What is a market research panel?

A market research panel is defined as a group of research participants, selected for market research studies. These research panelists help a researcher to evaluate a brand or products/services offered by the brand, thus also called brand research panel.

Market research panel is a more popular option as compared to the more traditional phone interviews with entirely random and un-categorized people that may or may not present privacy issues. In addition to the high cost of such processes, there is no guarantee that the person coming on the phone will be ready to respond to your questions. It leads to a waste of both time and resources.

Having a market research panel makes it easier to conduct market research, as the panel members are already pre-qualified and ready to go. It saves the researching companies from the hassles of having to start from scratch as the panel information is readily available.

What is an online panel?

An online panel is defined as an online group of pre-selected people that are both interested and willing to participate in a market research study, online focus groups, surveys, etc. This group of people could be your current customers, future customers, and any sales lead or could very well be people with shared interests and beliefs.

Using an online panel gives businesses an effective method of gathering data and feedback from a group of participants. It is a way for companies to make consumer research useful, more productive, and less expensive than traditional research methods.

Who uses market research panels?

Market research companies and other organizations use market research panels to reach respondents who are keen to participate in research. Organizations, depending on their research needs, use customers, non-customers, potential customers, and other stakeholders for their research activities. These online panelists are called up to answer surveys depending on the research needs.

What are the types of panels?

• 1. Supplier panels
• 2. Corporate panels
• 3. Specialty Panels

What is a supplier panel?

A supplier panel consists of members from both the B2B and B2C sectors. The panel provider can estimate the incidence rate to understand the percentage of members who qualify for the survey. This research supplier panel is more extensive compared to a corporate panel.

Example: To conduct a competitive study on product(P), the company (X) contacts a supplier panel. The supplier panel will be able to provide product(P) with the number of company’s(X) clients attitudes towards product(P).

What is a corporate panel?

A corporate panel purely consists of customers of specific products or services. These customers generally share the same interests, have similar behavioural habits and other similar traits. These panels are also known as consumer panels.

Example: Company’s (X) panel members taking part in a research study conducted by company(X). Here, the researcher company(X) can choose to survey the entire panel database or may only select a few respondents for the study.

What is a specialty panel?

Niche and focused panel to suit the exclusive research needs of the client