Remember when bookstores dismissed Amazon and the music industry resisted digital. This post from Denis Labelle shows how Google is expanding its offering in the market research business.  They now have a number of products including online surveys and consumer panels.  They are going beyond  web analytics and optimisation into all types of market research.

Time for the MR industry to wake up. These products from Google offers businesses a quality of insight and tools that used to be far more expensive. This looks like it could well be better than what many MR companies offer.

I am particularly impressed with the offer from +Paul MacDonald on Google consumer surveys

My only comment is that Google are possibly allowing too much customisation.
There is best practice in survey construction and analysis. Market research should use more of this standardized best practice rather than each study being created from scratch in a way that allows less expert users to make mistakes that have been made by others.  These tools can help us learn from the mistakes of others and just use what has been proven to work.

But this looks very very interesting to me. Especially Google’s innovative way to attract respondents at lower cost. The MR industry is in the line of Google’s sights. Look out.

Appendix

Here are the links shared by Denis Labelle in his post on Google+ where he talks about how to get to know your Customers with Google

Analytics: Free online tracking tools to optimize your site
www.google.com/analytics/
YouTube Analytics: View detailed statistics about your videos
www.youtube.com/t/analytics
Consumer Surveys: Custom market research made easy
www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys
Trends: Explore past and present search trends
http://www.google.com/trends
Think Insights: Consumer trends, marketing insights, industry research
www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights

Google Website Optimizer > google.com/websiteoptimizer
Google+ Page: Give your business a home online, and let you build relationships with your customers > www.google.com/+/business/