Happy Holidays & Market Research Wishes

All of the well wishes we give and receive this time of year has me thinking. From a market research context, what am I wishing for everyone in the new year?

A Razzie Award for Online Surveys?

Maybe online survey research needs the “Sazzies”, the Survey-Razzies? We can create awards for “Most onerous” or “most annoying” survey designs. Or how about, “Most spelling errors” or “Poorest chance of meeting intended goals”?

Market Research Holiday Fun

I’d like to share a little market research fun. And what’s more fun than a crossword puzzle? I have crafted a market research crossword puzzle; it was fun to make, and I hope you enjoy it.

My Totally Unofficial, Brutally Honest 2010 TMRE Awards

Best Speaker: Dawn Lacallade from ComBlu. For content, delivery style and just being so refreshingly honest.

Most (delightfully) unexpected content: Kelley Styring’s presentation on the One-armed Dove Hunt, which is a core piece of research for her current project, “The One-handed World.”

Most amusing: This award goes to the Shopping Track. Apparently, research on shoppers is a rather slippery topic; I heard contradictory data from 3 Shopper Track speakers. I won’t name names. But I sat in on 3 sessions…

Letter to Client-side Researchers

…mplying that all in-house research is “bad” is as ridiculous as asserting that all agency-led research is “good.”

Confessions of a Market Researcher: The Day I Beat My Data to Death

The day I beat my data to death: I poked it, pulled it, pummeled it. I sliced, slashed and skewered it. I tore it up into a thousand pieces and glued it back together into a Frankenstein mess. I abandoned it. I restarted from scratch. Seven times. I created 43 new variables, each of them a total waste. It wasn’t analysis any more; it was an act of violence.