Choose your words wisely or so we have always been told. We could extend this thought to the market research world by saying choose your categories wisely. The categories we use in our questions directly impacts the quality of our survey data analysis.Nowhere is this more of an issue than in 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

As market researchers, we are frequently asked to assess the opinions of our constituents. In the process of questionnaire creation, this can take the place of asking one group directly about their sentiment, but there are other options. It is equally common to ask one group about their perceptions...read more

Measuring influence is a common practice in both consumer and B2B marketing research. Understanding the dynamics of the purchase process is critical to both effective messaging as well as the overall design of your sales programs. With that said from the perspective of questionnaire creation there...read more

Advances in online survey design and market research in general have allowed us to expand outside the realm of just asking the right questions. In order to ensure participant engagement, and ultimately higher completion rates, we have to consider the question formats we use in addition to how they...read more

There is a fine line between requiring respondents to answer a question thus avoiding missing data, and pushing them to a place where they decide to exit the survey before completion. As the survey author you have the ability to specify whether or not a question is ‘required’ or alternatively a...read more

As a market research professional and long-time survey guy, I have come across many clients who could be classified as unwieldy. Although I have nothing against them personally, their thoughts about survey development and the kind of information needed are enough to make one flinch. A few...read more

Ah the sweet life…marketers in the entertainment, culinary and travel industries do their job with vigilance to remind us what the good life really is. In order to do this effectively, the researchers that support these marketers need to embrace lifestyle questions in our consumer surveys. Hard core...read more

We all know the power of information, and surveys can be a great way to get essential information efficiently.  Some companies, depending on the frequency and need for surveys, rely on survey software in order to make questionnaire creation, data collection, and survey analysis a swift and easy...read more

In a recent post I spoke to the need for using best practices when applying survey scales to measure customer attitudes. No where is this more critical than when creating a customer satisfaction survey. This should be accomplished in a way that places as little effort on the respondent as...read more