Web 2.0 has led to website applications, which are more desktop-like, low-latency and interactive. Market research can make use of such methods mainly in two ways:

1. Setting up surveys. In this case Web 2.0 methods or techniques are used to enhance online-questionnaires (e.g. drag and drop ranking items)

2. Analysing data and/or visualising the results.

We developed a technique which addresses the second point. It can be used for the coding of answers to open ended questions and visualising the results by tag clouds. Using this technique we expect the following advantages comparing tag clouds with the traditional coding approach:

1. Answers can be clustered automatically in order to get a quick and rough impression of the topics mentioned.

2. Answers which can not be classified automatically may be sorted manually by the researcher unsing a drag&drop interface. We expect this approach to be less prone to errors which often occur using numerical codings. Moreover, it appears easier and more enjoyable to the researcher.

3. The results are visualised by tag clouds, a widespread known web 2.0 display method. The researcher can make a snapshot of the tag clouds to implement them in his report or download a table with descriptive results for further analyses.

Nevertheless, empirical evidence is needed to support or to falsify our hypotheses. Therefoe, we compared the codings from several surveys (concept tests) that were undertaken manually against the results that were generated by tag clouds. The correspondence of results was tested using the automatic coding first and after the manual sortings by drag and drop.

Based on our findings, we would like to give some recommendations which coding method suits what kind of open endend questions the best, which obstacles have to be considered and discuss further developments of those techniques.