For members
Your association asks for your help, and your answers change what the market offers you.
When your association invites you into a research study, the companies that build products and services for your field find out what their work for you actually requires. Your association finds out the same thing, and you get the results.
What sponsored research is
Your association surveys its own members and its own field. A supplier to the field pays for the work, because that supplier needs to understand the people who use what it sells. Your association conducts the study and prepares the findings. The association benefits, the sponsor benefits and you benefit.
What happens to your answers
Your individual answers are not given to the sponsor.
The sponsor receives results for groups of respondents, not the answers of any one person.
Answering produces no sales contact unless you ask for it.
You are contacted about a product or service only when you request it yourself.
Your association approved the project before it began.
Nothing reaches you that your association has not reviewed and accepted. The association assures the authenticity of the study and the value to the members, the association and the sponsor.
What you gain
Suppliers learn what you actually require.
A company that understands its customers introduces products that fit the work you do rather than the work it imagines you do.
The findings come to you.
Your association, the sponsor, or both, may publish the results as news and information, so you learn what the rest of the field reported.
Your association serves you better because it knows more.
Continuing education content, program topics, journal topics, and answers to the questions members ask all improve when the association has current data about its own field.
Non-dues revenue can reduce the need to raise membership costs.
Revenue the association earns from sponsored research is revenue it does not need to request from members, in dues or in event fees.
Participants are sometimes paid.
Payment is most common for focus groups and panel discussions, and occasionally for online surveys.
Why a company pays for this
The sponsor pays for the study, your association approves what is conducted, and the results describe your field as its members actually described it. A supplier that guesses at what members need builds the wrong product and writes the wrong message. Research is the less expensive alternative to guessing.
When the invitation arrives, answer it.
A study takes a small part of one day, and the results return to the whole field. The more members who answer, the more accurately the findings describe the work you do.
Association Insights, LLC conducts sponsored research on behalf of associations. Questions about a specific study should go to the association that invited you.