Are you bringing more market research in-house? Relying less on outside market research agencies? That can be a perfectly reasonable choice—for many reasons. But before you …
Blogs tend to be a little less filtered, and a little more honest, than traditional magazines and newsletters. And that is exactly why I like to read them. In the market research space, there is no shortage of blogs. But I do find myself regularly checking these 5 (I’ll post a part 2 on other faves next week). MR Heretic’s “Market Research Death Watch blog.” First, I just love the word “heretic.”
Seth Godin’s blog post yesterday was about a topic I have been thinking about a lot lately. It’s inspired by the aphorism, “…to a person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
Some of the pain that market research is going through right now is precisely because of this. In the field of market research, we have hammers we are very comfortable with…
A Research Rockstar client shared a great story yesterday, one that I just have to pass on. I have sanitized it a bit, to “protect the innocent.”
Theresa is a market research manager at a consumer electronics company. Her team of 4 researchers used to be a team of 7, so workloads are pretty rough.
She recently had an executive from another department share his concern that customers were being over-surveyed. He knew some non-research employees were using SurveyMonkey and similar tools to conduct customer surveys. He asked Theresa to recommend a course of action.
Knowing that the issue is a lot more complex than just telling people to “stop,” she recruited six people from the different departments involved in the rogue activity. Once gathered in a conference room, she showed them the Research Rockstar class, “Embracing Rogue Research.” The 1-hour class acknowledges the pros and cons of decentralized research, suggests policy options, and even tools to make everyone’s life easier.
While at the Marketing Research Association’s First Outlook conference this past week, I listened to some interesting stories from people using their online communities as both research and marketing vehicles. This dual-purpose approach leaves me feeling, quite frankly, conflicted. And a little ignorant; apparently this is a widespread practice. Until now, I had thought most communities were primarily focused on listening to customers to uncover…
I’ve been attending the MRA’s First Outlook conference in San Diego this week. From conversations with other folks here and some of the sessions I have attended, I’ve learned some interesting things. Here are just a few highlights before I hop on the plane home.
