To assure complete accuracy and fairness in selecting the winners for the Life Science Industry Awards, The Scientist selected BioInformatics, LLC, an unbiased third-party research firm, to collect the votes and tally the results.
The Life Science Industry Awards are unique as they allow the scientists to determine the winners. BioInformatics designed and fielded a 34-question electronic survey to registered members of The Science Advisory Board—the world’s largest market research panel of scientific customers—as well as readers of The Scientist magazine. These respondents, using their experience as product users, voted for their favorite suppliers—taking into consideration practical factors such as satisfaction with product features, likelihood to purchase again, likelihood to recommend the supplier, the supplier with best overall solution, and cost-effectiveness.
In all, over 3,000 scientists completed the ballot between January 3, 2007 and February 16, 2007. The winners for each product category and for each customer communication and support category were determined by quantitative measure of nominations received for each supplier in addition to the customer value score. The combined score (number of nominations received for each supplier and supplier customer value score) was calculated for all suppliers and used to determine the winner for each category. The customer value score calculation was based on additional questions in the ballot that contribute to a company’s competitiveness and success.