Market research almost always relies (or should rely) on U.S. Census data. The data are rigorous, reliable, and fundamentally important to every business, not-for-profit, and government body in the United States. So if you get a package that looks like this, as a neighbor did last week, here is what you should do: Open it…
Last month we were honored to be on the main stage at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:Think 2015 Conference, sharing with the nation’s top research and advertising executives insights from our work with Wells Fargo. I use the word honored for two reasons. First, we were selected from over 200 entries for one of the…
One of the cardinal sins of market research is to misrepresent the purpose of research and how it will be used. The colorful terms used for two of the most common forms for misrepresentation are SUGGING and FRUGGING. The first of these stands for Selling Under the Guise of research. The nefarious “research” firm calls…
It used to be that online surveys were dismissed as a form of polling because only a fraction of the U.S. population had access to the Internet. That is no longer the case, and I was surprised by the latest numbers showing just how extensive Internet access has become. Almost nine out of ten (87%)…
[SEE CARTOON] Of course those 99% keep reading the pointless polls, and most research firms are happy to keep generating pointless polls. The problem? Too few research firms are willing and able to help clients differentiate a survey that is informative and truly worthy of print, versus one that is pointless. So how do you…
I recently came across this strange big book, the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, compiled by the Federal Judicial Center and the National Research Council. It’s not fun reading, but it provides an enormously useful and fascinating overview of what makes social and marketing research (and other kinds of scientific research, too) sufficiently rigorous to…
The next time you analyze the results of your customer satisfaction or brand loyalty tracking study, and you notice an upward or downward shift, ask yourself this: Is it reasonable to think that certain customers—either the happy ones or the unhappy ones—were more willing to give you their opinions than the other group? If so,…
Telephones used to be an awesome way to find a random sample of Americans. Nearly all Americans had a home telephone, nearly everybody would answer if you called, and most were willing to answer survey questions to help researchers understand public opinion. In fact, telephones have been so central to scientific survey research that the…
Over the last few years it has become clear that random digit dial telephone surveys—once the gold standard of survey research—are no longer so golden. But the New York Times has been a holdout among media giants, refusing to use online polls or to report findings from them. They have clung to the false idea…
One of the most useful techniques for in-depth qualitative interviewing is to ask respondents not only what they think, but what their friends, family, or colleagues think. It opens a whole new level of conversation and insight because all of the sudden respondents feel free to talk about their understanding and assessment of the world…