BusinessWeek Research Services case study

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GMI enables BusinessWeek Research Services to tap into hard-to-reach
Chinese sample

Customer profile

BusinessWeek Research Services is the full-service custom research department of the business publication based in Manhattan, New York. Their five members of staff serve the intelligence needs of its parent company, the McGraw Hill Group, as well as a wide range of external clients that include non-profits and Fortune 500 companies in a variety of industries. From defining target audiences and designing surveys all the way to collecting data and analyzing research results, they enable customers to gather market insights for better-informed strategic decisions.

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The challenge

"We needed to conduct an international study for a German client in the insurance space," explains Marc Scheer, Account Executive in charge of managing the project at BusinessWeek Research Services. "Our proprietary online panel of BusinessWeek subscribers and online registrants is mostly U.S.-based, so we knew we needed to outsource the global part to a specialist panel provider. We had worked with GMI last year on another global project, and as we had a very positive experience then, we decided to call upon their expertise again this time around. The proposal was delivered quickly, and quoted a reasonable price for the study."

The sample challenge that BusinessWeek Research Services faced for this research project was that of targeting affluent, educated college graduates in China, who were able to comfortably take an online survey in English. 150 completes had to be collected within a week. "GMI came through when other international panel providers fell short," continues Scheer. "GMI was able to over-deliver on the sample target requested by our client, in a shorter timeframe than expected, and at a higher incidence rate." BusinessWeek Research Services conducts 80% of its projects online. It chooses to leverage online research because it is faster, more cost-effective and less invasive than other data collection methods. The subscribers of their proprietary panel, who are mostly business professionals and executives, can take online surveys at their leisure while providing valuable intelligence.

The solution

"We have an excellent proprietary panel, but unfortunately, it does not offer enough global respondents for us to be able to fulfill the 10% of our research projects that we field internationally. This is the reason why our partnership with GMI is so valuable," concludes Scheer. "They really came through for us on this Chinese sample at a very reasonable price. Our project was eventually completed to our client's full satisfaction, which is the best ROI we could have asked for."

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