The Daily Inter Lake is launching a market and readership survey today to measure shopping patterns and media habits of area residents.

Reader input sought in newspaper survey

Surveys will be conducted online by Pulse Research of Portland, Ore., a company that works with media companies and retailers nationwide.

The online survey is available starting today at www.pulseresearch.com/kalispell. A link to the survey also can be found on the Inter Lake's Web site at www.dailyinterlake.com.

The survey will stay online until a minimum of 800 responses are collected.

Upon completing the survey, respondents will automatically be entered into a drawing for $200, $150 and $100 grocery gift certificates. Prize winners will be announced in the Inter Lake.

All responses will be strictly confidential.

The purpose of the market research survey is to better understand newspaper readership patterns, gather suggestions and insights from readers, improve the newspaper, gain information on shopping patterns to share with local retailers and collect data to potentially help attract additional businesses to the market.

"The only way to find out what is going on communitywide is to do a communitywide survey," Inter Lake Advertising Director Cindy Sease said. "We want to understand readers' shopping habits and be able to share this information with our retail community to help them understand the dynamics of the market to better serve customers in the Flathead.

"We encourage our readers to take the online survey because it's fun, easy and completely confidential," Sease said.