Online Customer Intelligence

Last couple of weeks we had a lot of meetings with prospects and social media experts about the use of Online Customer Intelligence (OCI) inside marketing appartements. A lot of questions arrised about the differences between OCI and traditional market research.

After some thinking we came up with lists of properties for both OCI and traditional market research which clearly explain the differences between them.

Online Customer Intelligence

• Real-time insights in customer perception.
• Open answers.
• No need for predefined questions.
• Actual themes are discussed.
• Possibility to combine with results from other studies.
• The blogger is doing research for you.
• Automatic categorization of opinions based on sentiment and subject.
• Easy drilldown possibilities.
• The due time of OCI research is short.
• Low long term costs

Traditional market research

• Research can be focused on specific target group.
• Quality of the data can easily be managed.
• Mainly closed answers.
• Mainly people with strong positive or negative experiencies will participate.
• Socially desirable answers will be given because of person asking questions.
• High costs per research.

These lists illustrate the number of benefits OCI has over traditional market research. There are more benefits then the  ones most named; low costs & real time. We think the non-biased answers and no need for directed questions are the largest benefits.
With OCI it is now possible to identify new subjects & opportunities and drill down on them if necessary. If you want to do this with traditional market research new subjects may be old again. because of the large due time.

Probably these lists are not complete. If we missed any benefit for either OCI or traditional market research, please let us know.