Benefits of Multi-Company Surveys Part 2

In the last article, we discussed some of the advantages to running a study where you are researching multiple companies (usually direct competitors) along with your own company, rather than simply limiting the information to your own company. Advantages included a collection of data on your competitors that you can use to figure out where they have an advantage, and also the decreased likelihood of central tendency theory that gives you (presumably) better research. Other advantages include: Greater Value from Qualitative Data You also have the opportunity to gather more qualitative data, especially at the end of your survey.

You can create branch logic that calculates the company that was looked upon more favorably, and at the end of the survey, you can ask the respondent to explain why they like the leading company (although that may be your company) more than the other companies they rated. That should increase the value of your survey and give you some information to use when you follow up. Less Research Costs Most companies do research their competitors, but doing so requires you to run a completely new study.

That will have additional costs, and while you may not save a great deal of money, any time you can cut down on your research needs it can be quite valuable – especially if you plan to run follow up studies based on the information you found in the data, which can increase the costs of your research dramatically. Same Sample, Same Personalities Another benefit is that by working with the same sample, it becomes easier to compare the data. You know that the comparisons that you make within the data re not just by random chance.

If you score less than a competitor in one area, you can say with relative certainty that your sample viewed you as worse in that area than a competitor. If you run multiple studies this isn't necessarily possible, because your sample could fluctuate, how you ran your study could affect the data, and so on, causing cross comparisons to be less valid.

Running multi-company studies has some clear value, and can greatly benefit your company. Of course, as with everything related to survey research, there are several potential downsides that you will need to consider before you choose to go this route. We'll explore some of those in the next article.