Market research company idea - does this exist already?

[CharlieB]

Hi

I've had an idea for a market research company but i'm not sure if this exists already. I'm hoping you can shed some light on it. The idea is:

A website where people fill out loads of information about themselves going into great detail and they get rewarded with prizes for the more answers that they give on a points basis. Revenue would be generated by selling on the information to companies that require it. For example: A new convenience store opens and wants to collect some information on the local residents who are likely to be customers. This website would then target these specific people with questions such as when do you usually get back from work? When do you usually run out of convenience items? They would then answer lots more questions like this and then pick up points for each question answered then when they reach say 250 points they receive a prize for giving over personal details. This information would then be sold off to the convenience store so they can target their customers better or in this case plan for busy times with better accuracy.

Just wondering if this is already out there and if not do you think it could work?

Regards

Charlie

[DenverDave]

I actually think this sounds like a very good idea. maybe the incentive for people to give information could be a grab bag of sorts with coupons and discounts from the businesses that would be using the information.

[DenverDave]

a person could choose maybe "mexican food" and your site could bundle all the questions from local mexican food restraunts and then once completed a coupon from all those restraunts would be sent via email. this process could repeated for all types of businesses

[Steven@A&CMediaCons.]

I like this!! With enough people this could be great. Keep me updated with this. I would like to be involved

[MJB]

In principle the idea is good. However my concerns are:

1) A significant amount of users need to spend significant amount of time on the site answering questions in order for it to be profitable. Where do you find these users? How do you drive significant traffic?
2) You are offering prizes to people who answer questions but you need money in order to offer prizes - otherwise where do the prizes come from?

It is a chicken and egg situation you need the prizes to encourage people to answer questionnaires. You need the answers to the questionnaires in order to generate funds to get the prizes.

I am not trying to be discouraging. Find the solution to that issue and you have done it!

Keep us updated.

Mark
bigamericangiveaway.com
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[Gary Barzel]

It seems like a nice idea being that you are not asking for personal information regarding things that people would normally not be willing to share. If you can offer a nice incentive for those answering the questionnaires it could work. Also see if you can offer incentives for those that bring others into it as well so that you can attract more people without you having to do extra work to go and constantly find more people.

[CharlieB]

does anyone know how much a business would spend on this type of research? To make the incentives worth while, I was thinking of giving a gift of around £50 for 250 questions answered. I'm just trying to work out how much this sort of information could be sold on for. If you run a business, how much would you pay for this type of information?

[daveb1]

Sounds like an awesome idea but my concerns would be:

-Most likely this type of project will open itself up to people scamming the system. I can imagine a bunch of fake accounts providing false information just to collect the prizes.

-There are already an infinite amount of reward/survey sites on the web doing exactly what you describe (poke around sites like CashCrate, Reward Port or Inbox Dollars to see what I am talking about)

-People in general do not like to give their personal information out knowing it will be sold later to whomever just to make a couple bucks. In fact most people I know try to avoid exactly this.

-There are already tons of localized deal sites targeting specific regions (i.e. groupon, living social etc.etc.)

Very good idea in theory and if you can make is work sweet! It sounds like a very tough hill to climb however.

[Tjordan]

It would be interesting to combine the idea of groupon and a survey site! Preventing against scam would be a huge challenge.

Tim

[BarbaraKParker]

Market research companies are much alike to online consulting firms.

[GotLiveChat]

Depends on the incentives for providing answers. You'll definitely need to play around with the type of prize to see what is cost effective.

[CharlieB]

I'm trying to do some market research for this idea to find out if online retailers would be interested in this concept and what information they would require on customers and how much they would pay for it. What is the best way of doing this? I've typed out a draft email asking for companies to participate in market research but i'm not sure just sending it to the adress on the website will get a response. Does anyone have any experience in this area?

[CharlieB]

Just coming up with a business plan for this idea, its just occured to me, is this idea in breach of the data protection act? http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/contents
Or because it will be qualitative information such as: What do you think of the taste of the food?, and where have you seen us advertised? instead of names and addresses of people is this ok?

[gbusiness]

It sounds like a good idea, the answer from charly is very helpfull thx ....

[simonsayz]

the idea sorta existed many years ago. myLot was a lot like that in the beginning. Each reply worth a certain amount of $
But it became a more of a social discussion now

Your idea is great, but you will have a hard time looking for those users like above comments