Are you planning to perform survey-based research? Have you considered omnibus surveys? This market research method is considered cost-effective and efficient, as multiple sponsors come together to perform it by contributing their own set of questions. 

Each subscriber receives answers for their share of the research process, performed either monthly or quarterly. Consequently, consumer trends can be easily investigated through the results. Omnibus experiments should investigate the public perceptions of your product, reveal the habits of consumers and their moods and opinions. 

The following guide will help you understand the concept.

What are they?

Omnibus surveys are questionnaires provided to a large group of respondents by asking questions on various unrelated topics. The questions are related to different products, brands, and services, as they’re paid by multiple sponsors, which share costs. These are different from traditional surveys, as random questions are included in a single script. Follow this link, https://www.wikihow.com/Conduct-a-Survey, to check out three methods for conducting a survey.

For instance, brand A is curious about the awareness of its brand; brand B wishes to learn more about the factors involved in the choice of household appliances, whereas brand C wants to ask about fitness habits. Since omnibus surveys are comprised of numerous questions sponsored by multiple organizations, sponsors aren’t provided with the data for each question. 

Sponsors select the questions beforehand and only receive data for the part of the survey they’ve paid for. They are fielded to large audiences, and quality data is collected. Each brand receives results from their questions. While omnibus surveys were conducted over the phone in the past, nowadays, they’re conducted online via tablets, smartphones, and laptops. 

Moreover, these studies are now conducted online due to the possibility of providing quick, inexpensive, and high-quality results. Responses are usually received from the questioned population in about an hour. They are inexpensive, as thousands of invites can be sent to respondents with a single click instead of wasting hundreds of hours on-call center calls. 

How does the process work?

The process of running an omnibus survey is straightforward as long as you follow the necessary steps to hiring a firm that handles such studies. Sponsors are required to pay a fee to purchase a single question or multiple questions in the script. You can purchase just one or tens of questions depending on your budget. They can be related to brand awareness, perception, and loyalty. 

The initial step is to inform your omnibus survey company about your needs and objectives in order for them to create a mini proposal with several package options. Each package has a different number of questions and responses. Once you decide on a package, you need to sign an agreement page. The following step is having a kickoff meeting with the professionals. Sometimes, these meetings are skipped to speed up the process, which isn’t always recommended. 

If you have already outlined your questionnaire, the survey can be launched as soon as possible. Nevertheless, in case the questionnaire isn’t outlined yet, the firm will assist you in clarifying your objectives and constructing the best questionnaire. Irrespective of whether you have already drafted the questions or not, these professionals will perform a questionnaire audit. Such an audit involves making suggestions on the types of questions, as there are more than thirty types to choose from. 

After the design is completed, the next step is programming. It involves adding the questions to the survey software of the firm. Make sure to click here for more information on omnibus surveys. The programming process involves taking care of answer categories, adding skip or routing patterns, adding answer category sequences, etc. 

The following consideration is the choice of demographics, as demographic data points can be included in questionnaires. Such options include demographics in the form of gender, age, number of household residents, ethnicity, education, children in the household, etc. It’s important to keep in mind that such information might involve additional costs beyond the package you’ve originally selected. 

After the programming process is completed, the firm conducts in-house questionnaire testing, which involves sending the link to several testers on the research team. The job of these professionals is to identify inconsistencies and errors. Testers tend to leave comments during the testing procedure related to issues like spelling, grammar, skip patterns, etc. Every issue has to be solved prior to the launch. 

Following the testing procedure, there is a soft launch and a full launch of the survey. The former fields the questionnaire to a small group of respondents, whereas the latter makes sure it’s fully employed. The launch usually takes between 24 and 48 hours to finish. 

A final note

This type of research experiment provides brands with helpful information about their consumers. 

It’s a minor but significant investment!