In market research online communities are being used to keep innovation and improvements to products and services closed to the needs of the customer. For this a short or longer term online community is established that is composed of individuals in the relevant target group(s). In these market research online communities, briefly referred to as MROCs, interactions, assessments, comments, ideas and contributions of the participants are collected on an interactive platform. Traditional forms of questions are mixed with diverse tasks, such as diary entries, discussions, forum contributions or photo and video uploads. The community is actively moderated, which fosters the motivation of the participants and gives the opportunity to flexibly address their contributions.

MROCS are particularly suitable for the co-creation in the development of products and services. Through the often longer-term creation of MROCs they can provide insights into customer satisfaction across different stations of the customer lifecycle.