Versta Research is a marketing research and public opinion polling firm that helps you answer critical questions with customized research and analytical expertise.
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.
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How statistics are calculated and presented has a huge effect on how audiences interpret information and make decisions. A recent study about medical decisions based on drug efficacy data highlights the critical importance of how you turn your data into stories, no matter what industry. The research shows that different stories, all of them true…
Versta Research just hit a magic number: 100. That’s the number of articles we have written to help our clients and their colleagues keep abreast of important trends in market research. If your market research supplier is not providing ongoing thought leadership in design, methods, and analytics, then what are the chances they are bringing…
One of the surprises of multi-mode research is that offering people a choice of how they want to complete a survey (online, by mail, by phone, etc.) does not necessarily boost response rates. An article in the most recent issue of Public Opinion Quarterly provides new evidence of this. The study showed that even in…
This past week the American Marketing Association in Chicago held its 2011 annual BrandSmart conference, bringing together top-level marketers from companies such as Groupon, Motorola, Allscripts, Cars.com, Deloitte, Coldwell Banker, Accenture, Hospira, Walgreens, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Grainger, Morningstar, and many others, all of whom shared the newest strategies and case studies for brand building…
Executives who lead entrepreneurial firms have dramatically different attitudes about market research from their counterparts at larger established firms, according to a recent study from Saras Sarasvathy, an associate professor of business administration at the University of Virginia. The study suggests that entrepreneurs are more focused on immediate and practical questions that will help them…
A good chart is the best way to understand the law of diminishing returns when it comes to sample size. So for our June 2011 newsletter we built an interactive graph for choosing sample size. It’s cool, educational, and useful. Moreover, it will show you just how mind boggling the numbers behind sampling can be. …
We have always been big fans of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric because it has convinced many firms to begin using customer satisfaction measurement scales that work better and that are tied to what people do rather than what people think. Eleven point scales (with points zero to ten) allow for optimal variation. They…
A new study presented by two professors from Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst was probably one of the liveliest and potentially disruptive presentations at least week’s annual meeting of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) in Phoenix. Why? Because their research challenges the beliefs of many AAPOR-ites who disregard…
We like this cartoon because it highlights the unrealized potential of really smart research, but also the potential perils of research gone bad. The cartoon brings to mind three lessons worth pondering: Customer satisfaction research is often “not fun”—but it can be Internal data can be a goldmine of insight and there is often a…
We are often surprised by the number of senior researchers in the market research industry who never touch raw data. Often they don’t even have the tools, since “data processing” is outsourced to lower levels or other countries. It is surprising because we almost always engage in work where getting into the data and puzzling…