What is a Market Research Panel?

A market research panel is a group of people who are asked to share their experience, opinion, and sentiment about a certain product, service, or brand to determine an overview of that certain product. The purpose of forming such a group is solely for research. It is possible that even you have been a part of a market research panel. Some free online tools are very convenient to create online surveys. They are a great way to gather a good market research panel. This way you can collect the information from people who are voluntarily willing. This process is faster and efficient as well. It is one of the easiest ways a company can know about how satisfied its consumers are and in which ways the company is lacking to gain customer satisfaction.

Types of Market Research Panels

There are mainly two types of market research panels:

1. Business to Customer (B2C): Experts also describe this type of market research panel as a customer or corporate panel. In these panels, the company itself contacts the customers or users of the product or service to participate in the panel. For example, a well-known company inviting its consumers to precipitate in an online survey how their products are helping them.
2. Business to Business (B2B): Business holders use these types of panels to know how the rival or competitor company is doing. This process is more line B2B2C. The original company (let’s say company A) contacts a supplier to provide the information on how another company (B). The supplier will then gather data from the consumer of company B and will pass the report to company A. The supplier here works as a media element. You may also know these panels as research supplier panels.

How Does It Help?

A market research panel is a great way to know the acceptance rate of a product or service. Very helpful information can be found from these panels that can be used for the betterment of that product or service. Some of the good qualities of a good market research panel are honesty of the panel members, members being true consumers of the product or service. From a good market panel, a company can work on its quality control, product price, etc.

Market research panels can help students complete their online surveys fast and economically. It is because these surveys are cheap and most of the time the goal can be reached almost without costing a dime. To get a market research panel freely, the company can share the survey forms on various social media. It only takes a few minutes to complete a survey. Google form lets the users create a form totally free. In some cases, it is possible not to get satisfactory responses from the survey-takers (For example, not enough people participating in the survey). In some cases, there are various platforms where you can pay people to take the surveys. It generally costs a dollar or two per completed survey. To get accurate information you can set a filter based on the survey-taker’s region, ethnicity, occupation, profession, etc.