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LimeSurvey for Market Research, an invitation to participation

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11 years 4 months ago - 11 years 4 months ago #87802 by spacejanitor
Hi everyone,

I would like to start a conversation with all of the market research professionals in the community regarding using LimeSurvey in our industry of market research.

Since I began using LimeSurvey extensively in 2009, a lot has changed in the software. There have been some major improvements over the last couple of years that have really made this software into something that is taken very seriously: the integration of quotas, the panel management features, or the very powerful Expression Manager are some notable examples. When I co-founded my company in 2009, we had really no startup capital. Other companies in our industry who were doing data collection were all using packaged software with hefty licensing fees to operate, but we didn’t have that ability. Using LimeSurvey, we were able to compete with those companies at a very minimal cost and with a very powerful set of feature in comparison. Yes, there were some things we couldn’t do, or at least thought we couldn’t do at first until we learned some “tricks”, but largely we could say we were competitive.

I believe that the market research industry is the single largest consumer of online survey data in the world. Each year, billions of dollars are put into budgets whose perhaps single largest component includes the collection, creation, and execution of online surveys. Online panel companies, the companies which have registered users opted-in to survey invitations, are some of the largest forces in the industry primarily because they can control the flow of online survey data, oftentimes with a worldwide reach.
As such, there is a huge opportunity for LimeSurvey to become a very credible competitor to all of the licensed survey software out there, which takes in hundreds of millions of dollars per year in licensing alone. It has already evolved to the extent that many market research companies are taking notice, although certainly it is not yet at a point where it can completely compete with a market leader like ConfirmIT. In fact, it may never displace a licensed giant like that as changing the mentality of upper management at a large company to using open-source software is not an easy task.

On the small-scale (meaning independent shop or small company), LimeSurvey is a very credible tool. I would say that it is at the point of being a competitor in the medium-size market research business now. In order for it to gain acceptance and use at this level, we as market researchers need to voice our opinions of the software and collaborate on its implementation to ensure that it continues to evolve in a way that is beneficial for our industry. I don’t mean to say that this will make it any less beneficial for other industries, but I contend that market research is the single largest user and driver of online survey software and has very specific requirements for how it is to be conducted.

The ways in which a market research company requires a survey to be designed and conducted are very rigorous and specific, and to most people outside the industry, these requirements may seem inane and unnecessary, however they serve very specific purposes. The elimination of survey bias is one of the most important issues for a market research company, and most companies allocate huge amounts of energy and money to that end. I have begun writing about this issue here and will be expanding this section in the near future. Besides the precise wording and phrasing of a question, there are many other considerations for market researchers when designing a survey, such as question order, question randomization that adheres to specific quotas, or the display of information in such a way that it does not influence the respondent’s opinion in any way; in most cases, this is easier said than done, and many market research companies stake their entire reputations on their ability to ensure that the data they collect is free of bias, so it is easy to see that the capabilities of their software will be paramount to their choice, where cost is a secondary consideration.

LimeSurvey has certainly come a long way, and I see it continuing to evolve in a good direction. In order to facilitate its growth, I believe that the market research community needs to come together more and collaborate on its usage: we should share our experiences, solutions, pains, and requirements in order for this software to gain wider and wider acceptance in our industry. This in turn would certainly drive more attention to the project, both in terms of donations and collaboration, and allow to evolve at an even faster pace.

I would like the invite the market researchers in the LimeSurvey community to identify themselves in this topic and share something about what they do and how they primarily use the software. If we can just begin with this simple introduction (and certainly I have seen several market researchers in our community), I think we can begin to establish a sub-community and help each other and the project to grow in a useful way. I can only see good things resulting from this.

Best regards,

Mark

I'm a call centre and market research technology consultant, lead/sample provider, and panel broker.

I'm also the co-founder and former IT Director of Winning Research Ltd. - LimeSurvey helped the company become a multi-million dollar company within just a few years!
Last edit: 11 years 4 months ago by spacejanitor.
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11 years 4 months ago #87809 by sys_sby01
It is good introduction about using limesurvey to market research. In my opinion, this software can use for mystery shopping and panel survey, with custome report, conversation as like as facebook (inter participant, participant and admin) and point rewards feature.

Rgds
Sys_sby
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11 years 4 months ago #87810 by spacejanitor
Thanks Sys_sby. Do you work in this industry? If so, can you share some details about your work or your company?
Maybe how you have used the software to accomplish those purposes you mentioned?

I'm a call centre and market research technology consultant, lead/sample provider, and panel broker.

I'm also the co-founder and former IT Director of Winning Research Ltd. - LimeSurvey helped the company become a multi-million dollar company within just a few years!
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11 years 4 months ago #87817 by sys_sby01
You are welcome spacejanitor. Yes, i am working in market research. We collect data by online survey, sometime we use limesurvey (now we use limeservice.com) to invite anyone to participate in our survey, then we make report in Microsoft Excel by manually. For communication with our participant, we use phone to contact them. And for inter participant, sometimes we do gathering. I think, Its more efficient and more fast, if custom report and conversation can handle also by limesurvey software

Rgds
Sys_sby
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11 years 4 months ago #87818 by spacejanitor
Interesting. When I'm doing fieldwork for my clients, I'll use LimeSurvey to combine data from face-to-face interviews, phone interviews and others into a single dataset. I also work with worldwide panels to get all sorts of respondents for my projects.

Which countries do you conduct work in, and what are your specialties?

I'm a call centre and market research technology consultant, lead/sample provider, and panel broker.

I'm also the co-founder and former IT Director of Winning Research Ltd. - LimeSurvey helped the company become a multi-million dollar company within just a few years!
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11 years 4 months ago #87829 by sys_sby01
We conduct it in Indonesia. We do offline-online survey (Face to face survey, online survey, Mystery shopping, mail survey, etc)

Rgds
Sys_sby
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11 years 4 months ago #87830 by spacejanitor
Cool. Who are your main clients, and where are your biggest challenges currently?

What has LimeSurvey helped you to do? What issues have you encountered with it?

I'm a call centre and market research technology consultant, lead/sample provider, and panel broker.

I'm also the co-founder and former IT Director of Winning Research Ltd. - LimeSurvey helped the company become a multi-million dollar company within just a few years!
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11 years 4 months ago #87946 by sys_sby01
Sorry for late reply,

Main clients are financial service industry, consumers, automotive and telecomunication industry , and etc. The biggest challenge are automatic reporting, custom report and report assignment. Sometime we use limesurvey just for collect data (ie. now we use Limeservice.com). We hope in future, Limesurvey have feature of custom report (report writer), access control list (authentication report/ assignment report base on hierarchy), and converstaion feature (feedback to participants for their answers in survey)

Regards
Sys_sby
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11 years 4 months ago #88465 by kalpanaceo
Informatics Outsourcing is an Offshore Market Research service company for Clinical Research,Bio Chemistry, Bio Technologies. Market Research services includes both Quantitative and Qualitative Market Research services Worldwide with affordable price.
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11 years 3 months ago #89610 by tbaker
Medimix International is a dynamic provider of advanced marketing research solutions for the life sciences industry worldwide, we work with global pharmaceutical, diagnostic and medical device companies with expertise in key therapeutic areas.

I would be glad to join and contribute our research experience to limesurvey
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11 years 3 months ago #89669 by spacejanitor

tbaker wrote: Medimix International is a dynamic provider of advanced marketing research solutions for the life sciences industry worldwide, we work with global pharmaceutical, diagnostic and medical device companies with expertise in key therapeutic areas.

I would be glad to join and contribute our research experience to limesurvey


Thanks, tbaker. Do you also have a panel book or some promotional material to share with us?

What sort of things have you used LimeSurvey for?

I'm a call centre and market research technology consultant, lead/sample provider, and panel broker.

I'm also the co-founder and former IT Director of Winning Research Ltd. - LimeSurvey helped the company become a multi-million dollar company within just a few years!
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11 years 3 months ago #89672 by tbaker
yes we use in house tools to manage our panel, we have begun to use lime as our primary survey platform and all surveys from logo testing , last patient analysis , ATU and brand testing are being done in Lime now..

there are some features that surround the science of market research that lime is missing, text data coding which we currently do and we have a complete front end set of tools for managing and targeting our panel, in addition we use analysis and tabulation programs which are based on the TripleS standard which we need to integrate with lime in order to compliment our offering.

Lime has come a long way since we investigated it over 2 years ago and with the enhancements we have seen so far we decided to make it our main surveying platform.

we are targeting a project to fully integrate lime with our other tools and would like to see lime become the base for us as a surveying platform.
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