Survey research can be used to assess the attitudes and opinions of virtually any group or sub-group. Most of my work has been in the areas of consumer and B2B market research, but from time to time my focus has shifted toward surveying employees. This makes perfect sense as our employees are the...read more

Building on a previous entry about exceeding market expectations, this post will look at a particular type of survey, the planning survey. If you are in B2B market research you are likely familiar with the requests of internal clients who need to budget and schedule for the coming year. The timing...read more

Hopefully by now we're all aware of how important social media can be to market a product or idea to a large audience. But did you also know how much social media can affect the research process? A few weeks ago The Guardian posted a great piece about how social media can be utilized during all...read more

Do you remember your first time? Well if it was your first kiss then I hope you would remember. In this case I am referring to first time you became a customer of (fill in the blank). How you feel about your first experience with a new retailer, vendor or other company plays a large role in...read more

Customer experience is a new(er) practice within the enterprise. There's no degree. There's no How-To manual. But there are events like the Forrester Customer Experience Forum in New York this week designed around sharing new ideas and practices for effective customer experience management. So far,...read more

Incentives are common place in the market research industry. This is true for consumer and B2B marketing research. Often we, as survey providers, offer tokens of our appreciation ranging from branded items to gift cards (can we say Starbucks, please!) to charitable donations. Yet, incentives are not...read more

Level 1 Evaluation relates to the feedback of the participants to the training event. Typically the participants are given "smiley sheets" to indicate their level of satisfaction with the program. As discussed in the earlier post, many categories are evaluated during level 1 evaluation. They include...read more

With a lot of focus on ROI on training, and other metrics of training, many times training managers and others forget that the good ol' Level 1 training feedback is also very important. The Kirkpatrick Level 1 measures the participant reaction or feedback to the entire training event. In fact, Level...read more

The survey is one of the most important means of collecting data. The advantage is that it can be given to a large sample that may ensure a reasonable rate of return. However, the survey has disadvantage—it may not yield the finer details for what you are seeking data. For example, you have designed...read more

In times when every penny counts, there is more demand on training managers to “prove” that training has paid off. Most organizations follow Kirkpatrick’s 4 Levels of Evaluation: The immediate feedback: The smiley sheets at the end of the training program where participants respond to questions on...read more