It is always dangerous to take instant opinions as much more that what they are, i.e., click-jerk reactions. Thus, it will be interesting to see if the results of an instant survey done by UK-based instant polling firm Usurv right after the announcement of the Apple (News 
- Alert) iPhone 5 holds up over time. Nevertheless, in an age of hyper-speed and instant gratification, the survey of Brits if nothing else is food for thought.
There is no need to keep everyone in suspense so here are the results:
If you are Samsung (News - Alert), you can take some solace in your brand loyalty in the UK. If you are not, then the numbers are not pretty. As noted these results are less than a scientific sample, and because this is what is known as “quick fire research” it is anecdotal at best since such exercises are limited to 1,000 participants.
So who is Usurv?
As a result of my investigation of the survey, I found Usurv to be more interesting than the results of this latest poll. There is no reason to make this complicated and that is the beauty. Here is what they do:
The question I had which they answered was, “Who are we asking?” As the website explains, “We post questions across our network of partner sites and these questions appear only when someone with the required respondent profile visits a partner site. Respondents are not required to leave the site they are visiting, instead they answer all surveys within their current digital footprint.”
As a former researcher, I was also impressed by a few other points these guys highlight. First they say that: “ComScore Networks famously claimed their research showed that 0.25 percent of the online population accounted for 32 percent of responses in online surveys, mainly due to the small number of people willing to complete surveys - 'professional' respondents.” Usurv reaches out to randomly selected individuals on sites they use every day, going beyond panels.
They also note that, “Over half of our participants claim that they would never fill out a questionnaire if they were sent a link from a market research company…. By approaching them through sites they already trust, we have achieved extremely high completion rates, averaging over 40 percent.” This is ingenious given the potential for skewed results.
From a pure marketing perspective, what is most intriguing is that the cost and speed of the service makes it almost irresistible. Not only can you get started for as little as £25 (a little over US $40) but results can be generated and presented on a nice dashboard in about one half hour.
Let’s just say the imagination wonders about the possibilities of quick fire research. From product launches like the iPhone5 to instant reactions to happenings at things like the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a little bit of fine-tuning on this could provide some more than marginally useful feedback that is even easier to swallow than being asked to tweet or respond to a text. Certainly a company and space to keep an eye on along with how many of those Britons actually purchase an iPhone5 and whose ox gets gored or bottom line get greased in the process.
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