Research Tips
Planning Market Research
- Screening Out Marketing People
- Changing Something by Measuring It
- Diminishing Returns to Increasing Sample Sizes
- Reporting versus Revealing Importance
- Self-Selection Bias
- Replicating Research
- Quota Samples
- Sequencing Qualitative and Quantitative Research
- DIY Web Surveys
- Demand Artifacts
- Building from Previous Research
- Plan Ahead
- Web Survey Quality versus Quantity
- Improving Mail Survey Response Rates
- Watch Your Language
- Poor Reliability Can Mask Research Results
- Who Knows the Answers to Your Questions?
- When You Ask Can Be As Important As What You Ask
- Time-Based Trends
- Realistic Research Expectations
- Selecting Research Participants
- Choosing Scales to Use in Surveys
- Monitoring and Evaluating Research Outcomes
- Using Existing Data Sources
- Triangulation
- Participation in Market Research Isn’t Always Fun
- What Would You Do Differently?
- Make Your Tables First
- Confidentiality Issues
- Clarifying Research Objectives
- Validity
- Reliability
- Respect your Respondents!
- Quantitative versus Qualitative Research
- Probability Sampling Techniques
- Probability versus Non-Probability Samples
- Increasing Response Rates
Data Collection
- Respondent Anonymity
- Respondent Cooperation
- Nonresponse Bias
- Be Cautious About Using Convenience Samples
- Oversampling
- Reporting Response Rates
- Using Multiple Informants
- Multiple Data Collectors
- Anomalous Results
- Using Secondary Data
- Updating Data
- Declining Phone Survey Response Rates
- Communicating with Research Participants
- Mail Surveys
- General and Specific Questions
- Combining Data Collection Methods
- Web Focus Groups
- Collecting Data by Observation
- Feedback
- The Use and Misuse of Focus Groups
- Conversational Interviewing
- Experiments
- Free Census Data
- Focus Groups versus Personal Interviews
- Web Surveys
- Phone Surveys
Designing Surveys
- Qualitative Survey Data
- Take Advantage of Web Capabilities When Creating Web Surveys
- “Not Applicable” Response Options
- Be Specific
- More on Labels for Scales
- Open-Ended Questions in Web Surveys
- Check for Multiple Interpretations
- DIY Web Surveys
- Permission to Follow Up
- Browser Compatibility
- Demand Artifacts
- Demographics and Psychographics
- Choosing the Number of Response Categories
- Proof Reading Web Surveys
- Don’t Ask Unnecessary Questions
- Formatting Questionnaires that Include Open-Ended Questions
- Improving Mail Survey Response Rates
- Make Directions Explicit
- Labeling Scales
- Branch Questions and Skip Patterns
- Positive and Negative Framing
- Advantages and Disadvantages of Ratings and Rankings
- Ratings and Rankings Are Not the Same
- Social Desirability Bias
- How Long Should a Questionnaire Be?
- Avoid Leading Questions
- Choosing Scales to Use in Surveys
- Using Demographic Questions in Surveys
- Ending a Survey with an Open-Ended Question
- Using Open-Ended Questions in Surveys
- Ask Sensitive Questions Last
- Let Respondents Say They Don’t Know
- Pre-Testing Surveys
- Question Order Effects
- Some Points About Scales
- How Often Do You …
- Avoid Double-Barreled Questions
- Wording Questions for Use in Scales
- Cross-Cultural Differences in Response Styles
- Multi-Item Scales
- Questionnaire Response Categories
Quantitative Research
- Testing for Differences New!
- Observation Independence
- Screening for Unreliable Responses
- Medians
- Significance Levels
- Weighting
- Omitted Variables
- Bayesian Methods
- Identifying Validity and Reliability Problems
- Looking at the Big Picture
- Holdout Samples
- Preliminary Data Checks
- Dealing with Outliers
- Sample Sizes
- Explaining Variance
- Variance
- External Validation of Results
- Correlations
- Multidimensional Scaling
- Cluster Analysis and Latent Class Models
- Nonlinear Relationships
- Lagged Relationships
- Interactions
- Making Conclusions About Cause and Effect
- What About the People Who Don’t Respond?
- A Higher Level of Statistical Significance Isn’t Always Better
- Statistically Significant Differences
- Data Mining
- Logistic Regression and Discriminant Analysis
- Regression Analysis
- Cross Tabulations and Analysis of Variance
- Conjoint Analysis
- Factor Analysis
Qualitative Research
- Ethnography New!
- Snowball Sampling
- Qualitative Survey Data
- Participant Observation
- Avoid Leading Probes
- Recording Qualitative Responses
- Borrowing Ideas from Quantitative Research to Apply in Qualitative Research
- ZMET
- Repertory Grid
- Coding Qualitative Data
- Give People Something to Do
- Cognitive Mapping
- Designing Focus Groups
- Web Focus Groups
- The Use and Misuse of Focus Groups
- Conversational Interviewing
- Means-End Chains
- Focus Groups versus Personal Interviews
Research Applications
- Real Time 3D Testing of Products and Packaging New!
- Monitoring User-Generated Content
- Marketing Metrics
- The Delphi Method
- Google Analytics
- Market Research in Second Life
- Modeling Drivers
- Forecasting
- Analyzing Historical Sales Data
- New Products and Market Research
- Pricing Experiments
- Game Theory
- Measuring Willingness to Pay
- Analyzing Web Logs
- Listen Then Verify
- Using Loyalty Databases to Fine-Tune Promotional Activities
- Monitoring Your Organization’s Context
- Feedback
- Competitive Analysis and Benchmarking
- ISO 9000 Now Requires Monitoring of Customer Satisfaction
- Advertising Pre-Tests
- Branding and Positioning
- Measuring Satisfaction
- Market Segmentation