Challenges in primary research
One of the key challenges in research current and prospective customers can be described as the chicken and the egg conundrum. How much do we need to know about our target respondents before we seek to know more about them? Which comes first?
Also, how can we make sure our primary research will include the respondents that matter, while minimizing or avoiding respondents that have lower involvement with the study subject?
Furthermore, once we have results from the survey, how do we know the relative size of each sub-group of respondents? We wouldn’t want to give more emphasis to a subset of the market that is small, nor give too little emphasis to the larger sub-groups.
TUP in custom research – balanced and weighted a priori
Because TUP/Technology User Profile has been designed from the outset to be broadly representative, includes weights to balance and project the results to the total online population, and spans a wide range of technology products and services, TUP often serves as a foundation for further custom research of technology markets.
Typical steps when using TUP in custom primary research
Carve out the target respondents – start with what you believe you know about the target market. This typically consists of identifying the technology products or services being actively used by online adults, or even those that are top of mind and in consumer’s purchase plans. Because TUP is a comprehensive source, it likely includes the characteristics you need for your primary research. To research especially innovative or disruptive products or services that do not already exist, MetaFacts can work with you to determine a proxy based on existing technology. Even the newest technology is typically evolutionary and will replace current products, services, or activities.
Determine incidence – after selecting your target market, TUP can tell you how many millions of online adults are in your chosen sub-group. Also, because TUP projects to the entire market, you can determine the incidence within the total market. This will inform your primary research budget so you will know the effort ahead before you begin conducting any new primary research.
Design the quota sampling plan – it is often more effective to survey separate groups than to treat the target market as one homogeneous group. For example, if your target market is bimodal, such as being strongest among the youngest and oldest adults and weak among the middle, then it could make sense to divide your sample into separate age groups. As a hypothetical example, if 60% of the target are aged 18 to 34, 10% are aged 35 to 64, and 30% are aged 65+, then you may wish to optimize your research budget by implementing quotas based on three separate age groups.
Weight final results – after you have obtained the final results, you can apply the TUP results to each of the quota groups to properly weight them to be more representative and generalizable to your target market.
Benefits to using TUP in custom primary research
Increase relevance and accuracy – conduct research with respondents that matter, while having the assurance that you are including those that need to be included while excluding those that are less relevant.
Leverage research budgets – you will save money by optimizing the size of your sample, so you are not over-sampling some groups at the expense of others that are under-sampled.
Deliver a greater impact – along with the basic demographic or profiling data you can get from TUP and then use to obtain your sample, TUP can provide much more profiling information such as richer demographics, technographics, econographics, attitudes, or behaviors.
Validate the sample – we advise clients to include profile selection and screening variables within your questionnaire to confirm that the sample you ordered matches what you obtained.
Next steps
For more information about using TUP for your next primary research project, contact MetaFacts.