Crafting Community Surveys

What makes a community? Well certainly it is a collection of unique individuals who call a single place home. It is also a place where businesses hang their shingle. Collectively the residents and businesses work together and if all goes well the community can thrive. However, there is something...read more

Know Thy Competition!

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

Tasty Satisfaction Treats: Feedback Tips for Restaurateurs

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

Charting a New Direction with Research

One the primary purposes of marketing research (both for consumer and B2B market research) is to mitigate risk. Often I am asked what I do for a living and invariably my response is I quantify executives gut feelings. This is exactly where market research as a function needs to be. When we bring our...read more

20 Most Popular Posts of 2012

While we highlight the most popular posts from a given month in our newsletter, one of my favorite activities is to look back and see what posts were the most popular overall each year. Keeping with tradition, here's a look back across the 20 most popular posts of 2012!   Customer Loyalty Month: 25...read more

How representative is my sample?

The question that lies in the back of any researcher’s mind centers on what degree is their sample a reasonable measure of the population of interest? All aspects of the survey project can be spot on, but if the respondents do not form a representative sample then all bets are off for the quality of...read more

How Optimistic are You Feeling?

Optimism, or lack thereof, is a key driver to both current and future spending. Practitioners in both consumer and B2B market research have known this for some time. There are numerous ongoing tracking studies which measure consumer sentiment and/or sentiment amongst purchase managers. Both have...read more

Message Testing 123

There isn’t a marketer out there who hasn’t at one time or another questioned whether he or she was putting the right messages into the market. After all it is all about how and what we communicate. This is true regardless if we are in acquisition mode or focusing on customer retention techniques....read more

Measuring Purchase Influence

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

Revisited: Executive Summary Report Writing Tips

Last Friday, National Tell a Story Day, inspired this month's Throwback Thrusday because survey reports and analysis is just that: Telling a Good (Compelling) Story. Whenever you tell a story, you have to start by setting the stage. The same is true with research reports whether you're working on...read more
The Rise of the Smart Phone: Are you Leverging Mobile? 10 Tips for Mobile-Friendly Survey Creation