Consumer panels
Consumer panels allow researchers to efficiently and quickly understand the views of a particular group. This is a tried and trusted IOA research methodology because it produces high response rates and provides specificity in the data collected. Changes in consumer preferences are easily deduced through this method, allowing researchers to swiftly respond to these changes. IOA works towards improving the participation of consumer panels through personalising the consumer’s experience in tandem with increasing the diversity of respondents to reduce bias. IOA has access to one of the largest online research panels in Africa
Online Surveys
Owing to its many advantages such as ease of gathering data, minimal costs, flexibility of design and increase in response rates, IOA prefers to use online surveys as one of its core research methods. IOA has a professional license to one of the top research survey platforms around – SurveyGizmo. This allows for world class data security, a multitude of question options, advanced reporting and analytics capabilities, and more. Testing the survey questions, refining the time it takes to compete surveys and avoiding the use of ambiguous wording are a few other ways in which IOA continues to evolve its use of online surveys in order to increase the response rate.
Social Media Monitoring
A young research methodology, social media monitoring denotes the use of social media channels to gather and track data and information on a set of individuals or group. It allows companies to monitor their audience, competition and industry, affording them the opportunity learn about new trends and consumer problems. Through utilising this research methodology, IOA is able to ascertain more current and accurate data, strengthening its position as one of Africa’s leading firms in market intelligence. IOA is improving this research methodology by constantly learning about and utilising new tools on the social media monitoring market such as Meltwater
Online Focus Groups
An increasingly popular alternative to traditional focus groups, online focus groups allow respondents to discuss and debate a specific topic through the internet. In additional to the aforementioned benefits of traditional focus groups, online focus groups are beneficial because of they are convenient, time and cost efficient. IOA employs this research method because it allows the researcher to administer focus groups with participants that are geographically disparate.