It’s typically fairly easy to recruit for a study with a general user profile — research-recruitment services and platforms (like User Interviews, UserZoom, and Askable, just to name a few) provide quick access to millions of potential participants. Unfortunately, it’s often much harder to find high-income participants through these services.
This is due to a selection bias — those most likely to register with recruitment panels tend to be looking for some extra cash. People in higher tax brackets are often hard to find and unwilling to participate in a study. Specifically, these individuals tend to be:
- Difficult to contact
- Busy
- Not enticed by typical incentives
We recently needed to recruit wealthy participants for a study on luxury-brand websites. In the following sections, I’ll share the strategies that helped us recruit participants.
Difficult to Contact
It might be worthwhile to first approach a recruitment service to find study participants. Depending on the profile you’re looking for, certain recruitment platforms might be able to meet your need. For example, Respondent.io specializes in helping researchers find people in specific job roles, like executives and business owners. Even if a recruitment service can’t fully supply all the participants you need, it might be able to at least provide a few.
For our luxury-brand study, we found that recruiting through word of mouth was most effective. I started by asking coworkers, friends, and family if they knew anyone who regularly shopped for luxury goods and services. Each time I was given a contact, whether or not they agreed to participate, I asked that person if they knew someone else who might be interested.
I ended up with some very distant connections — for example, the wife of a friend’s fiancé’s college buddy and the employee of a coworker’s mother-in-law’s friend. These people didn’t know me personally (or know much about NN/g), so I wasn’t worried about any connection that could influence their behavior during the study.
After each session, I asked participants if they could think of anyone else who might want to participate in the study.
Wealthy people are often wary of being asked for money, so it’s important to ensure that potential participants don’t feel harassed or suspicious of your motivations. I found the following approaches to be helpful in avoiding that perception:
- Asking a contact (someone the potential participant already knew) to introduce me via email
- Mentioning that contact’s name in my recruitment email message; for example: Alissa thought you’d be a great fit for this study
- Clarifying that I was not interested in selling the potential participant anything: You will not be given any sales pitches or asked to purchase anything during or after the study session
Additionally, at no point during the recruitment process did I ask potential participants to share their net worth or income level. For other types of studies, it’s common and expected to ask potential participants to report their household income level, at least in a range (for example, $80,000 – $99,999). High-income participants may be offended or uncomfortable if you ask how much they make.
Instead of using income level as a recruitment criterion, think of another way to assess whether this person fits your study’s needs. (In most cases, this should be easy, since your study’s focus will likely be something else — such as a particular type of professional or some behavior specific to this demographic category.) For example, I asked potential participants to tell me which brands they typically shopped for, and I picked those who listed luxury brands. Alternatively, you might ask about profession instead of income. If you must ask about income, use wide ranges: for example, Under $200,000, $200,000–$499,999, Over $500,000.
Busy
Some high-income participants are paid well because they have difficult, demanding jobs that occupy much of their time. Others may have plenty of free time on their hands, but prefer to spend it on travel, relaxation, or charity work — not talking to researchers. In either case, the recruitment challenge is the same. These high-income participants are likely to be hesitant to give you any of their time.
For this reason, it’s extra important to make participation as easy and convenient as possible. Remote sessions are ideal — participants don’t have to deal with time spent traveling to and from a test location. They can join your session from the comfort of their own home. (This approach has the added benefit of reducing geographic limitations on your recruit and thus increasing the number of potential participants.)
Flexibility in scheduling is also key, and remote studies make this easier. For the luxury study, I offered dozens of different time slots over several weeks, including early mornings, evenings, and weekends. I also allowed for rescheduling whenever my participants needed it (one person needed to reschedule four times). When your participants are hard to reach, it’s best to work around their schedule, not yours.
Additionally, try to keep any demands on participants’ time to a minimum. I didn’t ask my luxury-study participants to fill out any long presession surveys and I gave them the option of signing the consent form during the session, not before.
Not Enticed by Typical Incentives
For this luxury study, I ran 75-minute remote moderated sessions. If I had been studying a low-to-mid-tier income consumer population, I probably could’ve offered US $75–125 as an incentive for this type of study. But to an investment banker living in New York City making high six figures per year, that amount may not look quite so attractive.
I offered $200 as an incentive for this luxury study — about twice as much as we might offer in similar studies with different user populations. However, I knew that even that may not be enough to convince some of my participants, so I gave them to option to receive that incentive in cash via Venmo or as a donation to the charity of their choice in their name. The donation option was very popular with my participants, particularly those with the highest incomes. That amount may not mean much to them, but they know it means a lot to others. For example, a Louis Vuitton shopper donated his incentive to a local LGBTQ center.
My high-income participants appreciated the opportunity to give back to the causes they cared about. If you choose to offer a donation option, ensure that you forward the donation-confirmation email to your participants, so they don’t have to wonder if the money was actually delivered.
Conclusion
High-income users can be tricky to recruit. Be aware of their concerns and constraints and make participation as convenient and enticing as possible.
