Research

Survey research is a method used to collect data from a specific population by asking questions to gather insights into respondents’ attitudes, behaviors, or characteristics. There are many methodologies or ways to conduct survey research from online structured questionnaires to in-person interviews as well as various types of survey research you can conduct based on your research goals.

Benefits of Survey Research

There are several key benefits to using survey research as part of an overall research strategy and can be critical in getting you the information you need for almost every business question. How do engineers regard a specific software product? What is the market potential for a new medical device? How do potential customers feel about the last iteration of your mobile device? Surveys can give you the quantitative insight that helps answer these questions. Some key benefits of survey research include:

Cost Effective: Surveys are often more affordable than methods like focus groups or in-depth interviews and allow businesses to gather valuable data at a lower cost.

Wide Reach and Scalability: Unlike other forms of research, surveys allow you to reach large, diverse populations. The scalability of surveys allows researchers to obtain a representative sample, enhancing the reliability of their findings.

Speed: Surveys, especially online surveys, can be deployed quickly with responses gathered in a short time enabling organizations to make timely decisions in response to rapidly changing market conditions.

Standardization and Quantifiable Insights: As every respondent answers the same set of questions, the data results are less variable and objective. Surveys provide quantifiable data that can be easily analyzed using statistical methods making the insights more actionable compared to other qualitative methods like interviews or focus groups.

Types of Survey Research

Now that we know all the benefits of doing a survey, it is also important to note that a survey can also be a magnificent waste of resources if not done properly. How can you make sure that you use surveys productively? A survey should tell you something that you don’t already know or that you can’t find out by other means. It should test a hypothesis, not seek to validate one. If you don’t know what you want to learn from a survey, you will assuredly learn very little from the results.

In future articles, we’ll discuss how to properly design a survey and what methodology works best for your research (online, phone, in-person). But first, you must decide what type of survey is best given your research goals.

Here are six of the most common types of survey research and what they can help you learn:

1. Consumer Survey, Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey, and Brand Equity Survey.

What your customers, clients, and employees think about you matters. Are they advocates of your brand or detractors? These surveys can quantify the value of your brand and how your audience perceives it.

2. Market Penetration Survey

Not sure how prevalent your product or service is in the industry? By asking broad questions about familiarity and usage, you can obtain responses that help you gauge market share.

3. Competitive Analysis Survey

How does your product or service stack up against those of competitors? How is market share shifting? What criteria are customers using to make their decisions? All these questions are crucial to understanding how you should position your wares. A competitive analysis survey is designed to obtain such insights.

4. Channel Check Survey

Instead of taking a direct approach to evaluating a company, you can use supply chains and distribution networks as proxies. When you understand how a vendor or how a logistics partner views a product, you gain a more comprehensive view of your target company and how it operates and performs in its industry.

5. Conjoint Analysis Survey

A conjoint analysis survey creates hypothetical product and price scenarios for respondents and helps uncover the impact of feature or price changes on customer preference. This survey is particularly useful for product teams tasked with scoping out what product features matter most to customers as well as how much they might pay them.

6. Product Concept Testing Survey

Are you unsure if a new product concept will resonate with your target audience? If so, a concept testing survey might be what you need. A concept testing survey can help you validate customer interest by giving quantifiable customer feedback on new value propositions and product ideas. When conducted at the right time, a concept testing survey can help you significantly reduce common innovation risks found in new product development.

7. Evaluation Survey

How are things going? What’s working? What’s not working? All such questions can be answered and analyzed quickly and easily. Evaluation surveys are most often used within companies to gauge performance and engagement levels, to gain feedback about various initiatives, and to solicit recommendations. To get the most out of these surveys, the results should be shared widely and should be accompanied by executive actions inspired by the responses. You can also use this type of survey to test perceptions about proposed product features.

8. Pricing Survey

With growing global volatility and uncertain customer demand, a pricing survey can help you optimize margins without deterring customers. This type of survey has respondents make choices based on fixed product descriptions and varying prices ultimately giving insights into a customer’s overall willingness to pay for different products as well as their key switching behaviors. GLG’s Price CheX, a proprietary tool, goes beyond just the survey data and enables

9. Strategic Planning Survey

Like an evaluation survey, a strategic planning survey can gather feedback on proposed initiatives and provide a forum for recommendations. The main difference is that strategic planning surveys are almost exclusively internal. Respondents can rate and rank the relative importance of strategic initiatives. The respondent will perceive the survey differently than he perceives an evaluation survey. With strategic planning surveys, the respondent is made to feel a part of advancing the business. Employee buy-in is a critical component of any strategic planning process.

10. Message Testing Survey

You’ve curated the perfect marketing message – but is it clear and easy for your audience to understand? Does it stand out among competitors? A message testing survey tests your message with your target audience to ensure that it is clear, relevant, competitive, and compelling.

You are now ready to make some important decisions: first, whether a survey is an appropriate tool for your current research goals; second, if so, what type of survey will best accomplish your research goals.

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Check out the other articles in our Survey Series:

• Top 8 Tenets of Survey Design
• Are You Running the Right Survey for the Wrong Reason?
• Why the Screener Section of Your Survey Is Compromising Your Results

Learn more about GLG Surveys and how GLG can help you reach the right groups and execute surveys that meet your research needs.

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Will Mellor, Director of Surveys, GLG

Will Mellor leads a team of accomplished project managers who serve financial service firms across North America. His team manages end-to-end survey delivery from first draft to final deliverable. Will is an expert on GLG’s internal membership and consumer populations, as well as survey design and research. Before coming to GLG, he was the VP of an economic consulting group, where he was responsible for designing economic impact models for clients in both the public sector and the private sector. Will has bachelor’s degrees in international business and finance and a master’s degree in applied economics.

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If you have a question about GLG Surveys, contact us to speak with a member of our survey team.