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

You will find important applications to almost any marketing effort you are engaged in.  For example, here is one that applies to what we are doing right now:  “Consumers are becoming more and more suspicious of online bloggers touting products.  Thus, a blogger’s attempt to tout a product may actually backfire and reduce consumer trust in both the blogger and the product.”  So to allay concerns, it is important to note that we have no connection to the authors, publishers, or sellers of this book!  Nor was the book pitched to us, or provided to us free (alas, we paid full price).

Here are the topics covered in the book:

Information Search
1. Effects of Product Knowledge on information Search
2. In-store Decision Making and Unplanned Purchases
3. Perceptions of Product Assortment
4. Variety-seeking Behavior
5. Consumer Search on the Internet
6. Buyers’ Post-purchase Information Biases Pricing
7. Perception of Price Deals
8. Biases in Processing Price Information
9. Effects of the Internet on Consumer Price Sensitivity
10. Effects of Transaction Structure on Price Perceptions & Consumption
11. Perceptions of Price Fairness

Advertising
12. Consumer Attention to Advertising
13. Effects of Ad Likability

Brand Effects
14. Consumer Brand Recall
15. Perceptions of Brand Extensions
16. Brand Dilution and Protection

Consumer Inferences
17. Consumer Inferences and Assumptions
18. Perceptions of Quality Signals
19. Causal Inferences and Consumers’ Judgments
20. Consumer Use of Persuasion Knowledge

Feelings, Attitudes, and Persuasion
21. Effects of Mere Exposure on Brand Liking
22. Influence of Feelings & Emotions on Consumers’ Judgments
23. Persuasion: Elaboration Likelihood Model
24. Consumer Goal Orientation
25. Consumer Attitudes Toward Marketing

Decision Making and Purchase
26. Pre-choice Bias in Brand Choice
27. Consumers’ Intertemporal Preferences
28. Loss Aversion and Consumer Choice
29. Protected Values
30. Purchase Intentions and Purchasing
31. Consumer Habits and Purchase Behavior
32. Impulsive and Compulsive Buying

The Social Consumer
33. Social Contagion and Word-of-mouth
34. Consumer Identity and Purchase Behavior
35. Perceptions of Advisors

Vulnerable Consumers
36. Children and Advertising
37. Aging Consumers
38. Effects of Low Literacy on Consumer Decision Making

Health and Well-being
39. Effects of Nutrition Information and Health Claims on Consumption
40. Mass-media Campaigns and Health-related Behaviors
41. Perceptions of Health Risks
42. Effects of Portion/Package Size and Shape on Consumption

The book is excellent and useful.  Get it.  It is now available through Amazon at a substantially lower price than we paid.

We learned many things we did not know, and we learned that some of the things we have come to know about marketing through our own experiences now have a wider research base to back them up.

Happy insights, from Versta Research!

–Joe Hopper, Ph.D.

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:

• One point for each simple question or scaled response
• One point for every two response options in a multiple choice question
• One point for each row in a grid question
• Two points for any response that requires mental calculation
• Three points for every short response to an open-ended question
• One point for every three sentences of extra text that respondents must read

Then:

• Tally up the points
• Divide by 8 for online survey length (in minutes)
• Divide by 8 then multiply by 1.5 for phone survey length (in minutes)

The system is straightforward, easy to learn, and easy to execute.  It is a method that really works and that we have validated against hundreds of different types of surveys over the past several years.

Once you know how to determine survey length, you can think more strategically about the ideal survey length to optimize the value and content of a survey within your budget.  Call us at 312-348-6089 with any additional assistance you may need.

–Joe Hopper, Ph.D.

These days most researchers agree that if you want to do a random sample phone survey of the U.S. population, you ought to include cell phones.  More than one-quarter of the population do not have landline telephones at home.  Those who do have landline telephones are less likely than ever to answer them, and less likely than ever to participate in surveys.

But it is not easy to include cell phones.  The sampling protocols and the post-stratification weighting become more complicated.  You need to account for a higher probability of cell phone owners being in your sample, because most of them also have landlines.  You can’t use automated or predictive dialing to call cell phone numbers.  You can’t target geography as well, because area codes and exchanges have become mobile.  And people get mad at you if they have to pay for incoming calls, so you need to offer cash.

What’s the bottom line effect on costs for a survey that includes cell phones?  A recent study sponsored by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) documents the following:

The cost of fieldwork for cell phone interviews is double if you don’t screen out those who also have landlines, and more than double (2.6 times higher) if you do screen them out.

Of course if you are surveying the whole population, only a portion of your sampling and interviews will be cell-phone based.  Currently, we recommend that 20% to 40% of interviews be cell-based.  But there are additional professional costs to remember as well, such as purchasing, managing, merging, weighting, and analyzing different types and sources of sample, and training interviewers to work with different sources and types of respondents.

There are still plenty of phone surveys being done that do not include cell-phones, and for many types of studies landline-only surveys produce information that is good enough for what needs to be learned.  But it is getting increasingly difficult for these surveys to achieve true representation and surely their days numbered.

Feel free to give us a call if you need help figuring out the best approach for your research.  We can advise you on the most cost-effective, feasible, and rigorous approaches to getting the data, stories, and level of understanding you need.

—Joe Hopper, Ph.D.

If your doctor tells you that highly reliable studies have shown that taking a certain pill will cut your risk of getting a serious disease in half, would you take it?

Suppose he adds that the risk is 2 percent for people who do not take the pill, but your risk will be reduced to 1 percent if you do. Would you still take it? And what would you do if he told you that only one of every 100 patients who take the drug will actually benefit from it?

The doctor could have said any of these things, all truthfully, because they are just different ways of describing the same data.

The researchers showed that the data’s persuasiveness and understandability, and the subjects’ views of efficacy varied dramatically for each of these three ways of presenting the data.  Moreover, education or expertise among those being presented with the data made no difference, with both physicians and patients responding in the same ways.

Data have no meaning without an implicit or explicit story to communicate that data.  And indeed the story tells the audience what to do with that data and how to interpret it.  That is what is happening in the research described above, and that is why good research is far more than collecting data, generating tabs, producing charts, and writing phrases that presumably summarize findings.  Good research must turn data into stories, so that your clients and audiences understand the questions, see and grasp the answers, and then act upon the research in smart and effective ways.

Need help?  Turning data into stories is central to our approach for the most complex, esoteric, or even the most mundane studies.  Versta Research can help you get your research heard, understood, and used.

—Joe Hopper, Ph.D.

]]> http://www.verstaresearch.com/blog/the-most-persuasive-way-to-present-data/feed/ 0 http://www.verstaresearch.com/blog/top-5-picks-best-articles-on-market-research/ http://www.verstaresearch.com/blog/top-5-picks-best-articles-on-market-research/#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:59:16 +0000 Joe Hopper http://www.verstaresearch.com/blog/?p=1484 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!)

1. Turning Data into Stories

There are two critical elements to top notch research.  First, it has to be right, which means focusing on the rigors of research design, data collection, and statistical analysis.  Second, it has to be heard, understood, and used, and in our view that means turning data into stories.  In this article we focus on what it means to turn data into stories, and we outline what you gain by doing so.

2. The Art of Asking Questions

Somewhere along the way to research becoming central to how businesses learn about their customers, the art of asking questions was lost. As a result, there is a lot of research for research’s sake, data in search of answers, and findings in search of questions.  The first thing you should do before starting research is figure out what question your research must answer.  Here’s how.

3. Magic Numbers in Market Research

Researchers cling to a handful of “magic numbers” that guide the decisions they make.  There are magic numbers for sample size, the optimal number of points on a scale, thresholds for statistical significance, and how big a focus group should be.  This article demonstrates and explains.

4. The ABCs of CBC: Understanding Conjoint for Market Research

This article focuses on the basic ideas, advantages, and uses of conjoint research. What is conjoint? How and why is it used? What insights can it give you? Furthermore, what are some of the pros and cons of fielding research using a conjoint method vs. other methods you might use?

5. Game Changing Product Innovation

A lot of research supporting new product development is a like machine that ends up creating NON-innovation because of over-benchmarking.  We suggest an alternative.

We write these articles because even though we are in the business of doing rigorous research for our clients, research only matters if it is thoughtfully communicated, understood, and used.  We hope that our efforts help your organization better design and deploy research to make smarter business decisions.

—Joe Hopper, Ph.D.

]]> http://www.verstaresearch.com/blog/top-5-picks-best-articles-on-market-research/feed/ 0 http://www.verstaresearch.com/blog/entrepreneurial-advice-rethink-your-research/ http://www.verstaresearch.com/blog/entrepreneurial-advice-rethink-your-research/#comments Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:42:20 +0000 Joe Hopper http://www.verstaresearch.com/blog/?p=1437 Executives who lead entrepreneurial firms have dramatically different attitudes about market research from their counterparts at larger established firms, according to a recent study from Saras Sarasvathy, an associate professor of business administration at the University of Virginia.

The study suggests that entrepreneurs are more focused on immediate and practical questions that will help them get their products into the hands of customers, and that traditional market research may not be the best way to get the right data and answers.  That makes sense.

But according to an article in the February issue of Inc. magazine, “when asked what kind of market research they would conduct for [a] hypothetical start-up, most of Sarasvathy’s subjects responded with variations on the following:

“OK, I need to know which of their various groups of students, trainees, and individuals would be most interested so I can target the audience a little bit more. What other information… I’ve never done consumer marketing, so I don’t really know. I think probably…I think mostly I’d just try to…I would…I wouldn’t do all this, actually. I’d just go sell it. I don’t believe in market research. Somebody once told me the only thing you need is a customer. Instead of asking all the questions, I’d try and make some sales. I’d learn a lot, you know: which people, what were the obstacles, what were the questions, which prices work better. Even before I started production. So my market research would actually be hands-on actual selling.”

We heartily agree that sometimes you should get out there and sell rather than conducting more market research (see our article What You May Need Is Marketing, Not Market Research).  But the problem with taking this quote at face value is that a really good market researcher would never say “How would you use market research?”  She would say, “What do you need to know?   What answers to questions would help you achieve your most critical business objectives?” (See our article The Art of Asking Questions.)  Then she would decide whether and how market research can best be used.

At Versta Research we believe that no matter what size company you are, you should be thinking about research more like an entrepreneur.  Great entrepreneurs are using, gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data all the time to help them make decisions.  But their data might be coming from reports on sales calls rather than standard satisfaction or tracking surveys or another new product benchmarking study.  That is a good thing, and a smarter way to approach research even if you are an established firm with a substantial research budget.

So when somebody offers you the shiny new market research tool which is now the “best practice” or the “benchmarked metric,” set it aside.  Instead, outline your questions.  Describe the data and information that would help you achieve your most critical business objectives.  Ask whether research is the most efficient and insightful tool to deliver answers.

If you need help with that process, we are happy to advise.

—Joe Hopper, Ph.D.

Here is an example of how critical it can be to look closely at your data, and in this case, very early in the data collection process.  We launched an online survey last week and got reports back from our sample supplier that incidence was just one-third of what we expected, which would have serious feasibility and cost implications.

But once we looked at their report portal, we saw that for every qualified respondent completing the survey, two qualified respondents quit before finishing.  That’s an unusually high ratio of “suspends” as we call them.  So what was the problem?  Were we just getting lousy respondents who did not want to seriously participate in a survey?  Was the survey was too difficult, tedious, boring, or confusing?  One source of answers (rarely examined) is to look at the data question by question to identify where in the survey people are quitting.

The story in this data: Something is wrong with your survey

Nearly every respondent who quit got close to finishing and then dropped off at exactly the same point, which was odd because the most difficult questions were earlier in the survey.  In fact, the question where most ended up quitting was an interesting drag-and-drop interactive exercise.  Ah, that was the problem.  The programming for the interactive piece was flawed and respondents were being kicked out.

It wasn’t without a good deal of angst that the programming team tested, re-tested, and confirmed the error.  Everybody involved in this effort resisted: the sampling provider, the programmers, the survey tool developers, the questionnaire designers—they have all done this work hundreds of times, so there can’t be anything wrong with their piece of it, right?

Let the data speak.  It will tell you where the mistakes are. There are lots of places and moments where things may go wrong.  If the top people responsible for the project do not have immediate visibility into the data, they are unable to suggest smart solutions, and bad research will just keep happening.

—Joe Hopper, Ph.D.

It is important to distinguish the two because unfortunately there is plenty of research not designed to answer important questions.  Research is frequently done because someone has a nagging feeling that they need more information to make better decisions or because doing research is considered a “best practice.”  Such research generates lots of data that marketing managers wonder what to do with.  Not surprisingly, they and their bosses start to question the value of research.

Our advice is to do market research only after formulating specific questions and information needs and only after you have a clear idea (in writing) of what you will do with the answers to those questions.  We have produced a whitepaper entitled The Art of Asking Questions (you can download it by clicking on the image) that outlines a useful process to help you formulate those questions.

The Art of Asking Questions: A White Paper from Versta Research

The key is to articulate five types of questions, including:

• The mission-critical questions
• The nice-to-know questions
• The red-herring questions
• The already-answered questions
• The look-elsewhere questions

Next, you outline at least two likely or possible answers to those questions.  And finally you describe what action you might take based on each possible answer.

Articulating specific questions and outcomes will not only vastly improve the quality of your research, it will also make it easier to bring a full executive team on board with the research.  Why?  Because it moves internal discussions away from the value of research per se, towards the importance of the questions that have been formulated and the business value of having answers.

Versta Research would be happy to help you formulate these questions and/or help you decide that research is premature.  Feel free to call us at 312-348-6089.

—Joe Hopper, Ph.D.

This shift in telephone usage is critically important to survey research, because telephone surveys have set a gold standard for rigorous research over the last two decades.  Given the trends, most survey researchers would agree that cell phone sample must now be included in the most rigorous research designs for an RDD survey.  But doing so introduces new difficulties in design, sampling, weighting, and cost, and our collective experiences are not yet sufficient for the industry to  agree on a set of “best practices” when it comes to including cell phones in survey research.

Our leading industry association, AAPOR (The American Association of Public Opinion Research) recently published a comprehensive update from the AAPOR Cell Phone Task Force that offers a good overview of the issues, complications, guidelines, and considerations every researcher should take into account when designing a telephone survey of the general population.  Briefly, it covers and highlights the following issues:

Coverage and Sampling: It is increasingly difficult to reach young men and minorities via landlines, so cell phone coverage is critical.  But using dual and overlapping sampling frames (both landline and cell phone) introduces new methodological complications in sampling.

Nonresponse: Response rates are lower among cell phones users, though response rates among landline users continue to decline as well.

Measurement: Data gathered via cell phone interviews is generally not of lower quality (despite concerns about audio quality, talking in public places, and distractions from multitasking).

Weighting: If dual and overlapping sampling frames are used (to include both landlines and cell phones) then data need to be statistically weighted to account for the complicated differences in probabilities that each person in the population will be recruited into the survey.

Legal and Ethical Issues: Including cell phones in surveying introduces a new set of legal, regulatory, and ethical considerations regarding auto-dialers, texting, caller ID, and do-not-call lists.

Operational Issues: Cell phone interviewing requires a unique set of protocols for recruiting, call-backs, and interviewing, all of which require special training for the people conducting the interviews.

Cost Issues: Including cell phones at least doubles the cost of a survey, and many times may triple or quadruple the cost.

Should you include cell phones in your survey?  It depends on who you are trying to reach and for what purposes.  When it comes to effective surveying, there are no absolutely right answers about cell phones vs. landlines, just as there are no absolutely right answers about online vs. phone surveys.  Moreover, the rapidly changing landscape of how people communicate means that the best answer today may be different in six months.

Need some help thinking through the options and figuring out the best approach for your research?  Feel free to give us a call.  We have decades of experience and are committed to helping our clients take full advantage of important changes and innovations in research.

—Joe Hopper, Ph.D.

Besides the ugliness of taking a verb (to act) and turning it into a noun (action) and then forcing that into an adjective (actionable), “actionable insight” just doesn’t mean much in our industry.  Now we have clients with reports full of “actionable insights” collecting dust on their shelves.

In our view, the problem is that few research professionals make an explicit link in the design phase of their research between the data that will be generated, and the specific decisions that need to be made.  If that link is not specified, then even if the report is rich, detailed, and full of insight, chances are it will not be used.  And if it is not used, it probably was not “actionable” to begin with.

Here is an example.  Suppose you measure customer satisfaction, and then probe deeply into several specific areas.  Many think that including more areas to measure and getting granular-level detail will yield “actionable insights.” You will get specific information to help you formulate actions for improvement, right?  Wrong.  It is only actionable if the business is able to address (and prepared to invest in) each of those areas.  If you already know there is nothing you can do about the speed of delivery to your customers, then do not ask about it.  If you already know you cannot act on an issue, then what the data say will not matter, nor will it matter how much insight you bring to that data.  The decision will be the same, and the research will not be used.

Actionable research is not easy.  It goes against our inclination as researchers to get the fullest possible picture of a problem so that we can offer multiple specific solutions and insights.  It also requires a great deal of thinking, listening, and understanding from senior-level researchers who must be intent on understanding you and your business.  The “actionable insights” boilerplate protocols will not work.

Here is a starting point we recommend:  The Art of Asking Questions.  This newsletter article from Versta Research focuses on asking the right questions of your business partners to ensure that research truly speaks to what they will do with it.  It outlines a process you can use internally, and it is a process that we use with our clients as well.  If you do it right, we guarantee you’ll hear your business partners thanking you for “the actionability of your deliverables” — or better yet, for delivering research they can really use.

—Joe Hopper, Ph.D.