Some respondents answer survey questions with the same answer over and over again. They agree to everything, or they give identical numeric ratings to all items. It’s called “straight-lining,” and we often consider this a sign of poor data quality. I was intrigued by an approach to mitigating the problem I learned last week, shared…
Maybe you got one of these printed notes from a cashier at Walmart, like I did: $1000 You can win a $1000 Gift Card and we can improve your shopping experience! Please follow the instructions on your receipt. “9” is NOT fine… We’re focused on an excellent experience. Please give us a “10” when we’ve…
Consider three core groups that come together on most market research projects: (1) The client-side research managers (2) The supplier-side researchers (3) The research respondents. Now consider a list of some deeply rooted needs and desires of these three groups, as revealed by a recent industry research study:
As we put the finishing touches on our recently produced video introduction to Versta Research (see the video below!), I kept wondering whether videos really matter. I don’t jump on bandwagons without strong reasons to believe the wagons are going where I want. So it was a happy coincidence to come across research just published…
Early customer feedback, especially in multiple forms and from multiple channels, can make or break the success of a new product or service. But it turns out that not all customer feedback is created equal. Some people have a knack for grasping new ideas, seeing how products might be used in novel ways, or imagining…
If you’re looking for a career-oriented new year’s resolution, there is no better way to improve your professional skills right now, including your research and marketing skills, than to write better. You will write better proposals and better reports. You will turn data into stories that people actually want to read. And with some practice…
Once a year we schlepp out the Google Analytics (yes, with good reason, only once a year—perhaps a topic for a future article) to find out what you, dear readers, are paying attention to. Traffic is higher than ever. During the last twelve months there were 383 visits per week to our website. But that…
There are good reasons to avoid phone surveys if you can. But if there is no alternative, it is critical to think about strategies for integrating cell phones into your outreach and sampling. Almost half (48%) of U.S. adults have no landline telephone service, while fewer than one in ten (9%) have no cell phone…
The evidence continues to mount that phone surveys should be a method of last resort. Pew Research Center has released results of an experiment conducted in 2014 to test mode differences in how surveys are administered. The research question was whether people answer survey questions differently when responding to a real person on a telephone…
Or, at least, design thinking should be invading your market research, because it is invading the brains of business executives. The New York Times describes IBM as being on a mission to hire 1,500 design school graduates, and embedding them in all of its product teams. The Harvard Business Review published an issue in September…