This past Monday I moderated a panel of thought leaders in market research to ponder the question: “How Will Social Media Change Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research?” The event was sponsored by the American Marketing Association, and included participants from GfK, Maritz, MARC, SAS, Market Tools, and Versta Research. One of the fascinating insights to…
One critical trend that is transforming the research industry is the rapid adoption of mobile technologies, especially smartphones. It transforms research in multiple ways. It means that people disconnect their landlines, so we have to adjust our methods for phone polling. But more importantly, it means people are accessible in multiple ways (text, phone, email)…
The summer 2010 newsletter from Versta Research focuses on how to bridge the gap between quantitative research and qualitative research, whether it be market research or academic research. Both methods give rich insights, and both offer compelling ways to summarize and communicate data. But rarely does each method draw upon the strengths of the other.…
The idea that online panel surveys can replace telephone surveys ruffles feathers among my colleagues at the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). So what would they think of using Twitter posts as a substitute for phone surveys? The idea seems crazy, but as reported in Science, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found…
In the old days (decades ago), phone surveys had limited utility because many people had no phone service in their homes. When that changed, phone surveys became ubiquitous because they allowed researchers better control over the process. Data quality improved. Now increasing numbers of people have moved to cell phones only, which has been a…
If something works and it keeps on working but you don’t know exactly why it works, what would you do? Our view is that you should keep doing it. Not everyone agrees with us. The American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) convened a task force to study online survey panels, and released their report…
Telephone surveys are still considered the gold standard for rigorous public opinion polling and market research. The reason is that virtually every household in the U.S. can be reached by telephone, and therefore we have careful methods of determining the probability that any individual person is included in a sample to be surveyed. Knowing this…
An article in the most recent issue of the Harvard Business Review (“Rethinking Marketing”) argues that marketing is shifting from being product-centric to being customer-centric. The old method was to develop a portfolio of products, build a team around each product, find the customers who need that product and market it to them. The emerging…
In the previous post we noted that our industry is driven by data and information, which meant huge changes in the nature of our work over the last ten years. Looking ahead, here are what we predict will be the five biggest trends that will shape market research challenges in the decade to come:
As an industry driven by data and information, market research and public opinion polling has seen dramatic changes in the last ten years and will no doubt change quickly and in big ways during the next ten. Looking back, here are what we consider to be the five biggest changes that shaped current challenges faced…