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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 […]
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“How To” Posts
Webinar: How to Run Discrete Choice Conjoint Analysis
Editor’s Note: Today’s post was originally published on the Survey Analytics blog. Discrete choice conjoint analysis is a popular marketing research technique that helps you determine the optimal mix of features in a new product or service. Survey Analytics invites you to a complimentary one-hour webinar, “How to Run Discrete Choice Conjoint Analysis.” The webinar is […]
Ask Me No Leading Questions, and I’ll Tell You No Lies
The most common problem with the draft questionnaires that are sent to me is the use of leading questions. A leading question suggests the answer the survey author is looking for and often unintentionally reflects the author’s bias. As a result, the answers to such questions overstate actual support for the item being researched. Leading […]
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 […]
MR 101: Validity and Reliability in Surveys
Confession: I don’t have formal training as a market researcher. I came to market research late in life by way of my training in information technology and computer science, and it’s something I’ve had to study – and continue to study today. And trust me: I’ve studied a lot in my life, and learning about […]
How to Set or Adjust Pricing Using the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter
Few things are as important as setting the right price for your product or service. The Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter is one way to hone in on the right price. The “meter” is actually a very clever survey method which consists set of four questions asked of members of your target market. The questions […]
How to Plus or Minus: Understand and Calculate the Margin of Error
Sometimes in the day-to-day work of conducting and interpreting market research, it’s easy to forget that many people who work with surveys on a daily basis have not had formal training in statistics. Even for those who have been trained, it can be useful to have a refresher from time to time. UNDERSTANDING MARGIN OF […]
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 […]
What Apple Got Wrong with Its Question about the 5c
The most popular research tweet on the Twitter #MRX hashtag in the past fortnight was Tom Ewing’s tweet of this screencap: Cor, I can see why Apple don’t make a big thing about their market research – pages of grids, stone age stuff. #mrx pic.twitter.com/uV1rbPDTSq — To Mewing! (@tomewing) May 1, 2014 Some folks on […]
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 […]
Grow Your Business by Focusing on Share of Wallet
At the Marketing Research Association’s Insights & Strategy Conference in Orlando today, Timothy Keiningham of Ipsos Loyalty shared an update on the Ipsos Wallet Allocation Rule method, which won the 2011 NGMR Innovation Award. Traditional customer loyalty measures alone do a poor job of predicting Share of Wallet, the percent of category purchases captured by […]
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? […]
