Trends in the survey industry

Surveys are an integral part of market research, and businesses across industries rely on them to gather insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends. With the rise of technology and data-driven decision making, the survey industry has undergone significant changes in recent years. We’ve previously explored how the survey industry works and its broad categories of B2B and B2C respondents.

In this blog post, we'll explore some of the latest survey trends. Whether you're a seasoned market research professional or just getting started, we hope that you will learn something new. Let's dive in!

Trend #1: Increased use of mobile surveys

Mobile surveys have become increasingly popular in recent years, as people spend more time on their phones. Ensuring your surveys are mobile optimized isn't only about making the format responsive and adapted to a smaller screen. You should also adapt the content; use short and simple questions and avoid open text responses. When done right, mobile surveys offer several advantages over traditional surveys, including greater convenience, faster response rates, and higher engagement levels.

Trend #2: Focus on respondent experience

Respondent experience is becoming an increasingly important aspect of survey design. Respondents are more likely to provide accurate and honest feedback if the survey experience is positive. To improve respondent experience, surveys are made shorter, more engaging, and more personalized. Across consumer and B2B samples, gamification techniques such as quizzes, puzzles, and games can make surveys more interactive and engaging.

Trend #3: Integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are transforming the survey industry by making it easier to analyze and interpret large amounts of data. These technologies can help businesses identify patterns, trends, and insights that would be difficult to identify manually. For example, AI-powered sentiment analysis can help businesses understand how customers feel about their products and services by analyzing text data from surveys, social media, and other sources.

Trend #4: Use of video surveys

Video surveys record replies as short videos, instead of written text. While they are more costly to collect and analyze, they can provide businesses with more detailed and nuanced feedback than traditional surveys. Video surveys are particularly effective for gathering feedback on products and services that involve visual or sensory elements. They can also be used to capture emotions and reactions, which can be valuable for understanding customer behavior.

Trend #5: Increased focus on data privacy and security

As businesses collect more data through surveys, data privacy and security have become critical concerns. Respondents want to know that their personal information is being protected and used appropriately. Businesses are responding by implementing stricter data privacy policies and procedures, as well as using secure data storage and transmission methods.

Trend #6: Fraud detection

Data quality is key to successful market research. Fraudulent data can skew results and compromise data quality, and undermine the buyers’ confidence in surveys as a research method. Fraud and fraud detection has become a hot topic during recent years, and the methods to detect fraud are getting more and more advanced. Using a CAPTCHA code is an efficient way to prevent malicious software and bots from accessing your survey. Another way to avoid low-quality respondents is to only work with providers that source from their own databases or do custom recruiting, and who don’t buy samples from third party panels. 

At Inex One, we know just how valuable surveys can be. As a marketplace and collaboration tool for expert networks and survey vendors, we've seen firsthand how businesses of all sizes use surveys to gather feedback from customers and stay ahead of the competition. But if you lack the right tools, finding the right vendor, deciding on survey methodology, and building a survey can be a nightmare. Inex One gives you access to the best survey providers in one platform. Our partners can help with everything from scoping, designing, programming and gathering the responses. Launch your survey here, or click here to discuss your research needs with our team.