Versta Research Blog

Versta Research Blog

About Versta

Versta Research is a marketing research and public opinion polling firm that helps you answer critical questions with customized research and analytical expertise.

Explore Versta

Versta Research Blog

Explore industry trends, research methods, and tips for your own research projects in the Versta Research Blog. All opinions are our own, and some may change over time.

First time reader? Check out the Best of the Blog for the most popular posts from almost 10 years of blogging. We’re glad you’re here.

How Bad Are We? (Survey Invite Review #1)

How Bad Are We? (Survey Invite Review #1)

I received survey invitations from three different companies over the last three weeks. Each takes a starkly different approach to wooing participation. One of them I admire; the other two offend me. The invitations brought to mind two feature-length articles we wrote for our newsletter subscribers in 2017: Building a Better Customer Satisfaction Survey and…

Read the rest of this entry
Getting to Yes When Response Rates Plummet

Getting to Yes When Response Rates Plummet

I used to think that when potential research respondents said no they’re not interested in participating in our survey, they really meant it, end of story. Then I started working more on the field side where all kinds of different data collection was happening all the time. Seeing recruitment and data collection up close amazed…

Read the rest of this entry
How to Measure Shopper Strategies

How to Measure Shopper Strategies

A feature story on the Versta Research website is about mapping shopper segments onto buyer segments. That story may have had you asking how we measured and defined those segments in the first place. The answer: by devising careful and nuanced survey questions to capture what our qualitative research partners learned about how consumers assess,…

Read the rest of this entry

How to Fix Your Education Bias in Surveys

How many people do you think are college-educated in the United States? If you’re like most clients we work for (whose family members, friends and co-workers nearly all have college degrees) you will substantially over-estimate that number. The answer is a mere 29%. If you include associate’s degrees, then it goes up to 37%. These…

Read the rest of this entry

10 Privacy Tips for Market Researchers

This week one of our sample suppliers said “no” when we asked if we could re-contact respondents for a purpose other than our original request. Good thing I asked, and you know what? I’m glad they said no. I want suppliers to think carefully about seemingly simple requests, and to point out ways in which…

Read the rest of this entry

Why Fake PR Surveys Outperform Real Ones

Sure we laugh at those ridiculously biased fundraising “surveys” from politicians. But for some reason, the poorly (but more cleverly) designed surveys put out by corporate PR departments often get a pass. Even worse, they sometimes get tons of visibility in both mainstream press and social media. I saw one such survey a few weeks…

Read the rest of this entry