February 2nd, 2012
One lesson I have learned serving on the board of the American Marketing Association in Chicago is that for most companies, research and marketing can no longer be separated. Why not? Because marketers now deal with immense volumes of data. If they want to make smart decisions and execute campaigns effectively, they need to use that data. And who best to help them find, interpret, and use data than the research team?
This became even more clear at our AMA event two weeks ago, where Luanne Calvert, vice president of marketing at Virgin America talked about her team’s effort to build an airline customer loyalty program from scratch. One of the challenges, she noted, was making sense of their data. “We have tons of data,” Calvert said. “There’s so much we barely know what to do with it. We are just starting to get a handle on it.”
Effectively dealing with tons of data requires a thoughtful research approach, which, by the way, does not necessarily mean doing yet another survey or creating a dashboard of mindless metrics. In our view, it means the following: Read the rest of this entry »
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January 24th, 2012
Election years are a perfect time to learn about (and brush up on) the fundamentals of survey research. Not only are the airwaves inundated with public opinion polling, but methodological experts are called upon to talk about developments and current best practices as new technologies and methods become central to measuring consumer and public opinion and behavior.
This week the Poynter Institute is offering a webinar of particular interest for PR professionals, whether or not you care about political polls. We also recommend it for any marketing professional because this type of polling is an exemplar of what all marketing research tries to achieve in measuring what people think and what they are likely to do. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: data quality, journalism, Market Research, media, news, omnibus, public opinion, Public Polls, Public Relations
Posted in Public Polls, Public Relations, Resources and Recommendations | No Comments »
January 18th, 2012
Many of us in marketing research have been deploying web surveys for over ten years, and web surveys are, by far, the dominant mode of data collection in our industry nowadays. But our techniques and methods are an amalgam of practices adapted from other data collection modes, learned in part through trial and error, and taught to others through channels more akin to oral traditions. So it is helpful when our academic colleagues manage to document and codify the art and science of what we do. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: bias, Internet, Market Research, Online Surveys, Sampling, statistics, Survey Design
Posted in Data Analysis & Analytics, Data Collection, Market Research, Online Surveys, Resources and Recommendations, Sampling, Survey Design | No Comments »
January 11th, 2012
In last year’s cliffhanger episode of “Can a Focus Group Save Spider-Man?” we pondered whether market research was powerful enough to save a Broadway show from doom and destruction. After crushing reviews from theater critics, the producers hired a market research firm to help them rewrite the show.
Guess what? It worked. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: concept testing, Focus Groups, Market Research
Posted in Focus Groups, Market Research, New Products and Innovation | No Comments »
January 4th, 2012
Given how common mapping capabilities have become via the Internet and smartphones, it is surprising that we don’t see more geographic mapping in market research. Researchers nearly always look at customer demographics, and a key component of a person’s demographic profile is where he or she lives. This data is far more compelling if you can present it visually with maps.
It does not take super fancy (and expensive) mapping software or specialized firms to create accurate, useful, and compelling maps from market research data. We recently created maps for a client showing where in a three-county region their best customers lived. Everything we used to make these maps was free and publicly available for download on the Internet. Here are the steps we used: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Market Research, visualizing data
Posted in Charts and Data Visualization, Data Analysis & Analytics, Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Presenting Research | No Comments »
December 29th, 2011
Even if you are not involved in political polling, it is worth paying attention to the methods and best practices of political pollsters. One reason is that few other areas of research offer a way to completely validate one’s methods. Pollsters are using sampling and survey methods to predict the behaviors of a much larger population. Then in just one day that population behaves, we get a near-perfect count of exactly how they behaved, and we know whether the methods worked.
Several industry colleagues have recently been debating the merits of calculating and reporting “margins of error” in political polling, and pointed us to some surprising data from The New York Times: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: journalism, public opinion, Public Polls, Sampling, statistics, survey
Posted in Market Research, Methods & Tools, Omnibus Surveys, Public Polls, Sampling | No Comments »
December 21st, 2011
If you have never done the hard work of interviewing your customers (or potential customers) by phone for surveys or in-depth interviews, you should. It will give you deeper insights into your critical business questions than any expert analyses about buyer behavior, marketing trends, or business best practices.
If you HAVE done the hard work of phone surveys, then besides deeper research insights into your business, we expect you will have a deeper appreciation for this holiday survey, written by Mitch Pravatiner, which is written in exactly the format that telephone interviewers typically see. We have worked with Mitch in the past, and he is a true pro when it comes to telephone interviewing. He recently shared this via aapor-net, which is a discussion group of research professionals who belong to the American Association of Public Opinion Research.
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas . . .
Hello, this is [NAME OF INTERVIEWER] from [NAME OF ORGANIZATION], an opinion research organization. Tonight we’re calling people across the country to find out what’s going on in their homes on the night before Christmas. Please rest assured that this is not a sales call, and that everything you tell us will be kept confidential. Would you be willing to participate? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: phone surveys
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December 15th, 2011
We recently received and reviewed an excellent book summarizing practical findings from academic marketing research. It is called Consumer Insights: Findings from Behavioral Research. It is published by the Marketing Science Institute and we highly recommend it. Why is it so good and useful for corporate researchers and marketers?
- It provides a quick overview of what we know in various areas of marketing
- It is organized into 42 useful topics, most of which are relevant to nearly all marketers
- Each topic provides universal findings based on research from hundreds of studies, not just one or two
- Each topic/chapter is short and to the point (just two or three pages)
- Each topic outlines insights, the evidence base, and managerial implications
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: insight, Market Research, marketing, research
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December 7th, 2011
In Versta Research’s Winter 2011 Newsletter, published just this week, we describe a simple method for estimating how long it will take respondents to complete surveys.
Here we offer the “Versta Digest” version as a handy reference card. Once you get the hang of it, you don’t need the examples and explanation. You just need to know the rules. We recommend reading the full article first, so you know what we’re talking about when it comes to “points.” Then, when you need a refresher or a reference source, consult these rules: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Data Collection, Online Surveys, phone surveys, research, Survey Design
Posted in Data Collection, Methods & Tools, Online Surveys, Survey Design | No Comments »
December 1st, 2011
Over the last few years we have wondered whether spreadsheet software like Excel will soon make statistics software like SPSS or SAS obsolete.
Spreadsheets have amazingly powerful and often intuitive capabilities. They have many of the statistical functions we use every day. Younger people entering our profession rarely know programs like SPSS or SAS, and we see them turning to Excel to generate frequencies, calculate means and proportions, create charts from data, and so on. The same goes for our customers. Many do not have statistical software, so when they need numbers and statistics, they often work in Excel.
But Versta Research continues to invest in advanced statistical software rather than doing our work in Excel for three important reasons: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: analytics, software packages, statistics
Posted in Charts and Data Visualization, Data Analysis & Analytics, Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools | No Comments »
