Company to consumer: Please take our survey as your input counts and it will help us to make changes to offer you even better service.

Consumer to company: Yeah, right.

This scenario plays out every day. While companies should be commended for seeking out opinions of their supporters, most do not properly convey what, and how exactly they will use the data to make actual improvements. Simultaneous to this, most firms fail to report back to the participants what they learned, and exactly what changes that they can expect to see.

As we tell our clients, whether you are conducting qualitative or quantitative research, you must have a complete action plan that includes answering the WIIFM (Whats In It For Me) question before its asked, and communicating with the customers before, during, and after the research process.

People will give you their opinions if you give them a compelling reason to do so. Expecting consumers to participate in market research solely based on a $10 gift card, or “just because” is an ill-informed and costly decision.

When people ask about Powerfeedback’s tagline (“Delivering Intelligence More Intelligently”) we point to scenarios like this to demonstrate the difference between what a professional market researcher brings to the table versus somebody with good intentions but little training and experience in the market research realm.