Red Planet setting up 100,000 strong research panel offering participants Frequent Flyer points
Qantas Loyalty’s data marketing business Red Planet is setting up a 100,000 strong research panel which executive manager Vaughan Chandler claims will “fundamentally change the face of market research in Australia”.
The scheme will draw on the millions of members of Qantas’ Frequent Flyers program, offering them points in exchange for completing surveys.
“Clients will be able to engage Red Planet to conduct market research on their behalf and feel extremely confident that the insights will be real and therefore highly valuable to inform their business decisions,” Chandler said in a statement.
“The panel will be made up of a diverse range of Qantas Frequent Flyer members who opt-in to receive and complete market research surveys, in return for earning Qantas Points.”
Chandler said due to the panel’s size, Red Planet can “generate insights covering the breadth of the Australian demographic”.
“Another key differentiator is our ability to coordinate research with our broader knowledge of Australian consumer behaviour, enabling both increased trust in the accuracy of the research as well as delivering a new level of actionable insights for our clients,” he said.
Qantas Loyalty launched Red Planet in September last year and handles part of Qantas’ digital media spend.
At last month’s Mumbrella Travel Marketing Summit Qantas’ head of marketing Olivia Wirth defended the Red Planet business, saying it was not taking market share from media agencies.
“This is all about effective and more targeted marketing and using the analytics we have on our customers,” Wirth said.
“It’s a partnership approach and we pride ourselves on the coalition of partners we have in Qantas Loyalty. It’s unbeatable so it makes sense to work with select clients in this way. It’s a huge opportunity. We are putting our toe in the water and starting small but we believe it has huge capability.
“We think we are growing the market. There is a competitive set but why shouldn’t Qantas take some of this business?”
Red Planet’s clients also include Avis Car Rental, Budget Car Rental, iSelect, Hilton, NAB, Bankwest, Athlete’s Foot, American Express and Super Retail Group.
Miranda Ward
Market surveys based on a group of Qantas frequent flyers seems like a very biased set of data.
Not towards Qantas, but not representative of the population at large.
Even with that, that’s a huge panel, could be some great insights to come out of groups even a third of that size.
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Will people end up spending lots of time completing these surveys just for a few ‘valuable’ Qantas frequent flyer points?
There are already well established sites (such as e-rewards) around since the turn of the century offering many points currencies as survey rewards, many worth much more than a QFF point.
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The journey is now complete, Qantas departed as an international airline and have now arrived as a market research company. They had one stopover, that was as a media owner.
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extremly biased if you compare a qantas flyer to your everyday joe.
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At some point the benefits of not being sold will outweigh the benefits of being a member.
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Just more proof of how clueless and desperate Qantas are.
If this bloke Chandler had any brains, he would come to the realisation that a research panel recruited from Qantas FF members gives right to a biased sample.
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I suggest the people behind Red Planet to read an introductory statistics textbook. When collecting samples you must use simple random sampling methods, otherwise you will introducing bias to your research. Using loyalty data violates this assumption . Would you use Mercedes loyalty data to model the population of Australia ?
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I disagree with those saying it will be biased data. I dont know the figures but i know alot of people of lower socioeconomic standing who have flown only once with qantas but became a frequent flyer through woolworths to get points from spending there. None of them are the “average frequent flyer”. They are just average people.
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Given over half the Australian population has a QFF account, it actually has a better shot of being representative than most other research panels out there. Of course it’s not a truly random sampling frame, but what is these days?
And if I’m in the business of selling luxury cars (for instance), why do I want to know the views of ‘average joe’ anyway? I don’t think they’re suggesting that it replaces the census.
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Even from a “random” dataset you can Introduce bias. The idea is to collect alot of data and remove anything that could possibly skew it. Mercedes Benz loyalty is completely different to Qantas Frequent Flyer. Guesswho you clearly know a little about statistics but not about the dataset in question. Its millions of Australians including some who fly with qantas and many that dont. If you have a woolies everyday rewards card you most likely are a QFF member whether or not you have redeemed any of you points earn 50k per year or 200k. When you join the red planet you are asked about where you live in Oz. How many children you have, how much you earn and if you work or not or how much. In this way they can select 300,000 members from a pool of a few million who best fit whats required. People who buy Mercedes may be the only members of the club but qantas and virgin are making juge profits from they’re programs because of theyre enormous reach throughout Australia meaning they have access to some very interesting and valuable data that they can yet turn into more $$
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Beyond the statistical problems spoken of here surely an even more serious concern is the enticement to express an opinion, any opinion, in order to get frequent flyer points whether the respondent actually knows or cares about the question.
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Bias doesn’t matter – this is more about getting tons more data on QFF customers, an affluent and valuable market segment, than it is about having a “representative” market panel.
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I’m in the MR industry and was just accepted onto the Panel…. where’s the industry exclusion question??
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As always qantas over promised and under delivered 2x surveys no points come on…… Listen to the feedback
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Loyalty programs are a direct contravention of Restrictive Trade Practices legislation.
Consumers are coerced into schemes designed to obfuscate proper comparisons of the price and value of purchases.
Governmental regulatory bodies ignore this blatant contravention because they are afraid of backlash from misguided punters, These punters irrationally believe they benefit from pie in the sky offers which steer them away from rational purchasing decisions and severely restrict new entrants gaining a foothold in the markets.
Unfortunately; it does appear to be true that “there is one born every minute”.
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