I was just reading a couple of posts from March about how we are not doing well by our research participants. First, there was Annie Pettit’s post about how we sometimes use YouTube videos to help make a point in a presentation — without asking for permission from the original poster first. Second was an article by Melanie Courtwright on… Read more »
I recently learned in a staff meeting that the marketing research team was meeting with a group of their clients, discussing the plans for the coming year. One of the big questions for one of the trackers: are we even measuring the right metric any more? I don’t know the details of what happened, except that, at one point, the… Read more »
In the past year, two main items have come forward that has caused me, at least, to step back and reflect a bit on the market research industry as a whole. The first item: an article about reproducing psychology studies and how those replicated studies produced different results than the originals. The second item: an article about a bug in… Read more »
One of the topics I’ve seen recently on the market research blogosphere has to do with innovation in our industry. I think this question of how to continue to innovate isn’t a new question, but the answer can often feel elusive. When I worked at a national laboratory years ago, one of the concerns that often surfaced was that of… Read more »
Last year, Annie Pettit wrote a blog post that, frankly, has been on my mind ever since. The post was titled simply, “Where are the millennials of market research?” Depending on the date range for millennials being used, I’m either GenX or I’m a millennial. I’m also in a somewhat senior role with my company. This has caused me to… Read more »
The cyclist journeys home The story begins with a traveler cycling home from work. All the way, the cyclist kept being passed by other cyclists, and couldn’t help but wonder, “I’m exerting so much effort, but I keep getting passed! I know I’m slower than most, but this is starting to feel silly.” The cyclist then did a quick analysis… Read more »
The market research industry is faced with a lot of change lately. From more people doing it themselves to increased telemetry availability to the increase in the number of people who are taking (or attempting to take) every survey on mobile, it can sometimes feel overwhelming to keep up. I read an article today about applying the kaizen principle to… Read more »
My life has been currently taken up by reporting. I’m living it and breathing it, and so it’s on my mind a lot. A few things that have been running through my mind: the difference between reporting and storytelling; finding the sweet spot between just updating a tracker report and looking for the story being told this time from the… Read more »
Have you ever stopped at a stop light and wondered when it was that we decided that a red light hanging over a street meant we needed to stop? Or have you ever looked at lines on a road, and wondered when we started recognizing them as barriers to be crossed or not crossed? This got me thinking: are there… Read more »
Clients and suppliers both share plenty of woes when it comes to market research. Both are trying to do more with less – less money and time, to be exact. Both are faced with increasing demands, too – more insights, better insights, more actionable insights, better stories. I’ve read plenty of articles talking about how to get better insights; how… Read more »