Can We Stop Arguing Over The “Best” Methodology?

February 25, 2011 By 1 Comment

arguingby Ron Sellers

Blogs and message boards are a great way to discuss research questions.  Some discussions I’ve seen recently:

  • Is it better to do one long survey or multiple shorter surveys?
  • Is qualitative research or quantitative research more likely to result in usable insights?
  • Should researchers be using CATI interviews or online panels?
  • Are focus groups superior to IDIs, or do IDIs provide greater insights?
  • Are traditional focus groups better than online qualitative, or is it the other way around?
  • Are online panels better than social media sampling, or vice versa?

The fascinating thing is that in every case, the posed question is then followed by multiple answers and discussion of which option is right.  People passionately defend their selection and denigrate the other choice.  I’ve even seen some nasty comments and arguments arise from these debates.

The funny thing is that to have a blanket debate like this on these topics is largely pointless.
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Why Panelists Abandon Surveys

February 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

If the greatest challenge of conducting market research is getting a qualified sample to respond to a survey instrument, the second greatest challenge has to be getting them to complete that instrument. In almost any survey any of us have ever conducted, we’ve seen the dreaded “Number abandoned” statistic, describing the number of people who began our study, but for whatever reason, didn’t complete it.

Fortunately, there’s some good information out there to help us understand why this happens!
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Looking Ahead: What’s Out

February 21, 2011 By 1 Comment

Way back when (all the way back to about two months ago), we did a series of posts looking back at the past year in market research, and more importantly, looking ahead to what’s likely to change. Our favorite post among the series highlighted a project by Kathryn Korostoff of Research Rockstar, wherein she applied one of the past year’s market research trends – crowdsourcing – to the task of identifying predictions for market research in the year ahead (a very “meta” project, indeed).

Well, the final results are in.
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The (Digital) Year in Review

February 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Last week, comScore released its 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review. comScore describes this report as, “its annual report on the prevailing digital trends of the past year and their implications for the future.” There probably aren’t many surprises here for those who’ve been keeping reasonably abreast of the big trends, but there are some interesting nuggets for sure. Among the topics covered:

  • How did the rebounding economy influence retail e-commerce, what group-buying and flash sales sites found success in 2010?
  • Which social networks witnessed the largest gains, what new social media players came onto the scene in 2010?
  • What were the key trends in the search market, which search engines saw the largest gains throughout the year?
  • Who were the top players in display advertising in 2010, what are the key trends in measuring the effectiveness of digital advertising campaigns?
  • How did online video viewers’ behaviors shift throughout the year, how are video ads influencing the industry landscape?
  • How has smartphone adoption influenced the mobile landscape, which players accounted for the largest share of the mobile market across operating systems, device manufacturers and network operators in 2010?

Again, not too many surprises (Facebook got more popular!), but there are some interesting statistics. Points of entry of engagement, for example, continue to shift, with portal traffic and traditional e-mail dropping as social media and entertainment channels grow. The trend towards local and group buying is exploding as well, with sites like Groupon up 712 percent over last year.

Check out the full report, and let us know your thoughts. Anything surprise you?

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Mobility is Evolution. Not Revolution.

February 16, 2011 By 2 Comments

By far, our most discussed topic over the past few months has been mobility. As the number of connected mobile devices (phones, tablets, netbooks, etc.) increases, more and more takes place on the go. Communication, commerce, education, and of course, research!

But in a recent article for TechNet Magazine by Research Access contributor Romi Mahajan, Romi makes the point that in so many ways, these changes are evolutionary, not revolutionary. (His point was in the context of the IT industry, but I think it holds true for us in research as well.) Here’s what he had to say:
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Breaking Through White Noise

February 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One of the challenges of conducting research by listening to social media channels is the sheer amount of noise that exists around any given topic. Twitter alone sees more than 90 million new tweets per day, and everyone knows that only a fraction of that is what we’d call “legitimate” (once you rule out the tweets about how to increase your followers and get a good deal on real estate). It’s hard to hear a clear message amidst so much chatter.
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7 learnings from the Super Bowl XLV (2011) Mobile Ethnography

February 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Kristin Schwitzer of Beacon Research has a great write-up over on the Green Book Blog about the lessons learned from the recent Super Bowl XLV Mobile Ethnography study. The study was conducted using the SurveySwipe mobile data collection platform we’ve been discussing (see our post about the study conducted during the State of the Union). The survey reached out to a 1,200 user panel on the iPhone platform, and 235 respondents accepted.

Here’s a preview of some of their findings:
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Let’s Save Smartphone Surveys: 10-7-140

February 8, 2011 By 2 Comments

Surveys have a great new platform: smartphones! We have access (we can get to people pretty much anytime) and identification (we can be pretty sure who is taking the survey).  It’s all for us to screw up. Is the survey industry going to do what it always does? As Betty Adamou pointed out in her paper at the Newmr (www.newmr.org) conference last year, survey research takes a communication medium and beats it to death. Telephone? Web? All victims of over use and poorly designed, boring,  and long surveys.

There has been a “140 characters per question text limit” meme floating around recently started by Annie Pettit from Conversition Strategies. This made me think, “How can we apply this idea to smartphone surveys?” The 140 characters for the question text makes sense, but what about the rest? So here are my proposals for NOT destroying the smartphone platform:
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Some Prerequisite Reading

February 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I had a fascinating conversation last week with David Boulton, founder of Learning Stewards and an expert of educational and organizational learning systems. Mr. Boulton and I had a lengthy talk about the role of feedback in learning: not only as we grow and progress through traditional educational systems, but also as we move into the business world, where hopefully, we continue to learn.

I’m going to tell you much more about our conversation in a longer post coming up soon, but first I wanted to give you something of a homework assignment (appropriate, I think, given how much we’re going to talk about learning!)

My conversation with Mr. Boulton was brought about by a post on his website called “The 3 Laws – The Role of Feedback in Learning Oriented Systems.” This post – and it’s beautiful in its simplicity – should be required reading, not only for every market researcher, but for anyone who ever wants to benefit from the answers that market research can provide. Go read it now.

Also worth your time are a series of short videos that Mr. Boulton has shared on YouTube, encompassing his core ideas about how we learn, why it’s important, and the role of feedback in the process.

Take a look at this material in the next few days, and I’ll be back with more about my conversation wtih David Boulton, which caused me to come to the conclusion that we have no idea how to listen.

Cheers,
Josh

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Do It (Yourself) or Die

February 4, 2011 By 2 Comments

Regular readers of the Green Book Blog know that I think a lot about the future of the market research industry. I make it my business to follow as much news as possible, network with peers, talk with thought leaders, and collect my own primary and secondary research data on the topic. I do all of this for three reasons:

  1. To protect my own business interests by anticipating trends in the industry
  2. To give back to the industry that has been so good to me
  3. Because I find it interesting and yes, even fun

I’ve written before about the tectonic shift our industry is undergoing right now driven by the forces of sociotechnological change due to the rise of social networks and mobile convergence, client demand for greater ROI from the insight function, and the rise of competitive pressure from emerging technology providers outside of the industry. We’re beginning to see these three factors coming together in the form of a rapidly evolving Do It Yourself (DIY) industry. Up until relatively recently we saw three classifications of DIY offerings that impacted MR:
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