| December 2006 Newsletter |  |
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Hi and welcome to the Christmas edition of our Newsletter for 2006. In this issue we ask you to note our office closing dates over the coming festive season.
We announce additions to the client portal and info on how you can view response reports and your data live at any time a project is in field. Plus we showcase a new Shopping Aisle question we have developed and detail some suggestions on how it could be used in your projects.
On behalf of all the team at i-Link Research we wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous new year! We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support during the last year and look forward to working with you in 2007.
Please enjoy the read and of course we welcome any feedback or comment you would like to make.
| We're taking a short break this Christmas! | |
i-Link will be closing our office over the Christmas & New Year period. Please rest assured that ongoing projects will not be affected. |
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CLOSING: 22nd December, 2006
REOPENING: 8th January, 2007
| A case study in flexibility - new Shopping Aisle question | |
| In the days when i-Link was a fledgling company we resolved to develop our research systems so they would be flexible. The underlying architecture was designed so it could be easily adapted to suit our client’s unique and specific needs. | |
In this article we demonstrate how we continue to meet this challenge with the release of a new question type: The Shopping Aisle Display – perfect for conducting innovative choice modeling exercises.
Some months ago we were asked to develop a new question type which would display products in a virtual shopping aisle setting. The collaborative design resulted in a clever technique for emulating a shopping Aisle environment and one that could be effectively used to undertake choice modeling exercises.
The Shopping Aisle question works by displaying a range of competitor products on a stack of shelves and labeled each with their purchase price which can also be highlighted 'on special'.
Participants are able to view the shelf stack as a whole or they can pass their cursor over any one product to view a larger image of it and any other additional details pertaining to the product. They can then select items by simply clicking on a product and dragging it into a shopping cart.
A range of options enable researchers to control whether participants can remove items out of their cart and back to the shelf, whether the aisle is presented left or right of screen or to limit the amount a participant can spend in their virtual shop. Researchers can also force participants to purchase a minimum number of items or to spend a minimum amount. Last but not least, the Shopping Aisle stack of shelves is completely adjustable and the display of items within a product category can be easily adapted to suit the specific research need.
When we are approached to develop enhancement such as these, we typically offer two options: The first is where the client pays for development of an enhancement for their exclusive use.
In the second approach i-Link agrees to absorb development costs on the proviso that any enhancement is incorporated into our system and available for the general use of all our clients. The Shopping Aisle question was developed in this way and we are extremely pleased to announce that is has now been incorporated into the arsenal of online research tools. In addition, our bureau team can also assist in providing choice modeling exercises or a research approach applicable to the Shopping Aisle display with any product categories you may wish to research.
If you would like to find out more about the Shopping Aisle question, our development approaches or our Choice Modeling capabilities please don’t hesitate to contact us.