Summary
This paper explores learnings and best practices that have been found from pilots leveraging the Google+ social network for consumer insights research. Four pilot studies were conducted around specific audiences with the intention to answer specific types of questions in the wireless carriers and consumer packaged goods categories. The results include findings around recruiting and incentive strategies, user engagement tactics, different audiences and research questions, and the benefits and current challenges to using a social platform for this type of research. Overall, the researchers found Google+ to be a capable and readily accessible platform for qualitative research and feel that the social features open the door to exciting user engagement possibilities.

Summary
An incentives experiment was conducted in a commercial online panel to examine the effects of lotteries and of offering study results on response behaviour as reflected by participation, retention and item non-response. A cash lottery was implemented, with three different payouts that were raffled either in one lump sum or split into multiple smaller prizes. The lottery groups were contrasted to a control group without incentive. Independent of the lottery, half of the participants were offered a report of study results. Participation was higher with a lottery, when raffling the payout in a lump sum and with higher single prize size, whereas item non-response was smaller with high total payouts. Furthermore, offering study results decreased participation.

Summary
Practical issues associated with sampling and data collection are of real concern to business researchers. Some important methodological issues are the willingness to participate of the individuals and the provision of accurate information. Therefore, the aim of this article is to present the results obtained from the combination of social networking sites (Facebook) with an online questionnaire to study transnational entrepreneurs in Spain. The article analyses the pattern of answer of 219 entrepreneurs surveyed, and a cluster analysis of respondents and types of question is developed. The conclusion is that new technologies can help researchers to tackle some of the limitations associated with the administration of surveys to business people (e.g. lack of motivation to answer, intermediate filters) and can improve the quality of the information collected (e.g. higher level of response to confidential questions). However, it is acknowledged that ethical and methodological considerations are of great importance in this kind of study.

Summary
The struggle for quality in online survey research is increasingly focused on ensuring respondents are properly engaged. Rules of engagement are needed help eliminate those respondents who provide poorly considered data and have an impact on the deductions and decisions made from that data. It is not enough to eliminate the worst offender; some measure of how much damage they cause needs to be included. This paper addresses the construction of a new metric that includes considerations of satisficing, data shift, and sample size. Further, simplicity of design is a high order requirement, as data cleaning should be done in real time to allow the replacement of respondents that are deleted.

Summary
More and more research agencies offer Market Research Online Community (MROC) services alongside other methods, but efficiently coping with the huge amount of text that some MROCs produce often remains a challenge. This paper describes research looking at how text analytics can be a helpful tool for a community moderator and for a qualitative researcher in dealing with these problems. More specifically, it explores how Cluster Analysis, ConceptNet, WordNet and Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) can be deployed in the context of Community Research. A case is presented in which these techniques were used to improve efficiency of deploying a MROC, both in terms of improving monitoring and in terms of supporting qualitative researchers in the reporting phase, leading to more solid results.

Summary
This paper describes an experiment in which a single questionnaire was fielded in four different styles of presentation: Text Only, Decoratively Visual, Functionally Visual and Gamified. Respondents were randomly assigned to only one presentation version. To understand the effect of presentation style on survey experience and data quality, we compared response distributions, respondent behaviour (such as time to complete), and self-reports regarding the survey experience and level of engagement across the four experimental presentations. While the functionally visual and gamified treatments produced higher satisfaction scores from respondents, we found no real differences in respondent engagement measures. We also found few differences in response patterns.

Summary
Marketing researchers are interested in the consumption-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of children. As a result, children often constitute the target population for marketing-related research, participating in focus groups and interviews and completing questionnaires. However, what are children’s attitudes towards participating in such research? This paper presents the results of a series of focus groups conducted to address this question. Findings suggest that, overall, children (5–12 years of age) enjoy participating in research. Children over the age of 6 were also found to have a good understanding of why marketers conduct research and hold a positive attitude towards the use of information obtained. Children were found to prefer research activities that are short and visually appealing, that enable them to express their opinions and are not completed independently.

Summary
This paper explores the effects of gamification and social sharing on consumer engagement with smartphone applications that are designed to collect users' data for market research purposes. The study involved developing a gamified smartphone application and a social feed that was designed to capture television viewing behaviours. Results from the study were that gamification appeared to engage respondents to participate whilst the addition of a social feed appeared to have little appeal or impact. Overall, the authors argue that the features appear to be important for re-engaging respondents that are part of a long-term data collection effort, with the cost and effort to develop the features making it less viable for shorter-term studies.

Summary
Grounded on persuasive communications theory, the impact of source credibility and message variation on response behaviour towards a mail survey on a sample of the general public are examined. An experimental design comprising three levels (high, medium and low) of these variables is employed. Source credibility and the interaction of message variation (i.e. usefulness of the study) and source credibility have a significant impact on response rate. Overemphasising the usefulness of a study is found to be counterproductive. For sources that are arguably average or lower in credibility, a strongly worded message (in terms of usefulness) was less effective than more modest objectives.

Summary
Online surveys can be conducted more cost-effectively than postal, telephone or face-to-face activity, and feedback can be delivered in a much shorter timeframe. But failure to construct the survey effectively risks not engaging with the respondent. Engage Research used the results of a year-long study to reconsider ways to optimise engagement. The study involved more than 30 research experiments undertaken on behalf of six clients: Sony Music, Allianz Insurance, AMS, Heinz, Kimberly Clark and Mintel Research - involving more than 5,000 respondents. This article examines some of the findings and explains why they could change the way online research is conducted in the future.