Latest Articles
Hey there…have you heard of me?
In consumer and B2B market research circles we are often asked to assess market awareness and/or familiarity with brands, products and spokespeople or causes. These two related, but separate constructs, represent the first steps on the pathway from prospect to customer. Awareness should be measured in two ways – unaided and aided. Unaided awareness is […]
Census Regions – What it means for Hispanic Sample
Census regions are probably the last thing you think about when procuring Hispanic sample. Language, acculturation, and country of origin are likely at the top of your list. However, census regions are linked to all of the above. The Hispanic population distribution in the U.S. is considerably different than the rest of the population. For […]
Sampling and Other Considerations for Mobile Research
In a prior post I highlighted an interesting statistic – for any given project market researchers can now expect up to 40% response on smartphones. This percentage will continue to increase. The question then becomes one of what do we know about mobile responders and can this be applied to our sampling plans? First and […]
Three keys for designing effective mobile surveys
At the recent MRA Corporate Researchers Conference the training organization Research Rockstar presented a course on designing device agnostic surveys. The trend is clear that more and more surveys are being taken on smartphones and tablets. Desktop computers still account for the majority of responses, but for any given project market researchers can now expect […]
Top 2 Box Score – Avoid the Pitfall
Recently when giving my desk a much needed cleaning I came across an article by Jerry Thomas with the firm Decision Analyst. His whitepaper focused on the use of the top two box score as a measure for conveying scores to survey scales. The top box score is the sum of percentages for the top […]
More from Research Access
“How To” Posts
How to Set Marketing Research Goals and Objectives
In a previous post, I laid out a marketing research plan. The first steps of the marketing research plan was setting goals and objectives. You might think that this is a same-old, same-old process. But it isn’t. I’m going to approach this in a different way that will get you better results. Begin with the END […]
Four Collaborative Steps to Innovation
Open innovation is the practice of collecting data from a wide audience in order to solve problems or evolve. And this practice is being utilized in every industry, from government to nonprofits to enterprise-level companies to universities, with numerous different end goals and objectives. Marketers are using it for research, product managers are using it […]
What To Expect From A Focus Group
We asked some of our favorite bloggers to provide us a “lost gem” – a great article that deserved wider response than it received the first time it was published. We wrap up our series with this piece by Lisa Steckert, which was originally published here on May 3. If you were to ask […]
How to Use Facebook for Market Research Surveys
It’s an understatement to say that there’s tremendous interest in using Facebook for market research. Indeed, among the most popular posts on Research Access is one written last year by Survey Analytics‘ CEO Vivek Bhaskaran, entitled “Social Media Research – Using Facebook for Survey Invitations and Market Research.” What not everybody realizes is that companies […]
Use Multiple Text Boxes for More Productive Respondents
A perennial problem with open-ended survey questions is that respondents are lazy. It takes time and effort to think of good answers. And if the survey is self-administered online or on paper, it takes time and effort to write them out. But there are several things a savvy researcher can do. One of them is […]
Social Media Research – Using Facebook for Survey Invitations and Market Research
Today, Sanja Licina, Senior Director – Talent Intelligence for CareerBuilder and I gave a presentation to the the American Marketing Association – as part of the virtual conference– talking about the future of Market Research and beyond. The slides are embedded below (at the bottom of this post.) One point got a lot of questions […]
How To Create Infographics: Tips & Tools
Not since the invention of online surveys has something sparked the imagination of our industry like Infographics. Sure, we haven’t mastered the art of making them, and we aren’t quite sure how to define them. Yet most of us know a good infographic when we see it (or think we do). I want to take a few […]
How to Write a Market Research Plan
In the past, we BUDGETED for market research. This usually included our annual customer satisfaction survey and then we simply looked at our marketing plan an set aside a budget for the new product research we were going to do in the next year. These days things are a little different. I find myself recommending […]
Order Bias Is a Larger Source of Error Than You Think
Last week I was writing a questionnaire for a client using their survey software account, and I was chagrined to discover that it lacked the ability to randomize the display of items in a choice list. This is a common capability of all modern survey software applications, including QuestionPro, Survey Analytics, Google Consumer Surveys, and […]
How to Increase Product Development Success with Ghetto Testing
In the movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner plays a farmer living in rural Iowa, who hears a voice while walking through his cornfield; “If you build it, he will come” (often misquoted “If you build it, they will come”) and sees a vision of a baseball field. Kevin’s character Ray Kinsella plows under his corn […]
The Mere Exposure Effect: Advertising to the Subconscious
A recent Adweek column bemoaned the absence of brand names from the first 29 seconds of many 30-second ads. It advised introducing the brand earlier and mentioning it more often, as the author explained that otherwise people forget the name of the brand. The author offered the right advice but for the wrong reasons. He […]
