If I was ever again in position to buy (or advise somebody on buying) an online survey, I would wholeheartedly recommend Pinecone Research. Those hypothetical research buyers interested why, please proceed to the Research Buyers section. Pinecone is also a great choice for potential respondents. Those (more likely to be reading) read on.

This opinion is based on my current activity in research panels and my professional history. I am currently a member of several online market research panels. Considering the fact that for many years I used to work on the other side, as a market researcher in all capacities from the interviewer to the analyst, project manager and research director of an agency, I am uniquely qualified to judge both sides of the equation.

Respondents: summary of benefits

Pinecone was one of the first companies I have signed up to about two years ago and remains unequivocally the best. In fact, the only other one that even comes close is ACOP, but even they are not as good.

Pinecone is a New Product Development Internet branch of the international research giant AC Nielsen, which is (or at least used to be until recently) the largest market research company in the world, known best for its audits (including retail and internet) but engaged in pretty much every kind of research. 

Pinecone, however, deals strictly with consumer projects and all of them as far as my experience goes concerned new product development and testing. You will not find surveys in which you are treated as a representative of the company you work for (business to business research) or opinion polls. This is all good for the clients of Pinecone as it ensures they use Internet surveys for what they are good for. 

It’s not of a major concern to the respondents, though. What is, is the fact that they pay their participants very well (GBP 4 per survey) and that they pay for every survey (apart from occasional very brief and clearly marked pre-screeners), promptly and every time, without the need to accumulate points, reach a payout level, collect credits or wait for weeks until something appears on your statement. 

They pay in real money via PayPal.

The way the whole process works is as follows: you receive an email invitation (always from Karen Scott at Pinecone), and you have few days to complete the survey. The payment is in the post pretty much at the same time so if you delay your work, you might even receive it before completing the survey, though recently it seems to come actually after the work has been done, I am not sure if this is due to Pinecone’s change of modus operandi or the fact that things take longer to get to Perthshire then Kent. 

Surveys are well designed, with questions that are not likely to bore you to death (though are often fairly repetitive) and rarely contain major irrelevancies (like asking you for your opinion on 12 companies, on 57 dimensions each of them while you have only heard of them and what they provide is nowhere near your major priority). 

It’s difficult to judge how many projects people who are not major shoppers for families with children would receive from Pinecone. Generally, being the so called ‘homemaker’ places you in the best position to get a lot of consumer surveys as it’s the biggest grocery and household goods companies that have money and need for extensive research. The surveys I received were about mass-market consumer goods, and I have received between 1 and 3 (that’s very rare though) projects a month, with an average of bit more than one per month perhaps. It’s not major money, of course, but it’s very easy and translates to something like 12 – 24 hourly rate, so why not? On top of this, I have also received products to test (these come in normal size packages so are bonus in themselves).

Signup and website

As a complete exception amongst the online survey companies, Pinecone doesn’t allow for signups from their website, doesn’t operate referral programme and the only way to become the member of the panel is to stumble across their banner and click through it to register with them. This is excellent for their customers, but not so good for the potential panel members. The banner crops up every so often on all kinds of sites (presumably partially guided by who they want to recruit), and there are places online where people post (unreliable) info as to where it has been recently spotted, so good luck! I think I found mine through some advice on saving money and making money online. However, I have to say that I have not seen it for ages on any of the sites I visit with any regularity. So if you come across the banner, sign up there and then!

The signup is quick and painless and doesn’t require any complicated form filling, address, email and basic demographics (household size, education, age etc) are required. Unlike some companies Pinecone doesn’t ask you countless lifestyle questions in order to the repeat them in its screeners anyway. 

You will be given a user name (a number) and a password (a combination of letters and numbers, mine is anyway). You need to log into the study each time with your password and user ID as the email link will not take you directly to the survey. It’s a pain, but a minor one as the login data are provided in each invitation email so all that’s required is a bit of copy and paste. 

Pinecone surveys generally work very well, though unfortunately they don’t work in Opera which is my browser of choice – a screen appears telling me sternly to complete the project in IE, which I grudgingly do. 

The Pinecone website provides all the usual stuff: an extensive and informative FAQ, a chatty newsletter whose aim is clearly to make the members feel valued and attached to the company (the thing that makes me most valued as a respondent is offering reasonable compensation and not asking inanely boring questions, and Pinecone does well on both scores) . I never read them, but for your benefit, I checked the last one: it was about squirrels, acupuncture and teenage drivers, amongst other things. 

When contacting Pinecone by phone or email answers are sensible and prompt. Updating your address and profile data is easy and the website works well. All in all, it’s a professional company and it acts like a professional company: treats its panel members well, pays excellent rates and provides reasonably steady level of survey (product and idea testing) work. For anybody with any responsibility for household shopping who is considering online surveys I couldn’t recommend a better company. Keep your eyes open for that banner!

Research buyers

This section is intended to provide a short overview for ‘the other side’ – a possible research buyer, who might be interested in using Pinecone services. It’s not relevant at all (unless out of pure interest) to potential respondents. 

There are two main problems with Internet surveys from the point of view of users of the research. 

One is that members of online panels are nowhere near a random selection of population, even the population of Internet surfers. They are, by default, active volunteers who purposefully came to the site to register (this is bad: volunteers means not random and thus likely to differ from a representative sample). They are, more often then not, semi-professional respondents and thus even less representative of whatever the population they are supposed to represent. 

Pinecone’s system of recruiting through a banner placed in fleetingly changing locations does what’s humanely possible to avoid the above problems: it doesn’t get rid of it, but it cleverly minimises it as much as possible. 

The other problem to do with Internet research is that people lie. It doesn’t mean that they don’t lie in face to face or telephone projects, but it’s much easier to lie in an Internet survey than when being questioned by a real interviewer. Plus, the lies in paid Internet surveys are specifically directed at the project and have one clear aim: to get through the screener and qualify, and then to get through the rest of the survey as quickly as possible. 

Pinecone’s system of using very short separate unpaid screeners in combination with generous payment for the proper survey means that the risk of people lying in order not to get screened out is minimised. The generous payment and reasonably short and not too demanding/boring surveys means that respondents are less likely to lie or answer randomly in order to finish soon. 

These are the reasons why Pinecone would be my provider of choice for a new product testing survey. I am sure they charge significantly more than other companies (after all they pay all their respondents 4 each) but I am also sure that it’s worth it for the increase in quality of sample selection and answers you get for your money. 

Verdict

For people looking for online survey work, Pinecone has to be a bit of Holly Grail considering their generous and immediate payment and reasonable surveys. 

For potential buyers of new product research services, Pinecone should be the first stop as the quality of sample and answers is likely to be substantially better than what other providers can offer.

Read full story here: bit.ly Lawrence Bailey delivered a guest lecture on ‘Market Segmentation, Qualitative Research and Conversations Across the Garden Wall’. This reflected his career-long wish to get qualitative researchers in the commercial world to talk to their counterparts in the academic world, and vice versa. he offered an analysis of the differing assumptions with regard to qualitative research practice that exist across the proverbial garden wall, and included examples from his research for American Express and the BBC that illustrate how qualitative research can be remarkably effective towards Market Segmentation. To cite the lecture in publications, the Harvard reference format is: LeedsMetUni (2011) Lawrence Bailey — Market Research Valedictory Lecture [video online] Available at: www.youtube.com [Accessed {date}] A pdf copy of the slides used in the lecture may be downloaded from: www.lfbailey.com Study at Leeds Met: bit.ly
Video Rating: 5 / 5