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

Specializing in providing online services for market research, W&S Limited Company, a subsidiary of W&S Group, aims to become one of the top online research provider in Southeast Asia.
W&S market research group is an expansion from Japanese online marketing and web creation. The Market Research founded in Vietnam in 2011.
Continuously, we sustain and improve our system and panel recruitment methods to ensure that clients could have access to the right people and at the right time. Members for market research purpose are recruited directly through dedicated panel site in local Vietnamese (www.vinaresearch.net) and have approach the quantity of over 130.000 within 2 years.
While our core business is providing online samples for researchers and manufactures, W&S also offers survey programming, data processing and provides reports. We believe with our local market research, new and existed business which start entry the new market or expands into it are going to get the best support to enhance business 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. We strategically develop our panels using search engine marketing, social networks, banners, co-registration, website, and text ads. We actively deployed both online and offline campaigns every certains periods.
Members who are 16 years old and above can voluntarily register directly 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 username, email address and mobile phone number. After system validation screening, our professional management team would double checking the accuracy by confirming through direct contact.
During survey taking, trap questions are integrated in each survey to minimize errors in the whole process and status of each member would be judged through their survey response quality based on Vinaresearch quality rule to determine their eligibility to continue the next survey or to continue their membership status.

♦ 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 and/or other appropriate 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 panelist with member support to answers questions 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. Members considered to become active member of panel after strict quality checking.

3. If you provide samples from more than one source: How are the different sample sources blended together to ensure validity? How can this be replicated over time to provide reliability? How do you deal with the possibility of duplication of respondents across sources?

Typically, W&S provides sample solely from our proprietary database. Should require in some circumstances, the using of multiple sample sources and outsourced providers could be taken into consideration to meet client needs. W&S would attempt to corporate with the providers with similar standard level with notification to clients in advance.
To avoid duplication in respondents among different sources, we would ask a series of preliminary questions (such as mobile number, email address…) for blended sample that ensures duplicates are not present in any online sample and to ensure the quality of the data. We can also apply IP address checking function to exclude samples within same IP in case client would like to have the most objective result for survey.

4. Are your sample source(s) used solely for market research? If not, what other purposes are they used for?

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 and Google Adwords is our priority.
Additionally, W&S could 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. If, on a particular project, you need to supplement your sample(s) with sample(s) from other providers, how do you select those partners? Is it your policy to notify a client in advance when using a third party provider?

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.

7. What steps do you take to achieve a representative sample of the target population?

Survey and mailing out system of Vinaresearch enable us to achieve a representative sample of target population.
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.

8. Do you employ a survey router?

We do not employ official survey routing systems. However, our survey system works partly as a router.
Vinaresearch divides survey into 2 main types: private and public survey. For private survey, only invitation receivers can only participate in the survey. For public survey, our survey system enable research team to set participation conditions based on attributes of geographic and demographic data of panellists. That means all respondents match setting conditions would see the survey opened in their own page and can participate if they want. Therefore, the system allocates willing respondents to surveys for which they are likely to qualify.

9. If you use a router: Please describe the allocation process within your router. How do you decide which surveys might be considered for a respondent? On what priority basis are respondents allocated to surveys?

10. If you use a router: What measures do you take to guard against, or mitigate, any bias arising from employing a router? How do you measure and report any bias?

11. If you use a router: Who in your company sets the parameters of the router? Is it a dedicated team or individual project managers?

12. What profiling data is held on respondents? How is it done? How does this differ across sample sources? How is it kept up-to-date? If no relevant profiling data is held, how are low incidence projects dealt with?

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: birthday, gender, and marital status.
• Contact information: address, mobile phone number, and email.
• Occupation characteristics: employment status, occupation, work detail, and monthly income.
• Internet usage: time and frequency
• Assets ownership: mobile phone, vehicles, entertainment devices, and computers

Regularly, panellists are requested to update their information through emails and introduction page before surveys. In some circumstances, members with incomplete data will have their status changed to inactive, until they complete their data profiles accurately. Voluntary surveys with various topics also being distributed regularly in Vinaresearch to collect more data from panelists.
In case no relevant profiling data is held, especially for low incidence projects, surve y would be divided into 2 steps. First step, we hold a premilinary survey to recruit target respondents and next, main survey is sent to those qualified for premilinary survey only.

13. Please describe your survey invitation process. What is the proposition that people are offered to take part in individual surveys? What information about the project itself is given in the process? Apart from direct invitations to specific surveys (or to a router), what other means of invitation to surveys are respondents exposed to? You should note that not all invitations to participate take the form of emails.

There are two types of surveys leading to two types of invitation method. All of this surveys can only be conducted to dedicated panels website. 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 incentives that respondents are offered for taking part in your surveys. How does this differ by sample source, by interview length, by respondent characteristics?

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.
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.
Regarding differrent awards allocated for surveys by interview length and respondent characteristics, our project manager will refer Vinaresearch price table with respectively time length and IR to revise the points accordingly for every project.

15. What information about a project do you need in order to give an accurate estimate of feasibility using your own resources?

When client asking the feasibility sample, following data is required:

• Study specification : To determine the propose of the study, find best methodology to be applied, and fieldwork timing.
• Target criteria / IR (Incidence Rate) W&S Sample Definition (Samples size W&S quota): To estimate the numbers of samples available and time of fieldwork.
• Length of Interview : To calculate drop-out rate and awards for respondents

16. Do you measure respondent satisfaction? Is this information made available to clients?

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. Currently one of five members are giving referrals to their friends to join Vinaresearch.

17. 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.

18. Who is responsible for data quality checks? If it is you, do you have in place procedures to reduce or eliminate undesired within survey behaviours, such as (a) random responding, (b) Illogical or inconsistent responding, (c) overuse of item non-response (e.g. "Don‟t Know") or (d) speeding (too rapid survey completion)? Please describe these procedures.

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:

♦ Survey feasibility checking

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 times 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. How often can the same individual be contacted to take part in a survey within a specified period whether they respond to the contact or not? How does this vary across your sample sources?

Regarding contact method for same individual to a survey within a specified period whether they respond or not, Vinaresearch uses two types of contact. Firstly, we send him /her invitation through email to ask the individual to take part in survey. In case invitation is not responded, direct contact method through phone will be employed.

20. How often can the same individual take part in a survey within a specified period? How does this vary across your sample sources? How do you manage this within categories and/or time periods?

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.

21. 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 "Panellist bonus history". Due to these level data, we could control the quality of member and supply our clients the most appropriate sample.

22. Do you have a confirmation of respondent identity procedure? Do you have procedures to detect fraudulent respondents? Please describe these procedures as they are implemented at sample source registration and/or at the point of entry to a survey or router. If you offer B2B samples what are the procedures there, if any?

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 in order to maintain the quality of responses.

23. Please describe the "opt-in for market research‟ processes for all your online sample sources.

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.

24. 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 English and Vietnamese version is as following:

• Vietnamese: https://vinaresearch.net/public/news/index/secure-policy
• English: http://vn.vinaresearch.jp/views/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 pr iority 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.
Vinaresearch Panel is 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.

25. Please describe the measures you take to ensure data protection and data security.

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.

26. What practices do you follow to decide whether online research should be used to present commercially sensitive client data or materials to survey respondents?

Each methodologies, either offline and online, cannot give total guarantee of the stimuli security. As the respondents who have received the information, might affect their behaviour and decision.
The approach we are doing is we are sending the invitation limited to specific chosen qualified samples, where they need to log in to a designated website, and they cannot either print screen, copy or return to previous questions. They also cannot answer the survey twice.
These respondents need to fill the confidentiality statements as well in the prior to the survey taking.

27. Are you certified to any specific quality system? If so, which one(s)?

W&S has not in the process to be certified for quality system of Market Research Standard yet.

28. Do you conduct online surveys with children and young people? If so, do you adhere to the standards that ESOMAR provides? What other rules or standards, for example COPPA in the United States, do you comply with?

Member registered to be panellist has to be 16 years old and above complying with the local standards. Currently, Vinaresearch has 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 Vinaresearch through email or direct contact.