The papers describes a specialist business panel (itself a rarety) of exporters and other users of international freight, parcels and document transport services. It provides a series of DHL case studies demonstrating the value of a time series of data over a 20-year period.
Early initiatives of many industry bodies (ESOMAR, MRS, ADM, SYNTEC, MOA) have proactively taken initiatives to formulate guidelines for online research. However, as the industry was then still learning how to conduct an online survey, relevant topics were missed in these early guidelines. Moreover these local guidelines differed from each other and, as many online surveys have an international character, the market is at present largely unregulated. Therefore it is often difficult to learn exactly what quality standard, if any, is being applied. As long as the quality definitions are unknown or blurred, online panels will stay under the suspicion of being a somewhat unreliable or unpredictable research tool.
Two major issues facing television audience research are the requirement to measure fragmented audiences accurately and the demand for measures of return on investment. This paper outlines a new development using set top box data. With the help of TNS, Sky is setting up a 20,000 home panel operation, SkyView. This panel brings several sources together to provide viewing, subscriber, purchasing, and demographic data. This will bring benefits to Sky and also to advertising agencies and clients. This paper considers the requirement for such a panel, the technical issues, and potential benefits.