A cool deliverable of many segmentation studies is a “typing tool” that allows you to input data on just a few dimensions (usually six to twelve survey questions) in order to predict which segment any customer belongs to. It works because even though segmentation algorithms sort through tons of data to find the best clusters,…
It’s the week after Independence Day. You’re doing your best to re-focus on work after the holiday break. If only it could have lasted a few days longer! I can’t bring you a few more days vacation, but I can offer this suggestion for making the holiday last just a wee bit longer: Bring some…
We have never deployed a customer satisfaction survey for our own customers. Why? Because most CX surveys are not designed to help customers. But we’ve just taken inspiration from a unique survey from Skype for Business, in order to Build a Better Customer Satisfaction Survey. It’s our feature article in this quarter’s newsletter. It highlights…
Google Analytics is a great example of how powerful OR how utterly useless data can be. If you let your analytics lead you around, and you search and search, and try all those variations and data cuts hoping to land on the “actionable insight” that Google always promises—trust me, you will fail. But if you…
What does it take to be a great market research vendor? That is the animating question behind Quirk’s top-read article in 2016 written by yours truly, your friends at Versta Research. We were thinking about all the annoying things our vendors do to us, and turned them into lessons for what we at Versta believe…
The thing I love about strategists is that they know exactly what they want. By the time they come to us, they have analyzed their business needs. They have figured out what kinds of data will help them make decisions. They know why they want research, how they are going to use it, and how…
Who can resist those flashy brain image scans showing that certain words, colors, images, or brands (or maybe your latest marketing message) magically light up consumers’ brains, presumably making them want to buy? Or, if you’re a cynic, who can resist sharing with colleagues the brain image scan of a dead salmon showing brain activity…
Here’s a market research tip you can give to your sales team without doing any costly research of your own. A seller can close more sales if, during the negotiations, he or she pairs a price concession with a request that the buyer do a favor in return. Why does this work? Because asking for…
Not long ago we were inspired to reflect on lessons learned from vendors. We are all vendors to clients (even corporate researchers have internal clients they serve), and we are all clients to vendors (even supply-side vendors have their own chain of vendors). So, we asked, what can all of us in the market research…
Last year, Gartner, which charts new trends and emerging technologies via its “Hype Cycle” tracking, decided to abandon its tracking of Big Data. The reason? Big data, they said, has become so ubiquitous and embedded in so many other technologies, that it is no longer a thing of its own. And yet, how many of…