The advantages of an online access panel are obvious: obtaining data is quick and economical. The changing desires, needs and opinions of those taking part in the surveys are tracked along a timeline, which is so much more valuable than a simple depiction of the consumer’s opinion at the specific point in time when the survey was taken. The customer therefore has a much more transparent and calculable impression of the everchanging market parameters.

In order to utilize these advantages in market research (also in a market-specific way), we have developed a process that enables us to maintain the most up-to-date information in our online database. By surveying a single target audience, one has the opportunity to more closely observe market segments and to access niche markets more quickly – if all the information is accurate. Any changes in the demographic data, interests, hobbies and preferences that go unnoticed pose a risk for the validity of the overall result.

Even though we find it problematic, we understand that, when panel participants change their data or interests, that they forget to account for this in the statistics or possibly feel some inhibition in the face of the panel registration. This is why we have been working in a much different way for 10 years now: In order to keep our panelists from becoming bored and to keep them interested in becoming participants in the surveys, we allow them to get started after a brief registration and only a few questions: but, we ask these few questions more often – specifically 2 questions after every survey. In this way, we obtain all the data we require – current, fresh and new.

As an example, we keep the registration for one of our most interesting target audiences, the “silver surfers”, as simple as possible. And our customers profit from the up-to-date inventory of data and the opinions solicited from this attractive target audience of people aged 50+ years.

The silver surfers are of particular interest to us because of this group’s rapid growth. Birth rates are dropping, and, according to the Federal Office of tatistics, this means that Germany will have twice as many 60-year olds as newborns by the year 2050. Life expectancy rates are climbing – and until now, the purchasing power of this group has not been tapped. And there is another, very important factor for the purpose of online research: in Germany there are about 7 million people over the age of 50 who have an internet connection and use it regularly.

We make sure that this target audience and all our other panel participants can access us quickly and easily. We also have an extraordinarily up-to-date data inventory. This is the subject we would like to address in the call for papers.