Getting Back to the Trenches: Getting too Far Removed from the Customer Experience

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

Philosophers & Market Researches, One in the Same? Dancing in the Consumer's Shoes

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

Customer Satisfaction + Importance

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

A new twist on the one percent concept

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

Thank You for Playing, Come Again!

If all goes well your respondent’s will complete the survey providing accurate data in the process. This is the goal anyway. How we engage participants from the point of the invitation through the survey and upon completion has an impact upon the quality and success of our overall project. Just as...read more

Adding Questions to the Matrix

On occasion a survey comes my way that illustrates, either with excellence or lack of vision, good online survey design. The illustration below comes from a customer satisfaction survey provided by a regional grocery store to their online community. The table speaks to one dimension of the...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

The name game

The world of B2B and consumer marketing research is filled with horror stories of products that have gone into the market with a name that could only be characterized as an anchor. In this case one that weighs down sales potential. Numerous examples of naming snafus have been documented, especially...read more

Choose your categories wisely

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
The Rise of the Smart Phone: Are you Leverging Mobile? 10 Tips for Mobile-Friendly Survey Creation