1. What experience does your company have with providing online samples for market research?

Specializing in providing online sample for market research, W&S has been one of the top online research companies in Vietnam since 2011.
Continuously, we improve our system and panel recruitment methods to ensure that our clients could access to the right people and at the right time. Members for market research purpose are recruited directly through our panel site (Vinaresearch) and have approach the quantity of 50.000 within one year.
While our core business is providing online samples for researchers and manufactures, W&S also offers survey programming, data processing and report providing. We believe that with our local market research, new market entry businesses as well as expanding businesses would get the best support to enhance trading decisions.

2. Please describe and explain the types of source(s) for the online sample that you provide (are these databases, actively managed panels, direct marketing lists, web intercept sampling, river sampling or other)?

W&S online samples are primary actively managed panels which used only for market research purpose. Members over 16 years old directly register to become our panellists at our top panel site. After that, automatic system quality control and personnel quality control work in parallel and support closely to ensure the quality of our online panel. These quality control techniques include:

♦ Fraud registers information checking

Members have to provide identify information with the sole email address and mobile phone number. After being checked by the system, our professional management team would confirm the accuracy by direct contact. To minimum errors in the whole process, trap questions are integrated in each survey and status of failing member would be judged through our quality rule to enter the next survey.

♦ Enhance the satisfaction of panels

In order to maintain panellist's engagement, promotion campaign is performed monthly and members are also rewarded a small amount of visualized money as incentives when taking part in the survey. The information and invitations are fairly sent by system to ensure the equal opportunity for similar panels. We also support the panel list with adequate answer for their question about the registration, surveys or policies.

♦ Member account management

Each panel member has their personalized account in panel site and could access surveys, score history and friend list. Members are encouraged to update their adequate register information every year through newsletters and emails. By fraud information adjustment in personal account, members could be considered to become active member of panel after quality checking.

3. What do you consider to be the primary advantage of your sample over other sample sources in the marketplace?

Online sample in Vietnam marketplace has not yet developed as the other countries in Asia like Japan, China and other continents like Europe and the Americas. W&S orientation is specializing in providing quality sample of Vietnam market. Therefore, not only our head office is based in HoChiMinh city but we also receive efficiently support from our bilingual employees.
Firstly, proprietary Vinaresearch provides adequate update in detail both of the quantity and quality of our panels. Due to dynamic and moving panels' target, panels are recruiting daily and time period for providing clients the sample could be shortened. Number of surveys for members per month is also considered to remain the good experience of member as the correlative cycle between number of surveys and members' satisfaction.
Secondly, to avoid duplication in respondent, both similar and varied panels are recruited to adapt client's request. Clients are also received advice for appropriate sample, target online group, expectation result. Additionally, clients could get their best choice because W&S services are varied and consist of three levels from free supplied sample to screening survey and detailed survey.

4. If the sample source is a panel or database, is the panel or database used solely for market research? If not, please explain.

W&S online panels are used exclusively for market research. Email marketing or any advertising purpose is completely not concerned with our panel usage. This term is committed in our Privacy Policy and Member Registration Terms and Condition.

5. How do you source groups that may be hard-to-reach on the internet?

Members of different groups of ages, academic background, income and employments are recruited from various sources. Online recruitment through panel site, partner sites, social network portals, online newspapers is our priority. Additionally, W&S conduct traditional marketing to recruit some source groups that may be hard to reach on the internet. This can be either offline recruitment from the streets to universities, shopping centers, drug stores or other target methods. In order to keep the panels both growing in size and demographic deficiencies, specific campaigns are considered and operated promptly every month.

6. What are people told when they are recruited?

On Vinaresearch panel website, all members registered have understood and agreed with the market research panel membership through The Privacy Policy – Terms and Condition. These important conditions are:

• Members registered are used solely for market research.
• Register data will be stored for segmentation, market research and improve our service quality.
• Participation in surveys dependents on specific surveys.
• Surveys information is confidential and could not be announced to third parties.
• Virtual currency redeemable for cash such as point and phone card will be given as incentives.
• Members could leave the panel by request link in their account site.

Members are recruited voluntarily and their participation in the surveys is considered as great contribution to businesses decisions to make better products, improve services for citizens and help economic development. W&S provides a 24/7 detail support for panels and appreciates their ideas as our properties.

7. If the sample comes from a panel, what is your annual panel turnover, attrition, retention rate and how is it calculated?

Panels to take part in the surveys would be decided by the quality of information that they provided. In panel site (Vinaresearch) system, fraudulent information member would have "Bad" status, not active over 200 days member would be "inactive" and the voluntarily cancel their membership would be delete from our system. During 8 months from July to November of 2011, the attrition rate of our panels was approximately 6%. W&S definitely makes efforts to reduce this rate by various methods from effective and helpful support such as increasing numbers of open surveys and improving survey and website design as well as verifying the incentives as member's expectation.

8. Please describe the opt-in process.

More than double opt-in process is used in Vinaresearch system to ensure the validity of responses and minimize the spam members. Panellists fill out an online registration form with basic information and after finished, a confirmation email would be send to their email address to confirm their registration. This email required members to click on a link to the website to verify their accurate existence. Additionally, a form of detail information is required to be filled to complete the registration process.

9. Do you have a confirmation of identity procedure? Do you have procedures to detect fraudulent respondents at the time of registration with the panel? If so, please describe.

Confirmation of identity is carried on by various techniques include system and personnel control at W&S. In order to decrease multiple entries and fraudulent panellists, at first stage of process, registration information is automatically scanned by system.
Secondly, the detail information is manually scanned and censored the eligibility to become member of our panellists. Our professional team will censor for right place of living, existing mobile phone number and the logicalness in general information. If there is any suspicion, members will be directly contacted to be checked once again as The Terms and Condition mentioned.
Continuously, register information is being checked again by our member management system. There are different methods such as double check when the members exchange visualized points. Only real mobile phone number and proper history bonus allows members to receive incentives through prepaid mobile phone card. With payment method through banks using in campaign monthly, they need to show their ID before receiving money sent.
These multiple entries and fraudulent panellists will be eliminated and data would be cleaned so that they could not join in any surveys and affect the quality of responses.

10. What profile data is kept on panel members? For how many members is this data collected and how often is this data updated?

Panel site (Vinaresearch) archives personal information from panel members to ensure the target invitations sending and further diversification recruiting. The information in detail registers regarding the following:

• Personal demographics: age, gender, and marital status.
• Contact information: address, mobile phone number, and email.
• Occupation characteristics: employment status, occupation, work detail, and monthly income.
• Household demographics: number of children in the household, household employment, monthly household income, and household careers.
• Internet usage: time and frequency
• Assets ownership: vehicles, entertainment devices, and computers.

Regularly, panellists are requested to update their information through emails and introduction page before surveys. In some circumstances, the suspicion data member will be changed to status inactive and we would only change their status until the data have been accurately updated.

11. What is the size and/or the capacity of the panel, based on active panel members on a given date? Can you provide an overview of active panellists by type of source?

W&S panels are mainly recruited online through our panel site Vinaresearch. Over the first 8 months after establishment, consumer panel consists of over 50,000 active panellists. The size as well as the components of a panel increase daily with the members from Northern to Southern provinces of Vietnam. W&S panels consist of then wide range of age from 16 to over 50 years old and have employment characteristics varying in over 50 job categories.
In order to ensure the sample feasibility with researchers or manufacturers, W&S does statistic about the proper active panellists' quantity before each survey. Active panellists are the members who have enrolled in the panel by double opt-in registration and have login their account at least one in the last 200 days. Moreover, the active panellists are the members who also click on link in email invitations or register on member's own page to answer the survey and proper finish the survey. Client could also contact W&S at any working time to request the percent of project performing. W&S could immediately supply the percent of finish response and the remaining rate.

12. Please describe your sampling process including your exclusion procedures if applicable. Can samples be deployed as batches/replicates, by time zones, geography, etc.? If so, how is this controlled?

Firstly, based on the screening criteria, quotas and some specific request for the engagement or active performance of the members, appropriate sample is filtered. The sample is randomized and one member appears only single time for one survey. Then, Vinaresearch mailing out system distributes invitations to the panellists and Vinaresearch's team would control content of invitation email.
The ID as well as information of survey's attendances is stored and tracking studies could easily be performed as requirement. In addition, surveys could be re-conducted with other fresh sample through exclusion function of mailing out system. Our system teams enable us to improve the system continuously and therefore new procedure deployment could be well-performed.

13. Explain how people are invited to take part in a survey. What does a typical invitation look like?

There are two types of surveys leading to two types of invitation method. First type of survey is public survey which opens to every appropriate member. People are invited to take part in a survey by e-mail invitation with a unique survey URL to participate in a survey. In addition, members could see the announcement of new public survey as login into their member page. They are able to register to take part in the survey.
Second type of survey is nonpublic survey, which is designed only for clients. Invitations are sent through email and only the members who get the email could answer the survey. The email usually consists of the survey topic, time of performing, number of questions, time length of survey and incentives for finish survey. There are definitely some Terms and Privacy information of Survey information.

14. Please describe the nature of your incentive system(s). How does this vary by length of interview, respondent characteristics, or other factors you may consider?

W&S panel members receive incentives for their participation in surveys participation in the form of E-Point. Each survey with different time-length and number of question will receive the equivalent E-Point. 1 E-Point is symbolized as 100 VND and the member who accumulates over 500 E-Points could exchange for prepaid mobile cards. The E-Point could also be exchange for playing mobile games at our partner websites.
As recognized in our internal research, members would like to receive others kind of incentives, so we are making effort to diversification the prize as cash, gift vouchers, online vouchers and game cards. Moreover, further specific panels recruitment would be awarded with other suitable incentives.

15. How often are individual members contacted for online surveys within a given time period? Do you keep data on panellist participation history and are limits placed on the frequency that members are contacted and asked to participate in a survey?

The Vinaresearch panel system randomly sends invitations to members that have appropriate data for the survey. We do not limit the number of studies that one member could participate, but with the same topic survey or survey for similar industry client, members are filtered carefully and could only participate one survey for a 6 month period of time. If the client has request like tracking survey through a long-time period or insight survey, we are also able to de-duplicate or exclude members who have already participated in previous survey. Members are never used for any additional marketing or sales activities either.

16. Is there a privacy policy in place? If so, what does it state? Is the panel compliant with all regional, national and local laws with respect to privacy, data protection and children e.g. EU Safe Harbor, and COPPA in the US? What other research industry standards do you comply with e.g. ICC/ESOMAR International Code on Market and Social Research, CASRO guidelines etc.?

The Privacy Policy of W&S is available online at both panel and client sites. The URL for Vietnamese and English version is as following:

• Vietnamese: https://vinaresearch.net/public/news/index/secure-policy
• English: http://www.vinaresearch.jp/privacypolicy/index.html

This document can be accessed easily by every panel member as the section is placed above of our panel site and the link is also provided in every invitation mail and at the first page before survey entry. W&S is aware of the importance of personal information protection and sets this as one of our priority tasks. The Privacy Policy describes about personal information, the purpose of collecting, using and providing. The policy also informs about the usage of cookies, rights of adjusting or changing own personal information of the member and other elements compliance with the laws.

W&S panels are in compliance with ICC/ESOMAR International Code on Market and Social Research and definitely with the Law of Consumer Protection number 59/2010/QH12 as prescribed by Vietnam's legislations.

17. What data protection/security measures do you have in place?

W&S employs strict measures of data protection and security to ensure of respondent information's safety. Firstly, panellists' information is collected on a secured server and only the personnel appointed by superior would have account and encrypted password to access the admin site.
Secondly, responses toward surveys are evaluated anonymously and the data in CSV download just only consists of the numerical order of the member in panel site. Individual information is confidential and transformed into statistical data using only for market research purpose and member quality evaluation.
Thirdly, there is only one account per individual and the others could not access into the account to change personal information. This action required to be informed to our panel team and we would check the identity information before accepting information adjustment.
W&S is also aware of the confidential information of clients so that pannellists are highly warned before the surveys and the copy functions are disabled. Information publishing on personal portals or other websites is also illegal without permission of W&S and clients.

18. Do you apply a quality management system? Please describe it.

W&S controls quality in every level of works from member censoring to programming survey and processing data. In parallel, system and our personnel team support each other to perform a general quality management system. The main procedures are as following:

♦ Executable survey

Essential sample with specific demographic information needed for a survey would be checked carefully to ensure the feasibility. We understand that sample statistics stage is important for the whole project so we would like to do right from the beginning.

♦ Survey programming

Questionnaire's content and design are tested by operation team many team before publishing and sending invitations to our panellists. According to the request and demand from our clients, we recruit specialist in question type designing so that clients could get expected data result. Trap and logical questions are also integrated in every survey to guarantee the improving rate of valid respondents.

♦ Data processing

Data processing procedure contributes major part in our quality management system. Bad data like speedsters, nonsense response or conflict answer is removed and other data is encrypted so that clients could receive the most simple but meaningful data. Besides, we also vary the forms of data supply and report due to clients' demands.

19. Do you conduct online surveys with children and young people? If so, please describe the process for obtaining permission.

Member registered to be panellist has to be above 16 years old complying with the local standards. Currently, W&S have not experienced the survey that required the participant under 16 years old. In case this kind of survey happens, parental or guardian consent to participate is definitely conducted by W&S through email or direct contact.

20. Do you supplement your samples with samples from other providers? How do you select these partners? Is it your policy to notify a client in advance when using a third party provider? Do you de-duplicate the sample when using multiple sample providers?

W&S has proprietary managed panels in Vietnam territory, which are managed by Vinaresearch system, W&S panel site. We prioritize the use of these panels in carrying out both voluntarily surveys and clients' surveys in these markets. However, if there is any request of clients that beyond our capability, the using of outsourced providers could be taken into consider. W&S would attempt to corporate with the providers with similar standard level and definitely notify our clients in advance.

21. Do you have a policy regarding multi-panel membership? What efforts do you undertake to ensure that survey results are unbiased given that some individuals belong to multiple panels?

W&S do not have a policy to verify certainty of the multi-panel membership, particularly as we prioritize the use of our own panels. To prevent cross-panel participation, we choose the method to expand size of panel and even with similar projects; we could have enough members with similar demographic and other background to participate separately. W&S directly recruit the members and avoiding direct marketing list brokers, so the rate of panel being used by 3rd party panel suppliers could be minimized as well.

22. What are likely survey start rate, drop-out and participation rates in connection with a provided sample? How are these computed?

The likely response rate of W&S survey is above 16% of the recently survey on consumer demand. Response rate is calculated by the number of email invitations sent divided the number of completes and screened out of the interviews. This number is up to 90% with the present public survey on the member account site survey. This is due to the frequency of member checking email and the different time period between the survey and available time of the member.
W&S operation team attempts to increase this rate by verifying the promotion campaign as well as recruitment and enhance control. This method is aiming to expand the panel size and improve panel quality to increase participation and good sample rate.

23. Do you maintain individual level data such as recent participation history, date of entry, source, etc., on your panellists? Are you able to supply your client with a per job analysis of such individual level data?

Individual level data such as recent participation history, date of entry, number of surveys responses is kept in "Panelist bonus history". Due to these level data, we could control the quality of member and supply our clients the most appropriate sample.

24. Do you use data quality analysis and validation techniques to identify inattentive and fraudulent respondents? If yes, what techniques are used and at what point in the process are they applied?

With W&S, data quality analysis and validation techniques are definitely employed to help identify inattentive and fraudulent respondents. Depends on our quality rule, panellists that commit one of the followings could be changed status and limited for other surveys participation:

• Failure in trap demographic questions
• Failure in trap logical questions
• Short-time answer compared with the average
• Conflict answers
• All options choice or specific choice
• Nonsensical answers on Open- ended questions.

Due to the level of fraudulent, the "Bad" or "Medium" status for response evaluation will be checked and the member who receives 3 flagged "Bad" or 9 flagged "Medium" will be eliminated from our active panels.

25. Do you measure respondent satisfaction?

W&S conducts survey about satisfaction of members about panel site (Vinaresearch) services as well as survey design, free survey theme, content and incentives. Additionally, members are freely comments and contribute their ideas about numbers of survey, topic range, questionnaire content and other bad points of Vinaresearch. Due to Alexa ranking website, Vinaresearch website had increased over 2000 ranks within 2 months in Vietnam. As recording in our panel management system, there are average 5 members would introduce one friend to become member of Vinaresearch.

26. What information do you provide to debrief your client after the project has finished?

W&S provides clients a full information report about the project's fieldwork. This report includes the quantity of number invitations, response rate, screen-outs, period time of starting and ending and number of qualify response. After each conducted survey, we appreciate clients' feedback to improve our information supplement as well as upgrade our service to become the best online sample provider in Vietnam and global.