1. What experience does your company have in providing online samples for market research? How long have you been providing this service? Do you also provide similar services for other uses such as direct marketing? If so, what proportion of your work is for market research?

GMO Research & AI has 22+ years of experience in providing online sample for market research. GMO Research & AI has its presence in 16+ countries with 65+ million panelists. We are the number 1 sample provider in Japan and have good presence in the APAC region with over 25M+ consumers' voices collected annually. We actively connect people across the APAC region through cost-effective, user-friendly online surveys. We are engaging people around the world to create a connection between their voices and the goodwill of companies, driving better innovation.

2. Do you have staff with responsibility for developing and monitoring the performance of the sampling algorithms and related automated functions who also have knowledge and experience in this area? What sort of training in sampling techniques do you provide to your frontline staff?

GMO Research & AI's tech team monitors both the response speed of each participant and the accuracy of the results' feasibility. Also, delivery and collection controls are system-controlled and automated, providing homogeneous sampling quality that eliminates human-dependent knowledge and experience.

3. What other services do you offer? Do you cover sample-only, or do you offer a broad range of data collection and analysis services?

In addition to online sample, GMO Research & AI offers market research services on the Market Observer platform, including questionaire design & programming, data processing, reports, online recruiting and hosting. Our services can be accessed on a DIY basis, full service or via a combination. We also provide data analysis services combined with a variety of data (Engagement Lab). Descriptions of GMO Research & AI offerings can be found on our compnay website or by contacting our sales team.

4. Using the broad classifications above, from what sources of online sample do you derive participants?

GMO Research & AI has successfully met the diverse research needs of our clients by leveraging GMO Internet Group's extensive experience in reaching general consumers and building proprietary panels, such as infoQ and Z.com Research. Through targetted advertising accross our group's media, we have expanded our reach to multiple countries. The majority of our respondents come from our proprietary panel, and currently, the Asia Cloud Panel includes over 65+ million members. Additionally, by adopting a panel mix approach, we ensure unbiased sampling by avoiding reliance on a single source.

5. Which of these sources are proprietary or exclusive and what is the percent share of each in the total sample provided to a buyer? (Assume proprietary to mean that the sample provider owns the asset. Assume exclusive to mean that the sample provider has an exclusive agreement to manage/provide access to sample originally collected by another entity.)

GMO Research & AI has a proprietary panel of over 65+ million consumers. While the majority of our total completes come from our propritary sources, this may vary depending on the specific project and target audience. In such cases, we collaborate with partner sample providers to meet project needs on a case-by-case basis.

6. What recruitment channels are you using for each of the sources you have described? Is the recruitment process’ open to all’ or by invitation only? Are you using probabilistic methods?
Are you using affiliate networks and referral programs and in what proportions? How does your use of these channels vary by geography?

For our proprietary panels, residents of the countries we operate in are eligible to participate by registering. We leverage both affiliate and referral programs as key recruitment channels, with "natural search inflow" and "refer-a-friend" contributing to over half of our registered user base.

7. What form of validation do you use in recruitment to ensure that participants are real, unique, and are who they say they are?
Describe this both in terms of the practical steps you take within your own organisation and the technologies you are using. Please try to be as specific and quantify as much as you can.

Some of our own panels require SMS or phone number verification by cell phone for membership registration. Registered members are checked periodically, and if they are found to be fraudulent, their membership rights are revoked. We also perform regular quality check surveys to ensure that surveys are not sent to members who respond inappropriately.

8. What brand (domain) and/or app are you using with proprietary sources? Summarise, by source, the proportion of sample accessing surveys by mobile app, email or other specified means.

We currently provide applications in Singapore and India, tailored to deliver a user-friendly experience for smartphone users. The proportion of smartphone users engaging with our services differs by country. In Japan and Vietnam, our services are offered under the infoQ brand, with smartphone access rates of 60.1% and 72.3%, respectively. In contrast, in Singapore and India, we operate under the Z.com Research brand, with smartphone access rates of 76.0% and 73.9%, respectively.
*Note: proportions vary by target audience/project type.

9. Which model(s) do you offer to deliver sample?
Managed service, self-serve, or API integration?

The GMO Research & AI platform provides clients with all three service options. In a self-serve model, clients can access the GMO Research & AI platform to specify their target audience and manage the necessary steps independently. In a managed service model, sample providers handle these tasks. Additionally, API integrations can automate certain aspects of the process.

10. If offering intercepts, or providing access to more than one source, what level of transparency do you offer over the composition of your sample (sample sources, sample providers included in the blend). Do you let buyers control which sources of sample to include in their projects, and if so how? Do you have any integration mechanisms with third-party sources offered?

The samples we provide through our Cloud Panel are consolidated into a single panel, ensuring no duplication on our end. When utilizing other third-party sources, the client can be identified. Integration with third-party sources is achieved through the use of cookies, which are placed on the survey cover screen when the survey is completed.

11. Of the sample sources you have available, how would you describe the suitability of each for different research applications? For example, Is there sample suitable for product testing or other recruit/recall situations where the buyer may need to go back again to the same sample? Is the sample suitable for shorter or longer questionnaires? For mobile-only or desktop-only questionnaires? Is it suitable to recruit for communities? For online focus groups?

GMO Research & AI supports all the scenarios mentioned above. We manage our 65+ million members in Asia using unique IDs, enabling us to directly target and distribute surveys to them. This approach allows us to efficiently conduct multiple surveys with the same members.

12. Briefly describe your overall process from invitation to survey completion. What steps do you take to achieve a sample that “looks like” the target population? What demographic quota controls, if any, do you recommend?

People may respond to a general email invitation inviting them to take part in an unspecified survey or they may choose to visit their panel portal and enter the survey from there. We randomly distribute questionnaires in quotas according to the client's requirements.Once they click to begin their session, the system identifies which surveys can be accessed by them depending what we know about them already from their profile. Quotas are always discussed before fielding. GMO Research & AI's operation team is trained in understanding how to manage quotas efficiently. Regular profiling surveys are also conducted to target demographics such as B-to-B, lifestyle, and automotive.

13. What profiling information do you hold on at least 80% of your panel members plus any intercepts known to you through prior contact? How does this differ by the sources you offer? How often is each of those data points updated? Can you supply these data points as appends to the data set? Do you collect this profiling information directly or is it supplied by a third party?

The data we maintain is primarily based on three attributes: age, gender, and area of residence. Additional data is collected through regular attribute acquisition surveys. These attributes can also be utilized for survey targeting and can be appended to survey responses for delivery.

14. What information do you need about a project in order to provide an estimate of feasibility? What, if anything, do you do to give upper or lower boundaries around these estimates?

For the most precise feasibility assessments, we need all relevant information that could affect sample selection or field timing. The minimum details required for an estimate include:
- Sample size
- Number of completes needed
- Time available for fielding
- Basic attributes (age, gender, region)
- Detailed attributes (such as product usage)
- Device compatibility: whether the survey is accessible to both mobile and PC participants
- Some factors, like interview length, may have less influence compared to others, such as the incidence rate.

15. What do you do if the project proves impossible for you to complete in field? Do you inform the sample buyer as to who you would use to complete the project? In such circumstances, how do you maintain and certify third party sources/sub-contractors?

If a project cannot be completed using our Cloud Panel, we will seek permission from our client to engage a third-party partner. We will select a partner that has been pre-approved to ensure compatibility with our system and adherence to our quality standards.

16. Do you employ a survey router or any yield management techniques? If yes, please describe how you go about allocating participants to surveys. How are potential participants asked to participate in a study? Please specify how this is done for each of the sources you offer.

GMO Research & AI uses a router system to match respondents with the most suitable surveys. When a respondent enters a survey, they are placed in the best-fitting survey based on their profile. Regardless of the outcome of the first survey, respondents are given additional opportunities to participate in other surveys by reassessing their eligibility for open projects through the router.

17. Do you set limits on the amount of time a participant can be in the router before they qualify for a survey?

Although there is no predetermined time limit, the average time respondents spend in our router pre-screening is relatively brief. We continuously monitor this duration and can make adjustments as needed.

18. What information about a project is given to potential participants before they choose whether to take the survey or not? How does this differ by the sources you offer?

All proprietary panelists are shown the generic survey names, number of questions, and the number of points to be earned. If any special notes are required, those will be clearly indicated on the cover page of the survey.

19. Do you allow participants to choose a survey from a selection of available surveys? If so, what are they told about each survey that helps them to make that choice?

All proprietary panelists are shown the generic survey names, number of questions, and the number of points to be earned.

20. What ability do you have to increase (or decrease) incentives being offered to potential participants (or sub-groups of participants) during the course of a survey? If so, can this be flagged at the participant level in the dataset?

By default we do not increase/decrease the incentives, whilst this is possible upon request, perhaps we should alude to that, while maintaining that generally we do not generally change the standard reward settings.

21. Do you measure participant satisfaction at the individual project level? If so, can you provide normative data for similar projects (by length, by type, by subject, by target group)?

For certain panels, we evaluate respondent's satisfaction with each questionnaire, allowing participants to view their scores in advance. Additionally, we conduct monthly satisfaction surveys to gauge respondent's overall satisfaction levels using our own proprietary panels.

22. Do you provide a debrief report about a project after it has completed? If yes, can you provide an example?

We typically do not provide a debrief report for every project across all studies. However, we can share survey or sample information upon request for specific projects.

23. How often can the same individual participate in a survey?
How does this vary across your sample sources?
What is the mean and maximum amount of time a person may have already been taking surveys before they entered this survey? How do you manage this?

GMO Research & AI does not set a specific limit on how often an individual can participate in surveys. However, we regulate the number of surveys a participant can complete in a single session to prevent survey fatigue. The maximum time a participant spends on surveys before entering a new one varies based on individual engagement and survey availability. We manage this by monitoring participation patterns and implementing controls to ensure high-quality responses and a balanced survey-taking experience across our sample sources.

24. What data do you maintain on individual participants such as recent participation history, date(s) of entry, source/channel, etc.? Are you able to supply buyers with a project analysis of such individual level data? Are you able to append such data points to your participant records?

Registration data includes details like the time and date of survey responses as well as the last response date. This information is used for internal panel management and is typically not shared with customers.

25. Please describe your procedures for confirmation of participant identity at the project level. Please describe these procedures as they are implemented at the point of entry to a survey or router.

Each panelist is provided with a unique survey URL to access the survey. Furthermore, to prevent the same panelists from being used more than once, a mechanism has been implemented to eliminate duplicate samples by checking the cookie information of the panel accessed in all projects.

26. How do you manage source consistency and blend at the project level? With regard to trackers, how do you ensure that the nature and composition of sample sources remain the same over time? Do you have reports on blends and sources that can be provided to buyers? Can source be appended to the participant data records?

In order to avoid inconsistencies and bias in the sample source, we include collaboration with partner panels from various industries, such as loyalty programs, e-commerce, and digital wallets, in addition to research panels. We maintain appropriate active rates and feasibility by conducting regular voluntary surveys and quality surveys. The data source is also managed appropriately, so it is possible to extract the necessary information.

27. Please describe your participant/member quality tracking, along with any health metrics you maintain on members/participants, and how those metrics are used to invite, track, quarantine, and block people from entering the platform, router, or a survey. What processes do you have in place to compare profiled and known data to in-survey responses?

To ensure the accuracy and integrity of in-survey responses, we have implemented several rigorous processes. Each panelist is assigned a unique panelist ID and provided with a unique survey URL to access the survey, ensuring precise tracking and minimizing the risk of duplicate entries. Regular quality checks are conducted throughout the survey process to verify the consistency of responses against known profiled data. We also perform ghost complete checks to identify and remove any fraudulent or invalid submissions. A short Length of Interview (LOI) check is in place to detect and filter out responses that may have been completed too quickly to be genuine. For our proprietary panel, we further enhance data quality by verifying email and mobile numbers, ensuring that the participants are legitimate and engaged respondents. These measures collectively maintain high data quality and reliability for our projects.

28. For work where you program, host, and deliver the survey data, what processes do you have in place to reduce or eliminate undesired in-survey behaviours, such as (a) random responding, (b) Illogical or inconsistent responding, (c) overuse of item non-response (e.g.,“ Don’t Know”) (d) inaccurate or inconsistent responding, (e) incomplete responding, or (f) too rapid survey completion?

To assure the best quality we have several procedures to check the quality on our end. However, we still recommend implementing additional checks on clients end during the survey. This could be straight-lining tests or red herring questions. If this is the case we also highly appreciate to get some feedback about these terminates in case they are related to quality reasons. These test questions are checking inconsistency and the quality of free texts, i.e., Is the text answer matching the question? Is the text answer too short? Is the text answer matching the panelists region? Panelist with very low internal quality score will be banned for future participation.

29. Please provide the link to your participant privacy notice (sometimes referred to as a privacy policy) as well as a summary of the key concepts it addresses. (Note: If your company uses different privacy notices for different products or services, please provide an example relevant to the products or services covered in your response to this question).

GMO Research & AI clearly states on how the personal information is handled and by which company.

The Privacy Policy can be found here:
https://gmo-research.ai/en/privacy

30. How do you comply with key data protection laws and regulations that apply in the various jurisdictions in which you operate? How do you address requirements regarding consent or other legal bases for the processing personal data?
How do you address requirements for data breach response, cross-border transfer, and data retention? Have you appointed a data protection officer?

We have dedicated resources, both internally and externally, to help us meet our personal data protection responsibilities and comply with legal requirements. We have an incident response program in place, supported by a designated team to handle any cases of unauthorized access or data breaches. A Data Protection Officer has also been appointed to ensure that we adhere to all relevant regulations.

31. How can participants provide, manage and revise consent for the processing of their personal data? What support channels do you provide for participants?
In your response, please address the sample sources you wholly own, as well as those owned by other parties to whom you provide access.

When personal data is handled in a questionnaire, we disclose the information of the company handling the data and state the contact information. We ask only those members who agree to respond to the questionnaire. For inquiries regarding personal information, we have prepared an inquiry form for our own member organizations and exchange contact information with our management partners to ensure a smooth response.

32. How do you track and comply with other applicable laws and regulations, such as those that might impact the incentives paid to participants?

We have dedicated legal teams, comprising both internal and external experts, who are responsible for monitoring and ensuring compliance with all laws and regulations applicable to our business operations.

33. What is your approach to collecting and processing the personal data of children and young people? Do you adhere to standards and guidelines provided by ESOMAR or GRBN member associations? How do you comply with applicable data protection laws and regulations?

GMO Research & AI does not directly send surveys to individuals classified as children according to the legal age group in each country. We strictly follow the standards and guidelines set by ESOMAR and GDPR member associations. Additionally, we have dedicated legal teams, both internal and external, responsible for ensuring compliance with all relevant laws and regulations applicable to our operations.

34. Do you implement “data protection by design” (sometimes referred to as “privacy by design”) in your systems and processes? If so, please describe how.

We have implemented comprehensive systems to ensure that data protection and privacy by design are integral to our product development lifecycle. This ensures that the collection and use of personal data are thoroughly evaluated and comply with privacy regulations across all the services and products we provide.

35. What are the key elements of your information security compliance program? Please specify the framework(s) or auditing procedure(s) you comply with or certify to. Does your program include an asset-based risk assessment and internal audit process?

Our information security compliance program is aligned with the ISO 27001 framework under the Information Security Management System (ISMS) certification, which includes asset-based risk assessment, access control, incident response, and regular internal audits. We also comply with the Privacy Mark certification, focusing on personal information protection, risk management, internal audits and incident management. Both frameworks ensure a comprehensive, systematic approach to managing sensitive information, with continuous improvement and compliance processes in place to meet both domestic and international security standards.

36. Do you certify to or comply with a quality framework such as ISO 20252?

We comply with the industry management system standard requirements, including certifying to the Privacy Mark, which is recognized for personal information protection in Japan. Moreover, to support our accelerated global expansion, we also certified to ISMS (Information Security Management System) certification in 2020. Currently, we operate in compliance with both frameworks, supplemented by our internal audit processes.

37. Which of the following are you able to provide to buyers, in aggregate and by country and source? Please include a link or attach a file of a sample report for each of the metrics you use.
 

01. Average qualifying or completion rate, trended by month

02. Percent of paid completes rejected per month/project, trended by month

03. Percent of members/accounts removed/quarantined, trended by month

04. Percent of paid completes from 0-3 months tenure, trended by month

05. Percent of paid completes from smartphones, trended by month

06. Percent of paid completes from owned/branded member relationships versus intercept participants, trended by month

07. Average number of dispositions (survey attempts, screenouts, and completes) per member, trended by month (potentially by cohort)

08. Average number of paid completes per member, trended by month (potentially by cohort)

09. Active unique participants in the last 30 days

10. Active unique 18-24 male participants in the last 30 days

11. Maximum feasibility in a specific country with nat rep quotas, seven days in field, 100% incidence, 10-minute interview

12. Percent of quotas that reached full quota at time of delivery, trended by month