How to determine the cost of acquiring participants/beta testers for market research?

I am working on a proposal which will include the cost of acquisition for market research participants. The participants in this case will using a chrome extension and reporting back on their feedback. I can estimate my time-cost for managing the process, preparing the survey, processing the survey answers, etc.

However, I am looking for feedback on the cost per participant / beta tester, which I can use for justifying my budget. Personal anecdotes or guidance may be useful, but published stats would be better support in my proposal.

Cost Market Research Survey

asked Mar 9 '13 at 17:14

Eric G
106 points

Hi Eric, welcome to the site! Polling the community for a list of resource recommendations is not allowed on this site. So I edited your question a little to focus on the "how to" aspect versus the "list of links" aspect. Hopefully people will still provide you with a link if they are quoting a published stat, but the link will be used as supporting evidence to a more thorough answer (versus just dropping a link with no context). – Zuly Gonzalez 12 years ago

1 Answer

So it sounds like you're asking for the fair rate to pay the market research participants. Until last year I worked as an account director for an ad agency, and we always based the subject's rate on their approximate salary, which you divide into to determine the hourly rate--in other words, if the subject is working his day job instead of the market research you're hiring him to do, then what's the approximate billable hourly rate? People often expect to be paid based on level of work experience and if they're missing work because they are involved in a project for you.

Does this make sense? Hope it's helpful.

answered Mar 10 '13 at 00:02

Nick Brous
11 points

I was not envisioning the tester's effort being equivalent to full time work. This will be over the Internet at their leisure. I imagine the effort would be a few multiples more than filling out online market research surveys (e.g., something like epoll.com). The cost I am looking at includes how much I will pay them and also associated cost with buying google ads or something else to actually find them. I could also envision a scenario where I try to get people to do it for kicks, but I need to reach out to find them. – Eric G 12 years ago