How does the Market Research sector work?

[FordWilde]

Hi! You know all these paid for surveys... well it got me thinking about how the sector works. How do companies afford the surveys? And how do the survey companies make money? What if more people responded than they had budgeted for?!

Can anyone explain how this works?

Thanks!

Companies hire the survey companies to conduct research on their behalf, it comes out of their marketing budget. They then analyse the results to tailor their products / services to try and increase their profits.

The survey company then uses a % of this fee to pay people to take their surveys, and the rest (after that and other expenses) is their profit.

Only so many people will be allowed to take the survey. If someone clicks the link once the quota has been reached you will get a “sorry this has now ended” message.

You can make money from doing online surveys, but not a lot. I am signed up to 4 of the main survey sites and do all that are offered to me, if say I make £50 two or three a year. It definitely works out less than NMW

The money paid to.surbey respondents is only a fraction of the costs for the survey companies. They employ quite a few people to design the surveys and sometimes to analyst the results. Companies pay the survey companies out of their marketing budgets which they use for a combination of advertising, PR, market research and direct selling. The channels for these activities have changed since the internet but fundamentally the aim is the same -companies want to sell.products and services so they have large budgets to spend on working out the best way to do that. Market Research is just part of that process of optimising sales.