[Lucid:]

It depends on what kind of research is being done. Most companies don't have their own survey software, they pay for a company like Qualtrics. These survey companies have huge databases of people that they can send surveys to, and charge around %1.50-$2.00 per survey completed. A good sample size is around 400-600 people. $1200 isn't a ton of money in a big business's eyes, but in a smaller company it can be a decent investment. On top of that you have to hire people who know how to analyze the data, find statistically significant patterns, and come up with results that the company can make decisions on. If there are any free response questions in the survey at all, they have to be read and taken into account individually. You can run the answers through some programs that analyze positivity and negativity in words, but they're not perfect.

More in-depth feedback would require focus groups, which take a lot of time to both administer and do an analysis on afterwards. Focus group participants are also usually paid $50-$100 for their participation, and a good focus group has around 6-10 people in it.

I really only know the costs of data collection since the university had all the programs and us students were free labor, but most of the money in research is on paying the researchers and paying for any programs that help in analysis. If you don't have in-house analysts, you have to pay a research company to do it for you.