The Research Playbook

Archive for the ‘Market Research’ Category

In our zeal to provide clean datasets by removing questionable cases, we can commit another research “sin” – the introduction of researcher bias.

More than once, I have witnessed a researcher going through a dataset case by case to try to determine if a respondent is a gamer or simply unqualified. The person started out with some basic rules or criteria, but in addition made decisions on respondents’ qualifications from a subjective position, arguing, “No one with this [attribute here] would frame answers the way this respondent did.”

Maybe the researcher was correct and the person was not a legitimate respondent, but this is a slippery slop and we should not take the task of deleting cases lightly. You should use both valid and repeatable criteria when you delete cases from a dataset.

If you are not careful you can start sliding down the slippery slope of researcher bias and not recognize it until it’s too late!

 

 

Please share your thoughts on this topic – leave a comment.

 

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The Social Media for SMB Group is designed to help address the needs of small and midsize businesses. 

It is where business owners, and executive teams that run businesses ask questions on how to leverage social media marketing, social media research, and the broad area of internet marketing and business research to advance their opportunities.

Professionals with credentials to offer guidance, advice, how-to suggestions, resources, and other  information are invited to bring their expertise to the group.

Please join Social Media for SMB Group to learn and share your knowledge!

 

Special Report: Website Traffic Businesses and Experts Speak Out 2012

 

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Sales cycle analysis is a powerful tool to help you better understand your markets. Gaining a strong appreciation for the good and bad news about your market positioning in relationship to your competition isn’t always easy to do. Moreover, if there’s bad news it’s difficult to hear. However, not knowing where you stand is, at best, dangerous and could prove fatal.

Understanding why you do or don’t get on the short list of your prospects (or stay on the short list of your customers) is critical and sales cycle analysis helps to answer this very important question.  You need to know what will facilitate or impede your progress toward becoming a preferred supplier – the position we obviously all want. If knowledge is power than sale cycle knowledge is supremacy.

Clearly, there is more than one approach to achieving insights related to sales cycle dynamics and how customers and prospects perceive a business. We won’t try to explore the options here.

However, it is worth noting that a commitment to exploring these dynamics is not a one shot deal. If you and your company are serious about sales and the factors that propel your sales, you will be well served by tracking the metrics required at least annually.

We all know markets continue to evolve quickly. A very good way to stay informed is to track market activity systematically. Creating a baseline of information and measuring against that is a great starting point and an essential part of sales cycle analysis.

You can structure sales cycle studies to help maximize your reach tactics. Knowing how to best reach your audience is a function of understanding how they search for information. More precisely it is about how customers and prospects search for information at each stage of the buying process. In addition, the new reach equation includes social networking and social media, again fast moving targets.

In addition, studies on sales cycles, almost by definition, provide competitive insights. It’s not enough to know if you’re on the short list you need to know who’s on it with you.

Combining information on brand and product positioning with a continually updated view of reach dynamics is a powerful tool in the hands of a savvy marketing professional. What are you waiting for? Get started!

 

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Often when I recommend that a research team prepare a formal analysis plan the first response I hear is, “Why? The analysis isn’t due for weeks and I have too many other things to do.” Alternatively, I hear statements like, “That is too much extra work, I know what to do, I’ve done a lot of analysis work.”

An analysis plan is not extra work; it’s work that makes all the other project tasks flow efficiently. It will help you produce on-time project deliverables. Typically, you develop an analysis plan in parallel with your research instrument (RI). Like the RI the analysis plan is tied back to the goals and objectives of the study.

In addition to the obvious purpose of an analysis plan, producing a plan serves to improve the RI and manage project scope, these benefits alone will pay you for the time you devote to creating it.

The RI is referenced in an Analysis Plan (AP) and while there are no hard or fast rules and no one right way to structure an AP we can offer some guidelines. The approach presented here is as good as any and better than most.

The analysis plan approach described is specific to quantitative studies. The first step of the process will be familiar to those of you who read some of my other blog posts and publications.

Research has the greatest chance of success when the objectives are clearly stated and that is where we begin. Use these five (5) straightforward steps.

1. State the key study objectives clearly at the beginning of the analysis plan (AP) and refer to them throughout the process.

2. Describe the major comparisons for the analysis (e.g., major cross tabulations for the study such as: Customers versus Non-customers, Companies by size, Customers that are Satisfied, Neutral, or Dissatisfied).

3. State how each question is used to answer a specific objective of the study either on its own or in combination with other data points. Think through how you expect to present the results from each question. What statistics, if any, will you use in the analysis? Identify the independent and dependent variables.

4. Write a clear justification for including the information from the question in the study and perform a section by section “So what” litmus test.

5. When the analysis plan is finished, go back and make sure each key study objective has been addressed.

These five steps are the basic approach to the AP template. While it is straightforward it is not a trivial task. The key is to focus on objectives and think critically about how to execute on the primary goal of the study.

For a more detailed description of how to develop an Analysis Plan see Analysis Plans Made Easier, which is on the www.AtHeath.com Resource tab (scroll about halfway down the page).

 

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Apparently many people do care about how panel recruitment affects sample development and with good reason.

Results from a poll posted on LinkedIn demonstrate that this is a serious issue. The question posed was:
“When you select a sample provider, how much importance do you place on their panel recruitment process?” Is it:

While the results derived are from a sample of convenience and hardly scientific, they are nevertheless instructional. So what did the 98 people who took time to participate tell us?

If you are a panel provider and you didn’t already know that recruitment practices play a deciding factor, it surely would be obvious now, with nearly seven out of ten (71%) prospective buyers voting “very and extremely” important.

 

Women are more likely to view recruitment as very or extremely important (72%) than men (64%) are. Differences by age were interesting. There was a very small portion of the sample (5%) in the 30-36 age group and they accounted for only 2% one of participants who voted “extremely important.” The 45+ age cohort, which was the largest age group in the sample, also had the highest proportion of votes in the extremely important and very important categories (68%). Perhaps it’s true that with age comes wisdom!

What can we learn from examining the results of this poll? I think the message is straightforward;  overall this simple polling question seems to have hit a nerve. We believe that sample development is one of the cornerstones of good research.

Market research is not an academic exercise. Real business decisions are made, or at least influenced, by the results of the research we conduct – how can you make a good business decision if the sample is faulty? Simply put, you can’t.

 

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Research Axiom: You can never fully recover from a poorly written questionnaire.

• No manipulation of the variables, regardless of how cleverly done
• No amount of analysis, regardless of how brilliant
• No degree of insightful interpretation, regardless of intellectual prowess

Nothing can save you from a poor research foundation. The building will collapse like a house of cards!

If there is one part of the research process that I know, it is questionnaire design. It is a task repeatedly given insufficient time and attention. Clients and research professional alike often underestimate the time it will take to develop a truly well structured and concise instrument.

What amazes me most is when this task is somehow relegated to a status depicted by the attitude of:  “Once the questionnaire is done we can get on with the important stuff, like analysis and reporting.” The assumption that analysis work is the essence of the research and the expectation that interpreting the results is where the mastery of research ultimately lies is a mystery to me.

Have we not pounded the concept of garbage-in garbage-out into our heads? Can new internet tools substitute for critically thinking and the hard work of aligning the research instrument to the purpose of the study – answering the business questions that sponsors paid to learn?

If this seems like a bit of a rant, well I guess I’m guilty. My own research on research including the use of a 25 point questionnaire audit system has shown me that even well healed researchers are less diligent about quality than one would hope. Research is not only science it is a craft [perhaps an art] and if the proper fundamentals are not applied the product is less than artful.

I’ll end the ranting with an analogy [but don’t be surprised to hear more on this topic]. If you have not studied and then practiced writing poetry would you expect to publish a book of poems simply because your company’s marketing department asked you to?

Designing a good quality research instrument probably takes less talent than being a good poet, but it’s close.

 

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No, I am not going to offer you yet another webinar, podcast, free report, or video.

We overstocked hard copies of my Book:

Questionnaire Design for Business Research

Tate Publishing (2010)

So I am making this offer to my Research Playbook readers

Purchase the book Questionnaire Design for Business Research, and you will receive a paperback copy signed by the author (my wife loves this author!)

 

My Special Offer is a signed copy [tell me who to address it to] for $16.75 with free shipping in the USA.

 

Perfect for anyone serious about:

• Raising the bar on questionnaire design in his or her organization
• Finding a cost-effective way to start designing a questionnaire
• Preparing for the next market research project
• Improving his or her research skills

IMPORTANT: To reserve your signed copy of Questionnaire Design for Business Research you must: Email me carey.azzara@atheath.com or call 508 400 6837.

 

We have less than 100 copies and my signing hand will probably give out sooner LOL. . . 

“I want to get this book in your hands.“

It is also available from the publisher’s website: http://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=978-1-61566-835-9

 

We spent the month of August (well most of it) on Holiday, with visits to family and the beach. We hope you had a wonderful summer too!

 

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The questionnaire Audit, Correct, and Enhance (ACE) approach starts with the audit. The Questionnaire Quality Control (QQC) audit identifies problems and errors commonly encountered during the task of questionnaire design.

My Questionnaire seems perfectly fine to me

No one wants to hear that what she or he created is less than masterful, but there is more to Questionnaire Design than asking questions the way you do in everyday discourse. Our audit is structured to be helpful and provide actionable guidance to the author(s) of the research instrument.

We have created a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) version of this audit process and we invite you to use this process to improve your questionnaires before submitting them for fielding. The process is described in this post and we hope you find it valuable. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Sales Cycle
All businesses secure customers through a sales cycle. The starting point is the Potential Market or said another way the Available Audience for your product and/or service. There is a portion of this market (you hope a large one) that is Aware of your business (i.e., your products and services), once they become Aware, you have the chance to be Considered.

You will perhaps start out on a long-list of sellers and hope to be placed on the person or company’s short-list where the chances of being selected increase. Eventually you want to move to a Preferred status, which you hope to maintain through customer-care. Finally, a Purchase is made; you have successfully navigated the prospect into your customer base. Read the rest of this entry »