Dealing with vendors often makes me cranky, but it always reminds me of the things Versta Research should be doing when working with our own customers. Over the years I have taken careful note of the things our best vendors do to capture my loyalty. They have me turning to them again and again without…
A persistent misperception in our industry is that technology can (or eventually will) largely automate our work. It reflects a fundamental confusion between the tools that we use versus the work that we do. This confusion was evident in a recent New York Times article about the surprising amount of time that data scientists devote…
I used to get more worked up about survey answer scales than I do nowadays. I didn’t like even-numbered scales, including 1 to 10 scales (no midpoint!) or five point scales (too blunt!) or seven or nine point scales (not intuitive!). I liked zero to ten scales—and still do—because they offer good opportunity for respondent…
A couple of weeks ago we highlighted the top tier marketing research priorities identified by a select group of corporate executives who are members of the Marketing Sciences Institute, and who represent the corporate-user side of marketing research. Every two years they vote on where to direct the institute’s research funds for academic research. Not…
Every two years marketing executives from more than 60 corporate members of the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) vote on the most important marketing topics they need to understand better. They represent companies like Kraft, Colgate-Palmolive, Bank of America, Nielsen, and Walmart. MSI—a think tank, of sorts, whose mission is to “bridge the academic and business…
Don’t waste money delighting your customers. That’s the message from an intriguing new study and report just issued by the Corporate Executive Board. Why not delight your customers? Because meeting expectations is enough to keep them loyal. Going beyond those expectations and “delighting” them has no measurable impact on loyalty. Quoting from the report: Most…
Our financial services group at the Chicago AMA hosted a panel last night of financial advisors to talk about the challenges of reaching customers. We recruited three advisors of different types: Todd Johnson from New England Securities (MetLife), Michelle Dunigan from BMO Harris Financial Advisors, and Patrick Cote from AssetGrade. The panel was moderated by…
Last week we wrote about the optimal number of benefits, features, or claims you should make in your marketing materials. Research shows that three maximizes the impact because it aligns with a buyer’s sense of data sufficiency. Going beyond three invites skepticism because it reminds buyers that the message is “just marketing,” not information. So…
If you do concept testing that involves evaluating messages, ad copy, value propositions, benefits claims and so on, chances are you get to the end of the study and say, “Now I know which messages are best. But how many should I use?” New research just published in the Journal of Marketing suggests that the…
Over the last decade satisfaction research has shifted strongly towards loyalty research. This shift has been driven, in part, by widespread interest in Net Promoter Scores (NPS) as a way to benchmark against other companies and link the customer experience more directly to financial outcomes. But it turns out that focusing so much on loyalty…