Julie Lemaster, an MBA student at the University of California- Riverside, has written an interesting paper (which is posted to the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing web site) entitled "Online Panel Management and Strategies: An Introduction for Managers." It is an introductory guide to managers who have been asked or have decided it is time to start looking into online market research for their companies.

Lemaster contrasts full-service providers, such as M/A/R/C and SSI against complex and potentially expensive "self-serve" packages from Confirmit, Globalpark, GMI, and SurveyZ to low cost providers such as QuestionPro, Survey.com, SurveyMoney, and Zoomerang.

The abstract of the paper summarizes it as providing…

"…an introductory guide to managers who have been asked or have decided it is time to start looking into online market research for their company.  The size of the company you work for does not matter, as we will discuss several methods that can be used for any size company or investment level.  This paper is for managers who want to quickly learn the basic issues of online market research panels.  It will also be useful to managers who need to become familiar with some of the major providers of online panel management."

In addition to reviewing the providers and the various strategies for organizing your panel, Lemaster discusses a variety incentives that can be used to motivate and retain participants, such as lotteries, bonus points, and raffles.

• Online Panel Management and Strategies: An Introduction for Manager

Stefania Viscusi of TMCnet recently posted an article that offers ten top considerations for selecting call center software for your company. Although not completely on topic, it does have some research ramifications (one would hope that your call center is in some way integrated into the collection of customer satisfaction data, which is definitely marketing research related).

Read the full article at TMCnet.
Props to Jim Berkowitz for finding this article first!

In a recent article posted on TMCNet entitled "Effective Customer Service Requires not Just Knowledge, But Insight," Bruce Pollock identifies some of the criteria he uses when selecting a survey took specifically for use by customer service representatives and call center agents. He suggests that the tool you select should be "agent anonymous" (the customer service agents shouldn’t be able to influence the results); interactive (survey should be easy); time-efficient (the survey should be fast); it should offer both qualitative and quantitative results (scores are good, but comments can provide the most insight); and it should provide real-time access to results.

Read the full article at TMCNet.

Article found at CustomersAreAlways.

There are a lot of excellent internet web interviewing packages out there. Since it is unlikely that I will personally have time to review, compare and contrast every one of them, I’ve compiled some of the criteria I consider when evaluating internet survey software systems including questions I ask about basic capabilities, advanced survey related capabilities, design/development features, user experience related elements, response management capabilities, reporting capabilities, pricing, system requirements and available support and training. (more…)