Market Research: The Bottom Line, Part 3

January 14, 2011

As researchers, we tend to talk statistics. Even if we are cautious in our use of statistical jargon, we certainly tend to rely on statistics to draw our conclusions. While every b-school grad, and many managers, has been schooled in stats, stats are not the common language of business, especially not the   c-suite. Those who [...]

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Market Research–The Bottom Line Part 2

December 20, 2010

A truism in market research states that market research results are not the business decision, but one input, albeit usually an important input, to a business decision. In this context, the primary purpose of market research is to provide relevant, timely, salient insights, usually about customers or prospective customers, to provide rational guidance to decision-makers [...]

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Market Research: The Bottom Line Part 1

December 6, 2010

The market research industry, via forums, blogs, conferences and commentators, is busy declaring the death of market research. Image via Wikipedia Phone surveys are dead. Online surveys are passe. Traditional analytic techniques are moribund. Why all the hand-wringing? Social media and social networking are taking over the world, market research included. True? Maybe. But maybe [...]

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Upping Market Research Survey Response

November 22, 2010

In an article titled “The Persuasive Pull of Procrastination”, Steve Martin (no, not the comedian) discusses the link between consumer action and incentives. Researchers Suzanne Shu of UCLA and Ayelet Gneezy of UC San Diego conducted a study of short and longer term-dated gift certificates. Study participants received either a gift certificate with a three [...]

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How To Lie With Market Research Statistics–Part 2

November 4, 2010

A few posts ago, I began a discussion of what is apparently a favorite pastime in modern media, lying with statistics. Having just passed through an election, I watched with utter fascination as pols quoted statistics to “prove” the correctness of their positions; many of the statistics they quoted were ludicrous to any thinking person [...]

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Stop with the Customer Satisfaction Surveys!–Part 3

October 20, 2010

So how can companies get real value out of customer satisfaction surveys? Value that demonstrably leads to increased revenue? The key is to operationalize the results. Transactional surveys, as we discussed in the prior two posts, can be valuable—IF they are keyed to measure attributes of which performance improvement can be demonstrated to have a [...]

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Stop with the Customer Satisfaction Surveys!–Part 2

October 15, 2010

What do I really learn from hit-and-run surveys, how-am-I-doing customer satisfaction questions? I cannot compare performance against competitors; I haven’t asked. I do not know whether I am strengthening or degrading my brand; I haven’t asked. In other words, I have no ability to analyze the data in any context, other than a point in [...]

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Stop with the Customer Satisfaction Surveys!–Part 1

October 13, 2010

Love or loathe his politics, Bill Maher produces some of the funniest jabs about modern life. Image via Wikipedia Recently, he aimed his barbed arrows at customer satisfaction surveys in one of his New Rules on his HBO show, Real Time. You can listen to his brief commentary here. When an aspect of society or [...]

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How To Lie with Market Research Statistics

October 7, 2010

Image via Wikipedia Visiting a local restaurant that serves wings and gives out hand wipes, I discovered the wipe packages had pithy little statements on each one, sort of like a fortune cookie. On one “58.3% of statistics are made up” was printed. I laughed. Not that this was my first exposure to the joke, [...]

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Market Research Consulting: Upgrading Market Research Reports–Part 4

September 28, 2010

J. Scott Armstrong on Advertising PrinciplesContinuing our discussion of market research reporting: In the last post, I suggested the idea of evolving toward reporting with a point-of-view rather than a summary and explication of all research findings. In his recently published Persuasive Advertising: Evidence-based Principles, J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School offers a 45 [...]

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