Learning the math behind market research is not easy because there is no programmatic way to master it as a body of learning. It is not like algebra, geometry, calculus, or statistics in high school or college. It is complex and multifaceted and draws upon nearly every area of theoretical mathematics, but it must be…
Our March 2011 newsletter focuses on conjoint research, which we consider to be one of the most clever and powerful techniques of survey research. Why? Because it allows us to build working models of decision-making. Conjoint works by presenting people with scenarios that are more like the real-life trade-offs they always make. For example, instead…
Yesterday nearly one hundred marketers and researchers met in Chicago to talk about new directions in marketing research. Our topic: Measuring the Un-Measurable. The event was organized by the AMA’s market research group in Chicago, headed by Joe Hopper, president of Versta Research. The event brought together professionals from companies such as Cargill, Allstate, US…
After spending $65 million and previewing the show over sixty times since the end of last year, the producers of the new Spider-Man musical in New York are turning to focus groups and surveys in hopes that market research can do something…anything…to save the amazing Spider-Man from destruction. Last week, theater critics roundly panned the…
Last quarter we wrote about Magic Numbers in Market Research—those arbitrary rules of thumb and cut-off points we use when quoting things like minimum samples sizes or how many people to include in a focus group. Presto! Like magic, the issue appeared in the New York Times a few weeks ago, this time related to…
Unless your company has a department dedicated to it, market research can be a hard sell because higher level executives may not believe in the value of research. At Versta, we have a certain sympathy with these executives. In our view, market research in and of itself has little value; it is the outcomes of…
The latest data from the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey show that one quarter (25%) of U.S. adults do not have land-line telephones in their homes. So if you conduct a traditional random-digit-dial (RDD) phone survey, you will automatically be excluding one quarter of the population. Does it matter, given that surveys rarely interview everyone…
Good data from a survey requires, among other things, thoughtful feedback from respondents. Low-quality data most often comes not from fraudulent or lazy respondents, but from well-meaning survey takers who are bored or irritated with surveys that are not user-friendly. In this article we focus not on the unengaged respondents who may be offering up…
With the magic of the holidays upon us, we got to thinking about “magic” in market research, or the lack thereof. So our just- published quarterly newsletter focuses on magic numbers in market research, arguing that certain “magical” numbers seem to guide much of what we do, whether we realize it or not. The best…
One way you can make a research report really pop is to carefully select and edit quotes from the people involved in the study. For qualitative research, that means pulling quotes from transcripts of in-depth interviews, focus groups, online bulletin boards, social media, etc. For survey research, it means pulling quotes from open-ended questions that…