Question 1

What is an omnibus survey?

Accepted Answer

An omnibus survey is a survey conducted with a specific population that is sponsored by multiple independent parties and consists of a set of questions supplied by each party, for which only they receive the results, plus general questions whose results are shared across parties. It enables someone who has only a few market research questions to get them answered without incurring the full cost or labor of a custom research project. Questions can address any topic. A consumer foods marketer may want to know which accompaniments are commonly served with different kinds of meals. A legislator may want to know how the public feels about a particular issue. A B2B marketer may want to know how businesses perceive the current economic climate. A manufacturer of home electronics may want to know how much interest there would be in a certain kind of device and which brands would be expected to offer it. A Monty Python fan may want to find out how many people think fish live in trees. It’s their money, and anything goes. From the perspective of the research participant, the survey includes a section for each topic, and the participant provides answers for all of them: which accompaniments they serve, their thoughts on a particular issue, how much interest they have in a certain device and likely brands, and whether they believe fish live in trees. The perception of the current economic climate would likely be part of a different omnibus conducted with businesses and contain other B2B topics instead of those just mentioned. In addition to the sponsor-specific questions, the participants answer general questions, such as demographics, other subjects to be used for profiling, or other general topics which might interest the set of sponsors as a whole. If participants belong to a panel, some of these questions may have been asked of them earlier. For the participant, the survey experience includes different topics which may or may not be related to each other, and the length depends on the number of topics covered, the number of questions in each topic, and the complexity of the questions.

Question 2

How do omnibus surveys differ from each other?

Accepted Answer

Different omnibus survey providers conduct them differently, and some may offer multiple options instead of just one kind. The survey may be fielded online, via telephone, face-to-face, or via multiple methods to ensure representativeness. The target population may be a random, representative population of adults, a type of business or businesses in general, a large consumer segment, or any other kind of person that different sponsors may have an interest in knowing more about. Participants may be freshly recruited for each survey or they may be part of an established panel. Different providers may have different capabilities for customizing survey design, such as randomization or piping, and may have different approaches to open ended questions or even to survey length. They may also have different real-time reporting capabilities, different levels of consulting, different kinds of deliverables, and different pricing structures. Omnibus survey providers may also have different periodicities for different surveys. For example, they may run them quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily, or only on the night of a full moon, if sponsors want that. They can also do a one-off survey or field the survey as soon as they have enough sponsors to support it. Timing depends on what their clients want and what they believe they can provide. The omnibus survey is a very simple concept with a very simple value proposition that can be executed in many different ways depending on sponsor need and supplier capability. If you can’t find an omnibus survey supplier who offers exactly what you need, ask them about their flexibility or keep looking. Your ideal solution may be out there.

Question 3

What is the purpose of omnibus surveys?

Accepted Answer

Omnibus surveys provide clients with a way to get answers to a few market research questions without having to manage and fund an entire custom research project. Clients pay for the questions they want to have answered, draft their own questions, and oversee the research execution. The omnibus survey provider gathers the questions from each research sponsor, develops and implements the survey instrument, fields the survey within the target population, processes the data, and provides deliverables. The costs for these activities and for the fixed and related out-of-pocket costs that apply to the project are shared by the sponsors. Providers may or may not provide additional services, such as consultation on questionnaire design or value-added deliverables like detailed reports or infographics.

Question 4

When is an omnibus survey a good research alternative?

Accepted Answer

Generally speaking, an omnibus survey may be a good research alternative when you have a few specific research questions and don’t want to fund and support a custom research project. Given DIY survey tools, DIY panels and other research innovations, you may be able to get these answers more quickly and cost effectively on your own than you could from an omnibus survey. Whether or not a custom research project is cheaper, quicker, lower effort, or a better fit for your research issue than an omnibus survey depends on your capabilities and what you can find from omnibus survey providers. It’s probably safe to assume that you can find a reputable omnibus survey provider who can field the questions you want to ask the way you want to ask them and has the levels of service and the kinds of deliverables you need. That leaves three open issues: target population, timing, and pricing. Among these three issues, the most difficult to resolve may be the composition of the target population. Because one survey serves multiple sponsors, it is very likely that your target market is more specific than the populations you can find from an omnibus survey provider. Put another way, it is unlikely that your ideal survey population exactly matches that of an existing omnibus survey, unless your organization is a public agency or the provider of a ubiquitous product or service. If you can’t find an omnibus survey that exactly matches the population you want, you might find one that is at least adequate, discover that your target market is an identifiable subset of an omnibus population, or ask omnibus survey providers to recommend solutions. After target population, timing is another potential barrier to using the omnibus approach. For example, if the omnibus that best matches your needs is conducted quarterly, you may not get the results in time to meet your need. If it is conducted on a monthly basis, you might get the results when you need them if the next launch is not a full month away or if it is not coming too soon to get your questions added to your satisfaction. However, they might also be able to field the omnibus outside of their normal cycle if you ask them to do so and other sponsors agree. Finally, pricing may be a barrier, and there is no way to know this unless you ask the provider of an omnibus survey you are considering. Their fees would likely vary by the number of questions you ask, the total survey sample size, and optional services, such as custom reporting, infographics, or other value-added deliverables. There could also be fees associated with customization, but this would be specific to the omnibus survey provider and your circumstances. An omnibus survey may or may not be a good solution for your research needs. If you have the need to ask only a few market research questions and lack the funds or the inclination to field it yourself, you may be able to find an omnibus survey provider who can offer what you need. There may be some upfront time invested to explore solutions, but that time could be well spent if your issue is important enough or if you think you will have recurring needs.

Question 5

What can you do if an omnibus survey solution doesn’t match your target market?

Accepted Answer

If you are unable to find an omnibus survey population that exactly matches your target market, you may still be able to find a solution that meets your needs. First, if the population matches your target approximately, the cost savings and timing may be worth the trade-off against imprecision. For example, if you are trying to understand the magnitude of an issue, such as “is awareness of my brand 80% or only 8%?” an approximate match might be good enough. If you are planning the funding of a larger project, these sorts of ballpark estimates of incidence rates may help you move forward. If the omnibus population is still too general, you may be able to “find” your target market within that population via filtering by demographics and other variables. For example, if your target market is brown-eyed females, you may be able to segment the population by gender, which may be one of the general questions available to all sponsors, and by eye color, which might be part of your set of questions. This means that however much of the sample is not a brown-eyed female will be useless to you, and it is up to you and the omnibus provider to decide whether or not to filter this question in the survey from the irrelevant population. You would still end up paying based on the entire sample that was surveyed instead of just your target segment, but it might be worth it to you depending on what’s at stake. The larger issue may be whether the remaining sample after filtering by gender and eye color is adequate to provide the confidence level you require. This will, of course, depend on the total size of the omnibus sample and the incidence rate of brown-eyed females within it. If this amount is not enough for your needs, perhaps you can augment this sample in the next iteration of the omnibus, provided that the gap in time is not relevant to your research issue, the two populations do not overlap, and the sample composition is similar across both. This solution may or may not be practical or cost effective, but those evaluations can be made once the details on sample size, cost, and so forth are established. Another alternative that could be explored, however, is to conduct the omnibus survey with a custom population. This idea may not be practical, but perhaps your needs are shared by the omnibus provider’s other clients who would be willing to co-sponsor the research. For example, maybe you want to track your market share within your product category on a quarterly basis. The omnibus provider may have other clients in the same category and may be willing to propose this idea to them. Although they are real-world competitors, each sponsor would be able to understand their own market share plus have the ability to ask about other topics which will not be shared with the others. Many omnibus providers also offer other kinds of research, so they may have the sorts of contacts who could match your scenario.

Question 6

How do you evaluate an omnibus survey solution?

Accepted Answer

Your evaluation of an omnibus survey solution should cover how well it aligns with your needs and the quality of the research that is likely to result from it. How well it aligns with your needs depends on several factors. Most obviously, the omnibus survey has to be able to accommodate your questions, and the survey population has to match your target market closely enough. Some omnibus survey providers may have a maximum number of questions, and some critics say that some require a minimum. However, it seems unlikely that a provider would force you to write extra questions if you were willing to pay the minimum fee, so this argument seems more like propaganda than fact. The survey also has to be scheduled or be able to be rescheduled to meet your timeline, and they have to be able to meet your sample size requirements. Of course, it must also align with your expectations of value for the cost. The omnibus survey also has to align with the provider experience you want to have. You may not like working with a provider that is inflexible, uncommunicative, or not transparent enough about their processes. A provider might not provide the range of support or reporting that you want, or their survey process may not afford the customization your need or the real-time reporting you want. They may not be consultative enough, or they may annoy you in their attempts to force consulting upon you. For some, the provider experience can be a deal-breaker, so it is worth conscious evaluation. The quality of the research may be difficult to evaluate without going through the process at least once, but there are some things to look out for and ask about. It may be worth having them walk you through how they source participants, how they evaluate participant authenticity and quality, and, if they have a panel, how they keep them engaged and how often they refresh the members. You’ll want to know how they determine the representativeness of the sample, as well as their idea of what it represents. Regarding how they would handle your particular questions within the survey, there are several issues for which you may want their perspective. You may want to know the proposed length of the entire survey, including all topics in addition to yours, and where your questions will appear within it. If you consider the total survey to be long, you may not want your questions to appear at the end. Also, some people argue that having a variety of topics in one survey keeps participants more engaged, while some others claim it fatigues them and others might claim that engagement or fatigue is a function of how they are sourced and managed. Depending on which camp you belong to or if you belong to another camp entirely, you may want to know more about the other topics that will be part of the survey, to the extent they can be revealed in light of this issue. You may be more comfortable with the process if you know more about the participant experience. Omnibus surveys can be more cost-effective and timelier than custom surveys, or they could be more costly and less timely or simply less practical depending on your reference point. The value of omnibus surveys depends upon how you evaluate them based on your needs, preferences, and the options you identity. They could be a potent resource for your research arsenal.

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