Introduction

Are you trying to launch a new product, gauge customer perceptions, predict buying behavior, or simply try to reposition your brand? One thing is key and that is market research, irrespective of the niche your business covers.

Why you might ask? well, it’s popular knowledge that it is foolhardy to launch into uncharted waters in the business world. Hence to equip yourself to succeed you would need to conduct market research.

Market research is essential in pointing you in the direction of success and one of the effective methods of market research is consumer panels, which is the focus of this post.

Here we will discuss all there is to know about consumer panels, the various types, the pros, and cons, and lots more.

What is a Consumer Panel?

A consumer panel is a  group of customers, brought together, either based on demography, interests, occupation, specialty, etc, to participate in consumer research. These batches or groups of customers are dedicated and knowledgeable customers who are tasked with participating in different research activities sponsored by various organizations.

Their job, in this case, is to share consumer perspectives in various aspects like the customer purchasing behavior (reasons why they would buy)their lifestyle, preferences, the level of brand awareness they possess, and the like.

The data gleaned from this form of market research is then used to clearly understand their buyer persona and create spot-on marketing strategies that would be sure to impact their bottom line positively.

Consumer panels are often used to measure or gauge opinion via a controlled method of advertising for products or services. This way companies can test for product feedback with a small sample of their would-be customers. The information gathered would then be used to make adjustments before the final launch of the product or service into the mainstream market. 

In summary, Consumer panels are a tool for testing the market with a product, to gauge the market success or the effectiveness of a marketing campaign.

Why Do Businesses Need Consumer Panels?

Companies need to know firsthand what customers want, and their unique preferences so they can produce tailor-fit products that would be sure to be a market success, therefore companies can now use offline or online research panels to get direct feedback from their customers on what works and doesn’t. Some other reasons why businesses need consumer panels are ;

• To Keep A Tab On Consumer Behavior: Understanding your customers, and knowing what they want is the key to a pleasant customer experience that in turn breeds customer loyalty and improves your NPS score as a business. Consumer panels also help you keep track of your customers behavior, by providing deep insights into their unique perspectives and preferences. 
• Measure  Consumer Opinions: Testing customers’ opinions on their true feelings about a product especially after a new product launch or release is essential. The insight gathered from this exercise would help you know the areas of strengths and weaknesses of the product, Consumer panels are an effective way to measure real-time opinions from consumers.
• Test Products for Launch: Launching a product before understanding consumer behavior can be risky. Organizations must understand the response they’d receive on the product or service. Hence, they launch the product only among a few selected consumers, study their response, make alterations (if necessary), and then go for a full launch.
• Gain Clarity On Buying Behavior: As a business, there is a need to understand the reasons that propel or fuel buying behavior in consumers. Insight into their attitude, habits preference for one product when compared to another, and the reason why they choose a brand over another need to be uncovered. Do they buy based on price, perceived quality, and the like? Consumers’ panels help to address these questions successfully.

What Are the Types of Consumer Panels?

Let’s take a look at the five types of consumer panels:

• Trail Blazers Consumer Panel: This consumer panel is made up of people who are the first to use a product or service. This set of consumer panels, help organization see how customers would accept newly launched products or services. 
• Brand Loyalist Consumer Panel: These guys are Brand enthusiasts and are willing to go over and abroad for a brand without getting anything in return. They are completely sold out to the brand personality of a product that they will try out new products, provide honest feedback and make suggestions on how to improve a product or service to better appeal to customers.
• Generic Consumer Panel: This set of panels functions as a regular market research panel made up of random consumers based on their purchase or usage of products or services.
• Product Developers Consumer Panel: This panel aims to help organizations develop customer-centric products. Some skilled customers can provide intelligent insights into modifying existing products or making suggestions than can improve products and increase overall acceptance once it is launched. 

How to Use Consumer Panels for Market Research?

Organizations use consumer panels for different research studies, often managed by market research companies. The essence of the research studies is to gather feedback repeatedly, in other to achieve customer satisfaction.

Here are some ways to use consumer panels for market research.

• Ads and Campaign Testing

Ads and campaign testing are usually carried out by businesses to gain insight into the impact it has on the targeted customers. This is to tell if the Ad was successful or not. Here consumer research panels help provide the sample representative of your target customers, to ensure the Ad can bring in business. The feedback from the panel helps you fine-tune the Ad to ensure maximum impact or helps you select the most impactful Ad based on their feedback.

• Competitive Benchmarking

Competitive benchmarking is a method of finding out all you can intelligently about your competitors and their industry leaders on ways, strategies, and practices they use to record success. You would then use the details of your finding a standard or yardstick for your organization, to see your business position when compared to these competitors.

The goal is to see if you are doing well or need to step up your game to keep up with them in terms of market/customer share or overtake them. This is a method of adapting to standard industry processes as well as preventing losing out on market share.

Consumer panel feedback helps you identify your competition, and their feedback would help enrich your knowledge of your competition and help you compete intelligently.

• Product Testing

The essence of the consumer panel is to have your products reviewed by real competition to see how well and if your product would be accepted by your target audience. Consumer panels help you with this, be it food products, beverages, electronics, white goods, etc. Panels are your best bet for gaining insight into your prospective customer’s reactions to your products.

• Guage brand awareness

The strength of your brand is commensurate with the success of your products. Be it the brand logo, voice, personality reputation, etc, they all affect the perception of your brand. Carrying out a brand survey using consumer panels helps you see the starts and weaknesses of your brand based on feedback from your consumer panel. With their feedback, you can glean ways to better present your brand to appeal to your target audience.

Enhance  your Target Marketing

Knowing what propels or motivates your customers to purchase or buy your product is key. With consumer panels, you can gain insights from different segments of your customers and use the insight to model marketing strategies campaigns, prices, and the like.

What are the Business Advantages of using Consumer Panels?

Businesses worldwide use consumer panels to have an edge over the competition in the marketplace. Here are 4 top advantages of using consumer panels.

Quick/Efficient Way To Get Customer Feedback

A consumer panel approach for market research is a fast and efficient way to get customer insight because the group of people recruited for the research has only one job, review products and provide feedback in real-time.

Customer Engagement

Consumer panels are one of the ways that foster customer engagement with your brand, via the consistent interaction and feedback that you have during the research process. This in turn produces helpful insight that can help improve overall brand acceptance.

Fosters Brand Loyalty

When consumers see changes to products based on their feedback, they know that they are heard, which triggers brand loyalty, as their confidence in the brand grows.

Consumer Oriented Solutions

Nothing makes a business thrives like when a product is made for customers by customers. That is what consumer panels do. By letting would-be consumers review a product and give honest feedback, the result is tailor-made products that are fit to meet the customer’s needs and provide overall customer satisfaction, which invariably impacts the bottom line effortlessly.

Limitations of a Consumer Panel

Like any approach, there are always some cons attached that you need to be aware of before you decide to use consumer panels for your market research. However, there are ways to eliminate these drawbacks if you decide to proceed.

Participants Fatigue

This is true especially if the research is going to be conducted over a long period. Sometimes participants get tired and drop out. Having to replace them with new members in the middle of research could risk mixing up the results.

However, you can overcome this by creating a buffer when recruiting for consumer panels, that way in the event of a participant leaving the group you still have a good number to finish up with.

The danger of biased selection

There is also the chance of ending up putting together a group of biased participants during the selection. This would distort the feedback provided, if not analyzed properly. Also, the opinions of panel members may not represent the true state of the panel members especially if there is a situation of trendsetters or influencers in the panel, which could distort the view of others.

How To Recruit a Reliable Consumer Panel

A lot of factors need to be taken into consideration to recruiting a reliable consumer panel objectively. While it’s great to and easy to recruit brand enthusiasts, however, it’s a great idea to also include objective customers, because you want feedback that can drive results.

So first thing first, knowing where to find your consumer panel members is top of the list.

Secondly convincing them to come on board is also essential and so is crafting the right message and putting it out. Here are some ways to recruit a reliable consumer panel that would be sure to deliver great results. Please note that your target audience and demography would help guide you on the most appropriate method of recruitment for you.  

Mobile

Mobile is the in this thing and any business that doesn’t adopt a mobile strategy would be missing out on a great opportunity. You see almost everyone uses a mobile device and smartphones have become increasingly popular. Hence it is one of the great ways to get the word out about your consumer panel. With mobile, you could send out bulk messages inviting customers to sign up to be members of the panel.

Social Media

The social media buzz has had everyone using it, so using this medium to find your consumer panel members is ideal. Irrespective of the demography you are seeking, you can find the appropriate fit for your panel from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and the like.

Traditional Advertising

With traditional advertising, you can also attract the right crew for your panel. Such as in-store advertising, where displays can be used to invite customers who visit your store to sign up for your customer panel, using a QR code.

Flyers, invitations on receipts, and in-store magazine booklets are some traditional ways to recruit panel members.

Online Panel Companies

Sometimes to take the load off your team, you can use market research companies that use consumer panels. They have the expertise and resources to help you find the appropriate customers for your team. Most times they already have a consumer panel pipeline waiting for the next product or service to review. This simplifies the whole process for you. 

Corporate Webpage

A call to action on your webpage inviting customers to sign up puts you in good light as an organization that values the feedback of your prospective customers. The higher the no of visitors to your website the bigger your pipeline of prospective panel members.

Conclusion

A consumer panel is a sample of people chosen by an organization to give them feedback on products, and services in other to improve customer satisfaction. These groups of people can provide quick and actionable feedback across various topics, products, services, etc. There is a valuable tool for unbiased and honest feedback.