Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik
Wintersemester 2005/06, Berlin, February 28, 2006
Seminar: E-Business Case Studies

Current Questionnaire Generation Tools - A Market and Product Overview

by

Nicole Petrick

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION 1

II. INTERNET-BASED RESEARCH – AN INTRODUCTION 2

1. INTERNET-BASED RESEARCH PROJECTS 2

i. Online Surveys 3
ii. Online Experiments 3

2. THE CHOICE OF WHEN TO CONDUCT AN EXPERIMENT ONLINE 4
3. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF ONLINE RESEARCH 4
4. STANDARDS FOR ONLINE RESEARCH 5

III. MARKET ANALYSIS 8

1. PAST MARKET DEVELOPMENT 8
2. CURRENT MARKET STATE 9

i. Supply side 9
ii. Demand side 10

3. TRENDS 11

IV. PRODUCT ANALYSIS 13

1. COMPARATIVE FEATURES 13
2. CURRENT SUPPLIERS AND THEIR PRODUCTS 15
3. ANALYZING PERFORMANCE VIA SCORE POINTS 21
4. PRODUCT POSITIONING 24
5. GLOBALPARK VERSUS ASK4MORE – A COMPARISON 25

a. Features 25
b. Usability 26
c. Pricing scheme 28
d. Outcome 29

V. SUMMARY 30

APPENDIX 31

REFERENCES 35

LIST OF ABBREVEATIONS

ADM = Arbeitskreis Deutscher Markt- und Sozialforschungsinstitute e.V. [Working Circle of German Market- and Social Research Institutes]
ASI = Arbeitsgemeinschaft sozialwissenschaftlicher Institute e.V. [Working group of social-scientific Institutes]
BVM = Berufsverband Deutscher Markt- und Sozialforscher e.V. [Association of German Market- and Social Researchers]
DGOF = Deutsche Gesellschaft für Online-Forschung e.V. (D.G.O.F.) [German Society for Online Research]
NEON = Network Online Research
OSS = Online Survey System
EITO = European Information Technology Observatory
ICT = Information and Communication Technology
GUI = Graphical User Interface
VAT = Value Added Tax

ABSTRACT

The paper mainly focuses on current questionnaire generation tools on the Germanspeaking market. Additionally, an introduction to internet-based research is given in Part One of this paper that will explain the differences between online surveys and online experiments and the choices of when and when not to conduct an experiment on the internet. It will also shortly introduce advantages and disadvantages of online research as well as the current standards that have been derived so far. Part Two of the paper gives a short market analysis on the market of questionnaire generation tools with its suppliers and demanders, explaining the past and current development of the market as well as its future trend.
The main focus lies on the product analysis in Part Three. Comparative features that will be looked upon when analyzing different products will be derived from the standards, introduced in Part One of this paper. A choice of current suppliers and their products will be represented and the positioning of their products within the market explained. Two favored products are then compared in more detail according to features, usability and pricing scheme, presenting a short result from the comparison thereafter. A summary will be given at the end that will recapitulate the results from the paper.

I. INTRODUCTION

Adapting to Stephen W. Hawking’s illustrative metaphor of the universe put into a nutshell¹, one could envision the world encrypted into the internet. There is nothing in the real world, where its interactive counterpart could not be found in the endless network of the World Wide Web – may it be obvious or hidden. Despite the early stages of the internet’s preceding forms in the 1970s, today’s internet especially experienced a tremendously fast development during the last decade, becoming a medium of the masses for the masses. User statistics are constantly rising and even if, in the early stages, the internet user was in average of higher education, English speaking and male, he is now a counterpart of the inhabitant of the real word. The internet is a medium for everybody. Statistics² show an ever growing participation. Of course, there are still demographic deviations from the real-world counterpart. However, considering the German-speaking regions of Germany, Austria and Switzerland only, demography and social status hardly differ, thus making the region quite homogenous. Data³ for Germany subsequently estimates a high current digital media universe of over 55% of the current population, with an active digital media usage of about 39%, where females account for 41%, teenagers below the age of 18 represent about 10% and people of 55 years of age or older, account for 14.5% of all internet users. As a consequence, the reason for social scientists and marketing researchers to discover the internet as a new research medium is quite obvious. Online-Research in the German-speaking region still has a young but already moving history behind. It started off with simple HTML-programming and continued, accordingly to the overall technical development, to derive standards and rules for quality, reliability and validity. A new market developed, providing software tools for the development of online surveys and experiments due to more complex programming languages. The main characteristic of the new market: lacking transparency.

II. INTERNET-BASED RESEARCH – AN INTRODUCTION

1. Internet-based research projects

In the beginning of the mid-nineties of the 20th century, using the World Wide Web as a method of research was the choice of only a small number of first movers among experimental researchers. Ten years later “we are in the midst of an Internet revolution in experimental research” (Reips, 2002a, p.243). However, what does “internet-based research” mean? To begin with, it is important to mention that several terms are used simultaneously: web research, online research, internet research, web-based research, World Wide Web research. Historically, as for the example of the term “web experiments”, the term “web” was the first term used. On the other hand, the terms “internet-based research” or “internet-based experiments” do also include internet services such as e-mail, telnet, ftp or messengers for communication (e.g. ICQ, MSN Messenger) that are no web services as such due to their definition and functionality. What this paper focuses on, is research done in the World Wide Web via a web browser using the web as the underlying tool. However, due to the fact that many authors use the term “online” for describing the above mentioned version of research, this paper will adapt this term analogously. In the further paper “online research”, “online surveys” and “online experiments” will thus refer to research, surveys or experiments conducted in the World Wide Web using the web with the help of a web browser.
The history of online research is strongly tied with the development and success of the internet. Attributable to the development of the number of internet users, the critical mass, necessary to conduct experiments in order to achieve a validity that coincides with the sociography and demography of the real world, was reached⁴. Due to the fact that research objects could now be recruited in a large amount within a short time, in order to be interviewed and from which to derive data, the entrance barriers for professional and empirical research sank and allowed research within a wider range. Subsequently, the internet and especially the World Wide Web with all its occurring social processes did not only become the subject of research, but a research method itself.
As mentioned before, online research can be conducted in different ways. According to Reips⁵, there are three main possibilities to collect data online that will allow conclusions to be drawn on the behavior of humans: none-reactive data collection, online surveys and online experiments. The last two mentioned will be looked upon further.

i. Online Surveys

Online Surveys, as none-experimental methods, are the most commonly used technique for online research. They are not only used by research institutes for professional, empirical research but mostly by market researchers or online-marketing experts. Surveys are an every-day fly by when surfing the internet, either as pop-ups, via e-mail or posted on a website in an either plain HTML or using Java script and Flash. Their purpose is defined as a “systematic gathering of information from respondents for the purpose of understanding and/or predicting some aspect of the behavior of the population of interest” (Tull, 1993). The frequent use of surveys is explained by the “ease” with that they can be “constructed, conducted, and evaluated” (Reips 2002b, p.230). This ease, however, still needs to be looked upon in the preceding parts of this paper. Moreover, online surveys do not necessarily need to have a scientific background; they mostly have a commercial one. However, especially for validity there are rules and standards to be considered that apply to surveys as well as to other forms of online research such as experiments.

ii. Online Experiments

According to Reips, online experiments have an advantage over online surveys or other methods of data collection via the internet, “because of their ability in proving causal relationships between variables” (Reips 2002b, p.229). Online experiments are the new and third from of experiments, that existed as laboratory and field experiments already before. They are seen as a mixture of the both predecessors, however neither taking place in a laboratory nor within a real field. Online experiments are based upon the use of multimedia technology and are conducted within the World Wide Web. The main aspect of research currently done on online experiments focuses on their validity and on the avoidance of errors as well as the derivation of standards and special techniques.

2. The choice of when to conduct an experiment online

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1 See Hawkings, S. (2004): Das Universum in der Nussschale. dtv.

2 See Nielsen//NetRatings (2002): Europäische Internet Nutzung Januar 2002.

3 See Nielsen//NetRatings: NetView Usage Metrics: (January 2006) http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/news.jsp?section=dat_to&country=ge (Home Panel, Web Usage Data)

4 See Introduction of this paper.

5 See Reips, U.-D. (2002): Theory and techniques of Web experimenting.