August 07, 2008 - Survey Sampling International (SSI) announces a significant expansion of its business-to-business (B2B) online research communities, particularly in North America. Through SSI, marketing researchers now have access to more than 3.6 million profiled business and IT professionals to support their B2B sampling needs. Nearly 3 million of the respondents are in North America, while more than 300,000 each are offered in Europe and Asia.

More than 1,800 clients worldwide rely on SSI for industry-leading sampling expertise and client support for online consumer sampling (since 2000) and telephone sampling (since 1977). The announcement is significant because it enables them to work with one preferred provider to complete their B2B sampling projects.

The growth of SSI Business Communities comes from several sources. The company has dramatically expanded its recruitment and profiling of business professionals in recent months under its SurveySpot (primarily in North America) and OpinionWorld (primarily Europe and Asia) brands. In addition to this organic growth, SSI builds research panels for major publishers and Web communities. SSI affiliates benefit from new revenue and enhanced customer loyalty; SSI clients gain access to the opinions and insights of an often untapped reservoir of respondents. Finally, SSI has established a network of certified and preferred partners across the globe to extend it’s reach. These partner relationships and commitments have also grown significantly in recent months.

SSI’s commitment to providing a positive respondent experience has contributed to the expansion of SSI Business Communities. Business people are often pressed for time and reluctant to take surveys. Because of the work of SSI’s Respondent Experience (REx) team, respondents can enjoy a more positive survey taking experience. This includes more respectful and relevant communications, appropriate rewards, and surveys that have been refined in terms of culture, language, logic, and length. This process helps business and IT professionals to view survey invitations from SSI as coming from a more trusted source.

"It is essential for marketers to understand the needs and wants of decision makers at large and growing companies. However, gaining their participation can be a challenge. By focusing so much attention on creating a positive respondent experience, as we do, as well as establishing a multi-sourcing strategy to engage targeted respondents, SSI has been able to offer many more B2B respondents who are more committed to the research process,” said Jim Follett, CEO. "And when people are more engaged, research quality is better too.”

SSI is also unique among major sampling providers in that it manages both Internet and telephone sampling solutions worldwide, offering researchers a choice of sampling methodologies to meet diverse project objectives. Interest in multi-mode sampling is growing, which includes recruiting people by telephone for online studies or completing a portion of the study by phone. This is often essential for reaching C-level executives.

To meet the growing client demand for B2B sampling, SSI will continue to expand its B2B communities, particularly in Europe and Asia-Pacific. Respondents are presently available in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Respondents can be selected by any number of criteria including job function, employee size, sales volume, industry classification, geographic area, and more.

About Survey Sampling International
Survey Sampling International is the premier global provider of sampling solutions for survey research. SSI offers access to consumer and business-to-business respondents via Internet, telephone, and mobile. Additional services include survey programming and hosting, data processing, and sampling consultation. SSI serves more than 1,800 marketing research clients, including nearly three-quarters of the top researchers worldwide.

SSI provides access to 6 million research respondents in more than 70 countries via proprietary communities and managed affiliate relationships. Founded in 1977, SSI has an international staff of 350 people representing 50 countries and 36 languages. The company is based in Fairfield, CT with additional offices in London, Paris, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Madrid, Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, and La Quinta, CA. SSI has additional representatives in Guangzhou and Kuala Lumpur. For more information, visit www.surveysampling.com.