Here’s One Jargony Business Consultant Word We Actually Like
The word “material” points to a useful concept, and provides a welcome corrective to an obsessive and misguided focus on statistical significance.
Personas Are Fake Customers. Here’s Where They Come From and Why They Are So Useful.
Personas are fictional representations of customer types, but they reflect the demographics, behaviors, goals, and motivations of people derived from real data.
I Wrote a Poem about Market Research using ChatGPT. Clever, Amazing, and Interesting. But Is It Poetry?
In a test of the powers of AI, here is an impressive poem it wrote about market research. It’s worth a smile. But it’s not poetry.
Translating Surveys Perfectly Will Make Them Perfect – But It Doesn’t Actually Matter
A recent study shows that team translation is superior for accurate survey translation, but that less accurate translations will work just as well in terms of survey measurement.
Don’t Be Fooled by the Mean (or How to Avoid Absurd Statistical Claims in Your PR and Market Research Surveys)
An article in The New Yorker claimed that a hundred years ago most Americans died in their mid-fifties. Alas, they were fooled by a statistic and the claim is not true.
Five Research Lessons from the Pandemic Years
Here is a brief summary of the Versta Research Spring 2023 Newsletter, which outlines five research lessons that have transformed marketing research during the pandemic years.
The Problem with “Check All That Apply” Survey Questions
We sometimes advise against multiple-select questions, believing that respondents give less attention to each item in the list. New eye tracking research suggests we might be wrong.
Mobile Phones Still Present Challenges for Market Research
Cell phone dialing is now essential for phone surveys, just as mobile-optimized surveys are essential for online surveys. A lot of market research continues to ignore this.
Data Visualization Is Not the Silver Bullet You Hoped For
It is magical thinking to believe that charts and graphs and fancy new tools for data visualization will solve the challenge of finding insights in data.
A Better Way to Ask Race and Ethnicity (and Proof That It Works)
Versta Research has a new way of asking about race and ethnicity on surveys, and it is reducing respondent confusion and complaints by 80%.