Pollsters Get Trumped, AGAIN.
The opinion research industry is in “crisis.” Among my professional circles, the inaccuracy of the polling data and the surprise election of Donald Trump was THE topic on November 9th. However, this “crisis” is not exactly new news. If you go back to the 2012 election, some of the same observations were made. So, what’s going on? Does this mean the end of quantitative research? Not...
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Rethinking Concept Tests – a More Human Approach
We do a lot of idea screening and concept tests. The typical approach is to present possibilities to end-users in a survey, ask a bunch of diagnostic questions, and see what sticks. The most common questions are things like “purchase intent,” “meets a need I have,” “belief that the product will perform as described,” and so on. This winnowing process may be necessary depending on the...
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Empathy or Evidence?
Recently, I’ve been in an ongoing conversation with a CEO of a mid-sized company about marketing research, consumer insights, and innovation. This CEO is an engineer by training, and he started his company with a great idea. This year, sales for his company will exceed $500 million. Not bad. While the company has a product development and marketing function, they’ve never invested in formal consumer...
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Cuddle Up to Focus Groups Again
Neuroscience proves that most decisions are filtered through emotions, and the holy grail in qualitative research is understanding these emotions. Decades of behavioral research is fairly conclusive: in order for a giver of feedback to convey emotions there must be a high level of trust with the receiver of feedback. To date, our industry has focused on technological solutions to measure emotional response. That is,...
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Are Study Participants Brain Dead?
We recently moved our office and during packing I stumbled across a collection of articles dating back 15+ years related to where market research failed to predict the ultimate success of a new-to-world innovation. I was under some pressure to declutter, but after thumbing through the folder I decided these articles would make the trek across town. It struck me that there was a common...
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