ICANN issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the Global Consumer Survey to identify vendors that can conduct a survey representative of ICANN's five geographical regions and using local languages, as necessary,1 in accordance with ICANN-provided objective and quantifiable criteria, which launched in September 2014. A global survey was critical to align with ICANN's mission – with one Internet to serve the entire world, the survey needs to account for the perspectives of a global cross-section of Internet users.
The survey's objectives gauged Consumers' perceived sense of trust and choice in the Domain Name System (DNS). By surveying a globally representative sample of Internet users and registrants, ICANN aimed to capture a baseline of worldwide attitudes regarding DNS operations, which will be tested again in one year to determine how opinions have changed over time and as more New gTLDs are available in the domain name marketplace.
The Consumer survey captured some of the metrics proposed by ICANN's community members from the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) and the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) to evaluate the impact of the New gTLD Program on Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice.
ICANN retained Nielsen to conduct an initial survey to create a meaningful baseline of data on consumer attitudes and will perform a follow-on survey to generate a set of comparison data to inform the CCT Review. This second survey will be conducted in one year to determine how opinions of consumers may have changed over time and as more New gTLDs are available in the domain name marketplace.
ICANN has published the Phase One Results from Multiyear Consumer Study on the Domain Name Landscape. The Phase One study surveyed 6,144 consumers aged 18+ representing Asia, Europe, Africa, North America and South America, and was administered in 18 languages and drawn from 24 countries. The research was conducted by Nielsen between February 2-19, 2015. The full Phase One Report is available here.
ICANN is also working with Nielsen to conduct a global survey of domain name registrants and their perceived sense of trust and choice in the domain name space. Results from that study will be available later in 2015.
Following the survey, the Review Team formed under the AoC will take into consideration the survey results as it examines other measures, such as the geographic spread of New gTLD registrations, the number of internationalized domain names (IDNs or domains in scripts that include characters outside the letters a-z, numbers 0-9 and a hyphen) available, and the relative incidence of compliance complaints, among many others.
