You might think that a research firm specializing in surveys would be glad to see a world in which customer feedback surveys are everywhere. Not so. I take part in a lot of webinars, and unfortunately I am asked to complete a survey (at least one) every time I attend. Some websites ask me to…
We are big fans data visualization (in addition to presenting data with numbers and tables). But even the basics of visualizing data can be challenging, so it is worth thinking about how and when to use some of the simplest tools, like pie charts and bar charts. Pie charts can be particularly challenging because they…
Market researchers complain a lot when they get data back from surveys and see that people have been “speeding” through their surveys or that people are not giving thoughtful responses. Putting aside the issue of fraud (which is a huge problem in our industry) the problem is rarely “bad respondents” – instead the problem is…
One of the cool things about social science and marketing research is that it brings together mathematics and human behavior. Mathematics is beautiful, elegant, and abstract. It is much like art. Human behavior is messy, contradictory, and frustrating, desperately in need of a way to make sense of it. Bringing the two together – turning…
Here’s a chart that will dazzle the research and design teams you are working for. It’s called a Sankey chart. In the context of market research, it is used to show the “flow” of respondents from one cut of data into another. For example, suppose you have data on how respondents started shopping online for…
I just read a delightful and thought-provoking snippet in Proust’s Swann’s Way (published in 1913) that, unfortunately, reminded me of artificial intelligence in market research. Here is what Proust originally wrote, which is delightful: But all of the feelings we are made to experience by the joy or the misfortune of a real person are…
One of the weirdest new uses of artificial intelligence in market research is to create “synthetic respondents” for surveys and qualitative interviews. The idea is to use information scraped from the Internet via AI’s large language models, construct a sample of synthetic people that matches the demographics of one’s target population, and then ask those…
Here are four types of “attention checks” to build into your questionnaires and analysis in order to assess whether respondents are fully engaged in answering your survey.
Personas are fictional representations of customer types, but they reflect the demographics, behaviors, goals, and motivations of people derived from real data.
If you suffer from miserably low response rates to surveys you send with your own e-mail list, here’s something to try: Dump the e-mail invitation functionality that is built into your survey platform like Qualtrics. Instead, use a stand-alone email tool like Mail Chimp or Constant Contact. This will make your life harder, and it…