How to Measure Brand Authenticity
This article outlines the six measurable dimensions of brand authenticity — established in academic research — that you should include in any survey of brand authenticity.
How to Fix a McKinsey Survey: 10 Best Practices They Should Have Followed
Last week we showed you a survey that might convince you to think twice about hiring a super high-end consulting firm for your survey research and insights. Fancy business consultants may know a lot about business, but they know little about gathering good data to answer their business questions. So this week, instead of focusing…
This is What a McKinsey Survey Looks Like
Ever wonder what you get if you hire a fancy schmancy consulting firm for your survey research and marketing insights, instead of Versta Research? Every once in a while we have a potential client who insists: “Give us IBM! Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.” I got a view into what those surveys look…
Why You Need Designer Data
One luxury of doing primary research is that you can get data perfectly tailored to the problem you need to solve. Primary research allows you to design how data will be elicited, and how, exactly, attitudes and behaviors are measured. Hence, you get the insight you need. If you don’t have perfectly tailored data, you…
Here’s Your Chance to Write Better Questionnaires
This summer you will not have to schlep to Ann Arbor for a month if you want to take advantage of top-notch summer training courses in survey research offered at the University of Michigan. Everything is being offered online this year! It is a perfect opportunity for corporate researchers and others who work on the…
How to Ask Race & Ethnicity on a Survey
If demographic benchmarks and trends are essential to your business and the research you conduct (things like age, gender, race, ethnicity, and region) then our just-published 2020 Spring Newsletter has information you absolutely need to know. The U.S. Census Bureau continues to change how it collects and classifies demographic data. Right now the Bureau is…
AI (Artificial Intelligence) Just Rescued Our Survey — We Overlooked a Huge Mistake and a Robot Flagged It for Us
I write a lot about how robots are messing up market research. But yesterday, I had the happy experience of a robot helping us in a surprising a way. It flagged an error in a list of competitive brands for an ATU study (Attitudes, Trial, and Usage)—an error that would invalidated our results if we…
25 Things You Might Not Know About Research
Whether you’re a seasoned research professional, a newbie, or whether you dabble in research for other job responsibilities (like marketing or strategy) you will probably find something you don’t yet know in our winter newsletter with a feature article on 25 Things You Might Not Know About Research. It covers topics from stats, to charts,…
Fix Your Jargon-Filled Survey with Ordinary Words Real People Use
An important role for good survey researchers is to translate ridiculous sounding jargon their clients give them into ordinary words that real people use. The jargon is typically business or marketing related, because most surveys are done for business or marketing clients. But I just ran across some “marketing science” jargon (created by market researchers)…
6 How-To Books for UX Research
I pulled this list of six books on user research from a much larger list of recent books and articles compiled by a colleague in the research industry. These books offer valuable ideas for all types of market research because UX research has moved far away from just website usability. It now encompasses a broad…