There comes a time when all professions begin to question their purpose. Consider it therapy for the profession. Market research is no different. Since the new millennium started, the MR profession has seen the rise of data mining, social media, online survey platforms, big data, gamification, The...read more

In the voice of the customer world it is our role as market researchers to listen and follow through on what the customers are saying. Quite often this puts us in the position of ‘middle men’ between the customers and internal groups (e.g. sales, marketing, finance, customer service, etc.)...read more

Ok so just what is a Likert scale anyway? If you have been in market research, or any form of survey research, for any length of time you have no doubt come across the ubiquitous Likert scale and its strongly agree to strongly disagree framework. In the years I have been involved in constructing...read more

Some days as a B2B market researcher, and in my previous lives in consumer research, I find myself becoming more intimate with SPSS files and questionnaires than with our customers. Ah, you might say, such is the life of a quant junkie. Well that may be true, as I do love working with the data that...read more

The number of true monopolies in the global economy is not that large. What this means to the rest of us is that we have to compete to sell our products and services. Competition can come from both global competitors and those homegrown in your back yard.To grow in a soft economy companies must be...read more

What is statistical significance anyway? The core of our survey data analysis should be directed toward generating consumer insights that are both meaningful and actionable. In order to achieve this joint goal we have to keep our eye on significance, both statistical and managerial.Previously we...read more

If there were one industry that could truly benefit from consumer insight research, it is the restaurant industry. Granted there are the giants of the industry, e.g. McDonalds or Chik-fil-A, that have teams dedicated to dissecting every aspect of the customer experience, but the biggest gains can...read more

Customer satisfaction measurement can be best described as part art, part science, and part intuition. Regardless of how you view it there are several moving parts to this equation. Satisfaction, as a measure itself, is part of a larger equation centered on profitability. When designing a...read more

Seldom is there a customer experience that doesn’t have an underlying emotional dimension. Harnessing this fact is an issue that Big Data has yet to fully resolve. However, for decades those in the consumer behavior camp have understood this. The emotional component to a decision or experience is...read more

There is another side to the ‘one percent’ debate. This presented itself in fine fashion recently thanks to two emails from LinkedIn. In the past year the business networking site surpassed 200 million profiles. In 2012, I received an initial email stating that I was one of the first one percent of...read more