Archive for the ‘New Products and Innovation’ Category
Thursday, March 28th, 2013
Or better yet, we might say “Why GOOD Research Takes So Long.” Our answer (before you feel inspired by the video embedded below) is that good research is creative and thoughtful and takes a great deal of intellectual energy at several crucial points:
- It puzzles over multiple ways (including data sources and methods) to get novel answers
- It thinks “behind” what managers are asking to figure out better questions that have unknown answers
- It experiments with new techniques of data collection that might not be standardized
- It toys with data and investigates multiple approaches for analysis
- It turns data into stories that get revised and refined so that managers see the answers in ways that matter
(more…)
Tags: innovation, Market Research, marketing
Posted in Market Research, New Products and Innovation, Topics in Marketing, Turning Data into Stories | Comments Off
Thursday, February 14th, 2013
“Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways,” wrote Oscar Wilde in The Critic as Artist.
That’s just the problem for market research and consumer behavior. Few design aspects of products, packages, brands, logos, advertising, and environments are more subjective than color. Which is why so many marketing decisions about color are based on the personal preferences of designers, decision makers, and their spouses (“What do you think of this color, dear?”) rather than on scientific knowledge of which colors are best for specific purposes.
But just in time for Valentine’s day (today!) here is a compelling new finding about the color RED and how it affects buying behavior: (more…)
Tags: Market Research, marketing, product marketing
Posted in Future Trends, Market Research, New Products and Innovation, Topics in Marketing | Comments Off
Thursday, December 20th, 2012
An article not too long ago in the Journal of Consumer Psychology summed up current research on brand extensions thus:
What factors determine whether or not a brand extension will be successful? The most important factor identified by prior research is perceived fit. Consumers respond more favorably if they are able to perceive a fit between the extension and the parent brand. . . . Perceived fit, no matter how it is defined, is the most important determinant of brand extension success—more important than marketing support, retailer acceptance, and quality of the parent brand.
The last sentence is worth reading again! Marketing support, effective distribution, and even strength of the parent brand matter less than whether buyers think the extension makes sense. (more…)
Tags: brand equity, Market Research, new product development, product innovation, product marketing
Posted in Market Research, New Products and Innovation, Survey Design, Topics in Marketing | Comments Off
Wednesday, December 5th, 2012
Successful innovation and new product development involves a great deal of customer input. The more ways in which customers are involved, and the more systematic your efforts to involve them in multiple ways, the more likely you are to succeed with an innovative product or service.
This is according to new qualitative research just published by the Journal of Marketing (November 2012). The authors of the study looked at six small firms trying to develop and sell a major innovation. Three of them succeeded and three of them failed. How and to what extent they involved customers separated the successes from the failures.
Want to improve the chances that innovative ideas, products, or services succeed within your company or department? Here are six things that the successful firms in this study were doing, and that you should be doing as well: (more…)
Tags: innovation, Market Research, new product development, product innovation
Posted in Market Research, New Products and Innovation, Topics in Marketing | Comments Off
Wednesday, October 31st, 2012
By elephants, we mean Republicans. Or maybe you have too many Democrats. Maybe it keeps going back and forth, which is the problem that Gallup sometimes has. In the spirit of learning all we can from election season polling, this week we focus on whom to include (or exclude) in your research, analysis, and market projections.
The issue is showcased right now as political polls attempt to measure voter preference and predict the election outcome. Is voter preference really as volatile and open to persuasion as the polls sometimes suggest? Probably not. A 2004 research article in Public Opinion Quarterly carefully documented that much of the volatility in Gallup’s polls results from how they screen respondents and weight their data. (more…)
Tags: bias, concept testing, data analysis, Market Research, Public Polls, Sampling, statistics
Posted in Data Analysis & Analytics, Market Research, Methods & Tools, New Products and Innovation, Sampling, Survey Design | Comments Off
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
Two researchers at the U.S. Census Bureau recently outlined an emerging innovation in survey research that could reverse the trend towards passive, boring, self-administered surveys that characterizes much online research. The idea is to use internet avatars in real-time interviewing with survey respondents.
Beyond just the heightened interest of having an animated survey, the avatars would be programmed to register and interpret respondents’ verbal answers, facial expressions, and body language through webcams.
(more…)
Tags: Data Collection, insight, Internet, Market Research, Online Surveys, stories, survey technology
Posted in Data Collection, Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools, New Products and Innovation, Online Surveys | Comments Off
Thursday, September 15th, 2011
MaxDiff is a survey method used to measure the importance of product features. Subsets of features are presented, and respondents are asked to select which feature is most important and which feature is least important. Its advantage over other techniques is that by forcing a choice from among multiple features, it more strongly differentiates the features if customers are prone to say that all features are important or attractive.
(more…)
Tags: conjoint, Market Research, segmentation
Posted in Charts and Data Visualization, Data Analysis & Analytics, Market Research, Methods & Tools, New Products and Innovation, Presenting Research | Comments Off
Thursday, August 25th, 2011
Recent social psychological research on consumer decision making suggests that making choices and deciding among alternatives depletes mental energy. With each choice we make, it gets harder and harder to make the next choice, and our brains start looking for “shortcuts” to make the task easier. The research, reported this week in The New York Times Magazine, found that when our brains get fatigued from too many choices,
one shortcut is to become reckless: to act impulsively instead of expending the energy to first think through the consequences. . . . The other shortcut is the ultimate energy saver: do nothing. Instead of agonizing over decisions, avoid any choice.
But give the brain a hit of glucose (the basic fuel that runs cell functioning), and our willpower and rational decision-making are restored.
The findings are from multiple experiments over the past decade that relied on a variety of scenarios that both academic researchers and marketing people care a great deal about: selecting (and paying for) options on new car purchases, buying computers, shopping in malls or grocery stores, selecting fabrics for customized products, and making critical financial decisions that involve trade-offs between short-term rewards and long-term gains. (more…)
Tags: choice, consumer insight, financial services, insight
Posted in Future Trends, New Products and Innovation, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Thursday, July 7th, 2011
Versta Research just hit a magic number: 100. That’s the number of articles we have written to help our clients and their colleagues keep abreast of important trends in market research. If your market research supplier is not providing ongoing thought leadership in design, methods, and analytics, then what are the chances they are bringing ongoing and deep insight to your specific research needs?
To celebrate, we’re serving up a sampler of our five best articles. How did we decide they are the best? Our clients told us. These are the articles that they write to us about, forward to their colleagues, and for which they return to our website time and again. These are also the articles for which we get requests for print-ready PDF versions. (Just let us know if you want one!) (more…)
Tags: communication, conjoint, Market Research, product innovation, research, statistics, stories
Posted in Data Analysis & Analytics, Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools, New Products and Innovation, Turning Data into Stories | Comments Off
