Magazine: Getting to know Opinion Leaders – how Sociolog works in real life

In the first part of our series (Trade magazine, October 2014 issue) we summarised the characteristics of Opinion Leaders. It represents a real challenge for researchers to find out the opinion of these consumers. They aren’t easy to involve in research but Sociolog may be the solution to reach consumers who communicate via modern platforms. Consumers can participate in surveys through their own computers or smartphones without having to install any software, they are simply sent a link or they need to download a free IOS or Android application. Sociolog is a kind of online focus group where a trained moderator guides the survey, assigning activities to participants and partners can follow the research process real-time. Survey length is recommended to be between 3 and 7 days. Activities: participants have to take photos of their favourite products, go to stores and tell what they experienced there or try new products and share their opinion about them. The moderator and the participants also engage in discussions – just the two of them. Consumers like to take part in research like this, they are active, they can be guided well and they really open up. Survey results obtained this way have already proved to be very useful for companies in finding out about mistakes and making the necessary changes in many cases.