MKTG 498 Class Notes Page

Market Research on the Internet

Primary Research
In order to conduct primary research on the Web, you should follow several steps.

  1. Define the ideal target market you would like to research
  2. Identify the discussion groups your target market might be participating in
  3. Identify the topics they might be discussing
  4. Search Web forums (follow this link for an example of a Web forum), UseNet discussion groups and e-mail discussion lists to find your target market
  5. Search Web forum, UseNet discussion group and e-mail discussion list content to find your target market
  6. Subscribe to the appropriate UseNet and e-mail discussion groups
  7. Use a filtering service to monitor discussion groups and lists for appropriate content
  8. Ask UseNet and other discussion group participants about other relevant lists
  9. Read FAQs and discussion group guidelines to determine how (or if) you can use each list to conduct your research

Identify your relevant UseNet discussion groups or e-mail discussion lists by using various search engines devoted to the task. Go to inclass exercise #4B for an example of how to do this.

Once you have identified your appropriate target market, there are several approaches you can take for conducting a primary research survey on the Internet.

  1. Post a detailed survey to several discussion groups (not recommended)
  2. Post strategic queries to a few relevant discussion groups
  3. Post a detailed survey at your Web site.
    1. Do you have a tatoo? Here is an example of a marketing research questionnaire targeted to owners of tatoos.
    2. Who visits your site? Here is an example of a questionnaire targeted to visitors of the CyberSchool Magazine web site.
  4. Post strategic queries at your Web site
  5. Post relevant content to discussion groups with a pointer to the survey at your Web site
  6. Post a detailed survey in an infobot mailer. Post notes to discussion groups to encourage them to access the infobot survey.
    1. To see an example of an infobot mailer in action, send an e-mail message to President Clinton congratulating him on his recent inagural and you will receive a message from an infobot mailer. Note: Do not call him nasty names unless you want to risk being investigated by the Secret Service. Just send him a simple note of congratulations.

Drawbacks
Of course, there are some drawbacks to primary research on the Web. You probably won't get representative information. But you will probably get a good handle on your target market.

Go to In-Class Exercise 3C.

Secondary Research on the Internet
There is a large amount of secondary research (research that someone else has collected) on the Internet.

Sources at JMU
The Carrier Library has a lot of business databases that are accessible by members of the JMU community. Some sources are only accessible while in the library, but other sources are available on any computer on the JMU campus, including dorm rooms (but not off campus housing).

Searching E-Mail Discussion Lists and UseNet Newsgroups Together
http://www.nova.edu/Inter-Links/cgi-bin/news-lists.pl

Searching E-Mail Discussion Lists
Lizst
http://www.liszt.com/

Inter-Links[tm]
http://alpha.acast.nova.edu/cgi-bin/lists

Tile-Net List of E-Mail Lists
http://www.tile.net/tile/listserv/index.html

PAML (Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists)
http://www.neosoft.com/internet/paml/

Searching UseNet News Discussion Groups
Inter-Links[tm]
http://alpha.acast.nova.edu/cgi-bin/news.pl

Excite
http://www.excite.com/

Deja News (does not cover all news groups)
http://www.dejanews.com/

Lizst
http://www.liszt.com/cgi-bin/news.cgi

Demographics
A good source of demographic information is the U.S. Census, located at http://www.census.gov. Information on other countries may be located by using other Web search engines and searching on words such as census, demographics, population, and the country on which you are trying to find information.

U.S. Patents and Trademarks
Is your company name already being used? Do you need information on patents? Try these sources.

MicroPatent's Patent Searcher (U.S.)
http://www.micropat.com

Questel Orbit's QPAT-U.S.
http://www.questel.orbit.com/patents/

Use a search engine to see if your company name is already being used. http://altavista.digital.com

Research Tools
The Research-It! site offers tools such as dictionaries, thesaurus, translators, area code directories, 1-800 directory, financial tools, etc.
http://www.iTools.com/research-it/research-it.html

Search Engines
These sites are all-encompassing search engines. Essentially, robots roam the Web and try discover all of the content that is out there. No quality control: any and every site found is listed in these services.

AltaVista
http://altavista.digital.com/

HotWired
http://www.hotbot.com/

Excite
http://www.excite.com

Architext
http://www.architext.com

Lycos
http://www.lycos.com

Infoseek
http://www.infoseek.com

Webcrawler
http://www.webcrawler.com

Search Engine Jump Station Web Sites
Jump station sites provide direct links to hundreds of search engines.

C|Net's Search.com
http://www.search.com

Allinone (pronounced all-in-one)
http://www.albany.net/allinone

Research Using Reviewed Search Engines
These directories only contain Web sites which have gone through some type of registration or screening process.

Open Text Index
http://www.opentext.com

Magellan Directory
http://www.mckinley.com

Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com

Published News Content
There is some truth to the phrase "You get what you pay for" (some of these sites charge for this information).

Clarinet News
http://www.clarinet.com/

The Electric Library (about computers and technology)
http://www.elibrary.com/

The Electronic Newstand
http://www.enews.com/

IBM InfoSage
http://www.infosage.ibm.com/

NetNews
http://mcaca.com/netnwhpg.htm

NewsPage
http://www.newspage.com/

Pathfinder
http://pathfinder.com/

NewsLink
http://www.newslink.org

Specific news about the computer industry

Computer News Daily
http://nytsyn.com

Techweb
http://www.techweb.com

ZD Net
http://www.zdnet.com

CompuBooks
http://www.compubooks.com/books.html

Using the Web To Locate Books
Check out the Amazon.com book site at http://www.amazon.com

Meta-Search Engines
Meta-search engines can search Web sites, USENET news and published content simultaneously.

Metacrawler
http://www.metacrawler.com

IBM InfoMarket
http://www.infomkt.ibm.com