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
Projectable, Innovative or Simple? Pick Two
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. This piece by Kathryn Korostoff was originally published April 15 on her Research Rockstar blog. “Cheap, fast or good. Pick two.” It’s a bit of dogma […]
What to Consider When Selecting Markets for Qualitative Research
Originally published in Alert!, the magazine of the Marketing Research Association. Pittsburgh or Portland? Los Angeles or Las Vegas? San Antonio or San Diego? Where should you hold your next focus groups? If you’re a local car dealer in Omaha, the answer is pretty obvious. But what if you’re doing research for a national organization? […]
How to Moderate Bulletin Board Focus Groups
Portions of the following are excerpted from Qual-Online The Essential Guide: What Every Researcher Needs to Know about Conducting and Moderating Interviews via the Web by Jennifer Dale and Susan Abbott. Published under license from Paramount Market Publishing, Inc. This post is an edited extract from Chapter 10, “Extended-Time Moderating Online.” No matter how good your online discussion […]
Avoiding Confirmation Bias
One of the key skills in the sphere of market research and consumer insights is avoiding bias in the research. As we know, bias is a result of subjectivity. It’s the personal subjective lens used to view the world and is often based on certain intrinsic parts of character (gender, race, age, etc.) as well […]
Customer Segmentation – An Overview
This information is useful for people who are interested in matching the best messages or products possible to those customers or prospects most likely to buy them. Why Segmentation? If you make a product, have a service, market or sell, customer segmentation is important to you. The days of one-size-fits-all approaches are long over, and […]
Survey Rewards: Best Practices
In the quickly evolving world of survey rewards, staying on top of changes can be challenging. Here are six tips to optimize your rewards budget and maximize your response rate: Digital makes a difference – Comfort with digital rewards is at an all-time high. People routinely receive e-gift cards from loyalty programs, wellness challenges and survey […]
An Interview with Howard Fienberg About Sugging
One of the pleasures of volunteering on the Board of the Marketing Research Association (MRA) has been the opportunity to get to know Howard better. Howard Fienberg, PLC is the director of government affairs for the MRA and champions the needs of the industry to federal and state agencies and departments. I recently had the […]
How To Monitor the Quality of Respondent Answers
On March 19, 2015, the esteemed Annie Pettit of Peanut Labs led us through a brief but insightful presentation on data quality lessons from the survey design perspective. As researchers who are actively engaged in survey implementation, we want to ensure that the responses we are collecting are as accurate as possible. This requires a […]
Managerial Economics For Dummies
The following is an excerpt from Managerial Economics for Dummies. Published under license from John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Successful businesses satisfy consumer desires. Knowing how consumers decide which desires to satisfy and which to leave unsatisfied is an important component in your managerial decision-making. Consumer theory describes how customers determine the purchases they make. […]
Use Data Imputation When Modularizing Mobile Surveys
The Problem The market research industry is at a crossroads as client demands push survey length longer while respondents increasingly take survey from smartphones (see Brian Jones’ previous blog on mobile market research trends and best practices). Many advanced analytical techniques require ~15-25 minutes (or more) worth of questioning to function, but many smartphone survey […]
What Negative Results from Concept Tests Might Mean
Tens of thousands of new products are tested each year, as part of concept tests, NPD, and volumetric testing. Some products produce a positive result, and everybody is pretty happy, but many produce a negative result. A negative result might be that a product has a low stated intention to purchase or it might be […]
