USamp founder calls for change in sample pricing model

Dusig believes the CPI model is part of the problem of online sample quality, and changing it is a way to fix it. Currently, buyers only have to pay for a completed interview – meaning many times more survey invites than necessary can be sent out to online panellists with no immediate impact on the client’s bill.

However, this does impact on the respondent experience – and eventually the price paid by clients. Many of the invited panellists will screen-out or find that quotas have been filled, with no compensation for the time they’ve spent trying to qualify.

This leads some panellists to opt-out and stop taking surveys altogether. Dusig explains: “When panellists stop taking surveys, sample firms need to refresh the panel with new people – and there are real costs associated with managing this attrition. These costs are passed on indirectly through the CPI-based pricing model.”

With a cost-per-finish (CPF) approach, clients would pay whenever a “requested person start[s] a survey and get[s] to a completion, disqualified or over-quota status”. Dusig believes this would push sample companies and their customers to a position where respondent targeting becomes more precise and where sample companies ensure they can deliver exactly the right person at the right time.

Alongside this, Dusig says survey tool companies should be pressured to allow sample companies to electronically read quotas in real-time through APIs – thus minimising the number of over-quota incidents experienced by respondents.

He suggests blind targeting of panellists should come at a higher cost “so that panel companies can pay every person who attempts the survey”. Surveys requiring an untargeted general population sample might retain the CPI model, Dusig says, but again he says a “reward fee” should be paid to those panellists who try but fail to qualify.

“Panelists are people,” he says. “These panellists eat and sleep just like us, and understand the concepts of time management and reward motivations.”

Dusig’s business partner Gregg Lavin reckons that: “Over the next couple of years, those sample companies that treat their respondents with the utmost respect and provide the best experience will succeed and those that don’t won’t.

“I can’t tell you how many times a panellist goes into a survey and they are screened out. It just presents a bad experience and the ability to get a user coming back for a long life-span won’t exist until that problem is answered.”

Lavin says the company has plans in the pipeline to address this issue, but he says the wider industry still “really needs to think about how we can provide a better user experience”.

• You can find more detail on Dusig’s CPF argument at the uSamp blog