With a captive audience of participants in an online research community, it’s tempting for marketers to slip a few topics into the facilitation plan to (indirectly) generate buzz or increase loyalty among the audience.  This can take the form of questions posed in a certain manner or simply launching research activities designed to make the audience aware of a certain product or service.

While it may be tempting, this practice (often called “sugging”) is definitely something to avoid in an online research community.  Here’s why…

What is “sugging?”

Wikipedia offers a definition of “sugging,” calling it the practice of “selling under the guise of market research.”  The MRA definition further elaborates on how this can compromise the integrity of research…

Why is “sugging” something to avoid?

I would imagine most people reading this blog are already well aware that “sugging” is a practice to avoid, but here are a few reasons to reinforce why it’s a bad idea…

• It’s unethical – First and foremost is the issue of ethics among market researchers.  The practice itself is unethical, regardless of whether it occurs in a survey, focus group, interview, online community, etc…
• It leads to a negative perception of the research – If marketing objectives are mixed with research objectives in a single community, it can hurt the way the data is viewed once it is presented to internal stakeholders.
• It hurts the dynamic of the community – In the initial recruiting phase of an online research community or advisory-type community, participants are clearly told the objectives of the initiative and how the findings from the community will be used.  When marketing objectives creep into the community, it can make participants feel that this initial purpose may have been compromised in the name of marketing.

How to avoid “sugging” in an online research community

Here are a few tips for avoiding “sugging” in an online research community

• Create a separate research environment – Clearly separating a research community from other online community initiatives will ensure that your marketing objectives can still be addressed, while not compromising the integrity of the research community.
• Careful phrasing of questions – Develop a review process for questions before they are posted to the community to ensure they are objective and related to the goals of the overall research initiative.
• Don’t focus on “damage control” around negative comments – We’ve blogged about this before in our post on “living with the negative feedback in an online research community,” so check out that post to see why this might be a bad idea…