Ramius Releases Recollective Baseline Online Community Surveying Tool

Ramius, developer of cloud­-based social software for engagement and research, has launched Recollective Baseline, a free Web-based service that allows anyone to conduct qualitative research studies within private online communities.

Recollective Baseline provides businesses with a way to gain a better understanding of their customers, allows marketers to test ad concepts, and provides entrepreneurs with a way to seek feedback on ideas. On the platform, which is optimized for mobile phones and tablets, groups of people can be engaged anywhere and asked open-­ended questions to which they can respond in text, images, videos, files, and other rich media.

Recollective Baseline is a simplified consumer­ targeted version of Ramius’ Recollective Professional, an online community -based research platform used by marketing research agencies and brands to elicit insights and feedback. 

"This launch taps into the popularity of the collaborative economy and allows brands and individuals to gain real insights from any of their existing networks, including social networks. Business can engage and learn from the people that matter most to grow more effectively," said Alfred Jay, CEO of Ramius, in a statement. "Recollective Baseline is a game-­changer for small and medium-sized businesses and how they gain insights to make better decisions. It's a platform for engaging and understanding their customers better than ever before."

At the heart of qualitative research is the idea of engaging groups of people in conversations as a means of learning their motivations and behaviors. In most small and midsized businesses, this is usually done informally and, in the research community, through focus groups. Recollective structures this process and essentially brings the focus group online in an online community, providing users the tools needed to understand why and how their audiences think and act as they do.

"Recollective Baseline could well be the SurveyMonkey of qualitative research tools. Recollective was already an innovative platform. This new consumer offering is absolutely disruptive," said Leonard Murphy, chief editor and principal consultant at marketing research industry publication Greenbook.

Recollective Baseline is a simplified version of Ramius' enterprise insights platform, Recollective Professional, which was launched in late 2011.

Ramius has developed online community systems and social networking platforms for millions of consumers and hundreds of enterprises, including SAP, NASA, Honeywell, Kaiser Permanente, Ciena, Sony, Nikon, Dreamworks, and the World Bank.

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