Do you think people use this site for market research?

Question

And if so, are you happy to give your information? Even if it's just about preferences or tastes...

Answer 1

What better way to pull together a focus group on the fly.

Answer 2

You can treat the responses here as you would focus group data - with CAUTION:  

* The sample is NOT REPRESENTATIVE of the overall population.

* Respondents are SELF SELECTORS (hand raisers)

* One CANNOT VALIDATE that respondents are members of their target market.

Even so, the benefit is that "Yahoo! Answers" are free and immediate. The BEST application for this website is EXPORATORY research. Depending on the subject people will be able to provide feedback to new ideas and concepts. They can tell you about it's merit, what they like, what they dislike, what they agree with and disagree with. People here may provide feedback to help you further refine your concept before you go to the expense of a more reliable form of market research.

Answer 3

Yes and I also take surveys for free.

Answer 4

This is an excellent site with which to take the pulse of society and culture. You tend to get all kinds in here. Some are just interested in giving catchy little sarcastic answers. Ignore those. Look for the answers with substance, most of them will be in that category. You have all ages, both genders, radical ideas and conservative ones. You won't have to go far to get the kind of feedback you can get in here.  So, yes, i immagine that people do use this site for market research.

Answer 5

I have seen some questions looking for opinions for market research, but I doubt the information is very useful.  It's not a representative sample and the number of responses are too few to generalize to a larger population.

But it's free and easy, so I suppose it's better than making decisions with no market research at all.