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Published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on February 2, 2000. All rights

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Market Research On the Web: Amy Yoffie

If you’re looking for a little slice of America, look

no further than the Web. America is online, and that’s where market

research should be as well, says Amy Yoffie of Research

Connections,

an online market research firm in Westfield. "The Web is beginning

to look more and more like everything else — it’s not just geeks

and techno-freaks anymore, it’s the regular consumer," she says.

A dotcom business can spend loads of money on banner ads and online

promotions, but a small investment in market research can give a firm

more direction, says Yoffie, who speaks Tuesday, February 8, at the

DeVry Institute at 630 Route 1 North in New Brunswick at 8 a.m. Her

seminar, entitled "E-Success: A Case Study in Starting, Growing,

and Selling an Online Business," is sponsored by Technology New

Jersey. Call 609-419-4444. Cost: $30.

Traditional modes of market research, such as the telephone survey,

are fading into obscurity just as online research is fueled by greater

technology and a more receptive audience, says Yoffie. "If your

customers are online you’ve got to be there one way or another,"

she says. "I think people are more receptive to market research

online because they can do it when they want to do it, and they also

have time to consider their answers more. If you have a question

that’s

open-ended, they can write a lot and it’s fun. Most of the time when

we finish a survey, people want to know how to do another one."

A native of Newton, Massachusetts, Yoffie earned a BA at Brandeis

and an MBA at the University of Missouri. In 1986, after moving to

New Jersey, Yoffie began selling PC-based market research tools

produced

by Analytical Computers (now Analytical Group), and developed her

own early vision of the Internet using an electronic bulletin board

to transport research data from survey sites in malls and telephone

centers. That was when she realized that the technology fascinated

her the most. "It challenged us to make it easier for people to

go through the surveys and easier for us to collect the data on the

backend." In 1994 Yoffie bought out the East Coast division of

Analytical Computers, and set to work on developing technology-based

market research even further.

Although she had the tools, finding the people to engage in the

research

presented a challenge. Buying opt-in mailing lists and E-mail lists

became too expensive and also unreliable. "The challenge became

how could I find people," she says. "I decided that I was

going to have to raise capital, at least at $1 million, to buy these

panels." Then last year Yoffie cut a deal with Talk City, an

online

community of nearly 4 million registered users. It was the perfect

symbiotic relationship. "They have about 24,000 unique visitors

coming there to chat any day," she says, "and they needed

a market research division."

But effective market research online is more than just the sum of

the Web and its users — you have to have traditional market

research

discipline, says Yoffie: Her advice: