L&E is a marketing research field service
that was founded in 1984. Today it is the
largest field service in Eastern North Carolina, and possibly the whole state.
Its specialty is focus group research--a type of qualitative research that allows industry to talk to small groups of consumers to measure their opinions.

In the past year, over 800 focus groups were conducted by
L&E Research. Headquartered in Southwest Raleigh, near Crabtree Valley Mall, (click here for a map to our location) we are active members of our community and are members of numerous organizations that are community based (Better Business Bureau, Greater Raleigh Chamber or Commerce) and industry based (Marketing Research Association, American Marketing Association) to ensure we are connected to you, our participants, and the industry we serve.

L&E has four rooms specially designed for focus group research. All of our rooms have videoconferencing capabilities that allow focus groups to be telecast worldwide. In fact, L&E Research has already "beamed" focus groups to England, Denmark, and all over the United States. Over the years L&E Research has completed projects for some of the largest, most prestigious companies in the world. Please check out our current projects.

 


Focus group research is a popular form of qualitative market research used by manufacturers, service providers, political parties, ad agencies, charitable organizations, attorneys, and most other industries to gather consumer input on wide varieties of projects.

In all instances, these industries use this information to help them provide better products and services to the consuming public.

Focus groups usually consist of 8-12 people who are pre-screened to a set of specifications given to L&E Research by the company who is conducting the research. These screens usually consist of age, income, and gender specifications, and screens the product or service that the researcher is seeking consumer's advice.

The focus group session is most often held at the office of L&E Research and usually lasts between 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours. Participants are always paid for their time and opinions, typically $65 for 2 hours of time but many times more than this. At no time will anyone attempt to sell you anything, nor is anyone's name placed on any list. This is pure market research.

If you are interested in joining the over 30,000 Triangle area residents already in our database and interested in getting paid for your opinions, click here to sign up. If you have additional questions about focus groups or L&E Research, visit our FAQ page.

When Fortune 1000 companies and their consultants hire L&E Research, it is because L&E Research is the leading qualitative research firm in Eastern NC, paying nearly 10,000 people every year for their opinions. L&E Research finds the people that our clients want to speak with, so they get the best information to help them make better products and services. What clients are looking for varies from study to study; we never know whom the next client will want to speak with, and most of the time we cannot determine who that exact person is by just looking in our database. We know a good bit of the information, but not all of it. For example, an automobile manufacturer may want to do research among people of a certain age and income who own a specific car that they purchased at a certain location. We know your age and your household income range, but we don’t know anything about the car that you own. Sometimes our clients ask us to find Triangle area citizens that meet up to 20 different data profiles, and we cannot get all of this information from you when you register in our database. In order to that, we would have to ask you thousands of questions (with some of the data changing as soon as the next day)!

So, we look in our database to narrow down who might qualify for a particular study and then either call those database members to ask them more questions, or email them to narrow down our identification process even more. You must always speak to a Recruiter on the telephone before being invited to one of our studies. If you meet the profile that our client is looking for, we will tell you the date and time of the study, how much you will be paid, and any other important details. You will then be sent a confirmation letter via email along with a map to our facility. If you don’t receive your confirmation email, do not hesitate to call the Recruiter who contacted you. They will always give you their phone number (or you can contact the main office if you cannot reach the person who recruited you for the study, which is 782-3860). If you do not meet the profile when the Recruiter calls you, do not be discouraged. It has nothing to do with you and is not a personal slight; our clients were just looking for someone different. Rest assured another client will come along that will be looking for someone just like you. After all, our clients spoke with over 10,000 people via L&E Research last year alone!

Once recruited to a study, you will be invited to our offices or other location where the study will be conducted. A person known as a Moderator, who is our client, will ask you some questions and will expect your candid opinions. The sessions typically last 90-120 minutes and at the end of them, you will be paid CASH for your time. When you are recruited by an L&E Research Recruiter, you can always expect to be told when the study is, where it will be held, how long it will last and how much you will be paid. Once you participate, you will probably have to wait a little while to participate again, since our clients want to speak to a diverse and new mix of people with fresh ideas. If you enjoyed yourself in the study, we hope you will tell others so they can sign up and begin enjoying the wonderful world of paid market research too!

Short and simple, L&E Research will:

1. ALWAYS PAY YOU. Your opinions are valuable, and we value them.

2. NEVER SELL TO YOU. We will never try to sell you anything, or allow anyone else to try and sell you something as part of our research studies.

3. NEVER ASK FOR FINANCIAL INFORMATION, such as Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, or other numbers that would put you at risk financially.

4. PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION. At all times...all of our staff that have access to your profiles sign non-compete and confidentiality agreements and no one is authorized to access our entire database without the written authorization of the President of L&E Research. Your profile and the profiles of other Triangle area citizens is our intellectual property, it is why our clients do business with us. We will never jeopardize that; doing so would jeopardize our business.

5. TREAT YOU AS A CLIENT. You are our client as much as the Fortune 1000 companies and Triangle area organizations that hire us. We need BOTH of you to make our business work; L&E Research's success is in putting our Fortune 1000 clients together with our database members. When you both win, we win.

6. PROVIDE YOU MORE AND MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO GREAT THINGS. We are working to not only provide you opportunities to influence the next generation of products and services coming out on the market, but to provide you access to other benefits that you might want, all while protecting your information, your identity, your privacy. Soon, we will be introducing opportunities for you to get paid for your opinions at home, to have benefits offered by local companies to you without them having your contact information, to participate in medical research studies, all as a result of being a member of L&E Research's database.

7. SEND YOU AN OCCASIONAL UPDATE ON WHAT IS GOING ON AT L&E. Two or three times a year, we will send you an email letting you know what has been going on at L&E Research, such as some of the impacts the research conducted among you, our members, is having. We will also let you know if we add new questions to the member profile so we can match you up with more studies, and we'll let you know of other opportunities we've opened up to our database members to enjoy with local businesses or other opportunities we think you might be interested in. We assure you that we will not bombard you with spam, these emails will only happen 2-3 times a year. The only other emails you may receive from us are specific to studies for which you may be qualified.