Marketing Research Blogs

10 December 2024

Making Spirits Bright: Why Concept Screening Matters for Holiday Confectionery Success

Standing out in a crowded marketplace takes more than great a great product. It requires a deep understanding of what resonates with shoppers. While ideation is where the journey often begins, concept screening plays a crucial role in ensuring those initial ideas are refined and ready to connect with consumers.

20 November 2024

Are You Listening To Gen Alpha? Hint: Young People Are Calling The Shots And Have Plenty To Say

Gen Alpha is unlike previous generations in that these young consumers are influencing the market right now. Brands need to pay close attention to what’s trending among this generation to understand them better, engage with them authentically, and respect their values.

04 November 2024

The Art of Pivoting

When thinking of pivoting, from a business perspective, it’s a foundational change in strategy or business tactics that leads in a new direction. Being strategic with a pivot and utilizing insights and data to purposefully pick a direction to pivot to, will help to ensure a successful change in direction.

29 October 2024

What’s in a Name? The Importance of Brand Research in Sales Efforts

As researchers, we’re often tasked with gathering brand metrics in tracking, AA&U, packaging optimization, and various other types of studies. But true brand health, value, personality, and associations are often left unexplored beyond surface level metrics.

22 October 2024

Don’t Sleep on Gen X

As we welcome our benevolent new overlords—Generation Z, who are soon to be, if not already, the dominant force in the minds of marketers and employers, don’t you forget about Gen X. We may not be the largest, but don’t underestimate our experience and spending power.

17 October 2024

(Full) Service With A Smile: The Anatomy of a Full-Service Consumer Insights Firm

Here is a quick look at the types of teams that support custom research and consulting efforts, and how their unique skill sets might benefit you and your company.

04 October 2024

Sniffing Out The Best Option: Paw-sitively Overwhelming

The growing number of choices these days for everything from dog food to TV shows to wellness can cause anxiety and decision paralysis. What can brands do to help make purchasing decisions less stressful?

25 September 2024

The Windy Road of Travel and Market Segmentation

This blog's author was struck by the similarities and differences between conducting Segmentation research and the process, and impact, of voting. While segmenting respondents based on commonalities to “divide” a defined population into addressable markets for our client to target, the election was highlighting and reinforcing the differences between two increasingly antagonistic groups.

04 September 2024

Maximize Your Home-Usage-Testing Success: 4 Expert Tips

Product testing is critical to the launch of new products. Here are 4 tips by Lesley Johnson that will help ensure a successful quantitative home-use test.

26 August 2024

Key Elements to Drive Effective Advertising

Based on years of advertising testing and consulting with brands throughout many industries, Bonnie Janzen has put together a list of key elements for successful and effective advertising in the sports world and beyond.

22 August 2024

Qualitative Package Design Research

While many quantitative methods are utilized in package design research, sometimes we overlook the importance of the softer side of research—the qualitative techniques. Here is some advice on utilizing qualitative research when redesigning packaging.

14 August 2024

Stated vs Derived Importance: What’s the Difference?

When derived importance is reported alongside stated importance, clients often find the results contradictory and confusing. Knowing the difference between the two, and understanding the end goals, can help marketing researchers decide when to report stated or derived importance. So, What's the Difference?

07 August 2024

Maximize Your Acquisition Success By Utilizing Strategic Marketing Research

Mergers and acquisitions can add fuel to grow a business and positively change its trajectory for many years. But sometimes there are major dangers to consider when thinking about mergers and acquisitions.

29 July 2024

5 Steps To Creating A New Lease On Life For A Struggling Brand

Sometimes a brand need a new lease on life, a new purpose, a new positioning, a new formulation, and/or a new look. There are brands that make mistakes along the way and lose market share due to their missteps. Sadly, these examples can be found at every turn. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

17 July 2024

My (Mis)Adventures In AI

You don’t have to look very hard these days to witness the transformation that artificial intelligence (AI) is having on society. The topic is all the rage at marketing research conferences, too. So, Decision Analyst's Tom Allen set out on a path to see how well AI can analyze unstructured data. Read about his journey as he has Gemini and ChatGPT analyze a large dataset of unstructured data.

20 May 2024

Inclusivity, Innovation, and AI at the 2024 SIR Annual Conference

Recently Decision Analyst's Julie Trujillo attended the Society of Insurance Research’s Annual Conference. Julie thought that the SIR Annual Conference was a great event and it covered a lot of information. There were 3 themes that stood out during the event: Inclusivity, Innovation, and AI. Read Julie's summary of the conference.

09 May 2024

To Boost Your Creativity, Take A More Direct Approach

Creativity is not about “thinking outside the box”, nor is it limited to only a select few that were born into it. Anyone can learn to become more creative in meaningful, useful ways. Creativity is a complex process with lots of facets and lots of possibilities. It’s a set of thinking skills that can be learned and practiced, that can boost your career and help make your life better.

06 May 2024

5 Tips For Planning Your Research Reporting Adventure

Writing a research report requires planning and attention to detail to ensure that the reporting experience goes smoothly and that it results in a deliverable with actionable insights. Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” So, decide where you are going with your research.

02 May 2024

Qualitative Researchers Are Facing More Anxiety, Fatigue, Stress, And Burnout,

And The U.S. Mental Health Crisis Isn’t Helping

The mental health crisis affects those involved in qualitative research. Stressed and depressed respondents, stressful client demands, and lack of management support can trigger anxiety, depression, and burnout in researchers. Fortunately, there are things we can do individually, and as managers, to promote well-being and improved mental health.

24 April 2024

Way Out In Left Field:

How To Manage Extreme Data Values

You’ve cleaned the data of cheaters, bots, and other ne’er-do-wells. The data set is ready. But hold the analysis! You need to examine the data for outliers. These are extreme data points found in continuous, numerical entries, such as taxable income, age, and so on. Outliers can play havoc with the data.

15 April 2024

Trends In Qualitative Recruiting: Complexity Takes Its Toll

Qualitative recruiting is increasingly looking for needles in haystacks while quality participants are becoming harder to find. Researchers are creating more complex screeners for longer, more complex projects with shorter, less-flexible timelines.

08 April 2024

ChatGPT-4 Versus Decision Analyst’s Deep Learning Model

With all the hype and hoopla over generative AI, we decided to do some experimental work to see how well ChatGPT-4 performed versus Decision Analyst’s Deep Learning Model, a multi-layer neural network classification model. The task we chose was to assign codes to the responses from an open-ended question. We learned that we have some work to do.

12 March 2024

Curious, Compassionate Listening:

3 Tips From My Yoga Practice That Make Me A Better Moderator

It’s one thing to be a good listener and yet another entirely to listen with rigor and unrelenting focus, all while maintaining genuine curiosity and an open heart, and suspending judgement, biases, and assumptions about what’s being said or about to be said. This type of curious, compassionate listening is critical for developing high-quality insights.

28 February 2024

Four Keys For Conducting Successful Shop-Along Interviews

A store is the only place where the brand, product, packaging, messaging, pricing, and competitors are all present in one physical location. Observing the shopper in the store environment is a powerful way to measure the quality of the shopping experience and to gather an understanding of the shopper’s behaviors, preferences, needs.

06 February 2024

Breaking Down Barriers:

A Call For Inclusivity In Consumer Research

Inclusive consumer research paints a rich picture of human behavior by capturing diverse perspectives. It goes beyond the checkboxes and incorporates screening criteria that engage a broader range of respondents, providing a more authentic representation of your audience. Here are 10 actionable tips to build bridges, not barriers, in your next research project.

01 February 2024

Inspiration Abounds!

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Offers A Beacon of Innovation Illuminating 2024

Decision Analyst's Heather Kluter recently attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This annual event is a celebration of groundbreaking advancements in technology. From smart home innovations, and wearables to emerging tech like virtual and augmented reality, CES highlighted the technological tapestry that defines our modern world. Heather has put together a list of innovations and new products she finds inspiring.

23 January 2024

Super Bowl…

Are You Ready For Some Football? Are You Ready For Some Ads?

Are You Ready For Some Football? Are You Ready For Some Ads? According to Ad Age, a 30-second spot for the Super Bowl is going for approximately $7 million. Given all that money, it is critical that the ads have a purpose and a driving strategy, and fits within the overall campaign.

09 January 2024

Megatrends:

Not Just For Scholars & Economists 6 Global Shifts That Will Impact Your Business

The world around us is constantly changing.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the global population is aging at a much faster pace than in the past. Between 2015 and 2050, the proportion of the world’s population aged 60 and over will nearly double. Here are 6 megatrends being observed now that will have an impact on your business.

02 November 2023

Unlock the Power of Advertising:

8 Steps To Creating Better Advertising

In the hands of skillful marketing executives and expert researchers, advertising gives us the power to change the world. Advertising can change feelings, change attitudes, and change behaviors. So, how can a client, advertising agency, and research agency work together to create effective advertising?

31 October 2023

A 12-Year-Old, a Cow, and a Qualitative Proposal without Secondary Research are Submitted to a Client…

Discussion guide suggestions are easier to create if you are aware of the issues in the industry.A good extra to include in your proposal would be a few questions relevant to the client's goals that you might add to the discussion guide for the project. Your questions might provide the "Aha!" moment that could win the project ― something that neither the smartest 12-year-old in the world nor the biggest-producing cow can do.

17 October 2023

7 Questions for Successful Concept Testing with Healthcare Professionals

Some of the most important qualitative interviews conducted are with medical and clinical professionals. An hour with a teaching hospital oncologist is more difficult to schedule, more expensive than with a consumer. However, conducting qualitative research with healthcare professionals tends to elicit responses such as: “I’m not an art director,” and “I really don’t like these types of interviews,” numerous times. In many cases this subject has garnered eyerolls, sighs, and groans. So, how do you elicit more productive responses from Healthcare professionals?

03 October 2023

Global Research – Not Just A Numbers Game

If there is one simple truth about global marketing research, it is that “Data gives us the answers to the questions we ask, but insight comes from understanding the truths behind the responses.” While data alone provides valuable information and answers to specific business questions, true insight often goes beyond the numbers and advanced calculations—it requires a deeper understanding of the respondents’ context, underlying motivations, and “culture.”

26 September 2023

Turning Big Troubles Into Business Opportunities

12 Options To Explore

Your new product should be selling like "hot cakes" but isn't? Where do you turn for diagnosing product issues? Shoppers' unconscious needs often drive purchase decisions—but hitting a rough patch is an area of opportunity. It is important to understand the unstated and underlying needs that the customer or shopper may not even be consciously aware of, sometimes described as System 1 Thinking.

01 September 2023

6 Strategies to Win Shoppers’ Hearts

It is critical that retailers remain relevant to keep an enduring place in the hearts and minds of consumers. So, how can you position your brand and your retail operation for success in the hypercompetitive and extremely fast-moving environment? When consulting with our retail clients, we focus on strategies in 6 key areas.

24 August 2023

Extra! Extra! AI Will Eliminate Our Research Jobs!

…Not So Fast… We Humans Aren’t Obsolete Yet

AI algorithms are smart and becoming smarter by the day. They’re sure to be able to do some of these tasks now, and perhaps more of them in the future. As we sit here today, relying solely or even too heavily on AI comes with significant risk. We humans have a broad and deep understanding of the business issues—the context of the problems.

22 August 2023

Ask the Experts:

What’s Key to a Successful Segmentation?

Well-conducted segmentation initiatives are highly beneficial, but they also are expensive and time-intensive for the organization. Kelly, has gathered expert advice on segmentation from three colleagues with varied areas of expertise. Here are some tips for ensuring a successful segmentation.

14 August 2023

Fancy Statistics Do Not Equal Causation

In research, understanding cause is often the goal. What is causing a product to sell? What is causing a decrease in subscriptions? Frequently, though, data has been collected using typical surveying methods that will not render answers about causation no matter which robust and fancy statistics are used. The only way to truly determine cause and effect is to control for all extraneous variables by utilizing an experimental design. That way, all other possible explanations for the outcome have been ruled out.

08 August 2023

Branding Models With Textual Data and Deep Learning

How would one develop a branding model using text data and deep learning methods? What steps would one take to build such a branding model based on both structured data and unstructured textual feedback from customers? What kind of modeling techniques could be used?

01 August 2023

The IAT – A Guide for Marketing Researchers

What is the IAT? The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was created by psychologists in 1998 and is believed to measure implicit associations about topics such as race, sexuality, weight, gender, nationality, age, skin tone, religion, and disability (among others). Since marketing researchers have begun to use it in their research, @Audrey has put together this blog that helps marketing researchers draw their own conclusions about whether or not to use the IAT in their research.

18 July 2023

4 Keys To Optimizing ROI From Your Segmentation

Segmentation studies are a large investment, which makes it critical to ensure that your organization will utilize the results to their fullest to justify the ROI. This blog discusses several actions you can take to use your segmentation results.

11 July 2023

The Type Is Right:

Maximizing The Impact Of Segmentation Typing Tools

During the course of most segmentation engagements, a typing tool is developed. This tool classifies future respondents into a segment using fewer questions than used in the original segmentation analysis. Vigorous application of the typing tool is necessary to achieve activation. The more companies integrate the typing tool into discovery and sales processes, the more likely they are to realize the full potential of their segmentation investment.

13 June 2023

Navigating Shark-Infested Waters:

Delivering Difficult Research Findings

Delivering research results that convey bad news is a delicate task that can feel like navigating shark-infested waters. By adhering to a strategic approach, market research professionals can effectively share challenging insights while maintaining trust in the findings. Treading carefully as you communicate early data, ensuring clear and well-substantiated findings, highlighting any positives, and buoying your findings with respondent-generated verbatims and recommendations help remove the researcher from the results.

06 June 2023

To Be (In Store) Or Not To Be (In Store)

That is the question. I’m paraphrasing Shakespeare’s Hamlet, obviously, but this question comes up fairly often when deciding on the best research approach to tackle various marketing or business objectives. In fact, earlier this year we interviewed customers onsite at locations in different markets in order to gain real-time feedback on various store point-of-purchase (POP) features.

30 May 2023

Direct Comparison Product Testing

Many inhabitants of the marketing world have heard of the term “paired comparison” product testing, and some may have heard of the term “triangle testing,” or “triangle taste testing,” and some are familiar with the term “Product Clinics.” All three of these methods involve direct comparison of one product to other products.

25 April 2023

Concept Testing Among Dual Audiences To Help Drive New Product Success

Testing new product ideas among the relevant audiences is worth the commitment. However, when there is an intermediary used for distribution of products to the end users, there are different research needs. For organizations that use an intermediary, it’s important to determine among which audience the research should be conducted. Can you limit yourself to only the end user or only the intermediary? I would advocate for research with both audiences as a best practice for ensuring the success of the product or service.

30 March 2023

You’ve Completed A Segmentation Study. Now What?

Leveraging Segmentation To Drive Business Results

Going into segmentation research, companies usually have firm plans, or at least an idea of how they will utilize the results. If a team is considering embarking on segmentation work without such plans, they’re probably not ready to spend the time or money required to make it happen. The last thing anyone wants is for such a significant research investment to fall flat for lack of planning or vision. The good news is segmentation efforts are, more often than not, successful with the right vision and good planning.

09 March 2023

The Top 5 Question Types to Include in Market Segmentation

In market segmentation, the distinctiveness of the segments depends on the types of questions used in the segmentation analysis. Typically, market segmentation uses 5 question types in the analysis so that segments differ on many facets (needs, behaviors, psychographics, personality characteristics, and demographics), not just needs. Analyzing the data using a variety of these 5 question types gives a holistic view of the consumer market.

01 March 2023

Is Your Strategy Lost In The Trees Or Making A StrategicImpact™?

In today’s world it’s easy to lose sight of the destination, the strategy. You become focused on managing versus leading, and you may be driving hard, but in the wrong direction. Are you organizing resources in the right direction? Is your strategy lost in the trees or making a StrategicImpact™

07 February 2023

Are Your Price Increases Causing Customer Confusion and Resentment?

During tough economic times, companies may often seem insensitive to their customers, causing a loss in trust and loyalty. Price increases paired with decreasing value cut deep. There can be a more artful approach to pricing that can soften the blow for consumers while still managing profitability. Of course, pricing evaluation can be complex, so where should your company start?

23 January 2023

Secondary Meaning: The Measure of Brand Strategy

A brand is some type of symbol, name, or sign that identifies and distinguishes one product or service from competitive products or services (and we can think of “identifies” and “distinguishes” as the practical functions of a brand). There are also intangible elements, such as status signals, values, emotions and feelings, visual imagery, and personality traits that can be linked to a brand name.

10 January 2023

If a Tree Falls in the Forest?

Consider, if you will, the age-old question of “If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no human or animal to hear it, did it make a sound?” So, in a similar fashion, if the optimal consumer insight research is budgeted, approved, designed, and conducted to solve a business problem but there were no decisions made, and no action taken, what did it accomplish? Why should it exist?