The Power of a Multi-Mode Approach.
Business-to-business research is different from consumer research. That may seem like an obvious point to make, but because consumer research is the predominant research type, many researchers go through their entire careers without doing much if any business-to-business (B2B) research. When faced with a B2B project, we make a mistake in approaching it in the same way as a consumer study. In B2B research:
- The targets are almost always very low incidence within the general population;
- The respondent is reflecting not only their profession, such as IT developer, but also their company (large corporation or startup, for example) in their answers;
- Many of the most desirable targets are hard to reach – their time is scarce and they may be protected by gatekeepers who guard access to them.
These differences all impact the way we build and manage a quality B2B sample.
Impact of low-incidence on quality
The low incidence nature of B2B research makes B2B sample susceptible to people getting into a study that they shouldn’t be in – either because of fraud or because genuine respondents sometimes mis-click the answer on a screening question in error. True frauds are a tiny percentage on a well-managed online panel, but their impact can be magnified when the incidence is low.
