by Moving Beyond Paid Panels: Bullet-Proof Insights from Ready-to-Buy Customers
White Paper by Prelaunch
Do you really trust paid panels and survey responses?
Prelaunch ran a recent study to compare the most popular survey tools and methodologies. What they found surprised them, and led them to develop a new model for collecting meaningful bullet-proof insights from future customers.
Identify Your Audience Before Your Launch
When launching a new product, brands need to understand who the product’s ideal customer is, how much they are willing to pay, how they will use the product, and how they would improve it. And you need to be sure the insights you gather are trustworthy and valuable.
Typically, brands reach out to their previous customers or use paid panels and survey tools to attract new ‘relevant’ audiences. But are they actually reliable?
What’s the likelihood that the person who bought a fridge from you last year, will buy a fridge from you this year? Are your research goals aligned with the person who is paid to respond, or is their incentive to answer as many surveys as possible, as fast as possible, to get paid at the end? And with the rise of AI, are those responses even coming from the potential customer?
These questions plagued us — and every other brand looking to gather valuable insights — for years…
How do you gather insights about an innovative hardware product concept before the launch?
Paying $5 vs Charging $5
So we set up an experiment.
We selected 5 of the industry-leading survey tools out there, gave the same instructions, identified similar niche audiences, and asked them the same questions.
The only difference was that while all survey platforms required us to pay each respondent $5 or more to participate, on Prelaunch.com people interested in purchasing the product paid us $5 to participate.
This $5 deposit ‘reserved’ respondents the right to purchase the product at launch and we soon discovered that it’s the most reliable indicator of future purchase intent.
Valuable Responses Only Come From Those Who Understand the Value
All paid surveys followed a similar pattern. Respondents gave the bare minimum that was required of them — short, vanilla responses. One-word answers. A lot of “I don’t know”s. And feedback requests amounted to little more than, “It’s good as is.”
However, on Prelaunch.com, the opposite was true.
People had strong, varied opinions — going to great lengths to explain their needs in detail. Many even went as far as to participate in in-depth interviews and focus groups — again, for no remuneration — and came prepared with 30+ slide presentations filled with insights and suggestions!
And while paid respondents rarely deviated from the mean in things like matrix questions — 55% chose neutral answers, only 7% chose extreme options — those who paid were more inclined to be themselves.
Over 60% of those respondents who paid us, shared much more opinionated responses, choosing either ‘extremely important’ or ‘not important at all’ — indicating more direct feedback and their investment in developing a better product.
Skin in the Game — the Prelaunch.com Framework
When respondents have skin in the game, they’re incentivized to provide more detailed, personal, and insightful feedback.
When there’s a clear link between the feedback they give and the quality of the product they’ll soon own, why not make it as valuable as possible?
That’s what we learned from this experiment, from the feedback we’ve heard from brands who use the Prelaunch Framework, and from the participants themselves!
By placing a deposit, they’re now ‘invested’ in the product development. They’re open to collaborating and sharing — even extremely private information. And they’re open to joining you in the ‘co-creation’ of a product they’re excited to soon use.
Using AI to Turn Qualitative Responses into Actionable Insights
This deposit is the first step to understanding customers. It validates customer responses and is also a great way to discover new audiences that brands weren’t originally targeting.
Once their future customers are validated, brands then use Prelaunch.com’s AI to analyze and cluster thousands of survey responses, interviews, and quantitative data gathered on-platform, to discover hidden patterns and unexpected insights. And together with their community, they iterate through product development to guarantee a successful product launch.
Discover Prelaunch’s groundbreaking approach to qualitative research at MRMW EU this October! Join us in Berlin to hear from industry leaders like Nestle, Foodspring, Salomon, Philips, Givaudan, British American Tobacco, and many more. Don’t miss out on Europe’s leading consumer insights conference—only a few tickets left! https://eu.mrmw.net/
