The economy is on a downturn and, with businesses bracing for the effects, you’ve probably been hearing plenty of strategies for how to thrive during this tough period.  And the foundation for any good strategy is good information.

Market research is just as important, if not more important, during a tough economy.  When times are good there is plenty of room in the budget to try several strategies at once, but with tightening budgets (and availability of credit), businesses and organizations have to get things right the first time.  Moreover, this is an opportunity for companies and organizations to position themselves for the eventual rebound.

Market research helps keep you informed off your markets so changes can be made quickly and the best strategies are pursued.  Specifically, market research can help you:

• Identify changing needs and perceptions (what are your customers top needs in this economy?)
• Identify your best customers (and just as importantly, who isn’t your customer)
• Provide the best value to your customers (what services can you provide or bundle to give added value?)
• Differentiate against your competitors (what are your competitors doing? how can you zag when they zig?)
• Create messaging and identify selling points that will resonate with your audiences (once you know the above points, what is the best way to communicate your message?)
• Measure marketing effectiveness (what campaigns are actually producing business?)
• Reduce risk in rolling out new advertising and new products (what do your ads really communicate?  what tradeoffs are people willing to make with products in a category?)

To give you an actual example of how market research has benefited our clients, Corona recently created a brief summary of a past project (with the client’s approval).  To see the full case study, please visit our resource section and click on the Sashco, Inc case study.

Even the bad companies can survive when the economy is strong, but only the great companies survive when the economy is faltering.  While we cannot control the economy, we can certainly control the future of our businesses.

Picture from http://commons.wikimedia.org

With some of us out on vacation and others out on business travel, it’s shaping up to be a busy week here at Corona.  As a result, our blog will be on vacation too until next Monday.

Please look for new material soon!

Its Friday, and we thought we’d share some fun, interesting, or just weird links that we’ve run across lately.

Brand Tags.  Cool site for word associations with brands.  Pretty revealing how people associate brands.  Try it out and check out the results.  Careful…it can suck you in.

Ning.  Create your own social network.  We saw this at a conference recently where they invited attendees to log on afterward to keep the questions and conversations going.

Groundswell. Cool utility from Forrester that allows you to build a basic technographic profile based on a few demographic variables.  The profile shows what proportion are in each of six overlapping levels of participation with social technologies.

SocialVibe.  A social media tool that pairs individual causes with sponsors.  Your cause benefits from donations and the sponsors benefit from additional exposure.

GPS Drawing.  We like mapping, but we haven’t done this - maybe on our next business trip.

Excel Rock Video.  We have to figure out how to make our data do this.

Whaleshark.  Great use of technology and conversations to exponentially increase the scope of research.

A good indication that a survey is poorly designed is when it confuses two people who create surveys for a living. Such was the case on a recent flight from Atlanta to San Diego. Beth Mulligan, a fellow analyst, was sitting next to me on the plane and she asked me to take a survey because she had problems taking it herself. The survey was on one of those fancy touch screen displays on the back of the headrests. I started by reading the first question, and once I picked my answer, I touched my selection. Nothing happened - or so it appeared. I touched my choice again. Nothing. After touching my choice about five times, I realized every time I touched the screen, the question at the top changed; I answered 5 questions the same way without realizing it. The survey was designed to go to the next question once an answer was selected – there was no prompt to move to the next question or a way to go back and change my answer. All of the answer choices were the same for each question, so there was not a visual cue that the question changed (besides the very top of the screen displaying a different question which I didn’t see during my repeated selection of my answer choice). I tried to go back and switch my responses, but there was no option to do this.

On top of filling out the survey incorrectly the first time, I tried to take the survey again, and I was able to! I could have spent the whole flight taking the survey hundreds of times, and if I didn’t have a magazine to read, I may have. I would only hope that the survey software is smart enough to know that someone at the same seat is filling it out multiple times.

I think the idea of including a survey on the headrest display has potential for discovering interesting insights into the mind of an airline passenger mid-flight.  After all, they are a true captive audience in the middle of experiencing the product or service (much better than asking them to recall their experiences later).  However, there should be several improvements on top of fixing the usability issues discussed above. First, respondents shouldn’t be able to take the survey multiple times.  Second, different surveys could be offered at different times of the flight, such as “How was your boarding experience?” or “Was the flight attendant courteous when serving the mid-flight snack?”  Finally, perhaps as an incentive for taking the survey, survey respondents could watch a movie or television on the screen for free (and avoid the annoying service charge they would normally have to pay).

LinkedIn, a social network for business professionals (learn more here), last week announced a new service that allows researchers to access their database of members for research. This service provides access to business and IT professionals that are typically hard to reach through surveys, and with the extensive profiles of members, targeting specific groups will become much more efficient.

LinkedIn currently has over 30 million members across many industries and countries and this service should provide one of the best sample sources for B2B research.  Members will be able to be rewarded for participation by gift cards or charitable donations.

This continues the trend we’ve seen of using online social networks for market research.  From the large networks such as Facebook to much more niche networks, researchers are finding more efficient ways of reaching very targeted audiences.

Given the high value of LinkedIn’s members - particularly the decision makers - and hence the likely high demand to survey them, it will be interesting to see if members get burned out taking surveys and just how much incentive researchers will have to provide.  After all, how much is a six-figure professional going to require to take a survey?  As with any panel, how you manage it will be critical to its long term value.

Thanks to Social Media Portal for their post that alerted us to this.

We blogged before about Google Trends and Google Insights, and now there is another online tool to add to your repertoire.  Twitter Search allows you see what the masses of microbloggers are saying about you, your brand, or anything else you can imagine.

Another great way to get a pulse of what is being said (and, potentially, create a conversation).

Thanks to Seth Godin’s blog for the tip (and if you like Godin’s perspecitve on marketing, you can currently download the audio version of his new book Tribes from Audible.com).

This is the sixth and final post on our recent trip to Africa.  To see the our other posts, click here.  I’m writing this blog on a business trip, sitting in the middle row of a packed plane.  I’ve just been offered a drink for a cost of two dollars, and I paid $15 or $25 or something to check my bag.  The gate was full of people willing to pay extra to upgrade to larger seats, but there weren’t any available.  The new bag check fee has created an unintended side effect where frequent travelers will attempt to carry on more luggage than ever before, in part because they might save a fee and in part because they won’t get charged if they can get it to the jetway and be told there that it has to be checked.  As a result, my recent flights have experienced phenomena where some travelers load the overhead with more carry ons than before, and those who aren’t the first to board then have their baggage taken from them. 

We all wish the best for the American airline industry, but .. wow.  This is clearly an industry where research could help them maximize revenue while also improving customer satisfaction.  And it doesn’t appear to be happening.  Overall satisfaction has sunk to a three year low in a recent J.D. Power report. 

Our flights in Africa were with South Africa Airways and Air Madagascar, and I must say that we were impressed.  They offered legroom that a normal human would consider reasonable, and we even got food.  I’m not just talking about food on the 18-hour flight over there, either.  I’m talking about food on 50-minute puddle jumper flights, food on regional transfers of under an hour.  Free headphones, flights that weren’t jammed, and good service.  Okay, there was one ticket snafu that I think briefly put me on Madagascar’s Terrorist threat list, but even that meant that I got to skip the big passport approval line, and it was taken care of before any prison time was involved.  Photo: African airlines have it figured out, even if the destinations aren’t the most common.

Are the domestic airlines really listening to their customers?  When I see a line of people willing to pay for upgrades that aren’t available, and the counter agent noting that it happens every week, I wonder why the strategists aren’t working to accommodate this market demand.  More money, and more customer satisfaction.  I know it’s easy to pick on the airlines, but come on.  E-mail me, you CEOs, and I’ll help you figure it out.

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Yep, it’s political polling season.  But if you’re tired of Gallup, Rasmussen, Zogby and others, here are some different “polls” we’ve recently run across.

Methodologically robust?  Not quite.  Entertaining?  Absolutely.

• Amazon Meters measures support by comparing Halloween face mask sales.  (For a related article, click here).  Don’t think face masks are a good predictor?  Then how about t-shirts or coffee?
• 7-11 is polling by cup selection. (allegedly 7-11 coffee drinkers have accurately predicted the outcome of the last two elections …)
• How about some donuts with that coffee?
• Or cookies?
• Finally, my favorite.  Using MotiveQuest’s Online Promoter Score (TM), the BrandAdvocacy08 Website measures each candidate’s brand by monitoring online conversations.

While each one of these seems absurd in isolation, they each tap into a different section of the voting zeitgiest.  And in aggregate, perhaps they are a good secondary measure of political preference.  After all, these “voters” are willing to put their money (often literally) where their mouth is!

Are there more of these “polls” floating around on the internet that we didn’t find?  Type your own in the comments below …

This is the fifth in a series of posts on our recent trip to Africa. To see our other posts, click here. While in South Africa, we stayed at a classic game lodge.  We ate impala at night and we slept in a tent (albeit the most luxurious tent I’ve ever seen), and in the day we drove around with a Zulu ranger in a land rover, looking for animals.  Photo: Elephant on safari.

The land rovers could hold up to nine people if they enjoyed crowding, and it was obviously in the lodge’s best interest to keep them full.  So whenever small groups arrived, they were assigned to a land rover and a ranger en masse.  Three or four couples might ride together during the day, and as a bonding exercise, they also ate their meals together at night, back at the lodge.  When we arrived, we saw some of the groups that had been together for a few days, and they all seemed to get along famously.  It was a good marketing idea for the most part, as it let guests meet each other and added a social element to the bumpy rides.

For the first couple of days, Karla and I rode alone, because there were no other groups checking in during an unexpected lull in business.  We knew that we would eventually become part of a bigger group, though, and hoped that it would include some interesting people.  We were a Fred and Wilma looking forward to meeting a Barney and Betty.  On day three, an extended family of six joined our land rover, another group of Americans that included three adult siblings, a spouse, and two parents of the siblings. Photo: Our land rover (in which we were ignored).

It seemed like we would get along well, but … hey, we tried.  The family wasn’t mean or smelly or uncouth, but rather they completely and unilaterally ignored us.  All conversations were between themselves, and any attempts by us to converse were generally met with cursory answers and no back-and-forth.  I don’t know how you can ignore other people in the same vehicle, but they somehow accomplished it.  Overall, it was more than a little disappointing, and made for some rather awkward dinners and other forced interactions.  (Admittedly, however, it made for some rather humorous moments from a humbling perspective, such as our last night as a group, when the patriarch called for a group picture.  We had driven as a group from the lodge into town, for a beach outing and a nice dinner: Karla and me, their family group, our everpresent ranger, and a temporary driver who had been assigned to us that day.  “We should get everyone together for a group shot,” the patriarch said at dinner, and the youngest daughter (in her 20s) gestured to us.  “Maybe we can get those people to take the photo.”  After nearly a week of spending hours together every day, they still hadn’t bothered to learn our names.  But it got worse:  as I patiently took their camera to take their photo, and the patriarch said, “Y’know, this isn’t a complete group shot, now that I think of it.  Go get that temporary driver!”)  Photo: Our retaliatory group photo, minus the other family.

So anyway, the nice thing about this situation is that, while we didn’t exactly make new friends, it was a great opportunity to do ethnographic research.  In ethnographic research, the idea is to “live amongst the natives” and observe their behavior.  One challenge with that is that you can’t “live amongst the natives” without impacting their behavior.  If they know you’re doing research, they may change their behaviors as a result of your presence, which can taint the findings.

In this case, though, it’s safe to say that our presence did not change one thing about their behavior.  They knew nothing about us when we met them, and they knew nothing about us when we parted ways, and if pressed, I’m not sure that they would have acknowledged that there were other people in the land rover.  Since there were occasional bouts of boredom when the animals weren’t leaping from the bush, Karla and I conducted an extensive ethnographic analysis of the family, plotting and discussing how each family member interacted with each other, examining the social structure of their little tribe, and generally developing what could be a fascinating magazine article some day about family dynamics.

And you know the most interesting thing we found? Remember that Safaris and Girls, Girls and Safaris blog post last week?   Well, we proved that it held true for this family.  The youngest daughter, even though she was legally an adult, was the one who had singlehandedly caused the trip to happen.  Hopelessly spoiled and relentlessly doted on by every other family member, she was the one whose initial idea was immediately adopted and turned into a $50,000 family vacation at the patriarch’s expense.  So yes, marketers, point your safari ads to girls and young women, because they appear to be the decisionmaking heart of your market.

We won’t extend this blog article to include the full results of our ethnographic study of this family, in part because they were dysfunctional enough that it would be more entertaining than educational.  Suffice to say, though, that we know exactly how any marketing should be aimed at that family, and any others that are unfortunate enough to have similar family dynamics.  I’d be willing to bet that we know them better than they know themselves.

I guess if you ever find yourself on vacation with people who own a market research company, you should see if they’re taking notes at dinner.

In a recent post, I talked about the problem of professional respondents, and specifically people who cheat to earn their incentive.  At the end of the post, I posed the question, “what can we do?”

Here I provide some basics on how to ensure the quality of your online data.

Survey Design

1. Screeners. Screeners shouldn’t broadcast the type of respondent needed to qualify for the survey.
2. Design. Is your survey engaging so people don’t want to “speed” through it?  Once respondents become bored, they’ll hurry to finish and/or lack focus to answer your questions accurately.
3. Engagement. Does your survey make the respondent feel like they’re contributing?  That they’re able to tell you what they really think?  Are all the possible answer choices present so respondents don’t become frustrated that they cannot answer?
4. Length. Is your survey sufficiently “short”?  Longer surveys will cause respondents to not complete the survey, or worse, speed through it.  What is sufficient, of course, depends on the type of respondent and the subject matter.
5. Experience. Does the survey provide a good user experience?  Instructions should be clear, layout clean, and repetition of questions kept to a minimum.
6. Reality checks. Include questions telling respondents which answer to select to test that they’re reading the question.  For example, “Please check answer choice two in this question.”
7. Consistency and opposite wording. Are respondents consistent with their responses on similar questions?  Ask two similar (thought sometimes reversed) questions - often at different spots in the survey.
8. Red herrings. Does a respondent indicate they have done something or seen something that does not exist?  Include nonexistent choices in your response options.

Sample Development (as it mostly relates to using panels)

1. Joining. How was the panel developed?  Can anyone join?  The obvious answer to this is no.  The panel should recruit from invitations instead of allowing anyone to join or a snowball method where friends of members can join.  Additionally, the panel should be recruited as “randomly” as possible for the given population.
2. Frequency. How often do the panel members participate in surveys?  (While it is presumed that someone taking too many surveys isn’t a preferred method, how many is too many is not exactly known currently.)
3. House cleaning. How is the panel “cleaned”?  Does the panel filter for duplicate information (people who are registered twice)?  Do they remove known cheaters?
4. Overlap. If you’re using multiple panels for one project, is there overlap?  Can you filter for duplicates?
5. Personalized. How personalized is your invitation?  This can help the respondent know their contribution is important.
6. Tokens or other personal codes. Does your invitation only allow a respondent to take the survey once and prevent him/her from passing the survey on to others? (See another recent post on this issue here.)  Some type of an individual code should be provided, ideally hidden so the respondent cannot alter the code.

Data Cleaning

1. Compare survey responses. Are different surveys exactly the same in your database?  While not necessarily evidence enough to discard the data - depending on the survey it may be likely that two people responded the same - combined with other tests below, identically completed surveys may create the case to discard data.
2. Digital fingerprinting. Was the same machine used to take multiple surveys?  Digital fingerprinting can vary on what data is collected, but often includes at a minimum browser settings, IP address, and view settings.
3. Speed. How quickly did the respondent finish?  If the respondent took exceptionally little time to complete the survey (as often determined by the time it took other survey takers), then the survey should be flagged.
4. Patterns. Are there pretty pictures in your data?  Data should be checked for straight-lining.  (Asking divergent questions, as stated above can also help.)

This is by no means a comprehensive list of tools to prevent and catch cheaters - with the dynamic nature of the Internet, what works today will likely fail to protect your data tomorrow.

What else have you done to ensure high quality data?

Photo from http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-Using-Scantrons