Spending on customer satisfaction studies continues to outpace overall market research spend in the US, and yet there is a generalized dissatisfaction with the value that companies get from such studies. They continue because there is an intrinsic belief that they should be good for business. This belief is not misplaced, but many studies suffer from intrinsic flaws, ranging from measuring the wrong thing from a customer perspective to looking for a simple metric that does not provide management guidance as to what to fix if scores are low.
The attraction: Why online panels have grown to be used for almost 50% of quantitative research in the US
The risks: What are the inherent problems with using online panels, predominately resulting in answers that are incorrect because the market does not look as the panel indicates it should?
The solutions: What the quality initiatives look like, and why the market should move rapidly to adopt them