How the online survey industry really works

Many Cashew users have asked the same question about how online surveys really work, and we think now is a great time to make this topic the first post in our new blog 🙂

The online survey industry is broadly comprised of the following 4 groups:

• Insight seekers: brands ranging from Apple to Zelle, who are looking to get market research insights on their products and services
• Software platforms: technology providers that help the above insight seekers create and distribute surveys as well as offer analysis of survey results; large players in the US include the likes of Dynata and Cint
• Panel partners: apps and websites like CASHEW that help connect consumers looking to take surveys with the surveys that are available on the software platforms
• Consumers: users of Cashew and other survey apps / websites that are people looking to provide their feedback and opinions in exchange for a reward

Here’s a quick example to help illuminate how this all works!

• Apple wants to better understand how consumers feel about their iPhones so they decide to create a survey that pays a bit of money per response
• Apple works with Dynata, the leading survey software platform, to design this survey and find the appropriate panel partners to take these surveys; Dynata gets paid a fee for helping design and distribute this survey
• Dynata offers software integration with a myriad of panel partners, including CASHEW, who are able to get their own audience / users to take the survey
• End users on Cashew’s platform that qualify for this Apple survey will take the survey and get paid for their answers; if the end users are successfully paid for their responses, only then is CASHEW paid a small commission for helping connect the end users with the survey

So whose fault is it anyways when I find out I disqualify from a survey at the very end?

This is the most frustrating problem that exists in this industry. Most of the issue stems from how software platforms handle who qualifies for which surveys. In some cases, a user is notified immediately when one of their survey responses disqualifies from the survey; but in the majority of cases, the software platforms wait until the end of the survey to notify the user.

Why would they do that? Well part of it is just how some of the older surveys are designed. They wait until the end, when they have all the user’s responses, to check if the user actually qualifies. Other times, we’ve heard this is actually a deliberate mechanism designed by the software providers to mask exactly what the qualification criteria are.

CASHEW is as frustrated as all of its users when this happens, because it is such a negative experience to reach the end of the survey only to find out you disqualified somewhere along the way. To that end, CASHEW is trying to work with these software platforms to mitigate this issue. Unfortunately, since CASHEW is only a small panel partner (in the broader ecosystem described above), the software platforms often don’t have time to listen and thus don’t provide adequate resources towards solving this issue.

Therefore, a lot of the burden falls on CASHEW to help mitigate the negative impact of this situation, and we’ve designed several types of missions to make this hurt a bit less. We compensate users even if they get disqualified at the end and reward them for their time spent regardless of the outcome.