The Internet as a Device for Market Research

Companies constantly have to make decisions about the products and services they offer. In order to create successful products and services, it is necessary to know how consumers can become customers. Therefore it is essential for a company to under- stand who their (potential) customers as well as (potential) competitors are. Accord- ing to Kotler/Keller, it is “the job of marketing researchers to produce insight into the customer’s attitude and buying behavior”.
Over the last years, the Internet has been a fast developing technology. Especially services like email or chat-rooms are used in everyday life by millions of people.2 The usage of the Internet has spread very fast through nearly the whole society. It is estimated that today nearly 67% of U.S. households have access to the Internet. Kotler/Keller state that online research “[...] was estimated to make up 33 % of all survey-based research in 2006, and Internet-based questionnaires also accounted for nearly one-third of U.S. spending in market research surveys in the same year”.
This raises the question whether the Internet is a suitable device for market research. This paper will discuss the use of the Internet for conducting market research on sales markets. First, the concept of market research, as well as what is understood by the term ‘Internet’, will be defined. Thereafter it will be discussed whether and how the Internet can be of assistance to market research.