Digital behavior data is a hot topic for market researchers, and for good reason. All researchers know that surveys aren’t perfect. Respondents have inaccurate recollections about their behavior, target audiences may not be perfectly representative, surveys may go unfulfilled, or, if poorly designed, may not answer the initial business question.
Digital behavior analytics can overcome many of these challenges and present added benefits to researchers and marketers – resulting in better online survey results and richer data.
What is Digital Behavior Data?
Collecting behavioral data isn’t new, of course. Researchers have been sampling and analyzing consumer behavior information since the inception of market research. The trouble is that collecting accurate data, at a large enough scale to be representative, can be time-consuming and costly. Not to mention, what consumers do and say rarely align.
With the advent of the internet and its widespread adoption amongst the consumer population, researchers were presented with a new way to collect data. Thanks to the global pandemic and the steady rise of online shopping, this data is becoming more widely available, easier to collect in large samples, and more useful for researchers and marketers. Online behavior data is now collected through browsing behavior, search activity, and online purchase behavior, just to name a few.
No longer limited in the way that traditional consumer panel surveys and online survey panels have been in the past, market research surveys that utilize digital behavior data offer incredible advantages.
Why is Digital Behavior Data Superior?
Don’t just take our word for it. Many studies have been done on the efficacy of digital behavior segmentation for online surveys versus traditional survey methodologies. One such study by Pompeu Fabra University found that:
- 89% of respondents segmented by behavioral data completed the survey, versus 46% from a random sample.
- Those respondents from the behavioral group reported an 80% satisfaction rate with their survey experience, while just 60% of the random sample conveyed satisfaction.
- Far fewer of those segmented by behavioral data returned ‘don’t know’ or incomplete survey responses.
All researchers know that recruiting and screening for the target audience is key to receiving meaningful data, but that this process is expensive and labor-intensive – putting it out of reach for many brands, even with expert vendors on board. What digital behavior analytics does is remove these obstacles for a more effective online survey, more satisfied participants, and more robust data for marketing teams.
Three Advantages of Digital Behavior for Your Online Surveys
At Luth Research, we’re often asked by brands to build very specific survey panels, based on the target audiences they’re hoping to survey. Unfortunately, the budgets and time constraints faced by many of these brands put these kinds of respondent groups out of reach. Thankfully, our capacity for utilizing digital behavior makes conducting more targeted online surveys much more manageable. Not only that, but using digital behavior information presents its own set of advantages.
- Save time, money, and reduce the steps to surveying
Instead of recruiting, say, young parents with children in the diaper-wearing phase (a costly and lengthy screening process), digital behavior analytics allows us to target online surveys to people who’ve purchased diapers from Walmart in the last six months, for example. We can then deploy the online survey to only those respondents. This approach saves the screening step necessary for traditional survey respondent recruitment, saving both time and money in the process.
- Digital data enriches your online surveys
Digital behavior works both ways – in narrowing down the sample size to the right audience and in using the data you go on to collect for further insights. In surveying parents of young children for insights into their diaper-buying behavior, on the one hand, researchers are also able to collect data on a whole host of other buying behaviors. Brands can discover, for example, what other products the parents of young children are buying, how inflation is affecting their purchasing behavior, whether another child is on the way for a percentage of the population, and more. All of this data, collected on an ongoing basis, forms a rich data history that can be utilized in the future.
- Saving Peter to pay Paul
Saving money and time by using digital behavior for your consumer panel surveys means freeing up resources for use in other areas. The speed and agility with which digital behavior can be used to deploy online surveys enables brands to spend their research dollars on putting those insights to the test, developing new marketing initiatives, or investing in R&D on new product offerings.
Digital behavior analytics allows brands to widen their horizons, even when budget and time constraints continue to put pressure on them. Luth Research is your vendor partner in gathering timely, cost-effective, robust digital behavior data on consumers to drive important business decisions.
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