What is opportunity sampling?

If you’re a CX professional looking to gain insight into the voice of the customer, you’re probably researching the best sampling methods around.

Because of its convenience and simplicity, opportunity sampling has been a popular sampling method. You can gather opportunity samples from just about anywhere – food courts, supermarkets, shopping centres, airports, and more.

But is it the best option? In this article, find out whether you can still make opportunity sampling work for you, or whether it’s best to turn to other alternatives. We’ll explore the decline of the UK’s high street and how this might impact the way you collect data.

Opportunity sampling is known for its convenience. All you have to do is grab a willing participant from the street and ask them some questions. Also known as convenience sampling, it’s all about proximity to you as a researcher.

Still not clear? Let’s look at a few examples.

Imagine a researcher who sets up a stall inside a shopping centre, advertising a new product that a food company is selling. They’re providing small samples of the product for customers to try. They then ask them to rate the product, as well as whether they would consider buying it.

Or, perhaps, you’re outside a gym asking its customers how often they work out, for how long, and what their favourite kinds of exercise are.

Opportunity sampling may be a convenient option if you’re trying to find out what customers think. If you want data fast, opportunity sampling could be the right option. Let’s see some of the advantages and disadvantages of this sampling method:

If the following advantages are your priority, opportunity sampling could be the right choice:

This sampling method doesn’t work well for all types of research, particularly if it needs to be in-depth. Here are some disadvantages:

If you think opportunity sampling – and product sampling – is still a useful tool, it is essential to consider its relevancy in the age of e-Commerce. With more and more shoppers turning to online stores, opportunity sampling may be of value. 

As it happens, the UK can’t get enough of online shopping. Being some of Europe’s biggest online shoppers, the UK’s high street – where customers would have traditionally shopped for goods – is in decline. Cities like London have seen high street closures and smaller businesses are shutting shop to save money. Instead, they’re drawing customers to well-designed e-Commerce sites.

As opportunity sampling often involves gathering feedback from the high street’s customers, this could be becoming increasingly challenging. With customers less inclined to leave their houses to buy goods and services, sample sizes might not be quite as useful.

80% – or four in five – of British customers are online shoppers. By 2027, Statista also found that this number is likely to reach over 86%. This is a considerable number. It also means that fewer customers are finding what they need on the high street. UK shoppers spend more on online shopping compared to most of the world. They’re in the top 7 for global e-Commerce spending.

When deciding on your sampling approach, ask yourself: what am I trying to gain from opportunity sampling? Researchers using this sampling type are probably looking to gain voice of the customer insights. Fortunately, there are plenty of other ways to do this.

Quick tip: use surveys to grow. Surveys can provide profitable guidance before launching your e-Commerce site. Research which of your products your customers most want to buy online. Then, base your online offering around that.

When looking for the best alternatives – or additions – to opportunity sampling, consider whether you’re using probability sampling. This is also known as random sampling. It means selecting participants from a random group. One of the key benefits of doing so is that you are less likely to get a biased result.

You can sample randomly from specific regions, or different demographics that don’t overlap. Random sampling is usually based on probability theory – opportunity sampling isn’t.

With email surveys, you can find out what your customers are thinking and feeling. SurveyMonkey’s customer satisfaction survey template can help you discover what makes your customers happy. With this actionable feedback, you can make meaningful change that boosts their loyalty.

Our Net Promoter Score survey template helps you find more about your company’s performance over time, as well as who your promotors and detractors are. In other words: who is going to recommend you and who is going to bring your brand image down. 

Voice of the customer programmes need to be timely and efficient. With SurveyMonkey’s ready-to-use voice of the customer resources, you can: 

Choose SurveyMonkey for CX and put customer experience at the heart of your business. With our flexible platform, it’s easy to drive action across product, marketing and more.

Hint: Help your team to perform customer centric marketing. One: let customers be your marketers. Two: ensure your marketers provide internal transparency. Three: build a customer-centric marketing team from the ground up.

Did you know, you can conduct opportunity sampling online? It can be even more cost-effective than opportunity sampling in-person, plus you may be able to reach a wider consumer base. 

Your sample could be an online interest group, forum or social media networks. They could be groups that a researcher already knows and is affiliated with. Online communities provide a ‘living-room’ atmosphere where people can chat about shared interests together. Often, they’ll swap product recommendations or links to resources.

This means there’s one huge benefit to online community sampling – you get to make stronger bonds with online groups relevant to you. Since your product’s more relevant to them, they’re more likely to respond positively to your outreach.

However, online community opportunity sampling comes with all the downsides that traditional opportunity sampling has. You still get similar issues with proximity bias. So, it might be better to combine this with probability sampling methods too.

Finding out what the customer thinks is key. As we learned from a travel industry expert, customer feedback leads to innovative solutions.

Opportunity sampling is quick, efficient and helps you build a first impression of what people are thinking about your product. But it might not be a good solution on its own. Look at combining it with probability sampling methods and customer feedback surveys to gain deeper insights. With online shoppers moving away from the high street, why not take a step into online community sampling as well?