Test Point recently carried out a market research with a very particular methodology: an “online community” was organized to identify a new model of sports shoes that would be liked by a young audience.
Do you want to know more about the “online community” and the experience of our group of young people? We’ll tell you everything.
A modern, dynamic and engaging methodology
The market research we are talking about today was carried out for a leading company in the sporting goods sector that wanted to launch on the market a new model of shoes, designed for young audiences, lovers of casual style, sport and life outside. To get in touch with potential customers, know their needs, explore their tastes, and to do this quickly and reaching a fairly extensive and varied area of the national territory, the methodology chosen was to create an “online community” “. And it is precisely this that Test Point did.
First of all, it was necessary to start with the classic recruitment, that is to identify a certain number of young people (15-20) who usually wear this type of footwear, to propose them some ideas still under development and to ask them which models they would be more likely to buy.
The selected people had to be available to connect to a link for about an hour a day for two weeks, to answer the questions that they found on the platform every day and to perform the “tasks” that were assigned to them each time. Each participant could access the platform in the time most convenient for them through the credentials that were provided at the beginning of the survey.
But what “tasks”? Well, they could be asked to upload photos or other multimedia files, for example about the shoes they already have or trend models displayed in sporting goods stores; or variants of models and colors could appear on the platform and participants were asked to rank them in order of liking; or even a comparison could be required between the developing model and the corresponding article of a competitor company to identify strengths and weaknesses of one and the other; or again, it was asked what price the participants would have been willing to pay for that item.
In this way it was possible to provide the client with a large amount of information in a fairly limited time, involving participants from a large geographical area.
Who asked the questions and proposed day by day the tasks to be performed? All the work was coordinated by a moderator who animated the discussion, reading the answers of each participant to the community and, when appropriate, asking for clarifications and insights.
The participants could only communicate with the Moderator but not each other as the work to be done was strictly individual.
At the end of the work, the platform allowed the Moderator to transcribe and print all the answers, so that they could be analyzed to draw up a final report for the client company.
Would you like to take part in an online community?
Online Communities are widely used for many types of surveys because they allow immediate feedback: they are, for example, an ideal method for testing new apps, such as tourism booking apps.
Giovanni, from Rome, 22 y. o., at the end of the survey told us: “I found this experience fast, nice, stimulating and never boring, thanks to the high degree of involvement that this methodology of research can guarantee. I was really satisfied with it, I did not expect it to be so interesting: my opinion is absolutely positive “
