Surveys and Market Research 101

Kelli Kelley is a senior research analyst with a full-service firm in Chicago. In addition to market research, she enjoys the outdoors, biking, traveling and decorating her condo.

Market researchers are forever writing questions, revising questions, asking questions – we live in a querulous world of questions! But sometimes we forget to question our own market research data. Some of you might be affronted, thinking What can she possibly mean? My data is perfect! And maybe it is. But it’s still important to be very careful when going over data.

If market research data is completely different than what is expected (say, 70% off from what you had predicted) this could... Continue Reading »

We all know the debacles that can happen when clients and companies do not do proper research, or simply ignore it. Take the New Coke disaster, for example. While New Coke beat Pepsi in taste tests, Coke failed to ask a very key question – Do you want New Coke to replace Coca-Cola?

Instead, they went ahead and launched the new product and replaced Coca-Cola. Consumers were furious! The cost of this mistake has never been totally revealed, but Coke undoubtedly lost close to a billion dollars or...Continue Reading »

All market researchers are familiar with the concept of prescreening and rescreening for focus groups. But similar methods can easily be applied to online surveys and questionnaires.

When finding respondents for an online market research survey, you should first send out a prescreening survey. These should be short in length and allow you to gain the demographic data you need in order to determine if the person fits the respondent sample profile. If they are a match, they will then move forward...Continue Reading »

When conducting internal employee surveys, it is important to make employees feel secure, comfortable and safe in the knowledge that their responses won’t result in the loss of their job. At the same time, it can be difficult to get completely honest answers from these survey respondents because that little fear is still there.

Particularly in today’s economy, many people are afraid of losing their jobs. It is very difficult to find work in the current economic climate and so no one wants to rock...Continue Reading »

Traditional methods of increasing responses for online surveys include purchasing e-mail lists, using customer information in your client database, or putting URLs on things like receipts or newspaper ads.

Using social media like Twitter is another way you can gain potential respondents. For example, if your a popular fast-food restaurant with a Twitter account that has 10,000 followers, you can tweet the link to a screener survey, those that qualify will then get the opprotunity to complete the...Continue Reading »

Every good market researcher knows how to turn raw data into a comprehensive and informative report. But some market research reports require thousands of survey responses, and this can be a daunting task. How can you maintain a handle on such a large project, while keeping the data accurate and organized?

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If someone comes to you with an involved research study, you may feel overwhelmed at first. If the project is multi-faceted and will require several different surveys and involve several different target groups, you may want to start with an online poll to give yourself a sense of direction.

Use an online poll creator to make a simple poll to gauge preliminary results. For example, if you were doing a study on voting habits for an upcoming election, you might create a poll asking people if they...Continue Reading »

For certain surveys and certain groups, a direct mail questionnaire is a good option.  The best time to use this method of gathering data is when visual aids are required, and lengthy open-ended response are not.

For example, if you are conducting a survey for a cereal company about their packaging, you can send a sample package and the direct mail survey to a respondent pool. They can answer the survey at their own convenience.

How can you ensure that recipients will fill out the survey?...Continue Reading »

More and more market research client’s may be interested in piggybacking, or combining funds to complete a research study. This is beneficial for all parties because you might gain new clients who would not otherwise be able to afford your services, and they will be happy you can accommodate them.

Piggybacking lends itself more easily to certain types of studies. Employee surveys, customer satisfaction questionnaires or product-specific studies may not necessarily be the best fits, but general... Continue Reading »