Top 5 Picks: Best Articles on Market Research
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 ongoing and deep insight to your specific research needs?
To celebrate, we’re serving up a sampler of our five best articles. How did we decide they are the best? Our clients told us. These are the articles that they write to us about, forward to their colleagues, and for which they return to our website time and again. These are also the articles for which we get requests for print-ready PDF versions. (Just let us know if you want one!)
There are two critical elements to top notch research. First, it has to be right, which means focusing on the rigors of research design, data collection, and statistical analysis. Second, it has to be heard, understood, and used, and in our view that means turning data into stories. In this article we focus on what it means to turn data into stories, and we outline what you gain by doing so.
2. The Art of Asking Questions
Somewhere along the way to research becoming central to how businesses learn about their customers, the art of asking questions was lost. As a result, there is a lot of research for research’s sake, data in search of answers, and findings in search of questions. The first thing you should do before starting research is figure out what question your research must answer. Here’s how.
3. Magic Numbers in Market Research
Researchers cling to a handful of “magic numbers” that guide the decisions they make. There are magic numbers for sample size, the optimal number of points on a scale, thresholds for statistical significance, and how big a focus group should be. This article demonstrates and explains.
4. The ABCs of CBC: Understanding Conjoint for Market Research
This article focuses on the basic ideas, advantages, and uses of conjoint research. What is conjoint? How and why is it used? What insights can it give you? Furthermore, what are some of the pros and cons of fielding research using a conjoint method vs. other methods you might use?
5. Game Changing Product Innovation
A lot of research supporting new product development is a like machine that ends up creating NON-innovation because of over-benchmarking. We suggest an alternative.
We write these articles because even though we are in the business of doing rigorous research for our clients, research only matters if it is thoughtfully communicated, understood, and used. We hope that our efforts help your organization better design and deploy research to make smarter business decisions.
—Joe Hopper, Ph.D.
