At Insignia, we know that the world changes constantly.  In the past 20 years, one of the largest changes has been the rapid growth and spread of the Internet.  This rapid shift has also meant huge changes in the way our societies communicate and in how we conduct all business including market research.

Today, many people are more comfortable communicating via the Internet than they are in face to face situations.  In some cases, this has to do with the ease of talking to people around the world.  For some people, they like to take time to think out their responses and really enjoy the asynchronous communication that happens in forums, bulletin boards and via email discussions.  Others enjoy the rapid, often confusing world of high speed chat rooms and instant messaging.

We believe that it is important to talk with people in the medium they are most familiar  and comfortable with, and this means that we conduct online research using cutting edge technology to get the best results.

Online Surveys

The "classic" form of online research is the quantitative survey.  Choosing to conduct a survey online has both advantages and disadvantages, depending on your target market.  Generally speaking the "younger" the demographic profile you are interested in, the greater the likelihood of getting a representative sample.  While this varies from country to country, it is a good general rule of thumb. In some countries the over 50 segment is highly under represented and computer weighting is required to obtain a representative sample by age.

Online Focus Groups

Online "Focus Groups" are a development of the spread of bulleting board, chat and forum software.  Generally speaking, online focus groups are useful in situations where a particular market segment is geographically dispersed.  One advantage of the online methodology is that the geographic spread of respondents can be much greater than face to face focus groups.  A major disadvantage is that emotions are hard to read and, as a consequence, the likelihood that a focus group member is "shading" their input increases.

Web Site / Online Community Analysis

One of the biggest concerns among many businesses today is the image that they present to the world via their web sites and that appears in online communities.  This requires a highly specialized form of analysis that combines skills from Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology and Computer Science.  

The Insignia Advantage 

At Insignia, we have two specialists in this area: Dr. Marc Tyrrell and Tim Groth who, between them, have over 20 years of experience in analyzing web sites and online communities.