Market Research Participant Incentives: 8 Easy Options
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Why Research Participant Incentives Matter
Let’s talk about how you get people to participate in your market research test – the incentives. Incentives are things like cash that will motivate people to take your survey or be in your focus group.
While there are many people who like to participate in research, most won’t do it completely for free, that’s why you need some kind of incentive. Do you absolutely have to have an incentive? No. But you will likely find more people more quickly by providing an incentive.
There are an infinite number of ways to provide research participant incentives. Here are 8 different kinds of incentives, starting with the more popular and easier ones, to give you some ideas. But you can be creative with these based on what your business is and what you need to learn from consumers.
Research Incentive #1 - Cash
You can always just cut to the chase and give them cash or a check for participating. This is the easiest and most flexible incentive for the participants because they can use it any way that they want.
Research Incentive #2 – A Gift Card
So many places offer gift cards so you have many options, but here are some ideas to get you started:
Gift card from your business
An Amazon card
Restaurant or grocery store gift card
Retailer gift card, like Target or Crate and Barrel
Spa or other experience
With gift cards, participants can choose their own incentives, adding a layer of personalization. Note, while there are also Visa and Mastercard gift cards, they usually charge a fee to buy them.
Research Incentive #3 – A Freebie from Your Business
Do you have a product or service that you could offer each participant that will be of value to them but won’t break the bank? For example, if you sell energy bars, you could send them a variety pack of your bestsellers. Or maybe there is a guide or tutorial you can send them on how to do something. For example, if you sell exercise equipment, you could send a 15-minute video on the best upper body exercises.
Research Incentive #4 – A Drawing or Lottery
You don’t necessarily need to send everyone an incentive but instead enter them into a drawing for a bigger prize. Just the chance of winning something larger is enough of an incentive for participation. But make sure that’s it’s very valuable so potential participants will get excited about possibly winning. Don’t run a drawing for a $20 gift card.
Research Incentive #5 – Discounts or Coupons
Offer a discount for your product or service or give out coupons for a percentage off your products/service. Another option is a buy-one-get-one free offer. Again, be creative with the types of discounts and coupons you could offer. However, make sure to have a time limit on them, usually a year in which to redeem, otherwise you might have participants trying to redeem it years later and any goodwill will be lost if they can’t redeem it.
Research Incentive #6 – Charitable Donation
You can donate to a charity of the participant's choice or a pre-selected charity in their name. Note that logistics will probably be easier if the charities are pre-selected.
You can also donate goods or services in their name. And you can even donate company employee time to a certain charity.
Research Incentive #7 – Exclusive Content and Experiences
This can include early access to new products, extended trials, or tickets to events. It is important to match up what your business does and what might be most motivating to the people you want to incent.
Research Incentive #8 – Subscriptions
If your research is not anonymous (often you don’t want them to know who is running the research to limit bias,) this can be a great way to keep reminding your participants of your business. Subscriptions can be things like Popular magazines or journals or online subscriptions to products or services. Also think about memberships or exclusive clubs or associations.
How Much Should the Research Participant Incentive Be?
This depends on how much of the participant’s time you’re asking for and what their tasks are. If it’s a short survey or quick 10-minute interview, $20-$30 is usually a good number to shoot for.
If it’s a 2-hour focus group and you’re having them do some homework beforehand, then the incentive will need to be more in the $150-$200+ range.
At the end of the day, choose an incentive that will be motivating to your respondents. That means matching who you are as a business to who they are as participants. If you’re doing interviews about tools, you probably don’t want an incentive like scented candles.
Conclusion
There are many kinds of incentives you can use, and there is no one “right” incentive for research. The best incentives are those that match the value of their time and align with your research goals.
You can also try different approaches. If one type of incentive isn’t getting you the people you need, then switch to something else. Despite this being “research” incentives are not an exact science.
