You can learn more information and smarter ways to conduct healthcare marketing research by visiting our website here.
After working with hospitals across the country on their healthcare marketing research efforts, fielding online, phone and mail surveys; community, physician, and service lines surveys, here’s our point of view at Strategic Intellavance:
The Advantages of Online Surveys:
- Lower Cost: Traditionally, you can field a longer or bigger survey for considerably less than either a mail or a phone survey.
- Quicker Turnaround: Online panelists are incented to turn the surveys around quickly so you can get your results back quicker than you would with a phone or a mail survey.
The Disadvantages of Online Surveys:
- Incented Respondents: Typically, most online surveys involve a paid or reward panel of respondents who opt in to participate in surveys for some kind of reward. This is not necessarily typical of the average person who would be utilizing hospital services.
- Zip Code Quotas: If your hospital has a primary or secondary service area that involves smaller zip codes or you have zip code quotas to reach, online surveys might not be best way to field. Panel companies tend to have many samplings in bigger zips and much less in smaller zips. You might need to do a backfill with phone if you don’t meet zip code quotas through the web.
- Representativeness of Respondents: Since the majority of hospital utilization comes from those 50+ in age and online usage is higher amongst those younger than 50, those who participant in online panels might not necessarily be representative of the typical hospital utilizer. An online sample might be more enthusiastic online users than the typical profile of a person who is utilizing a hospital.
- Low Incidence for Specialized Subsets: Some hospitals want to conduct specialized service line research amongst respondents with cancer, cardiovascular disease, etc. Online panelists tend to be much more limited if you have a finite population.
Healthcare Intellavance Recommendation:
For healthcare marketing research, if cost and turnaround are your major concerns and your hospital has its service area in a heavily populated area with a general acute care population, then online surveys are great way to research. If your hospital is more rural in nature or you want to reach subsets of the population, then other healthcare marketing research survey methods will most likely yield better results.
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You can call me directly at 866.508.9508 or email at Cheryl@StrategicIV.com.
