Marketing data can be a powerful force in making marketing decisions for your company. It can provide information to identify and define threats and opportunities; generate, refine and evaluate tactics and channels; and measure the effectiveness of your marketing plan. It can confirm what you thought you knew about your target market, or it can show you where you need to make adjustments. 

Technology enables marketing research to take the lead in providing useful information for effective business decisions. The Encyclopedia of Business and Finance by The Gale Group, Inc. points out, “The Internet’s role in marketing research will continue to grow because it provides a quick, cost-effective way of collecting and disseminating data…Companies that take advantage of marketing research and view it as a valuable business component will be the companies that survive and thrive.”

Today, the online survey is relied upon as a cost-efficient source of data, allowing marketers to build a body of marketing information. And why not, with 147 million Americans (according to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project) as regular Internet users?

Of course if 73% of respondents in the Pew study do use the Internet, that still leaves 27% of Americans who do not. Of these, many are minorities, are at the low end of the economic scale, have less than a high school education, or are older Americans. For example:

• Latinos comprise 14% of the U.S. adult population. Fifty-six percent of this growing group goes online. However, that compares to 71% of non-Hispanic whites and 60% of non-Hispanic blacks.
• The Pew Project reported that 87% of those people with household incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 go online, but only 53% of adults living in households with less than $30,000 income do so.
• While 91% of adults with at least a college degree go online, of adults who have less than a high school education, only 40% use the Internet.
• And although the Internet age gap may be closing, still 84% of 30-49 year-olds say they use the Internet compared to just 32% of those over age 65.

In light of these “digital” gaps, if your goal is to reach a cross-section of Americans, you may need to employ additional data-gathering methods like phone interviews or traditional surveys. However, that doesn’t mean abandoning online technology in the analysis of your data. 

“Whether you collect data through phone interviews, focus groups, traditional surveys or the web, the Internet is the engine that can convert results into real-time information,” said Bill White, partner with MillerWhite Integrated Marketing.

Phone, focus group or traditional paper data can be incorporated into online research software. For phone interviews, the interviewer enters answers into the online survey document, as if he or she were taking the survey multiple times. The software incorporates the data into the survey database. Where answers are received on traditional survey forms or through focus groups, the answers are keyed into the online survey document, and again the software incorporates the data into the survey database.

For example, a retailer might want to gather information about a customer loyalty program through an online survey sent via eMail to a shopper database. If it was determined that a significant portion of customers were not Internet literate, paper surveys could be placed in stores for shoppers to fill out and leave at the service desk. The format would parallel the online survey and the answers could be easily incorporated with the electronic responses.

White said online survey engine features vary, but MillerWhite utilizes one that assembles data and reports or charts the results in real-time. Powerful filtering techniques help pinpoint patterns in the results. For example, it can compare respondents’ answers to a particular question based on their age, household income, zip code or any number of given combinations of factors. This capability allows for complex analysis that translates into very specific conclusions and yields meaningful information from the data, White explained.

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