Last summer, we helped the Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA) run their latest survey to learn more about grocery shopping behaviour amongst Generation Z and their perceptions of store brands. The results offered new insight and created quite a buzz at their trade show (watch a short interview about the study here).

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How we did it

The basic requirement was to design and run an online survey, and collect responses from 1,000 people living in USA who are responsible for the household shopping, and at the time of the survey, aged between 18 and 28.

Finding people to take your survey

In olden days, a market researcher would hang around the high street or outside a store and conduct face-to-face interviews. You could spot them from a distance… that lone figure hugging a clipboard, stood still while all others sped up around them with their eyes fixed on the ground ahead or making a display of looking at their watch (this was pre-internet, no smartphones). The lesser-spotted interviewer still exists today but of course… the internet happened.

These days, we go to a research panel to reach our audience. All the big research companies operate panels, which are large databases of people recruited to take part in research on a wide range of subjects. The panels aren’t limited to research companies; Surveylab used to run all the surveys for a parenting website, Raisingkids, whose niche was families with young children.

Data Quality

Trouble is, research panels have earned a bad reputation for promises of earn $$$ for sharing your opinion.

When people opt-in to take part in surveys solely for the incentive – they have no real interest in the survey itself since their only goal is to extract all the reward ASAP. We call these participants ‘gamers’ and face a constant challenge detecting and blocking their access or excluding their responses out of the data.

Some of the issue depends on how the panellists are recruited and expectations. But we can also help achieve high quality data by designing an engaging, focused survey that is easy to follow and complete. This is key because in reality a lot of people probably aren’t even one-tenth as excited about [insert your industry here] as you! We want to know what they genuinely think which requires thought and a degree of concentration.

Engaging Survey Design

In all our surveys we’ve run for PLMA, Joe’s team draft out the initial questions and Surveylab joins up the thinking and expertise, looking ahead to what data will be collected:

• Are the questions addressing the research objectives?
• Are there potential issues, confusion or bias in the questions and wording?
• Any gaps, what-if’s and what-abouts?
• Is the content going to turn off respondents?

We think a lot about what is really wanted from a survey. Hew and I are always reverse engineering questions to consider “what will this tell us?” and how those specific answers will be used. For this survey, PLMA had an independent analyst, Dr Sara Williamson, PhD to help with the design and write the final report. So our role in the design was more around integrating the panel with the main survey, presenting the questions to be smart-phone friendly, and ensuring there’s a flow. So the participants can step through the questions easily in a way that stimulates their views and experience without over-burdening them.

If your survey has two or three grids of questions (like lists of attributes or statements that need rating in some way) – break the questions out into less daunting chunks.

If possible, insert a couple of fun questions too, aimed at getting people to think about the subject-area. Supermarket shopping isn’t at the front of everyone’s mind, but by asking a question like

What is your favourite meal to prepare at home?

– your respondent is more likely to think about ingredients, the taste, brands and groceries as they take the survey. While these answers may not feature in your analysis, they can help improve the data quality.

The Results

Good surveys are a collaborative effort. The client knows their business, and our role is bringing the client knowledge and survey design together to draw out the insight needed.

Much of this survey’s success lies with another consultant, Dr Sara Williamson PHD and Dynata for the research panel. But we get just as much satisfaction from a project being the techie, feeding back into the design process and making it all happen.

Joe Azzinaro, Director of Special Projects at PLMA, shared some kind words about PLMA working with Surveylab. He mentions learning something from us everytime, but this is also true for us, learning from each survey we run too.

You can read the full Gen Z report here.

Need help with your online survey?

Surveylab has run a few niche surveys in the last 20 years! Whatever level of support you need, we’re happy to help – Contact us