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When Unilever Speak the World Listens…

A recent article in the Financial Times stated that in the US, 80% of Unilever’s research is now carried out online and the UK and Japan are likely to follow quickly in suit. There is an obvious reason for this. Online research is quicker and cheaper than the phone or face to face interviews. It is the reason for the stellar growth of companies such as YouGov, set up only 7 years ago and now worth £133 million on the UK’s Alternative Investment Market.

Online Research – Now’s The Time!

Since Unilever virtually invented market research, in commercial terms, then we should be taking note of this now. This is the time to act and build online research communities and panels that we can offer to clients and drive them toward the online research solution.

There’s more honesty on the internet...

There are, of course, numerous arguments against the use of online research and by far the biggest problem seems to centre on the integrity of the data that is fed back from panellists. Once again we refer back to Unilever where Chet Henderson (Unilever’s Vice President of Insight) said that according to Unilever’s internal data testing, internet responses also tended to be more honest than those gained by traditional methods. In fact he goes on to state that “In some countries, people are far more honest on the internet,”

Big consumer groups move to online surveys

The move to web research by big consumer groups underlines the business opportunity for internet-only research companies trying to grab business from established research networks. Market research was worth about $16bn (£8bn) in the world’s five biggest territories in 2005, including $7.7bn in the US and $2.4bn in the UK.

Reporting on this year’s excellent financial results for WPP Sir Martin Sorrell stated that there had been three key “engines” to the fantastic growth in such a difficult climate. A key element was Insight which “we think is becoming more and more important.” He talks about the fact that growth in revenues from Insight functions is directly linked to their investment in online research along with their recent acquisitions of companies from this sector.

Phone gives way to web

CATI based research is suffering from declining response rates, people are no longer tolerant of having their dinner interrupted by telephone calls and are becoming increasingly resistant to CATI based research.

Given the above statements from Unilever and Sir Martin Sorrell and the fact that the WPP-owned Lightspeed Research’s panel activities are powered by MARSC is there any reason why you wouldn’t have online research as part of your strategy?