As an incentive for online survey participation, some companies offer to share the survey results with respondents. Here are the pros and cons for this type of incentive.
Pros
Offering to share some or all of the survey results with respondents can sometimes be effective with business-to-business research. For employees of certain companies, incentives such as guaranteed rewards and prize drawings are considered conflicts of interest and are therefore not permitted. Thus, the ability to share in the insight gleaned from the survey can be an extra incentive.
Cons
For consumer research, offering to share the results with respondents is rarely an effective incentive because most consumers prefer guaranteed rewards or prize drawings.
For business-to-business research, offering to share the results can increase the likelihood that some respondents who are not qualified to participate in the research will provide dishonest responses to demographic questions in order to be assured that they will be able to complete the survey and receive the results. This can skew the data.
The bottom line: For consumer research, offering to share the results is rarely an incentive for completing the survey. However, for certain business-to-business research projects, this can be an effective incentive.
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