Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

I am not personally familiar with any of the three vendors you list. What you might want to do is ask someone in the market research business to spend an hour or two researching and asking questions, reviewing proposals, making suggestions, etc. and pay them for their time. It could be money well-spent.

If you need a few recommendations for knowledgeable consultants in this area, let me know. Use contact information in my profile.

I used to teach market research and strategy, but it's been awhile, and you need someone who is really current and involved in the industry up to their eyeballs.

Aside from the fact that all three are leaders in the technology side of the online MR industry, Vision Critical is the best equipped for building and managing custom panels, both from a technical point of view as well as a think-tank.

Confirmit has a great tool -- it has gone through many battles but it's lost its competitive advantage in recent years, which has always been based on its arsenal of technical features. They are good if you want to build surveys, not for running your panels.

GlobalPark is well-rounded but their technical capabilities are marketed better than reality might suggest relative to the other two. That is, they might "wing it" on more occasions than clients realize and they are essentially spread too thin among their services.

Vision Critical has its roots in building proprietary panels, far before it ever became popular to be in the business of it. So the tool itself was designed from top to bottom, rather than the other way around.