Comr For Esomar 26 Questions

CIIC & COMR ( 中智库玛 )

Response to the “ESOMAR 25” Online Panel Questions

Response to the “ESOMAR 25” Online Panel Questions

Shanghai CIIC & COMR Marketing Research Co., LtdShanghai CIIC & COMR Marketing Research Co., Ltd

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Introduction

The document has been prepared by CIIC & COMR to provide some of the essentials needed by those considering using online access panels. This format is laid out in response to the European Society of Market Research (ESOMAR) ‘s 25 question, which it has advised professionals to ask when selecting a panel supplier.

CIIC & COMR is fully supportive of the ESOMAR initiative which will help buyers of online field understand the quality, reliability and veracity of the online panels which they are considering using.

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1. Is it an actively managed panel (nurtured community) or just a database?

2. Truthfully, how large is it?

3. What is the percentage of active members and how are they defined?

4. Where are the respondents sourced from and how are they recruited?

5. Have members clearly opted-in? If so, was this double opt-in?

6. What exactly have they been asked to opt-in to?

7. What do panel members get in return for participating?

8. Is the panel used solely for market research?

9. Is there a privacy policy in place? If so, what does it state?

10. Which research industry standards are complied with?

11. Is the panel compliant with all regional, national and local laws with respect to privacy, data protection and children e.g. EU Safe Harbour and COPPA in the US?

12. What basic socio-demographic profile information, usership, interests data etc is kept on members?

13. How often is it updated?

The 25 ESOMAR Questions

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The 25 ESOMAR Questions (cont’d)

14. In what other ways can users be profiled (e.g. source of data)?

15. What is the (minimum and typical) turn around time from initial request to first deployment of the emails to activate the study?

16. What are likely response rates and how is response rate calculated?

17. Are or can panel members who have recently participated in a survey on the same subject be excluded from a new sample?

18. Is a response rate (over and above screening) guaranteed?

19. How often are individual members contacted for market research or anything else in a given time period?

20. How is the sample selection process for a particular survey undertaken?

21. Can samples be deployed as batches/replicates, by time zones, geography, etc? If so, how is this controlled?

22. Is the sample randomised before deployment?

23. Can the time of sample deployment be controlled?

24. Can panel members be directed to specific sites for the survey questionnaire to be undertaken?

25. What guarantees are there to guard against bad data i.e. respondent cheating or not concentrating/caring in their responses (e.g. click happy)

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Answers to ESOMAR 25 Questions

1. Is it an actively managed panel (nurtured community) or just a database?

As a professional marketing research company and a qualified sample provider, we carefully manage and keep updating our panel. Our panel contains 17 categories of diverse information of a member. The 17 categories provide the background, consumption attributes, economical attributes, social distribution and so on. The panel also can be easily used and withdrawn by the requirement. The panel family currently comprises of the following communities:

- CIIC&COMR (www.comr.com.cn) - China (www.51poll.com) - HK (www.51poll.hk ) The panels are built in order to ensure that they are responsive, reliable and

representative-the foundations for quality research.

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We help ensure that our panelists are responsive, reliable and representative by:

Using multiple source recruitment- the panels are recruited by email and online marketing. Portions of our panel are balanced to represent the sampling and screening to our panels for specific study requirement where detailed quotas are needed.

Frequently refreshing the panel-Our panelists are continuously recruited and refreshed, ensuring that panelists are not over used, so that sufficient fresh respondents are always available for ongoing tracking profile.

Incentivising - at a low level for participants. This is respectful of panelists’ time, ensuring thoughtful considered response coupled with healthy response rate.


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We carefully manage the panels: By personal contact with our panelists-panelists queries are dealt with by native-

speaking panel support executive, talking care of panelists questions and providing help with technical issues. Panelists can contact us by email, post or directly call a panel representative in person.

By careful selection of panel members to take part in surveys-we ensure that panel members are not over contacted- therefore panel membership is a positive experience. We hold a wide range of profile information from our panelists as we can send out invites according to the sample specification.

By applying panel rules to ensure that panel members are neither over r under contacted. These include rules governing frequency of contact, and the frequency of taking part in research on particular categories or methodologies and rules designed to discourage ‘incentive hunters’

By monitoring panelist behavior and satisfaction with their survey experience-our panel managers and analysts look at the response behavior of our panelists in order to identify any persistent non-responders, patterned responding etc and are able to ‘soft subscribe’ such people.


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2. Truthfully, how large is it?

By the end of 2007, we have owned 2,021,082 panelists. These panelists have been distributed into 34 provinces, Directly administrated cities, Macao and Hong Kong.

3. What is the percentage of active members and how are they defined? Fortunately, the active members are 70 percent of all. The definition of acti

ve members are: Log into the 51poll.com website and join the focus discussion once a week

at least Join the online surveys frequently and successfully provide the true answer

s.


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4. Where are the respondents sourced from and how are they recruited?

We have a plenty of different channels to enrich our panel. The main approaches are as followed:

Traditional method: advertise on the magazines/newspaper/TV Innovative method: Links with other websites/Purchase key words from

Google, Baidu, etc Cooperative method: Recruit the members through the cooperation with

giant clients such as Shanghai Telecom, TOTAL, Walmart. We also target certain demographic groups and hard to reach niche group

s to provide sample for more specific studies. We constantly recruit new members, ensuring that fresh respondents are available for tracking projects as required.


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5. Have members clearly opted-in? If so, was this double opt-in?

Members of CIIC&COMR of panel actively join by completing the registration survey. This is presented as requisite for membership and clearly states the reason which they are providing their information. Upon confirming their desire to become a member they are asked to agree to our terms and conditions of membership-a process which constitutes a very clear ‘Opt-in’. Subsequently panelists opt-in on each occasion they are asked to take an individual survey by clicking on the private survey link sent to them. Also panelists can unsubscribe from the panel at any time they wish.

The double opt-in is absolutely excluded. Every person who is interested to t

he online survey must submit his/her name, gender, contact, Identification number, residence address. Since our members can be rewarded the gift or money, they are willing to provide true information. Otherwise they can not be rewarded.


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6. What exactly have they been asked to opt-in to?

Our panellists have been asked to actively join an online market research panel. It is a clear promise to them upon on joining that they will only be invited to take part in market research through membership of the panel and they will never be marketed to or sold to as a result of membership. They are informed that the panel is owned and managed by CIIC & COMR, a company which follows all relevant market research industry standards, data protection and privacy laws.

As an attachment of 51poll.com, Bulletin Board System( BBS) is an active saloon to attract the acquaintances and strangers to surf. Most of the strangers would register after their visit to the BBS.

We also encourage the strangers to opt-in by reference. Any people who recommend others to opt-in will be reward by scores. Once they collect the enough scores, they have rights to ask for the change of money.


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7. What do panel members get in return for participating?

The panellists will be rewarded the money or the equivalent presents only if they have provided the true answers within the logic procedures. The amount of the reward varies for each survey but is clearly stated in the invitation email and is related to the survey length., interest and complexity. When the members answer our questionnaires, we will double check the questionnaires and give the related scores to the members.

8. Is the panel used solely for market research?

Certainly not. We are not only a marketing research company but also a sample provider. One of our strategies is to construct the largest panel in China. Therefore the sales of panel would be part of our business.


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9. Is there a privacy policy in place? If so, what does it state? Certainly we strictly keep private of the members and their information. We pr

omise not to deliver the information of members without the permission of them.

10. Which research industry standards are complied with?

The panel of CIIC & COMR comply with, exceed, all applicable industry standards published by:

European Society for Market Research (ESOMAR)

China Marketing Research Association (CMRA)

The includes observing the following guidelines amongst others:

Ensuring the voluntary cooperation of panellists

Following rules to protect researcher’ s and respondents’ identity

Respecting the respondent’s right to anonymity

Ensuring that all data procedures are reliable and valid


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11. Is the panel compliant with all regional, national and local laws with respect to privacy, data protection and children e.g. EU Safe Harbour and COPPA in the US?

Since we launch the surveys online, according the related law of the People’s Republic of China, We are the Internet Content Provider (ICP) license.

We also the Permission Certificate of surveying the foreign projects.

We launch our surveys based on panel within the legal areas.

12. What basic socio-demographic profile information, usership, interests data etc is kept on members?

The socio-demographic profiles are segmented into three attributes:Personal Attributes Family Attributes Social Attributes

GenderAgeMonthly IncomeMartial StatusEducation level

Location Household incomeHousehold sizeOwnership of computersOwnership of automobilesOwnership of real estate

Working status OccupationCompany size PositionYears of working


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13. How often is it updated? Basic demographics are updated regularly when screening for research

projects. Also, panelists can access and update their profile at any time and are encouraged to do so whenever they check their reward balance or complete a survey. Where such information is key to a survey we always recommend our clients reconfirm this within the body of questionnaire to ensure that this is absolutely up to date for the purpose of the survey.

14. In what other ways can users be profiled (e.g. source of data)?

We hold a great variety of information about our panelists and hold the screening history for each project we have undertaken to assist with future sample selection. Potential respondents can additionally be profiled in any way necessary for a particular project by pre-screening panelists and using our proprietary, industry leading, panel management software.


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15. What is the (minimum and typical) turn around time from initial request to first deployment of the emails to activate the study?

We can deploy respondent invitation almost immediately (with one or two hours) for projects which require only sample to be sent to a pre-scripted, live survey. The typical in-field/recruitment time for such sample-only studies is 2 to 3 days which is sufficient time to allow panellists who have been invited to complete the survey.

Full-service projects including scripting and hosting the survey, typically need a further 2 to 5 days set up and then test. We apply stringent testing and translation checking prior to launching a survey.

However, depending on the length and complexity of a study it can be turned-around as quickly as 24 hours.


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16. What are likely response rates and how is response rate calculated?

Normally speaking, the response rate is 30% and above. Once We begin the survey, we will notify our members by emails and then we will make the record of quantity of emails. Finally we will compare the successful questionnaires to the quantity of emails.

Response rates are measured by the number of responses received compared to the number of emails sent.

17. Are or can panel members who have recently participated in a survey on the same subject be excluded from a new sample?

For one survey, any member would have only one chance to take part in. Since we can easily check the background of the members and their recent questionnaires, we can exclude them according to the terms or requirement of survey projects. A member, for example, working in a cosmetics company will not be allowed to join the survey of cosmetics products, nor join the surveys of two different types of biscuits.


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18. Is a response rate (over and above screening) guaranteed?

Whether we carry out our own projects or provide the panel to the clients, we guarantee the quality of collected questionnaires and data. We do not guarantee the response rate however we do guarantee the number of survey completes for every project we quote for.

19. How often are individual members contacted for market research or anything else in a given time period?

As mentioned above, members can not participate in more than 12 surveys a year, more than 2 times a months and only for one survey at a time. This means that if a member participate in a diary project, he/she will not be contacted for another study at the same time. Our members are only contacted for market research or to provide information about panel membership.


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20. How is the sample selection process for a particular survey undertaken?

The sample selection process is based on the terms and requirement of research projects. In order to minimize screening-out of our panellists, we use all the panel information that we have available, both from the initial registration questionnaire and also from the subsequent pre-screening exercises that we undertake. This minimises the number of people we invite to surveys for which they may not qualify, thereby providing a better quality panellist experience which in turn leads to better quality research responses and minimises panel attrition.

21. Can samples be deployed as batches/replicates, by time zones, geography, etc? If so, how is this controlled?

Yes, our proprietary panel management system enable us to have total control over the way in which we invite respondents to surveys.


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22. Is the sample randomised before deployment?

Where required the sample is “randomised” before deployment. Sample can also be randomised within a survey to ensure equal rotation/exposure etc as required for the research design. Again, we have full control over how we invite respondents and can therefore apply any treatment we or our client with to the invitation process.

23. Can the time of sample deployment be controlled?

Yes, Panellists access the survey with unique links stated in the invite. Thus time of sample deployment can be controlled by sending our invites at a specific time.


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24. Can panel members be directed to specific sites for the survey questionnaire to be undertaken?

Yes, we can send panellists to specific sites for completing a survey. We use this technique for sample-only projects where survey is hosted by one of our research partners. However, this method is only used after checking the link and the survey experience thoroughly and making sure that no personal information is asked. The email invite comes for the panel of CIIC & COMR, the panel site of which the person is member, can clearly states the level of the incentive that will be offered and that the survey will be run with a research partner-and therefore may look different to the surveys they may have seen before CIIC & COMR.


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25. What guarantees are there to guard against bad data i.e. respondent cheating or not concentrating/caring in their responses (e.g. click happy)

To ensure the quality and truthfulness of answers and data from the questionnaires online, we take the controlling procedures. The main methods are:

Technologically speaking, every member would have the possibility to be excluded when they fill in the online questionnaires once they fail to meet one term or requirement. We set the logic trap on the questionnaires to avoid the false/dishonest data. When the deployment of samples is finished, we will make a double check by telephone interview.

We firmly control the creditability of members who take part in the survey. If we find they are not honest in the surveys, we will depreciate his/her creditability and reward.


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Thank you!

Comr For Esomar 26 Questions

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