'Hidden' opportunities and benefits in using web-based business-to-business surveys

The use of surveys continues to be an important technique in business-to-business (B2B) market research, and internet or web-based surveys are fast becoming desirable alternatives to traditional survey methods. Web-based surveys have several technological and methodological advantages to help improve both internal survey and external validity. This paper presents the results of a web-based survey conducted in a typical B2B research setting to evaluate the 'hidden' opportunities and benefits of web-based surveys. We demonstrate that using a web-based approach has considerable potential for examining ex post the quality of collected data and for retrieving findings to improve future surveys. © 2005 The Market Research Society.