As a fact of daily life we are confronted with choices and options. Some of these decisions are easy to make and take little of our precious time. However, there are those decisions that take considerable time and resources to resolve. As survey researchers we put our respondents through choice...read more

I’m goin’ mobile as Pete Townsend once sang. The trend toward all things mobile continues to cruise down the highway unconcerned by high gas prices. Does this mean market research should follow along? I say so with a cautious yes! Why the caution you ask? When we go mobile we should do so with open...read more

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 a previous post I discussed the basics for conducting online advertising testing. With the advent of online survey platforms the ability to test various advertising messages and formats is easier than ever. Gone are the days of renting large rooms and embedding ads in mock programs. The current...read more

Just who we are is a question that has been asked by philosophers since time immemorial. Market research professionals are no different than those wise men from ancient Greece in this regard. Our task is to create an understanding of the consumer’s mind in which we can shape our brand positioning...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

There was a day not long ago that advertising testing involved sitting large numbers of people in a room and showing them ads embedded in pilot television shows with a pre-exposure survey and a post-test assessment following the programming and ad exposure. My how things have changed! With the...read more

It has been said many times that randomness is next to godliness in the world of experimental design. I would extend this thinking to the structured world of survey research as well. In this post we will look at two methods for incorporating randomness into your online survey design. Cvent offers...read more

The concept of a New York minute can be applied to market research. For those who do not know a New York minute is an instant, which is infinitely shorter than the 60-second minute you and I work with. In the current haze of cloud-based thinking, we can apply this short attention span metric via the...read more

As consumer insight professionals we are often tasked with assessing how our consumers and prospects make a choice when selecting a product or service. This is not an easy task regardless of whether your focus is consumer or B2B market research, but there are several ways to reach the end. A recent...read more