Book Review - The Handbook of Online and Social Media Research: Tools and Techniques for Market Researchers

By Ray Poynter

3rd September, 2010

In the foreword to his new book Ray Poynter makes the point that “in terms of quantitative data collection, the internet is now the single most important global modality for data collection”, and to document this modality he has written an extremely thorough and comprehensive book which does exactly what it says on the tin: it is a handbook which should prove invaluable to both students and experienced researchers.

The book is well laid out with separate sections on Online Quant, Qualitative, Social Media, Other Research Topics and Breaking News. In order to make it function as a handbook Ray has gone to some pains to cover more than once some topics which it is essential to cover in more than one section, tailoring them to their application where necessary.

The book contains everything a complete novice dipping into it could need: well labelled headings; rules, caveats and concerns; and those icons you get in “For Dummies” books that signpost warnings, resources, and, very importantly, opinions. There are also case studies scattered throughout. These occur more in the Social Media section which is probably because more of the methodologies there need worked examples.

It would be easy to assume, knowing Ray’s outspoken advocacy of NewMR, that the book would be heavy on the novel and the whacky; in fact it is a rather old fashioned kind of book and none the worse for that. Some chapters such as Chapter 16 “Research Techniques & Approaches” and Chapter 17 “The Business of Market Research” could be picked up and dropped in a much more conventional/off-line text book. At a rough estimate less than a third of the book is dedicated to Social Media.

The book is at its best when the author shares his many years of experience with the reader. Throughout the book he makes timely reminders and issues caveats such as (of web scraping software) “Generally the better packages cost more, which is not the same thing as saying the more expensive products are better” and on ethical behaviour in online methodology “Remember that in terms of the internet most things do become public at some point”. My favourite heading in the book: “So, Why Does Market Research Usually Work?”

Of course, the more innovative the technique and the faster growing the market, the more likely some of the information is to need updating regularly. The text contains quite a few comments such as “at the time of writing” and “as of December 2009”. This is always going to be a problem with a book which aspires to keeping its reader right up to date. Maybe Ray has plans to update it online, or by some other means as yet not tried. Even if he doesn’t, this book is bound to quickly make itself an indispensible reference in every market research company library.

Teresa Lynch

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