"Dr. Gallup knows the thoughts of millions of people he does not know. This is how a French newspaper evoked in 1939 the extraordinary power of a new scientific method, which had appeared a few years earlier in the United States and was made famous by George Gallup during the American presidential election of 1936: the opinion poll. Mathematics proves it: it is enough to question a "representative" sample of a few hundred or thousands of people to know with precision the thoughts of millions of others. Nearly a century later, this scientific discovery is still perfectly relevant and new polls are conducted daily in the fields of politics, health, research or marketing.
Since the first face-to-face surveys, the various technological revolutions of the telephone and then the internet have transformed the way
opinions are gathered. The last two decades have been marked by the emergence of mobile technology and the exceptional growth of social media. Unsurprisingly, surveys are now also conducted via mobile-adapted questionnaires, distributed automatically through social media. Thus, 4.6 billion social media users worldwide are now almost instantly accessible, ready to share their opinions on topics relevant to them. For brands, this is a tremendous opportunity in their quest to be ever more agile and "consumer-centric," by adapting optimally to consumer expectations...
