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Research for PR is definitely not “research lite” as my former boss used to think. It is the opposite, and requires more attention to rigor than strategic research. Why? Because no other research gets such intense scrutiny from people outside our firm and from audiences beyond our clients. It can’t be “directional.” It has to…
Just back from LIMRA’s 2017 Marketing and Research Conference, I am happy to report a successful and productive “meeting of the minds” from both the Marketing Side and the Research Side of this uniquely blended gathering of financial services professionals. No matter what some may say, research is not part and parcel of marketing. Nor…
This familiar sentence opens the lead article of Public Opinion Quarterly’s 2017 special issue on survey research: “Telephone surveys are dead, claim some survey researchers, and should be replaced with nonprobability samples from Internet panels.” Hmm, I’ve said something similar to that in the past, I thought to myself. I guess I’m not the only…
There is a small academic niche in market research that relies heavily on extremely cheap crowdsourcing for data. But before getting up in arms about the reliability and validity of such data, you should know this: They used to rely heavily on students enrolled in their college classes for data. Remember having to work six…
Here are two ways you might ask a question to document multiple behaviors, purchases, interests, etc. They seem like they would be equivalent, but they are not. The first is called a multi-check format: The second is called a yes-no grid: If respondents were super careful, thoughtful, and unbiased in how they answer, the information…
In the Versta Research spring newsletter, Build a Better Customer Satisfaction Survey, we mentioned—but did not speak to—the seventh question in our newly developed survey for clients. It was added at the last minute. We put it right at the top, so it is the first question you see. If you didn’t yet test drive…
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…
One memorable lesson from reading Edward Tufte’s books about visual displays of quantitative information is that charts are not the only way to display data. Indeed, they are sometimes a worse way. We should always at least consider a table as a superior alternative: Tables are clearly the best way to show exact numerical values,…
When Dilbert starts making fun of the most common words in market research—actionable insights—it’s time to consider letting them go. And now that nearly every marketing and research professional, every market research firm, and every data analysis tool touts a unique ability to offer actionable insight, I think we can now safely agree that the…
Which of these two questions do you find more annoying, question A or question B? A. Foodie TV has announced a competition to select the best destination for food. What can your city do to win? B. In terms of the restaurant choices, what is important for a city to offer? Now which of these…