2022 Blogs
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27Sep
I ♥ Product Testing by Tom Allen
Product tests are, at their most basic, some of the simplest types of marketing research that can be done.
Which cola do you most prefer the taste of? The one on the left or the one on the right? Take it no further than that and you have something that is arguably insightful. Take it even one step further and the tests can be very revealing. Why do you prefer the one on the left? Just adding that one simple question (and the probes that should normally follow it) takes the implications to the next level.
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12Sep
Does Your Segmentation Need A Refresh? by Elizabeth Horn, Ph.D.
Segmentation initiatives are expensive and exhausting. Done properly, by including stakeholder interviews, qualitative exploration, quantitative segmentation, qualitative persona development, and an activation workshop, segmentations can take months and require the ongoing attention of internal business partners.
When the research and the initial activation process is finished, there remains the big job of socializing the segments throughout the organization.
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9Aug
Let Imaginators® Enhance Your Next Research Initiative by Gretchen Riskind
Hearing directly from consumers can be invaluable, but what if your research initiatives are a bit more creative in nature?
By including creative people, such as the Imaginators, as part of a hybrid (or multi-method) approach to your research often provides a more comprehensive perspective which translates into strategic action.
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28Jul
6 Steps (Or Hops) To Successful Shopper Research by Felicia Rogers
Research can be a little bit like the game of hopscotch. You take the first hop, then the second (maybe the third at the same time), then the next, then the next, and so on.
All the while, you’re gaining momentum and working hard to stay focused on the outcome: THE FINISH LINE! Here are the steps for successful shopper research.
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20Jul
Virtual Ideation Workshops: 5 Tips For Success by Kelly Sons
Ideation workshops are a great way to generate innovative ideas for new products, services, or experiences—or enhancements to any of these.
Most companies have grown very comfortable with in-depth interviews and focus groups conducted via webcam, an option that provides flexibility and has been relied on heavily since the pandemic began. But what about ideation workshops? When does it make sense to take these virtual? And how can you do so successfully?
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12Jul
Assessing Willingness To Pay In An Economic Downturn by Cari Peek
Times like these undoubtedly lead to changes in consumer spending.
Facing this downturn, businesses are struggling with tough decisions on whether to increase prices, and by how much. When making these decisions, it’s important to know how much a consumer values your products. What are the pricing parameters for your offerings that ensure continued customer demand, and at what point do you start pushing your customers out of your brand? Understanding Willingness To Pay (WTP) can help businesses answer these questions.
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27Jun
Your Employees are The Key to Your Success! by Bonnie Janzen
Employees are the lifeblood of any business. Fostering employee relationships is much like planting and caring for a garden.
We want to create, maintain, and nurture each relationship between the company and its managers and its employees. Investing in employees’ growth and training as they take on new tasks and challenges is a crucial element of cultivating a successful company.
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31May
Researching In The Metaverse: For Better Or For Worse? by Julie Trujillo
Admittedly, I’m no expert on the metaverse. Yet, here I am, raising questions and starting the conversation.
I think this is a conversation that needs to start now because we are already here. "Here where?", you ask. Here, conducting research in the metaverse. For better or for worse, it has begun.
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11May
Make Me Comfortable, Please! by Felicia Rogers
What makes a home comfortable?
You’re likely to find a wide variety of answers to this question, ranging from soft goods to structural improvements. Based on our recent research, things like home entertainment systems, furniture, and a good heating and cooling system top the list.
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11May
The Eye Of The Beholder by Clay Dethloff
Throughout my career in marketing research, I’m constantly reminded of the importance of stepping back and seeing the world through the eyes of the consumer.
To better understand the consumer perspective, and make sure that we do understand the world from the “eye of the beholder” (i.e. consumer), we at Decision Analyst have found an overall approach of going in-depth and in-the-moment in our qualitative research endeavors often provides richer insights and a better understanding of the consumer.
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03May
An Overview Of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) For Marketing Researchers by Audrey Guinn, Ph.D.
Structural Equation Modeling is a flexible multi-use tool in the marketing researcher’s pocket.
Researchers benefit from using SEM due to its multi-functional capabilities. SEM’s benefits are many, such as managing many independent and dependent variables, examining different types of models, accounting for measurement error, and analyzing all relationships simultaneously.
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27Apr
How To Interview Physicians When You Aren’t An M.D. Yourself by Pamela Waite
Let’s face it—talking to doctors can be intimidating.
The weight of physicians’ work responsibilities and their collective intelligence can be quite intimidating, even for a seasoned researcher. If you lack experience with interviewing physicians, this article includes six questions to ask yourself in preparation for an interview with physicians.
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12Apr
What’s New, Pussycat? by Sara Sutton
Yes, I like the music of Tom Jones and other crooners.
However, I bring up this tongue-in-cheek, somewhat old-fashioned song for another reason: “What’s new?” is a question that product-oriented companies face all the time. For service-oriented companies, that question is often “What’s different or unique about the services your company offers?”
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5Apr
Knocking Off The Rust Getting Ready For The Post-COVID Business World by Heather Kluter
Life feels like it may be returning to normal.
How do we dust off our rusty social skills? ‘Social rust’ is to be expected after dealing with the uncertainty of the pandemic. Activities that we never thought twice about may now feel awkward or anxiety-inducing. Even those who are willing to step back into live social situations may still want to adhere to some social boundaries.
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1Mar
Decisions are among the key elements of our lives. Regardless of who you are or where you’re from, you make thousands of decisions every day.
Any time you design a space where a human must make a choice, whether it be a product website or a retail store, you are creating what behavioral scientists call the “choice architecture.” And no matter how you design your choice architecture, you will be influencing people’s decision making—intentionally or not.
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22Feb
Brand Equity Tracking Models by Jerry W. Thomas
All other factors being equal, Brand Equity is the very best predictor of a corporation’s probability of long-term success.
In well-managed corporations, senior management stays focused on building and maintaining Brand Equity for all of their brands among the most important target audiences (customers and prospective customers). Once a sound brand strategy is in place, it’s important to track the cumulative effects through repeated surveys of target consumers, employees, and other target audiences.
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8Feb
Not Wasting Words: Identifying the Right Sustainability Message by Jennifer Murphy
Your company has done the hard work of defining sustainability in your arena, researched the topic, and set goals and created initiatives that have the full support of the board. How do you best communicate your plan to your customers?
Does the word "sustainability" mean the same thing to your customers as it does to your organization? How can you assure that your initiatives are seen as more than merely lofty ideals?
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1Feb
Strategy’s Starring Role: Don’t Let The Supporting Actors Steal The Show by Felicia Rogers
It seems so simple but brilliant at the same time. Messaging strategy, like any other strategy, should have a singular focus.
If the recipient takes away just one key idea from your message, what should it be? High quality? Sustainably produced? World’s most comfortable pants? Guaranteed fun? When we think about brand-building campaigns, whatever your brand’s core promise is, that’s where the messaging strategy should be focused.
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20Jan
Recently I was thinking about the similarities between coffee made with a French press and great consumer insights.
To manage a successful business, you will need customer insights in order to inform the decisions that are being made on a daily basis regarding products, advertising, messaging, pricing, packaging, distribution, shelf displays, promotions, etc.
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12Jan
Multicollinearity – A Marketing Researcher’s Curse Word by Audrey Guinn, PH.D.
What is Multicollinearity?
Multicollinearity (also known as collinearity) occurs when two or more variables are very highly correlated. Singularity, a more serious form of multicollinearity, occurs when two or more variables are redundant, where one variable is a linear combination of the others.
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2021 Blogs
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1Dec
Getting Comfortable: An Unexpected Theme During The Pandemic by Felicia Rogers
It’s no secret that when COVID-19 hit the U.S., life changed swiftly and dramatically. Most people began spending so much time in their homes that desires to spruce things up emerged almost immediately.
What exactly were homeowners doing? Here’s a summary of activities from our ongoing Consumer Reactions to COVID-19 research.
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4Nov
Shock’ supply shortages are nothing new to the country, especially in times of war or oil embargoes, but this is a mostly new experience for today’s younger- to middle-aged consumers.
So how do today’s consumers feel when their favorite brand of English muffins is out of stock for the first time ever? What action do they take when there is little selection of new pickup trucks at the dealership, and the less-desired model is available—but costs 10% more than it did last year?
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18Oct
Reliability and Validity from a Scientific Perspective by Elizabeth Horn, Ph.D.
Different words can be synonymous in a casual conversation, but take on different meanings in a scientific context. Both “reliable” and “valid,” for instance, are used to mean “robust” or “accurate” in everyday speech.
The concepts of reliability and validity are not interchangeable from a scientific perspective, however. These two words are not identical, and understanding the difference is important when interpreting research outcomes.
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28Sep
How to Succeed in a World Gone Supply Chain and Logistics Crazy! by Bonnie Janzen
How can your organization manage the craziness in this world, given all the supply chain and logistics challenges? So how is a business supposed to succeed in the midst of all this chaos?
Given all of these outside “unusual demands and supply chain constraints” on business, over-delivering on the customer experience can really pay off. Here are a few ideas to help you surprise and delight your customers during these times.
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22Sep
Listen More, Plan Better: Searching For Authenticity In Environmental, Social, And Corporate Governance (ESG) Planning by Sara Sutton and Mai Tolentino
Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) issues have been at the forefront of the news in recent times.
With environmental consciousness rising, social movements finding greater audiences, and corporate boards being held more accountable for how businesses are run, assessing, planning, and enacting new policies for ESG issues has become increasingly important.
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3Sep
The 411 About Deriving Marketing Claims From Market Research by Sara Sutton and Sheela Avila
Have you heard that the average person has the attention span of a goldfish?
While that’s an exaggeration, it’s true that marketers have just a few seconds to capture a person’s interest in buying or recommending your product. To do this, companies will often use marketing claims, which are typically short, snappy phrases that pack a punch! Including impactful claims, using words and phrases that resonate with consumers, is an easy way to increase your product’s stopping power and ultimately increase sales.
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16Aug
5 Reasons To Think Like A Squirrel by Tom Allen
This is an article about how to think like a squirrel. The inspiration of thinking like a squirrel came from witnessing their behavior, oddly enough.
How should you think like a squirrel? Don’t take the shortest path to your destination. Look for new ways to accomplish your personal or business goals that might lead you to new experiences, relationships, sights, or locations.
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10Aug
Like its in-person counterpart, an online focus group allows businesses to use a moderator to talk directly to consumers to ask key questions, to show a variety of stimulus types, to capture group interaction, and more.
But, in conducting online qualitative, don’t forget the role of, and the importance of being a backroom observer. Here are four ways to use the backroom as a means to get the most from your qualitative research.
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21Jul
The New Kid In Town: Gen Z by Cari Peek
Social, economic, political, and technological advancements made a mark on Gen Z.
Understanding their generational mindset is vital to helping marketers better understand how to reach and communicate with consumers. Currently, Gen Z represents $44 billion in direct buying power in the U.S. – and most don’t even have jobs yet. As you read the details that follow, I challenge you to think about your brand and how Gen Z’s perspective on these events and societal norms may impact it.
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13Jul
Advertising Claims Substantiation by Jerry W. Thomas
Is it a good idea to make a head-to-head comparative claim against a competitor?
Before you rush off to create that great head-to-head commercial, a recommended best practice is to test a number of different advertising claims or messages, to see which types of claims resonate with your target audience. Here are some tips an advice for advertising claims substantiation.
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6Jul
Political Divide Deepens Around the Pandemic by Audrey Guinn, Ph.D.
Republicans, Democrats, and Independents seem to be drifting further apart and these differences are noticeable not only within political ideology but also within more mundane aspects of life.
Decision Analyst’s monthly “Consumer Reactions to COVID-19” tracker finds that these divisions exist within beliefs about COVID-19 and the vaccine, feelings surrounding the pandemic, concern about the pandemic, and even comfort levels with gathering in different situations.
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29Jun
Insights, Not Oversights! (A Market Research Checklist) by Sara Sutton and Stephanie Trevino
As market researchers, our goals and responsibilities are to deliver thoughtful, accurate, data-driven insights to our partners.
To do this successfully, we should always ask ourselves these questions: Is this methodology right for the audience, topic, and objectives? Am I being too narrow or making assumptions about my target population? Am I screening and including a representative set of respondents?
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21Jun
The Bridging Model: Connecting A Segmentation To Customer Databases by Elizabeth Horn, Ph.D.
Segmentation is a very powerful tool. When possible, leverage that power by applying the segmentation to your company’s customer database(s).
Organizations that successfully classify their customers into segments increase the likelihood that their brand communications and new products will meet the needs of those customers. This makes the time, effort, and investment to build the “bridge” worthwhile.
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11Jun
Who’s More Likely to Receive the COVID-19 Vaccine? by Audrey Guinn, Ph.D.
Personal characteristics and situational circumstances are potential explanations for why some people receive the vaccine while others do not.
Therefore, we wanted to understand differences in ethnicity, age, political affiliation, income, gender, area lived in, and occupation with regards to vaccination. To examine these potential demographic differences, we analyzed the data from Decision Analyst’s monthly “Consumer Reactions to COVID-19” tracker.
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1Jun
Consumer feedback. There’s the good, the bad, and the ugly.
When you’re seeking feedback through a survey, the good news is that you’re in control. A well-designed survey can help you answer the “whys” behind negative feedback and even help you understand which low-rated areas to prioritize. Here are three simple but effective ways to get the most out of survey feedback of all kinds.
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25May
Motivators for and Barriers to Getting Vaccinated Against COVID-19 by Audrey Guinn, Ph.D.
As of May 20th, 48% of the population has had at least one dose. However, that leaves a little over 50% of the population unvaccinated.
Using the data collected in Decision Analyst’s monthly “Consumer Reactions to COVID-19” tracker, we did examine what impact, if any, beliefs about COVID-19 and its vaccine have on the decision to get vaccinated.
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27Apr
Delivering bad news is an unpleasant task, but learning to do it effectively (and tactfully) can prevent a costly disaster in the marketplace.
It can also provide you an opportunity to boost your credibility and improve your professional relationship with the client. So, how do you tactfully relay bad news? Here are six tips to ensure your results are not just heard but accepted and acted upon.
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20Apr
Navigating Business-to-Business-to-Consumer Relationships by Julie Trujillo
What if you are one of the many companies whose product or service goes through an intermediary?
And, what if that intermediary has a strong influence on your brand’s relationship with the end customers? Operating in a business-to-business-to-consumer environment creates extra complexity to consider.
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13Apr
Like many of you, I spend a good part of my day thinking about all the ways the near future will (hopefully) be different from the past year.
But what will the future look like? I’m no futurist, but I see a short-term demand boom coming for many industries. This list is not all-inclusive but just a few examples.
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4Apr
Sins of the Fathers by Jerry W. Thomas
The Fathers of Marketing Research invented a number of extremely powerful and valuable tools, methods, questions, and concepts that we all use and benefit from every single day.
But no one is perfect, and our industry Fathers committed sins that blight our industry to this day.
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23Mar
5 Steps To Optimizing The Lifetime Value Of Customers by Sara Sutton
Customer loyalty directly improves the bottom line by increasing the lifetime value of each customer.
This is true in any industry, but particularly in those where the customer will interact with the brand (and its agents) over and over, such as in healthcare, insurance, financial services, travel, etc. Think about the following steps when optimizing the customer experience (and thus, the lifetime value of your customers).
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10Mar
In Search of the Holy Grail Customer Experience by Heather Kluter
Understanding the experience consumers have with brands is more important than ever, especially when attempting to get them to return to an abandoned brand and stick with it.
Traditionally, brands that win have always placed customer experience before everything else, but now understanding the changing, lasting expectations of post-pandemic consumers is more important than ever.
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16Feb
Clear, well thought out study objectives are critical to any market research project's success, no matter the size, scope, or cost.
FA well-written background and a clear set of business objectives establish your study's tone, pace, and direction and ultimately lead to better outcomes as you navigate the different research phases. Here are five guidelines you should follow when writing your research objectives.
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2Feb
User-Centric Innovation: 3 Important Tactics To Help Ensure New Product Success by Felicia Rogers and Hillary Semmelman
Focusing on the consumer is a critical step to ensure new products meet the needs and expectations of end-users.
From a research perspective, there are several ways to engage with potential customers to help guide the innovation process. We’ll address three broad research tactics that many companies use to accomplish their goals: Qualitative Research, Concept Testing, and Choice Modeling.
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19Jan
It’s Time to Put Those Negatively Worded Items Behind Us by Audrey Guinn Ph.D.
In an effort to catch survey cheaters, researchers use negatively worded attributes placed in groupings of positively worded attributes.
This context switching causes respondent confusion, which creates error. It may be time for researchers to relinquish negatively worded attributes. So, how can researchers catch cheaters, speeders, and straight-liners if negatively worded attributes are no longer included in the survey?
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13Jan
2020 and its challenges have been extremely difficult to navigate!
Despite the long list of negatives from 2020, there are several positive trends from the year, including: Strengthening relationships, Connecting with loved ones, Improving communication between teachers and students, Focusing on self-care and mental health, Continuing work-from-home/work remotely, etc.
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Contact Decision Analyst
If you would like more information on Marketing Research, please contact Jerry W. Thomas by emailing jthomas@decisionanalyst.com or calling 1-817-640-6166.
Library Sections
Blogs By Decision Analyst Researchers
- Jerry W. Thomas
- Bonnie Janzen
- Felicia Rogers
- Heather Kluter
- Jennifer Murphy
- Julie Trujillo
- Lesley Johnson
- Sara Sutton
- Tom Allen
Blogs By Advanced Analytics Team
Blogs By Qualitative Research Team