One of the biggest misconceptions about online communities for market research is that they need to be an ongoing initiative (typically lasting at least six months)…

The reality is that communities should be designed around your objectives, organization and available resources, which may or may not necessitate an ongoing community approach.  Here are a few useful questions to help you decide whether or not you need an ongoing research community, or a short-term, project-oriented community.

Do you have the need?

An ongoing research community is going to help you in a few key ways.  First, it is going to give you a deeper understanding of your target audience by virtue of continually learning about them through community activities.  It is also going to give you the chance to efficiently and cost effectively address a wide range of topics over time.  Finally, an ongoing community will help you collaborate with your audience to develop new products, services, marketing materials, etc…

While these are certainly benefits of an ongoing research community, you may or may not actually need this level of understanding or have a variety of topic areas to explore…  For example, you may already have a deep understanding of your audience through other research studies, and are more interested in evaluating reactions to specific topics in-depth.  In that case, a shorter-term community may suit your needs.

Do you have the right culture?

If your organization values qualitative research and is constantly looking for new perspectives into the lives of your target audience, then an ongoing community approach will probably work well.  A continuous community may also make sense if your organization has multiple internal stakeholders who are conducting qualitative research studies fairly consistently.  However, if your needs are more “finite,” or you are looking for alternatives to other qualitative methods (like focus groups), then perhaps a short-term community may be a better solution.

Do you have the time and resources?

With a continuous community comes responsibility – both on the part of the researchers and the company sponsoring the community.  You will need to be committed to launching activities on at least a weekly basis, coordinating the distribution of the findings across your organization and collaborating with stakeholders to brainstorm topics to explore in the community.  As you can imagine, this takes time and resources to accomplish.  It may make sense to run a short-term community first to see how your organization adapts, and then plan for ongoing initiatives after that…

What’s the takeaway?

We hope this post doesn’t dissuade anyone from considering an ongoing research community, as there are definitely scenarios where this approach makes the most sense.

Rather, we’re pointing out that research communities do not need to (and sometimes should not) last indefinitely.  There are highly effective and cost efficient ways of wrapping a community approach around a targeted set of objectives, perhaps by setting up a short-term (1-3 month) community and then evaluating your options after that to determine if an ongoing community makes sense for your organization…