In today’s data-driven world, businesses depend on consumer insights to guide product development, marketing, and growth strategies. Much of this relies heavily on self-reported survey data, yet Numerator’s research shows that nearly 70% of respondents misreport critical details such as purchase frequency, spend, and brand choice.
This “recall gap” undermines the accuracy of market research, leading to poor business decisions and misaligned strategies. The solution is clear: researchers must integrate verified buyer data to ensure that surveys deliver complete, accurate, and actionable results.
Numerator leveraged its Verified Voices panel to quantify this gap and its impact in our latest whitepaper, “Risky Recall: Why Verified Buyer Data is the New Research Imperative.” In this article, we’ll explore the fundamentals of strong survey development, as highlighted in the whitepaper.
Identifying High Quality Survey Panels
A survey panel is a group of individuals who have agreed to participate in ongoing surveys over time. For businesses and brands, survey panels provide valuable insights into customer behavior, brand perception, and market trends. Surveys should enable organizations to make more informed, evidence-based decisions that drive growth, strengthen customer relationships, and improve competitive advantage.
The panel is typically designed to reflect a broader population by carefully selecting members based on demographic, geographic, and behavioral characteristics. By using statistical weighting and sampling methods, the panel can be adjusted to align with the demographics of the general population, ensuring that the results are representative and reliable.
Numerator’s panel requires real-life receipts that are tagged and processed as being legitimate vs. duplicative, which inherently helps to prevent bots from being able to game the system. The verified nature of Numerator’s panel makes us a better option than survey firms that source their panels from all over the Internet, recruiting through web apps and/or recruiting professional survey takers. The benefits of Numerator Verified Voices surveys include faster access to feedback, higher data quality, and the ability to conduct longitudinal studies that reveal not just what consumers think, but how and why those opinions shift.
The Pitfalls of Traditional Survey Panels and Responses
One inherent problem with traditional survey panels is that they often depend on human memory. Think back to your last shopping trip: can you remember exactly what you bought, when you bought it, and how much you spent? You probably can’t, and that means survey respondents can’t either. Numerator data shows that the average respondent visits 15+ retailers monthly and purchases nearly 400 brands annually. With so much going on, recall is simply not dependable.
This knowledge gap leads to risks such as:
- Over-reporting or under-reporting: Many respondents misstate how often they purchase a product or how much they spend.
- False confidence: Studies show that even highly confident responses can be wrong, making it hard for researchers to identify inaccurate answers.
- Distorted insights: Entire strategies may be built on flawed assumptions about the target audience.
- Misleading consumer profiles: Claimed data can inflate the size and profile of a brand’s heavy consumers while providing a skewed profile.
Numerator tested the impact of recall gaps by comparing survey responses from thousands of our panelists to verified purchase data captured through receipts, loyalty transactions and online purchase records across 40 categories. The results were striking:
- 73% of consumers couldn’t recall when they last purchased a category.
- 70% misreported frequency of purchasing a category.
- 61% inaccurately reported spend per trip.
Only one-third of respondents could accurately recall information across all tested metrics, with trip-based metrics having a slightly higher accuracy rate than time-based metrics.
These errors aren’t minor; in fact, their effects ripple across research outcomes and highlight the risk of relying solely on self-reported survey data. Even with well-crafted survey questions and solid survey design best practices, self-reported answers alone cannot overcome the limits of memory. While many traditional survey research companies claim to provide ‘verified’ respondents, the term ‘verified’ can mean very different things. To ensure you’re getting accurate data, it’s critical to confirm with your supplier whether their definition involves verified buyers with confirmed purchase data, rather than a less rigorous standard.
Numerator’s research found that while 56% of respondents expressed high confidence in their answers, verified buyer data showed these recollections were no more accurate than those from less confident respondents.
That’s why the best survey questionnaires go beyond design. By incorporating verified buyer data, researchers gain accurate respondent profiles, higher response rates, flexibility, and reliable insights for hard-to-reach audiences.
How Verified Buyer Data Closes the Recall Gap
Verified buyer data is captured directly from receipts and transactions, ensuring that purchase-based insights reflect reality rather than recollection. Numerator’s survey panel collects data from over 600,000 U.S. households, pairing survey responses with actual purchase behavior, as well as more than 2,500 demographic, psychographic, and media consumption attributes that panelists elect to share with Numerator.
Key advantages include:
- Behaviorally representative samples — ensuring insights align with real-world consumer actions.
- Minimized recall bias — eliminating errors from faulty memory.
- Higher accuracy in targeting — identifying the right buyer segments with confidence.
- Greater research efficiency — verified buyer panels reduce the need for screeners and incidence costs.
The combination of verified purchase data and survey responses creates a holistic view of consumer behavior, where attitudes are enriched by real buying actions.
First and foremost, recall challenges are universal. No category is immune and suppliers relying on claimed purchase behavior are all vulnerable. In one example from our research, survey data showed that brands in the Laundry Cleaning Additives category should target Urban consumers given their survey responses. However, when purchasing behavior is validated by using verified buyers, it is clear that Suburban consumers should be prioritized.
The Future of Market Research Is Verified
The message is clear: relying on recall is risky. With nearly 70% of consumers misreporting key purchase details, survey research without verification is increasingly insufficient and dangerous to brands and retailers. Traditional survey panels come with major disadvantages ranging from inaccurate recall to misleading consumer profiles. Verified buyer data closes this recall gap, ensuring that every survey response is grounded in real behavior.
As expectations for high quality survey panels and survey samples continue to grow, verified buyer data is no longer optional. By shifting toward verified purchase behavior as the new research standard, brands can future-proof their insights and ensure smarter, more confident decision-making.
If you would like to better understand how verified buyer data can improve your survey results, connect with your Numerator account partner or reach out to our team directly.
