This paper reviews the recent lessons learned by ibm.com from measuring customer satisfaction in its eBusiness environment. It focuses on the opportunities and challenges brought forth in the course of planning and implementing a customer satisfaction measurement system and reports on the approaches developed for dealing with two issues of great concern for the future of eBusiness management: the need for new technologies capable of handling individual-level vs. aggregate-level analysis and the research imperative of fusing behavioral and attitudinal data in a single set at the individual customer level. The paper also demonstrates the need for and the viability of global research partnerships that can bring together the most advanced technologies regardless of the country or continent of their origin.
As the Internet has now become a legitimate and often critical business medium, it has also forced those of us in the market research profession to confront a wide assortment of new challenges, including reevaluating traditional market research techniques and practices and embracing new ones. In this paper, I will highlight some personal experiences that I have encountered in the past two and one-half years at one of the worldâs largest technology corporations - IBM. I will share some learnings from several web site surveys and use these examples to illustrate how the complexities of online market research will force change in the how market researchers approach their work and in the skill sets required of successful research professionals.
This paper highlights examples from several online web site survey to illustrate some of the complexities to conduct online research. In particular the paper argues the importance of a strong collaboration between market researchers, legal, costumer service units and technical staff. Additionally, the argument is made that the Internet is forcing change not only in the research process but in the skill sets required of successful research professionals.