Does data displayed in charts and graphs, rather than tables, lead to better decisions? Not according to research published several years ago in the Journal of Marketing Research. The authors looked at various types of biases that creep into business managers’ decisions when based on data presented to them. They did this by conducting experiments…
One of our heroes at Versta Research is David Blackwell, a prominent statistician and mathematician who died at the age of 91 very soon after we opened our doors for business (sixteen years ago!) For many he is well known because he was the first African American to be elected to the National Academy of…
We saw an ad today for a downloadable survey app that was pitched as a tool for actionable insights. Wow! Download, install, run . . . click again, and there they are, sitting on your desktop or smart phone: actionable insights. Is this possible? No. It unfortunately confuses the tools of market research and public…
A colleague in market research once complained to me that he felt bored and unchallenged by all the client satisfaction and loyalty research he was doing, claiming he had mastered it to the point that he could do satisfaction and loyalty research in his sleep. I was struck because I could not think of any…
Good research happens by design. That is one of the reasons we enjoy writing research proposals. Writing proposals is an exercise in research design, which is the place and time where you must think in strategic and smart ways about what you are going to do and how you are going to do it. You…
It should be straightforward to ask someone a simple factual question and receive a reliable answer. Questions like: “Do you have children?” “Do you attend church every week?” or “Do you own a bank account?” seem easy and clear-cut. However, the moment we begin drafting even these seemingly straightforward survey questions, we quickly uncover ambiguity…
In this article we revisit a 15-year old article in the Harvard Business Review (“Rethinking Marketing”) about the transformation of marketing. It relates directly to an important theme of Versta Research’s recent talk at the AMA in Chicago—namely, dissipation of the research function. The article argued that marketing was shifting from being product-centric to being…
Getting your research findings heard, understood, and used should always be your goal. That means more than putting findings into a report deck, presenting results to the marketing team, writing up press releases, or getting media placement for a PR story. It means having your audience engage with it by thinking, sharing, and taking action.…
Years ago I watched a film that documented how a new product developed. The idea was to create a pre-packaged sandwich for quick and easy lunches. As the idea made its way to the final product launch, it became something entirely different: a round tubular pretzel with a soft gooey interior – now a snack…
One of the devilish problems with statistics in market research is that we deal with probabilities rather than simple yes/no answers. But you, as a business person, need to make clear-cut decisions: Should you launch the product, yes or no? Which one name should you choose for your new service? Which three areas should you…