Inside Market Research

Who's reading Inside Market Research?

2011-06-04T11:11:00.002-04:00

Last month, we passed the sixth "candy or iron" anniversary of Inside Market Research without much fanfare. While the blog was launched in May 2005, it wasn't until April 2006 that the Google Analytics monitoring widget was installed. I'm a big fan of Google Analytics and other web traffic tools (like StatCounter). These tools allow a publisher to learn more -- often times much more -- about who is visiting the website and how they're using it.

For the 5-year history of the Analytics-enabled blog, it looks like we've had over 37,600 visits, with about 1.25 pages being opened per visit. Visitors spend about 49 seconds on the site, on average. As I've always known, my article that compares churn rates is by far the most popular of my pages, accounting for almost 30% of all the page views. The next-most visited page is an article about sample sizes, garnering about 9% of page views.

However, if you drill down more carefully into the data, I think you can make some other interesting discoveries. For this task, I decided to take only the most recent 24 months of traffic data, so that the findings suggest more current trends and distributions.

For example, can we estimate the market share of various Internet Service Providers based on the U.S.-based traffic to my blog? The traffic statistics would suggest so:

Comcast - 27%
RoadRunner (Time Warner) - 15%
Verizon - 10%
SBC Global /BellSouth / PacBell (AT&T) - 10%
Cox - 5%
Charter - 4%
Optimum Online (Cablevision) - 4%
Comcast Business Class - 3%
Qwest - 3%
Verizon Wireless - 1%
Cogentco - 1%
XO - 1%
All others & unknown - 16%

That strikes me as probably fairly accurate, and it seems to line up rather closely with other independent measures. The Comcast share is likely inflated somewhat, since I publish from a local Comcast area, and I am also a Comcast employee.

Using the same methodology, we might learn that in Australia, BigPond Broadband and TPG Internet are neck-and-neck for top spot in ISP market share. Or that India's leading ISP is Airtel Broadband, followed by Tata Indicom (VSNL). In the UK, it's British Telecom with about a 30% lead on Virgin Media, which itself has about a 30% lead on BE Internet.

But you can get even nosier about your visitors. For instance, I looked at all of the web domains that had at least 5 unique visits to my blog over the past two years. The domain that seemed to be most interested in my content was the office of Bnei Moran Productions in Israel, spending an average of nearly 10 minutes per visit on my site. Within the United States, the honor of "most interested in my blog" goes to Health Care Service Corporation, clocking in at 7:41 per visit.

Since my blog is about market research, it's interesting to note that some market research and similar consulting firms spend a bit of time reading my commentary. In order of depth of interest (as measured by time per site visit):

TNS Global (India offices) - 7:01
Bates White - 6:16
CMI Research - 3:46
Millward Brown - 2:29
Morgan Keegan - 2:24

I would like to thank these five companies for taking a bit more time to read my thoughts and findings on Inside Market Research!

Trusting results of product concept research

2010-11-10T22:01:00.007-05:00

Any quantitative study that tests purchase interest in a new or unfamiliar product concept will produce results that are likely to be questioned or doubted by even those who designed the study. At my current employer, the Market Research team has made great strides and taken considerable effort to try to normalize the variance that occurs in estimated take-rates from product to product, study to study. We've done this by:

Creating standardized wordings for questions capturing interest and purchase intent;
Creating standardized scales for questions concerning agreement, likelihood, satisfaction, and switching; and,
Retaining archival data results from previous studies to make benchmark comparisons.

Despite this, the fickle nature of telephone and web-based survey audiences remains a hobgoblin of professional consumer researchers. Twenty years ago, response rates on telephone surveys would easily surpass 35% or 40%, where now they are fortunate to break 20% (not to mention that 18% or more of the population no longer has a land-line telephone). Ten years ago, response rates on web-based surveys would commonly be in the 5% to 8% range, where now it is not unusual to obtain less than a 2% response rate (not to mention concerns that many panels are stacked with "professional respondents"). Frankly, despite all of our efforts to be consistent with data and our expectations of that data to guide insights, the changing world makes it more and more difficult to obtain "reliable" measures that uniformly track the general population.

But, we learn certain compensatory tricks and caveats. For example, we know that consumers typically under-report common daily activities (e.g., time spent watching TV will often get reported around 22 to 24 hours per week, but when the actual "people meter" is switched on by Nielsen, it's typically closer to 31 or 32 hours per week). Conversely, consumers will over-report infrequent activities (e.g., we're seeing consumers over-report online long-form video viewing, but ethnographic studies that observe actual waking-to-bedtime behavior suggest that this activity is potentially over-reported by a factor of 5x to 8x).

A recent study at hand regarding a new sports-related product/service has returned a mountain of data, based off a questionnaire that was carefully designed and vetted by both some of our company's and the vendor's best personnel.

We knew going into this research that the presentation of such a multifaceted product would likely require a video format to convey all of the features to the respondent. On the other hand, most of our new product concept testing does not enjoy the benefits of a glossy video presentation, so some of the "benchmark" data loses its comparability. People tend to more warmly embrace a concept that's been presented to them in a stimulating, engaging way (such as a video clip) than when they're presented with only words on a page.

So, when the results came back, showing a rather strong interest in the concept, it didn't take long for us to begin wondering if it was the slick presentation of the concept (compared to other, more typical presentment formats) that gave it an edge against benchmarks.

In this particular case, we had also asked some "true or false" questions to gauge whether or not the respondents truly understood what the product offered, or whether they had gotten carried away with imagined promises of delivered benefits. We concluded that at least two-thirds of the respondents really had a good grasp of the concept (getting three out of three of the true/false questions correct), and so that helped ease everyone's concerns about potentially inflated take-rates.

What do you do in your organization when you encounter research situations such as this?

The importance of competitive bidding

2010-10-10T10:10:00.001-04:00

When businesses seek to conduct impartial research about a subject near and dear to them, I think it's an important practice of good governance to obtain competitive proposals and quotations from at least three reputable vendors.

I don't think it's good practice to allow "the new guy" to wire the contract to his former employer, then when publicly called out about it, to ignore the problem entirely. It would seem that the world's fifth-most popular website doesn't see things my way.

Congratulations, Q2 Consulting LLC. You're surely the pride of Oklahoma now.

What is Field and tab?

2010-03-23T00:01:00.002-04:00

A wiki formatted definition, as I write it, is:

'''Field and tab''' refers to a limited set of services provided in the [[marketing research]] industry. The name refers to the task of '''''field'''ing'' a questionnaire (that is, interviewing consumers or whomever is the target market, to get their response data to an array of questions), then '''''tab'''ulating'' the resulting data into convenient two-dimensional tables (called "cross-tabulations"), based on answers to at least two of the questions included in a survey.

{| border="1"
|+ An example of a '''cross-tabulation''' (simple)
! Answer choices !! All Respondents !! Males !! Female
|-
! Voted for Democrat
| 55% || 50% || 60%
|-
! Voted for Republican
|45%
|50%
|40%
|}

A field and tab research vendor will typically not be responsible for drafting a questionnaire or assisting on high-level sampling design discussions. Likewise, after the data has been collected and tabulated, the vendor will typically not interpret the resulting data nor prepare a deck of presentation slides. These responsibilities fall on the client (the research buyer) or on a [[consulting|consultant]] that the client may hire.

Field and tab is always a part of the offering of a [[full service research]] vendor. A full-service firm will sometimes offer only their field and tab component when the budget for a particular study is limited.

==Bibliography==
* Hague, Paul N., '''Market research: a guide to planning, methodology & evaluation''' (3rd edition), Kogan Page publisher, 2002.

[[Category:Research methods]]

Note: The content published above is released to the public by Gregory Kohs, under the terms of the Creative Commons, Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. All respectable attempt should be made to attribute the original content to Gregory Kohs.

Power law curve in surnames

2010-01-14T07:05:00.005-05:00

There are purportedly six million unique surnames in the United States.

Think about that. Considering how many Smiths and Johnsons are running about, that means there are millions of surnames being clutched onto by only a handful of survivors. Indeed, the New York Times says that while 151,000 surnames were shared by a hundred or more Americans, four million were held by only one person. For some reason, I suspect that spelling typos are responsible for at least a million of those. How many census records, for example, accidentally point to the surname "Smioth" or "Wikkiams"?

A few years ago, I wanted to know how many Kohses there were in the United States. I suspected there were about 200 or so. I was able to obtain a tally sheet from the United States Census Bureau, and while they did not preserve the exact 1990 census count, I learned at least that "Kohs" was about the 56,229th most frequently occurring surname in America.

Recently, though, I went back to review that file, and it's been updated with more detailed year 2000 census data. They now tally over 150,000 surnames having more than 100 members. The "Kohs" name has dropped to (approximately, since many families share the same estimated number of members) 84,631st place. They estimate about 206 people with that last name in the United States -- very close to my personal guess of "about 200". Funny that I've already collected at least 30 of them on Facebook.

While poking through the first 1,000 surnames, though, I made a fascinating discovery. After I charted the data, it was clear that the top 1,000 American surnames follow a power law curve in terms of distribution.

Naïve as I may be, I momentarily thought I might have made an impressive discovery, but this is not the case, of course. Academic studies have already examined the power law properties of surnames in Puerto Rico, Japan, England and Wales, Korea, and doubtless many other countries, including the United States.

Who's a recognized authority?

2009-09-16T11:01:00.005-04:00

Another debate on Wikipedia. What fun.

Wikipedia's article about "Churn rate" at this moment (though it won't last long) contains an external link to my blog post about churn rates. A couple of editors have indicated that the link is inappropriate, because I am not a "recognized expert" or "recognized authority" on churn rates. The blog post comes up as the #2 Google search result (after Wikipedia) when you search for 'churn rates', and it is this blog's most heavily visited page.

We have one party (me) wishing to help expand Wikipedia's usefulness by including one external link to a sourced, academically-cited blog post. The author's credentials include career work in the area of churn rate research, currently for a Fortune 100 firm where churn is an essential matter.

We have another party saying it is not sourced (even though it is), that the scholarly reference to it is merely a ".edu web page" (even though it is a published subscription journal with ISSN: 1527-6619), and that the author is not a recognized expert.

I've pointed out that Wikipedia has thousands of similar external links to commercial sites with far less expertise and scholarly credibility than my own. Who do you think has the more solid footing in this debate?

I hope that any uninvolved Wikipedia editors in good standing might help weigh in on this debate. Should the link stay, or go?

Restaurants on the Web - Part 2 of 3

2008-12-20T23:11:00.006-05:00

Hamburger Hank's is a clean, presumably friendly burger joint found in Fountain Valley, California. If you search Google for the words "Hamburger Hank's" (in quotation marks), you get only 14 pages returned. So, this is clearly no Wendy's or Burger King mega-chain.

A page from Pubcrawler.com is the first result, and nobody on that site has bothered to review the restaurant. Just a bit lower in the results, we see our very own blog, thanks to our most recent post mentioning that we'd be talking soon about Hamburger Hank's.

There's another link not far down that mentions Hamburger Hank's merely because it's an establishment where you can pick up a copy of the Huntington Beach Wave weekly newspaper.

Clearly, this hamburger emporium has made little effort to establish a "brand identity" for itself on the Internet.

Suppose someone wanted to at least see if anyone had ever taken a picture of the hamburgers (or the front door, or the cashiers, or the parking lot) at Hamburger Hank's. You know, just to get a better "feel" for the place. Then they might look up "Hamburger Hank's" with the Google Images search.

I'm not sure the ownership of Hamburger Hank's would be pleased with how their restaurant is being presented in visual form online. The array of four photos that come back does not particularly evoke an establishment where I'll enjoy a delicious hamburger.

Nor do these images inspire me to place Hamburger Hank's toward the top of my gastronomical "to do" list. She doesn't look like a particularly cheerful cheeseburger chomper, does she?

Companies sometimes spend 10% of their revenues on advertising and marketing, so that a consistently positive image of the corporate entity is firmly imprinted in the target market's mind. It doesn't look like Hamburger Hank's is spending one-tenth of 1% of their revenues on advertising and marketing. At least not on the Internet.

I'd be interested in hearing comments from restaurant owners here. Would you be satisfied with the web presence of Hamburger Hank's, if it were your own establishment?

This has been Part 2 of a 3-part series:
Part 1 – Restaurants on the web
Part 3 – Can a wiki directory change the web landscape for an unpublicized restaurant? (Still haven't completed this part, but the attempt to build data was made here.)

Restaurants on the Web – Part 1 of 3

2008-10-18T09:00:00.012-04:00

I love good food. Bestowed with a metabolism that allows me to eat until full, three meals a day without blimping out, I consider it a true blessing.

So, with that in mind, I tend to hold in high value the restaurant industry, though I wouldn’t know the first thing about managing a restaurant. I probably know a bit more about Internet marketing, though; and that's going to be the topic of discussion in this post. Specifically, why do some restaurants fail to market themselves on the Internet?

CASE STUDY: The Georgia House Restaurant

My in-laws live in Lower Delaware. This affords me the opportunity to visit Sussex County every 4 or 5 weekends, and that thrills me because I never miss the chance to have a dinner at The Georgia House in Millsboro, DE. It's my favorite restaurant in Delaware. There isn’t a fancy thing in the dining room or the kitchen -- it is simply unadulterated Southern-style and Chesapeake regional "family food". You can sample a catfish po'boy sandwich, Memphis BBQ ribs, Miss Vicky's meatloaf, prime rib (try the Cajun-spiced version!), or my trusted go-to dish, the buttermilk fried chicken. Chicken is the area's primary agronomic business, so of course Georgia House has to know how to prepare it well. Whatever you do, don't miss the "soup that made them famous", a cream of crab concoction that you'll regret having ordered only a cup. Upgrade one of your two side dishes to the classic green salad, and you've got your fiber for the night. Finish off with another salad, the Eastern Shore picnic favorite Jell-o pretzel salad.

Sounds like a perfect restaurant, huh? But it has no website. Why, then, doesn't co-owner Sean Hall publish a website about his Millsboro restaurant and its several satellite locations in Selbyville, Milford, Laurel, and Georgetown (take-out counter only)? I can't figure that out, and Sean was unavailable for my call. Just a couple of years ago, people would pack the place and wait 45 minutes for the next available table, but now business has dropped off to a relatively slower "at capacity" pace. I have to imagine there are tourists traveling to the area who have never heard of the Georgia House, or may have been referred to it only by name but would like to see the menu before trying. Most of the clientele is over the age of 50, so maybe Sean doesn't think this market avails itself of the Internet. Think again, though -- seniors constitute the fastest-growing Internet demographic. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, those age 50 and over experienced a 26% growth rate in home broadband adoption from 2007 to 2008, with half of Americans between the ages of 50 and 64 having broadband now. Some 19% of those 65 and older had home broadband access as of April 2008.

Consider the following possible web searches a hungry diner might conduct. For the tourist who has never heard of Georgia House, but happens to be rambling through Millsboro and has a craving for the regional favorite soup, they might go to Yahoo! on their mobile web browser and type 'millsboro delaware crab soup'. Here's their search result:

In the top 9 results, there's not one hit for the Georgia House, despite it being founded in Millsboro and famous for its cream of crab soup. Is it just me? Wouldn't that be maddening if you were the owner of this restaurant?

On the other hand, consider the diner who may have had a local resident advise them, "You should go to the Georgia House in Millsboro," but they’d like to see the menu, evaluate prices, get directions, and perhaps confirm whether the establishment accepts Discover card. Their Google search might be constructed as '"Georgia House" Delaware menu map'.

In the top 9 results, four of the links do contain info about the Georgia House restaurant, but these specific links are not particularly helpful or flattering to the business.

I don’t understand why the Georgia House would settle for these various pages representing (or, failing to represent) their establishment on the Internet. Maybe some of my readers will have some thoughts why.

Editor's note: As of September 2009, the Georgia House finally established its own web site.

Later in this 3-part series:
Part 2 – The imagery of Hamburger Hank's
Part 3 – Can a wiki directory change the web landscape for an unpublicized restaurant? (Still haven't completed this part, but the attempt to build data was made here.)

Internet users per household

2008-07-02T11:36:00.003-04:00

I'm looking for data that would help estimate the number of Internet users per household (or, rather, "per Internet-connected household") in the United States.

If you perform a web search for "Internet users per household", you get a bunch of sites -- all of which are addressing this question in a country other than the United States.

Isn't this the sort of information our government should track in some way? There's a bill that wants to mandate a study of applying net neutrality regulations to high-speed Internet access services, but we don't know how to count Internet users per household.

Somebody help me!

Bradley Joseph atop Wikipedia

2008-06-24T12:41:00.002-04:00

The featured, front-page article on Wikipedia today is about musician Bradley Joseph.

His musical talents include "hired by Yanni", "lead keyboardist for Sheena Easton", and "included in multiple various-artist compilation albums, most recently the 2008 release of The Weather Channel Presents: Smooth Jazz II".

I can't imagine how many iterations of smooth jazz from the Weather Channel will ultimately be necessary to exhaust the genre, but apparently we're already up to Volume II.

There is some debate on the Wikipedia talk page about whether this article is truly encyclopedic, as it seems awfully self-promotional, and it lacks even one mote of negative criticism.

"Taking a look at the references it appears Joseph doesn't seem to register outside of the musical circles in which he is appreciated, a very unique situation which causes the article bias."

I do have to wonder how it is possible an article of this length and detail did not involve a financially-interested party at some point.

We all know that Wikipedia can be, in many cases, a marketing dynamo for the subjects portrayed within. Prior to today, Bradley Joseph's article was getting approximately 70 views a day. Now that it's on the Main Page, it will be opened today by between 30,000 and 100,000 people, and the intro blurb on the Main Page itself will capture the passing attention of at least 10 to 15 million additional people.

Joseph's music is backed by 15 talented musicians, some playing three or more different instruments, that make up a symphony of sounds ranging from quietly pensive mood music to a rich orchestration of classical depth and breadth. "
—Ken Moore, Naples Daily News

Loyal Wikipedians will tell you that they have a strict policy against exploiting Wikipedia for marketing or self-promotion purposes. Uh huh.

That's all I have for today, other than to mention that FCC chairman Kevin Martin was recently outvoted 4-1 by his fellow commissioners. Boo hoo.

Multi-level marketing research

2007-11-10T09:44:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite marketing research vendors is a San Diego firm that specializes in Internet panel surveys. The panel is SurveySavvy.com, managed by Luth Research. What makes SurveySavvy different from most other online panels is that they pay a small amount of cash to every survey respondent, instead of entering them all into a sweepstakes drawing that leaves 99.5% of the respondents unrewarded. This has the effect of boosting SurveySavvy response rates to an amazing 25%-30%, rather than the 1%-2% other panels might achieve.

There's one other cool thing about SurveySavvy's panel rewards. Panelists who invite other people to join the panel also receive a cash incentive ($1) when those referrals complete surveys! What a fantastic way to build a panel with the "snowball" method.

When I was employed by ICR, I never promoted the SurveySavvy panel here. While we partnered frequently with Luth Research, they were still our competition in some ways.

However, now that I'm no longer on the vendor side of research, I have no hesitation to invite my readers to take advantage and sign up for Luth Research's SurveySavvy panel and start getting paid regularly for EVERY survey you complete with them. If you click this link, you may register for SurveySavvy as my referral, so I'll also earn a dollar when you complete a survey!

If you like the experience SurveySavvy offers, you can then start to build your own pyramid of referrals, so that you too will earn money even when you're not personally completing research surveys.

(Disclaimer: I have already earned a few hundred dollars over the years with this program, and Luth Research has not asked me personally for this endorsement. It is my personal recommendation.)

How not to sell market research

2007-10-11T14:59:00.000-04:00

I couldn't believe this one when I saw it. My superior at Comcast is responsible for millions of dollars of market research budget allocation. He's someone I've known and respected in business for about 15 years now.

Recently, a marketing research vendor with whom we're not currently working got about 10 minutes of our time on the telephone. My boss informed them that any business that seeks to win a new spot on our Approved Vendors list had to complete a request for information, after which they may be invited to sign a non-disclosure agreement and a general services contract. Apparently that was too much to ask for this particular researcher, who replied by e-mail with:

Thanks for the time, but truthfully, you're not interested and you'll be a waste of my time. I'm sure Comcast will continue to be successful simply based on the cable component. It won't be based on your consumer research and product offerings that you'll bring to the table.

Wow. Thanks for your pro bono analysis of our company's market position, delivered with such grace and politeness. Glad we won't be working together! I'm going to spare from public identification this individual and his firm. If you're dying to know who it was, you can contact me privately by e-mail.

Tags: Comcast, rude, sales pitch

Job change

2007-06-26T12:44:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post today to let my readers know that I've left my previous employer (ICR / International Communications Research) to take a position with Comcast Corporation, as the Senior Research Advisor. I'll be working on video, high-speed Internet, and digital voice product categories.

Through my observation of 15 years in marketing research, I've found that the most versatile professionals have both vendor and client-side research experience. Heretofore, I had no client-side experience, so turning down an offer from a Fortune 100 company would have been awfully difficult to do. I'm still getting settled in on the 17th floor of 1500 Market (West Tower), waiting for a dedicated phone line and voicemail, etc. But, already, I'm heading up some pretty important research initiatives.

And, don't worry dear readers, I'll share those insights that I can, which aren't proprietary.

Tags: Comcast, ICR, International Communications Research

Prevalence of geography in SEO & SEM

2007-04-04T23:49:00.001-04:00

I witnessed a discussion on a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing (SEM) message board that just didn't sit right with me. The self-appointed SEO and SEM experts were holding sway, that important business-related search terms are almost exclusively searched without appending a geographic qualifier. That is, far more people will search for "barber shop" than "barber shop cincinnati".

Well, of course this is true, as a specific example. However, by so dismissing geographic qualifiers, the "experts" are missing a couple of really key points.

(1) I would contend that at least half of the people who type in "barber shop" and hit "Search" will almost immediately see the millions of results returned, slap their forehead, then re-enter a modified search, such as "barber shop in Beverly Hills" or "barber shop 90210" or even "barber shop on wilshire boulevard".

(2) If you're a barber on Wilshire Boulevard in the 90210 zip code, you may be resigned to have your web page come up 478th in a Google search for "barber shop", but you damn well better not be satisfied if your website comes up 478th if the search is for "barber shop in Beverly Hills".

I say to ignore the impact of geographic specificity in search engine strategy is to ignore your best prospects.

Take a look at this spreadsheet I created, examining the most frequent searches related to "plumber", "real estate agent", and "landscaper", according to the Yahoo! Overture keyword selector tool. This data tracks how many Yahoo! searches (in February 2007) were conducted with these words as part of any search phrase. The results are ranked by frequency.

The data shows that, admittedly, the majority of searches for these terms are just for the term alone. However, remember my point (1) above -- many of these searches were likely modified in the next couple of seconds to include more descriptive objectives, such as geographic reference points.

The evidence is equally clear that locational modifiers play a very big part of business-related searches in this manner:

27% of searches with the word plumber included geographic qualifiers
17% of searches for real estate agent were narrowed by location
A whopping 44% of landscaper searches specified a locale (most of them in California)

How does the business manager (or owner) responsible for search engine optimization address this matter? Well, for starters, make sure that your website contains textual references that relate your enterprise to all the possible ways your location might be defined. Depending on a graphic image or a Flash animation to display your address may look cool, but it would be folly as far as the Google spider bots are concerned. To go back to our Beverly Hills barber once again, his website should be decked out with text references not only to Beverly Hills, but to "90210" (the zip code), "Los Angeles County", "West Hollywood", "Wilshire Boulevard", "Wilshire Blvd", and "Southern California"!

Furthermore, there's one more secret to optimizing search results for businesses -- especially those that service a finite geography. It's called "semantic tagging". Semantic Web is eventually going to be the golden egg, as far as search engine algorithms are concerned. While incorporating semantic tagging into an existing, non-semantic website is quite a challenge, there's an easy shortcut to getting your company semantically tagged for amazing search engine results. List your company on the business directory that I am developing, called MyWikiBiz. If you don't believe MyWikiBiz can help your business with search engine performance, just read this for a bit of proof.

I'll see you soon on MyWikiBiz!

Tags: MyWikiBiz, SEM, SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, semantic tagging, semantic web

Trending the news with Trendio

2006-12-12T23:11:00.000-05:00

Web 2.0 sites that users enjoy for entertainment can sometimes be useful tools for the savvy business person, too. One example that comes to mind is Trendio.com, a site that claims to be the first current events stock exchange. It is an online "play money" stock exchange where words from the news are the equities. The values of the words are calculated according to their presence in thousands of media sources, from newspapers to blogs.

One way that Trendio could be used by marketing and public relations professionals would be to counsel senior management -- in a quantitative way -- about how quickly certain "crisis moments" are fading from the public sphere.

Take for example the following three corporate case studies:

Remember when Hewlett-Packard was involved in various hearings regarding the "Board spying" accusations?

These seem to have peaked back in mid-November, if you believe the Trendio chart. This might be a case where a PR or communications manager at H-P would be, at least for the time being, relieved that H-P's exposure was on the decline.

The following chart is interesting in that Wal-Mart seems to have had a big climb in news mentions between November 23rd and December 2nd. What transpired during that time? Nothing but the launch of the "official" Christmas shopping season, complete with a sober warning from the retail giant, predicting its December same-store sales gain would be no better than 1 percent.

As a final example, do you recall
when Merck won a significantly important case regarding Vioxx? With this chart, do I even need to tell you that the jury put in its decision on November 15th? It seems the lesson in today's media world is that bad news (or the possibility of bad news) is what drives impressions.

Even if you don't end up using Trendio for business reasons, it's still pretty fun to play. I know I'm holding some really attractive, ground-floor shares in "Christmas", "Boxing Day", and "New Year's Day". Get 'em while they're still cheap!

Tags: Hewlett-Packard, Merck, Trendio, Wal-Mart

Surname distribution in the United States

2006-10-18T12:44:00.000-04:00

I came across a delightful mapping tool on the web today. It is a simple mash-up of surname data from the Census Bureau and white pages telephone directories on the one hand, and a map of the 50 states on the other. It's a lot of fun and rather informative to look at how certain last names have "traveled through time" across the United States.

Here are a few of my favorite examples:

A common Amish (Pennsylvania Dutch) name, like Yoder:

A surname with strong ties to the Mormon faith, such as Larsen:

The predominantly Hispanic surnames of Gomez:

...and of Sanchez:

Or, there is Olson, a common Scandinavian surname popularly found in the northern plains:

It's interesting to note the wide distribution of the Vietnamese name Nguyen, but the only significant record begins in 1990:

Many thanks to the Hamrick Software company for devising this useful tool. (Hamrick's primary product is photo scanning software, so if you're in the market for that, check them out.)

Tags: Census, genealogy, Hamrick Software, maps, surnames

Maps on your web page

2006-08-30T12:11:00.000-04:00

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a cartographer.

So, it's not surprising that one of my favorite things to come out of the "Web 2.0" evolution (I refuse to call it a "revolution") are the various mash-ups between Google Maps or Yahoo! Maps and user-provided content. Let the masses geocode, and watch the magic begin.

Two of my favorite such sites are Placeopedia and Wikimapia. Unfortunately, Placeopedia doesn't seem to have active customer support any more, and they don't do a good job of updating their "auto-fill" registry with the most recent entries from Wikipedia. But, Wikimapia seems to be going strong, and users are making hay, filling in interesting spots all over the globe.

You can even use Wikimapia to create a map that you can plug into your own web page!

This is an example:

Note that the orbiting satellite took a picture of ICR when we still didn't have grass growing around the building -- meaning the photo is at least 4 years old.

Tags: geocoding, geotagging, maps, Placeopedia, Web 2.0, Wikimapia

You know your friend, "Cheese"?

2006-07-12T08:33:00.000-04:00

One of the best television ads I've ever witnessed ran in January 2005. Yeah, I'm only writing about it now, because in all my searching of the Internet recently, I have not been able to find reference to this particular commercial.

I know it was produced by Wieden + Kennedy of New York, and I believe the creative directors were Todd Waterbury and Kevin Proudfoot. The ad featured two of those "singing fish plaques" that were all the rage about six years ago. They were promoting the angling programming on ESPN Outdoors.

The ad went like this:

LEFT FISH: You know your friend, "Cheese"?

RIGHT: Yep.

LEFT FISH: That's a nickname, right?

RIGHT: Yup.

LEFT FISH: Does he smell, or somethin'?

RIGHT: Nope.

LEFT FISH: Does he eat a lot of cheese?

RIGHT: No. In fact, he's lactose intolerant.

LEFT FISH: Well, what's his first name?

RIGHT: "Mike".

LEFT FISH: What his last name?

RIGHT: "Jankowskowicz".

LEFT FISH: {Deadpan turn to the camera, pausing for comedic effect}
That just doesn't make any sense!

RIGHT: All right... One time we were out on the boat, and Mike pulled out a big ol' hunk of Limburger. Put it on a hook. Apparently, catfish like stinky cheese.

LEFT FISH: {After a pause}
Catfish are so dumb.

Tags: advertising, commercials, ESPN, Wieden + Kennedy

Comparison of churn rates

2006-06-09T09:22:00.001-04:00

One of the most closely guarded secrets in business seems to be the churn rate. This is the rate of attrition, over a period of time, that subscriber-based customers "churn out" (unsubscribe) of the customer base. Churn rates are often measured in monthly terms, especially in the cable and satellite television and the wireless telephone industries. Business analysts will often look at the churn rate on a quarterly basis. Likewise, an annual rate of churn is a commonly used measure.

Recently, I got to searching the Internet for a comprehensive list of churn rates, if such a thing existed. A churn rate table, across industries. But alas, nobody seems to have compiled a database measuring the percent of customers who churn out of various companies, across sectors. So, I had no choice but to create such a table.

If you try to discover reported churn rates, the first thing you'll notice is that companies will use various time periods as the basis. Monthly, quarterly, annually. I even found one study of lawyer retention rates that spanned a four-year period. So, to try to make this an apples to apples comparison, I converted all of the churn rates I found to "per year" terms. Note, however, if a company reported a 2% monthly churn rate, I did not say that equates to a 24% annual rate (2% times twelve months). Rather, I calculated a sliding count, such that in the first month, 100 customers would dwindle to 98. But in the second month, the 98 customers would decrease to only 96.04 customers (98 minus 2% of 98).

The table below expresses 67 different churn rates at different companies in different industries at different times. As I discover more churn rates in my travels, I will update my spreadsheet and occasionally edit this chart. I'm quite certain that I will get feedback in the Comments section, pointing out the perceived errors in my table, or suggesting new data points worthy of adding. I look forward to that! For verification, I have placed a link at the bottom of the table, showing the source material for this table. It would be fantastic if this post became the Internet's number-one repository of publicly available churn rates.

Since I've put in some backbreaking coding work creating this table, I would at least appreciate that if you use it and get value out of it, please return a favor by subscribing to my blog via FeedBlitz. Just type your e-mail address into that form over there, on the right. That way, you'll be updated when I have something new to report.

And now, without further ado, Inside Market Research presents the...

BIG LIST OF CHURN RATES

Annual Churn	Company	Industry	Data Year	Country
1.0%	Cox (triple-play customers)	Cable TV	2002	US
4.0%	C I Host	Web Hosting	2003	US
4.0%	Earthlink	Internet Service	1999	US
4.5%	Greenberg Traurig (lawyers)	Legal	2003	US
4.6%	Reed Smith (lawyers)	Legal	2003	US
4.6%	Sonnenschein (lawyers)	Legal	2003	US
4.9%		Local Telecom	2000	US
5.0%	Piper Rudnick (lawyers)	Legal	2006	US
5.3%	Baker & McKenzie (lawyers)	Legal	2005	US
5.7%		Local Telecom	2002	US
6.0%	Sirius	Satellite Radio	2005	US
6.0%		Wireless	2002	US
6.1%		Local Telecom	2001	US
6.3%	Holland & Knight (lawyers)	Legal	2004	US
6.4%	White & Case (lawyers)	Legal	2003	US
6.5%	McGuire Woods (lawyers)	Legal	2003	US
6.6%	Sirius	Satellite Radio	2004	US
7.0%	Morgan, Lewis (lawyers)	Legal	2003	US
7.2%	Sirius	Satellite Radio	2006	US
7.5%	Nextel	Wireless	2001	US
7.9%	Howrey (lawyers)	Legal	2003	US
8.0%	Triton PCS	Wireless	2001	US
8.0%	U.S. Cellular	Wireless	2001	US
9.0%		Wireless	2001	US
9.6%	Duane Morris (lawyers)	Legal	2003	US
9.6%		Wireless	2000	US
10.0%		Web Hosting	2003	US
10.0%	Western Wireless	Wireless	2001	US
10.3%	Akin Group (lawyers)	Legal	2003	US
11.0%	Alamosa PCS	Wireless	2001	US
14.0%	Virgin Mobile	Wireless	2005	GB
15.0%	Nascar.com (premium subscribers)	Sports Media	2004	US
16.0%	Nextel	Wireless	2005	US
17.0%	Colorado teachers in 'excellent' schools	Education	2004	US
17.0%	Schnader Harrison (lawyers)	Legal	2003	US
17.0%		DBS TV	2002	US
17.2%	Vodaphone	Wireless	2005	IT
18.0%	DirecTV	DBS TV	2003	US
18.3%	Vodaphone	Wireless	2005	DE
19.0%	Alltel	Wireless	2005	US
20.0%	Hutchison Telecommunications	Wireless	2005	IN
20.0%		Wireless	2001	AU
21.9%	Vodaphone	Wireless	2005	ES
22.0%	Analog cable subscribers	Cable TV	2002	US
23.0%	Cingular	Wireless	2005	US
23.0%	Sprint	Wireless	2005	US
23.0%	Colorado teachers in 'unsatisfactory' schools	Education	2004	US
25.0%		Wireless	2005	GB
26.0%	Sprint	Wireless	2005	US
26.0%	Subscribers	Cable TV	2002	US
29.7%	Vodaphone	Wireless	2005	GB
30.0%		LD Telecom	2002	US
31.0%	Globe	Prepaid Wireless	2003	PH
31.0%		Pagers	1998	US
34.8%	T-Mobile	Wireless	2005	GB
35.0%	Maricopa County (anglers)	Recreation	2002	US
36.0%	Las Americas - Cable California	Cable TV	2002	MX
37.0%		E-mail addresses	2003	US
45.0%		E-mail addresses	2004	US
46.0%		Prepaid Calling Cards	2004	US
46.0%	Digital cable subscribers	Cable TV	2002	US
51.0%	Globe	Prepaid Wireless	2004	PH
52.0%	Florence (AL) Times Daily (readers)	Newspapers	2005	US
58.0%	Snowball.com	E-mail newsletter	2000	US
78.0%	Touch Mobile	Prepaid Wireless	2004	PH
93.0%	VOOM	HD TV	2004	US
93.0%	Runoff at time of sale	Home Mortgage	2002	US

Source material link:
http://tinyurl.com/churn-rates

Tags: attrition, attrition rate, attrition rates, cable, churn, churn rate, churn rates, email, e-mail, Internet, legal, list, table, telecom, wireless

Top Ten sources

2006-04-29T21:55:00.000-04:00

How are you doing, blogosphere? The weather for the past two days has been impeccable here in southeastern Pennsylvania, and it looks like it will continue for a couple of days more. Simply perfect late Spring weather.

As if that weren't enough to lift my spirits, my blog received the very flattering distinction of being recognized as a "Top 10" marketing research blog by the editors at "Top Ten Sources". You can check it out yourself, or just look in my righthand sidebar for the list.

Exxon challenge

2006-04-19T11:55:00.000-04:00

For the past few months, the news media has been tearing up ExxonMobil, at first for the enormous profits the company has been reaping of late. Then, the crowning touch came with the news story that showed Exxon's retiring CEO Lee R. Raymond as having been compensated to the tune of $144,573 for every DAY that he led the company (from 1993 through 2005). Even more scandalous was the fact that in 2005 alone, because of a lump-sum pension handout and rising stock price, the amount was much more -- over $1.1 million PER DAY.

During a period when every oil company is making money hand over fist, does any one individual really deserve to be compensated over a million dollars a day? Do we think that Exxon would have gone bankrupt these past few years, were it not for the management expertise of Mr. Raymond? To me, I'm not sure anyone really needs more than $25,000 a day to live a decent life as a corporate CEO operating a company that essentially extracts liquid from the ground, refines it, and sells it on the commodity and retail markets. Go ahead, brand me a Communist, or worse, a Liberal.

That got me to thinking. If Exxon's CEO could have scraped by on $25,000 a day, that would have freed up nearly $120,000 a day for the company. They could have run one hell of a consumer promotion with that budget. They could have called it the "Exxon Challenge". Here's how it might have worked:

First, Exxon would conduct an internal database query of their ExxonMobil SpeedPass Card holders. To minimize anomalies of small samples, they would filter out any ZIP codes with fewer than 5,000 total households (according to the U.S. Census). Exxon would then calculate the current market penetration (household incidence) of their SpeedPass product, within every major ZIP code.

Then the "Exxon Challenge" would begin. For the first 3 months of the year, the company would promote a "membership drive", encouraging households in the largest ZIP codes to apply for and obtain an ExxonMobil SpeedPass Card. At the end of 3 months, the ten ZIP codes that most substantially increased their market share of Cards would be named "Finalist" ZIP codes. (The Fox Broadcasting Company or the Game Show Network could get involved at this point, with a "reality" series.)

For the next 6 months, those ten ZIP codes' SpeedPass Card holders would be encouraged to buy gasoline exclusively at Exxon and Mobil stations, using their new Cards. They would be encouraged to buy, buy, buy! Use as much gas as possible!

Then, Exxon would analyze the customer traffic volume across the ten Finalist ZIP codes to determine the one winning ZIP code that bought the most gas during the 6-month buying frenzy. The grand prize? Every SpeedPass Card holder residing in that winning ZIP code would get $5,000 deposited into their SpeedPass account! All paid for by Mr. Raymond's pay cut.

This promotion would elevate to a new plateau all of the things we Americans love about oil and gas companies -- greed, excessive depletion of limited resources, consumer debt, pollution, and (potentially) fraud. What's not to like about the "Exxon Challenge"?

Tags: CEO, compensation, Exxon, ExxonMobil, Exxon Challenge, Lee Raymond, promotion, SpeedPass

That's one messed-up scale

2006-04-10T07:55:00.000-04:00

Ahem. Getting back to marketing research, now.

I received an e-mail at work last week, inviting me to participate in the "Research Industry Trends 2006" survey. It was being sponsored in part by the NY-AMA (American Marketing Association), publishers of the GreenBook Marketing Research Directory, with which obviously I am familiar. Addtional sponsors were DialTek (vaguely familiar), Pioneer Marketing Research (not familiar), and the mysteriously named Rockhopper Research.

I almost always participate in surveys directed at our own research industry. I like to voice my opinions (obviously), and I'm always hopeful that a top-line summary of the research might be made available to me as "compensation". I think our marketing research industry could use some more objective research about what makes the most successful companies hum. What are clients looking for? Is the industry truly polarizing to the extremes of crude data collection (order takers) offset by consultative strategic partners, leaving those in the middle on tenuous ground?

But then I get a survey like this, and I'm just disappointed. Take a look at the following graphic (click it to open in a larger view), a screen-shot of one question in the study that made me shake my head:

What was bothersome about this question? Let me count the ways!

First, the respondent is supposed to have a strong enough idea about the growth potential in each of ten different global regions to be able to form an opinion about each. You're not allowed to "Don't Know", because that's just not an option.

Second, what if I anticipate that there will be a decline in one of the areas? Again, that's just not an option. I guess the survey authors felt that there couldn't possibly be a retrenchment in research anywhere in the world, even the Middle East. I'm sure they'll just be pouring out the marketing research studies over in Baghdad throughout 2006.

Third, look at the five-point scale. At the top end, a "5" reports "Very High Growth" (nevermind that we seem to be forgetting about "potential" any more). At the bottom end, there is "1" anticipating "Little to No Growth". So, what would you expect in the middle, at point "3"? The survey says "No Change". WHAT?! If you're going to have "No Change" in the middle of the scale, then 4 and 5 should be positive change, but 2 and 1 need to be negative change. They're not! It's all growth, growth, growth.

Fourth, I have to marvel that, when a question is this patently awful in design and execution, how did it POSSIBLY pass through the quality checking process of (presumably) all FOUR sponsoring research entities? Were they all asleep at the wheel, or was this the disasterous result of a project by committee, where this rating scale was the queer result of some kind of compromise among disagreeing sponsors?

It just looks bad for them, either way.

That's my criticism. How about making it constructive? What should they do now? In my opinion, the study should be pulled from the web and sent through a more thorough review process. Additional completes then can be solicited on a second, better version. Heck, with the right mea culpa, those who already completed the survey could be invited to take another crack at it.

I would always rather have 50 completed interviews on a well-designed question than 150 completed interviews on one that is seriously flawed. I guess I'll notify GreenBook, DialTek, Pioneer, and Rockhopper about this now.

Tags: AMA, DialTek, GreenBook, marketing research, Pioneer Marketing Research, rating scale, rating scales, Research Industry Trends

Strumpette's decline

2006-04-06T12:33:00.000-04:00

Ever since the "Strumpette" got off the ground, blog readers far and wide have discovered that "she" is probably a "he", and that the site is less of a "naked journal" of the PR industry and more of a low-brow attack on Edelman Public Relations. I think intelligent readers want objective commentary from real-life people who aren't hiding behind a fake persona.

Me, I learned not to wrestle a pig. You both end up dirty, but the pig enjoys it.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so this will be my parting shot:

Goodbye, Strumpette.

Tags: Amanda Chapel, Brian Connolly, Furthermore, Strumpette

Garfield's too big

2006-04-05T08:11:00.000-04:00

I recently came across an amazing list. While this might not have much to do with marketing research, it does underscore how incredible the power of "the masses" can be -- often trumping the power of the intellectual elite.

The list was generated by the Online Computer Library Center. They're the folks who, along with their member libraries, cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat -— an electronic catalog of books and periodicals (not to mention a few stone tablets and MP3s). If you've ever spent time searching for library books online, chances are you were using a WorldCat database.

Anyway, about the list... It's the 2005 edition of the Top 1000 works that are owned by 53,000 libraries in 96 countries. They started with nearly 495,000 WorldCat items, then counted how many libraries had how many copies of each item. The top five listings shouldn't be a surprise to anyone:

1. The Bible
2. U.S. Census
3. Mother Goose
4. Divine Comedy
5. The Odyssey

The next five should present no surprise, either: The Iliad, Huck Finn, Lord of the Rings, Hamlet, and Alice in Wonderland.

Furthermore, I have no beef with numbers 11 through 14 -- Don Quixote, Beowulf, The Koran, and The Night Before Christmas.

Number Fifteen, however, I had issues with. Garfield.

That's right. Garfield. The orange cat.

In terms of library dollars allocated to assure the institution had a copy available, Garfield beat out Tom Sawyer, Romeo & Juliet, Treasure Island, The Scarlet Letter, and Last of the Mohicans. In fact, there are over two times more copies of Garfield books in the OCLC libraries than Last of the Mohicans!

If you love books, or if you love lists, you'll probably enjoy browsing the complete list.

Tags: books, library, libraries, OCLC, Online Computer Library Center, Top 1000, WorldCat

What is "fair use"?

2006-04-04T18:11:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I get into these "comment battles" with other bloggers with whom I may disagree. A recent such dialogue I had was with a new voice in the blogosphere, someone specifically dealing with "breaking news about PR and marketing communications". Her blog is certainly irreverant, which is borne out even in her background photo, shown here:

Now, I'm not going to say who this blogger is. I'm not going to give you her web site. I'm not even going to attribute this photo to her or her photographer (if this photo even depicts "her" -- there's extensive speculation about the real identity of this person/woman/nom de plume/Brian Connolly/Furthermore character). I know full well that I am not the creator of the above image. Am I violating a copyright? I think so.

The sassy lady blogger in question, however, says otherwise. Fair use, she would claim.

I'm trying to make a point. The point being, she copied an image from The Economist online magazine and used it in a recent blog post (without any permission, or even attribution). Then when three different people leaving comments questioned her about whether she had the "rights" to use the drawing in the manner she did, she replied in each case that she did. She's not an attorney. She didn't have the time to explain why she was right and the field was wrong. She only cited that there is a "four factor fair use test", and that this image use was covered by such a test, and that there should be no further discussion on the matter.

That's what frosted me the most. A subsequent comment of mine was notably "not approved" by the saucy blogger. She deemed that no more discussion on the topic of copyright needed to make its way to her blog comment form. Visitors, purportedly, would only be allowed to comment on the topic of the original post, not the underlying legal/ethical question of copyright. I think that's a pretty lousy policy for someone to have on their blog -- especially one that claims to be a "naked journal".

Before I open a big can of worms, I've checked out the images that I have ever posted in my own blog, and I sincerely believe that all of the photos are either: used with permission, used for the purpose of parody, or being re-used as the product of a public relations campaign where the original authors would be delighted to see more exposure for their product. I hope.

If you really, really must know the identity of my opponent, you can probably figure it out in my Technorati tags, below.

Tags: Amanda Chapel, Brian Connolly, copyright, fair use, Furthermore, Strumpette, The Economist

How to promote heartburn

2006-03-29T07:44:00.000-05:00

Over the past few years, I've had the pleasure of working with public relations firm Manning Selvage & Lee, helping them promote various products and services with some news-generating public opinion polls. One such client of theirs is Prilosec OTC, the famous over-the-counter heartburn treatment for those who suffer from frequent heartburn (on a self-reported basis, about 13% of the American adult population).

Last year, MS&L had ICR run a quick survey in our Excel Omnibus program, asking over 1,000 adults about what type of music is their favorite. We found that, nationally, seven listed styles of music stacked up as follows:

Country was most popular, the favorite among 26% of adults

Rock was next, tops among 17%

Pop / Top-40 was favored by 15%

Classical at 10% (however, 22% among senior citizens)

Rhythm and Blues at 8%

Hip-hop / Rap at 7% (however, 18% among 18-34 year olds)

Jazz at 5%

Another 11% of respondents said that their favorite type of music was not on that list of seven varieties. Anyway, why would Prilosec OTC want to know what kind of music people like? Well, they really wanted to know what kind of music that frequent heartburn sufferers like! And that proved to be Country -- even more than the general population. In fact, among Prilosec OTC's target market, Country music is preferred by 38% of adults, which is statistically significant at the 95% confidence level, versus non-heartburn adults (24% preference).

So, how did MS&L put this information to use for Prilosec OTC? I'll let some of their press release speak for itself:

NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2005 /PRNewswire/ -- For the first time ever, the Country Music Association (CMA) is bringing Country to New York City for the presentation of the 2005 CMA Awards, and several events have been planned from November 10th through November 15th to help New York City celebrate.

...On Friday, November 11th at the historic Roseland Ballroom, Country Music performers, including the legendary Charlie Daniels, will join together with athletes and dignitaries in a variety concert to raise money and awareness for the veterans of America's armed forces and their families. Prilosec OTC will introduce the grand prizewinner of The Prilosec OTC Burning to Sing Your Heart Out Contest, Dallas Burnett, at the event. As part of his prize, Dallas will perform on stage with Charlie Daniels during the concert.

..."Prilosec OTC and Country Music have something in common -- they are both #1 with people who suffer from frequent heartburn. We have had so much fun working with the CMA to celebrate Country Music and educate consumers about frequent heartburn. This was an exciting venture for us as we connected with so many different types of people and Country Music fans from all across the country," said Kip Olmstead, Brand Manager of Prilosec OTC.

Fun, indeed. If you want, you can even check out the fan-written song video that won the contest.

Tags: Charlie Daniels, Country Music, Country Music Awards, frequent heartburn, heartburn, Manning Selvage & Lee, MS&L, Prilosec OTC

Mapping with Frappr

2006-03-22T23:22:00.000-05:00

Okay, I admit it. I'm a Geography nerd. I've always loved maps. I even went so far during my Ph.D. candidacy at Temple University as to take on a minor topic in "Quantitative Methods in Geography". (If you must know the other 3 topics I chose, they were American Military History from 1898 to present, European Diplomatic History from 1800 to 1945, and Naval Warfare from the Spanish Armada to present. I left all that behind for a career in Marketing Research!)

So as not to bore you with a treatise on the value of cognitive space, let me just ask you this:

Whether you are a regular reader of Inside Market Research or whether you are a first-time visitor, whether you practice in the field of Marketing Research or whether you do not, won't you please "Add yourself!" to the Frappr map you see at the bottom of my right sidebar? I really don't ask much of my readers, yet I pour forth all of this excellent free content to each and every one of you. So, please, won't you give a little back by mapping your visit?

Tags: Frappr, geography, mapping, maps, Temple University

They love us in China

2006-03-18T11:55:00.000-05:00

Many hits have been coming to my recent blog post, entitled "Usable research". Imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a Chinese blogger who goes by the name of 'Heart5', asking if he could re-copy and re-post my "Usable research" article -- into the Chinese language!

I figured, "Sure, why not?" I consented to my material being re-posted.

Thus, so to speak, I'm syndicated in two languages now. I hope my hit counter goes to a billion!

Tags: China, Chinese, heart5, Usable research

Bad profits - case #1

2006-03-15T10:44:00.000-05:00

People are going to think I'm the new step-child of Fred Reichheld, creator of the loyalty concept called Net Promoter Score (NPS), a simple index that subtracts those who aren't strongly likely to recommend a company from those who are.

Reichheld is pitching another concept in a new book. It's the notion of "bad" profits. How can a firm call any profit "bad", you might ask? Well, bad profits are earned at the expense of customer relationships -- when a company makes the customer, member, or client feel like they've been misled, mistreated, coerced, or abused. Bad profits are the bank's $35 overdraft charge on a check for $9.75. Bad profits are (were) Blockbuster's late fees on video rentals. Bad profits are when your $89 hotel room bill also comes with a $12.50 surcharge for using the telephone, even to call 1-800 numbers.

Bad profits are especially harmful to a corporation because, while they may momentarily please Wall Street shareholders, bad profits actually undermine the foundation of customer loyalty (or "preference formation", as ICR's Dr. Steve Ballou likes to say). And typically, only firms with strongly loyal customers can capitalize on the long-term profitability benefits of word-of-mouth referrals and implementation of premium services. Companies that regularly exercise their right to earn bad profits are unknowingly creating a customer base that is so ready to defect, that when they do switch brands, they take 3 or 4 other customers (their family, friends, and co-workers) with them.

Very recently, I had one such experience on the receiving end of bad profits. We took our annual vacation to Key West, Florida. We love the drive down the Overseas Highway, so our airline flight was into and out of Fort Lauderdale.

When I chose a rental car, I knew our family would want a nice minivan, to carry our luggage and little Maddie's innumerable supplies, as well as have the opportunity to shuttle my wife Stephanie's sister and two cousins, who were also going to be in Key West that week. I used Orbitz to shop for and reserve a rental minivan.

Orbitz does a nice job of displaying all of the comparable rental rates from various car rental firms. In my mind, over the years I have built the following price/value images of the available car rental firms, when it comes to minivans:

Hertz is almost always the most expensive option, and I don't see the value benefit of their services, which seem to cater to executives in a hurry.

Avis does "try harder", but this apparently means that they have found a price-point that lies just below Hertz's, but above everyone else's.

Then, we have the free-for-all among the remaining car rental agencies: Alamo, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, National, and Thrifty. They are typically competitive with each other on price, service, and airport facilities.

You also can find a lower tier of local or regional rental companies, like Advantage, E-Z, Fox, and L&M. They are almost always just a bit cheaper than the free-for-all companies, but you usually compromise on the location of their car lots and/or the extensiveness of their roadside service.

Anyway, for this particular trip, we chose National Car Rental -- it was a brand that I trusted, and they were offering an American-made minivan for only $239 for an 8-day rental. My contract was for Friday evening through the following Saturday afternoon. I didn't read or notice the fine print that said, "Rates are subject to change if vehicle is not returned on the date and time agreed upon at time of reservation and rental."

On February 11th, the Philadelphia area was due for a major snowstorm in the evening, and on that morning, we were still in Key West. Fortunately, I had called our airline (Southwest) the night before, and we got our evening flight seats changed to an 11:00 AM flight. (Believe me, my wife and daughter were not pleased to depart Key West for the drive to Fort Lauderdale at 5:30 in the morning! But, in the end, it was the right decision -- we got 15 inches of snow in my neighborhood.)

In the rush to drop off our minivan at the National return area at the FLL airport, it never occurred to me that there would be any inconvenience on National's part, to take back our vehicle at 9:45 AM, rather than at 5:00 PM as contracted. Well, apparently this was a major hassle for National, because they took the liberty of charging not $239 for my rental, but an amazing $515! I didn't even notice this on the heat-transfer receipt that the check-in agent in the garage gave me. Indeed, I wouldn't have even noticed it a couple of weeks later, had I not carefully looked at our credit card statement for the month.

How dare a company MORE THAN DOUBLE an already substantial bill, just because a customer did not use a product or service for an additional "expected" seven hours? When I called National to complain, they were indeed quick to refund the overcharge, and they weakly explained that "their computer system" recalculates rates based on the most expensive daily rate if a return time is not within an hour of expectation. I wondered aloud to them, "How many of your loyal customers simply don't notice this overchage, and furthermore, how angry do those observant ones become?"

The representative I spoke to sheepishly said that this is something that agents have been complaining to management about for some time. It's just not fair to the customer. It's not abiding by the Golden Rule -- treating others the way you would want to be treated. Do you think if customers of National Car Rental found a way to fleece the company for over $300 just by manipulating the clock a little, the firm would stand by idly without changing the system? Of course not!

So now, here I write. And about 15 people per day will read this article. And they, like me, will now place National Car Rental (and perhaps even its sister company, Alamo) at the bottom of that "free-for-all" class of car rental agencies. I'm not saying I would never use National's services again, but I am saying that I will not forget this experience when I'm choosing my next rental car.

Tags: Alamo, Avis, bad profits, Ballou, Blockbuster, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Fred Reichheld, Hertz, Key West, National, National Car Rental, Orbitz, Overseas Highway, Net Promoter Score, Reichheld, Steve Ballou, Thrifty, Southwest

Usable research

2006-02-21T11:11:00.000-05:00

One of the really enjoyable people I work with at ICR is our VP of Marketing, Michael Brenner. Recently, he pointed me to an article in B2B Online that discusses how General Electric has rolled out an internal performance measurement system called Net Promoter Score (NPS), a fairly simple index that indicates whether customers of a particular division would recommend GE to other businesses or colleagues.

The thing is, this isn't something that GE cooked up. NPS is the brainchild of Fred Reichheld, whose concept was adopted by Satmetrix Systems, on whose board of directors Reichheld sits. Does GE like it? I would say so, being that General Electric's CEO Jeff Immelt says, "This is the best customer metric I've ever seen."

The Net Promoter Score probably couldn't be any simpler. To calculate a company's NPS, take the percentage of customers who are promoters (those who are highly likely to recommend the company or its products), and subtract the percentage who are detractors (those who are less likely to recommend the company or products). That's it.

Can customer growth and profitability really be this simple? I suspect not, at least not in all cases. There are some companies that have probably had profoundly high NPS ratios -- off the cuff, I can think of Saturn, Apple Computer (pre-iPod), and Iridium as having very high ratios of promoters to detractors among their customers -- but these companies have had a somewhat notorious track record of translating that customer loyalty to financial success.

Similarly, I could think of a few successful companies that might not generate the highest NPS ratios. (I'm imagining that customers of Playboy TV, Hummer, and Microsoft would pan out with low NPS readings.) In the case of Playboy, I'm not sure customers are actively advocating to friends and relatives their private relationship with that enterprise. In the case of Hummer, one would think that most owners have discovered that talking with acquaintances about their monster truck (in this day of $2.69 per gallon gasoline) brings them more pity and scorn than praise and admiration. Furthermore, part of the mystique of owning a Hummer is that you're probably the only one on the block who drives one, so why recommend it to a neighbor or a friend? And, in the case of Microsoft, I'd bet that the company has more true "detractor" customers than promoters. Yet, Microsoft is valued at $275 billion.

If I may come back to Michael Brenner, he has voiced to me some criticisms of our market research industry. One point of his is that in business (not so much in academia or in public policy), market research is being driven by usability. Usability refers to a low amount of effort required to translate a research finding into an action or a decision. In Brenner's opinion, this is also what is driving the growth in Internet-based research methodologies. The other side of this argument is that accuracy is becoming less important, based on budget and time pressures -- something Brenner and I have already discussed and agreed on.

Brenner concludes that CEOs speak to the masses, so if a research finding is simple and explainable, it will be used by CEOs, CFOs, Marketing, and other business influencers to drive their business.

In light of that, we in the research industry need to think more about making our findings usable.

Tags: accuracy, Apple, Apple Computer, corporate identity, Fred Reichheld, General Electric, Hummer, Iridium, Microsoft, NPS, Playboy, Playboy TV, Reichheld, reputation management, Saturn, usability

Benchmark your B2B survey response

2006-01-31T21:23:00.000-05:00

Within my account group at ICR, about 40% of my research portfolio is directed toward B2B audiences; that is, business owners and CEOs, IT directors, middle managers, and other "daytime" respondent sets. The other 60% are typically consumer audiences, contacted (if by telephone) at nighttime and on weekends.

Over the past few years, my once limited exposure to B2B research studies via the Internet has blossomed into quite a robust research function. Recently, I was working with a client of mine in the financial services industry, fielding a web-based satisfaction survey among their clients in the retirement plan services sector. The client asked, "Greg, it's been over 24 hours since our e-mail invitations went out, and we've gotten about a 9% response rate so far. How does this stack up against other studies' response rates, after the first day of activity?"

My reply noted that survey research response rates are highly variable, so there are no hard and fast rules about benchmarking them. For example, our client on this occasion had mailed its contact list a pre-notification letter by U.S. Mail about a week before the e-mail invitation went out. That certainly reduced the e-mail deletion rate, helping the response rate. Not every client would take that important step, thinking that 39 cents is too much to pay to increase response.

The retirement plan study included 950 outbound e-mails to the customer-side decision-makers and day-to-day managers of the plans. Sixty-nine of them were returned immediately as undeliverable. Thus, the net sample included 881 records.

After DAY ONE (Tuesday): 86 had completed the web survey -– reflecting a 10% response rate

After DAY TWO (Wednesday): 122 responses -– a 14% cumulative response rate

We felt that these response rates were pretty much in line with other studies we've conducted by web with B2B respondents.

For example, we had another study of casualty insurance underwriters who are members of a professional organization. Their 7,100 invites went out on a Monday. After 24 hours, we had about 470 completes; the second day saw another 340 interviews completed; then it dropped off to about 80 or 90 completes on Wednesday. After four days, 949 surveys had been completed on that sample -– 13% overall, and 14% if you discounted the undeliverable and "out of office" e-mail invitations.

One other study we did recently was with hotel managers who used our client’s transaction processing software and registers. There were only 107 pieces of sample, but they were very heavily encouraged to respond by the hotel chain’s senior management and by the software client. There were also reminder notices sent twice after the initial e-mails. There were 9 respondents in the first 24 hours (8%), and then they trickled in (no more than 3 completes in any given day) for the rest of the 3-week field period, with the reminders going out repeatedly. The final tally was 39 completes, or a 36% overall response rate.

Our cohorts over at the e-Rewards Business panel say that when drawing up a cost estimate, they will estimate a 10%-15% overall response rate on their B2B web surveys, and that’s using a self-selected panel of participants!

Thus, I would say that our retirement services client's response rates so far are right in line with other B2B client surveys that we have conducted on the web. I'd be curious to learn what others in the industry tend to experience, so leave a Comment!

Tags: B2B, B2B surveys, response rates, surveys, web surveys

Let the music play

2006-01-19T10:49:00.000-05:00

You may recall a while back that I experimented with a "music radio" feature on this blog, powered by the folks at Audioscrobbler and Last.fm. Technically speaking, it didn't work out too well for me.

I'm happy to report that I've found another solution for playing my favorite music on this web site. Using a plug-in by Gcast.com, I've assembled a short playlist of songs (copyrights authorized) that I happen to like. If you care to listen, scroll down to the bottom of my righthand column, under "Other Stuff", and press the Play arrow button.

You'll notice that Mr. T has graciously endorsed my playlist, too. Listen to Mr. T.

Tags: Gcast, Last.fm, music, radio, songs

The wisdom of crowds

2005-12-27T07:11:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking that I need to get my hands on James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds, because I've been hearing a lot about it, and it sounds like it's up my alley. Better add it to my Froogle wishlist.

The premise behind The Wisdom of Crowds is that large groups of people can be "smarter" than a few elite experts -- better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

Over the past couple of months, I've run into a few interesting items that tend to fall into this category.

The first is the ageproject, a web site where you can post a photograph of yourself, and the random masses will take a stab at how old you look. Earlier this year, I posted a picture of myself that I think is a fair representation of my appearance. (It also happens to be the profile photo you see here on Inside Market Research.) After about 80 people have submitted their guess of my age in that photo (I was 36 at the time), they have come to the conclusion (as an average) that I looked thirty-six years old! I don't know why that amazes me, but it does.

Another interesting site where random users contribute their perceptions to create an "average" whole is the Mind World Map. Here, the user visits the site and sees what used to be a random assortment of green and blue pixels. But the Internet community is molding it, one pixel at a time, into what they think the world map looks like. Pretty neat.

The final item that I thought fell into this category actually happened at ICR, when the results of a survey that we conducted among American adults were presented in Japan to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One of the survey questions asked household respondents to identify the year in which the atomic bombs were dropped during World War Two. The range of answers was a bit frightening to me (a student of History), but sure enough, the mean, median, and mode were correctly on 1945. Same goes for the question about which month of the year the bombs were dropped, correctly centering on August, even though every month of the year received at least some mentions.

I'm not completely convinced that, given a choice between 10 experts in various fields and a room full of 200 average Joes, I'd want the latter giving me important advice. But, the concept is interesting. Anyone with similar anecdotes about either the book or the concept of "the wisdom of crowds"?

Tags: aging, James Surowiecki, maps, nuclear war, Surowiecki, wisdom of crowds

Companies for the next 100 years

2005-12-22T00:14:00.000-05:00

I saw a blurb today in Market Research News about a French professor (Georges Lewi) who named seven global companies that he predicted will still be thriving in 100 years. One of his selections was Airbus. Considering some of the state-supported advantages that Airbus enjoys over Boeing, that could be a good pick.

The whole notion of envisioning the business world in the year 2105 was intriguing to me, so I thought I'd lay out seven global firms that I happen to think will be thriving a century from now.

1. Toyota
What this company is doing in terms of hybrid energy drives is certainly intriguing. But, in my opinion, Toyota has always been the auto manufacturer that best covered the waterfront with top-of-the-line models for sports coupe, sports muscle, family sedan, luxury sedan, pick-up, minivan, and SUV. They just consistently do it right, across the board.

2. Coca-Cola
This brand is American globalization exemplified. If the United States still exists in 2105, then so will Coke.

3. eBay
I thought about Amazon, as well, but if I had to have a pure-Internet player, I think eBay has the future of distributed merchandizing better in hand than does Amazon. There will always be a marketplace for new goods. There will always be a marketplace for second-hand goods. eBay has the latter locked up tighter than Amazon ever will have the former.

4. Microsoft
The Windows/Office construction is now the lexicon of business communication. When you add the fact that Microsoft is becoming a dominant player in media and games, you can't help but see that they're prepared for a long, long legacy after Bill Gates has passed on.

5. Samsung
This company is scary in its diversification across anything that uses electrons to be useful. They seem to have the right combination of innovative design and cost-effective practicality that will carry them for another century.

6. Citigroup
The monolith of money. Credit cards, retail banking, corporate and investment banking, and (through Smith Barney) they've even got wealth management.

7. Synagro
It's football season, so you have to have an "upset special" of the week, right? We all hear about how water will be the commodity of the next century. This company is carving out a dominant position in the area of wastewater conversion. That is, they turn sewage into fertilizer. I can't see how that's not going to be a growth market for years to come.

I hope you enjoyed my little look into a crystal ball. I'd welcome your comments, either debating my selections, or offering one of your own companies "built to last".

Tags: Airbus, Citi, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Coke, eBay, Microsoft, Samsung, Synagro, Toyota

How large should my sample be?

2005-10-27T14:22:00.000-04:00

Before we launch a marketing research study or public opinion survey, we're often asked by the client, "How big should the sample be?", or "How many people do we need to interview for the results to be valid?" Public relations firms are especially prone to ask these questions, since they appreciate the value of research for ink, but don't often excel in sampling design issues. We don’t have a “standard” answer, because there is no universal “standard” for sample sizes and error tolerance. It quite literally is a subjective preference, based on custom, budget, and the consequences of the findings.

Statisticians, media editors, and business stakeholders alike can discuss and argue what is an “appropriate sample size”, and none would be wrong, and all may be right. Depending on different trades (epidemiology versus public relations, for example), you will hear different “minimum” sample numbers. Likewise, depending on different cultures, you will hear various “minimum” sample sizes -– often based on nothing more than a psychological comfort zone. For example, in the United States, some media content providers prefer to accept only consumer sample sizes of at least 400. Why? Merely because findings that center near 50% of the sample response have a margin of error of no more than +/- 5% (a nice round number) at the 95% confidence level (another nice round number). However, if you asked a pharmaceutical company if this would be acceptable for the test of a new immunization treatment, they might look at you in shock. Not to be too flippant, but the desired accuracy of a sample size can vary with how much the resulting data will result in a life-or-death consequence.

In other cases, smaller sample sizes would have to be gladly accepted by the media or business stakeholders. For example, if a study about the future of NASA were to be conducted among American astronauts who have ever been in space, a sample size of 35 would probably be considered quite impressive in its coverage of the very limited and difficult-to-reach population universe.

That being said, business organizations make very important tactical and strategic decisions all of the time, based on research data that covered only 100, or 50, or even 30 people. They may take away “directional” learning from data that has a margin of error of +/- 9% at the 90% confidence level. Indeed, the City of Austin, Texas publicizes that the norm for sufficient statistical validity of their water load research for the City was indicated to be "90/10", i.e., at the ninety percent confidence level, a maximum of ten percent margin of error. Based on industry standards and published experience for similar applications, the 90/10 criteria could easily be achieved with a sample of only 100 respondents. So, what is good enough for the City of Austin is perhaps not good enough for another client, or perhaps it is. Again, neither is absolutely correct, and neither is absolutely wrong. It is a matter of needs, budget, consequences, and preference.

Cost is an important factor to consider when determining a sample size. If the “ideal” sample size and design methodology don’t fit a budget or timeline, then trade-off decisions are going to be necessary, some of which may compromise the quality and scope of the research. In one example, by surveying 225 American workers, ICR achieved a sample tolerance of:

* Margin of error no more than +/- 4.27% at the 80% level of confidence
* Margin of error no more than +/- 5.48% at the 90% level of confidence
* Margin of error no more than +/- 6.53% at the 95% level of confidence
* Margin of error no more than +/- 7.75% at the 98% level of confidence
* Margin of error no more than +/- 8.59% at the 99% level of confidence

Had our client wished to cut these margins of error in half, then the sample would have had to be increased four-fold, to 900 respondents, and costs would have nearly tripled. Which of these levels of confidence was “necessary”? In our opinion, it is hardly objectionable to state that all of our U.S. findings (based on total qualified respondents) would be accurate (that is, reflect the “true” opinion of the entire population which was sampled) to within 4.3 percentage points or less, on at least 8 out of 10 independently sampled outcomes. If this standard would be rejected by our client or the media, to the preference of exclusively samples of 500, 900, 1,000, or more, we would contend this would represent a research solution that may be unnecessarily large and unnecessarily expensive, considering the survey topic was about financial investment matters, and not the effects of a tainted pharmaceutical remedy on an at-risk patient population. We recognize the challenge of overcoming industry-specific customs and local best practices, but my company stood behind this research as perfectly valid, within the tolerances indicated above.

So, in summary, I guess the answer to our title question is actually another question: "What's your tolerance for error?"

Tags: error, margin of error, sample, sample size, sampling, tolerance

Two-Four Tuesday (v.7)

2005-08-09T21:11:00.000-04:00

Our previous list of the "Top Five" safety upgrades in automobiles that have saved the most American lives since 1960 finally garnered a comment. So, I'm going to reward our lonely player with another list today. According to a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the #2 item (though not #4, as predicted by Aloma210) was indeed energy-absorbing steering assemblies (over 53,000 lives saved since 1960), and the #4 item was improved instrument panel designs (over 21,000 lives). By the way, Aloma210, adhesive windshield bonding ranked #8 -- but not so much for not shattering, but rather, for not falling into the car and breaking during a collision.

And now, on to today's game. We hope you'll play along again!

I will post the "Top Five" items in a list, except that I'm leaving out the 2nd and the 4th items. Your mission -- comment with your guesses (or "answers", if you're that confident) as to what the missing items are. Don't cheat by looking up the info on the web -- just have fun and take your own guess. I'll give the correct answers the following Tuesday, if there have been comments made.

Top Five states by the percentage of their population that was born outside the state of residence, according to the 1990 U.S. Census.

1. Nevada (78%)
2. ??
3. Alaska (66%)
4. ????
5. Wyoming (57%)

(Your tricky hint for #2 are the red birds and the blue and striped fish of Jupiter, and the similarly tricky hint for #4 is the Texas Rangers [Surprise!].)

Annual Survey of the Media

2005-08-05T10:33:00.000-04:00

I promised back on June 20th to write a little bit about an event that I attended. This was the roundtable discussion presented by Euro RSCG Magnet, regarding the "11th Annual Survey of the Media". This study, co-sponsored by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, was managed by my account group and hosted on ICR's web server. The symposium was held on one of the top floors of the Reuters Building, which made for incredible views of the Hudson River and cemented in my mind that ICR is going to have to cooperate with Magnet to reserve this space again when we present a "public relations and research" workshop later in 2006.

Taking the lead in presenting the study findings was the notable Professor Steven S. Ross. He displayed a good number of slides relating to the findings of the survey, a summary of which can be seen here. But the one thing that amazed me most was Ross' comment that even though he's been conducting this study for 11 years now, and that he has always offered the raw data set for other organizations or individuals to analyze, no entity outside of Columbia has even taken him up on that offer. That's strange and disappointing.

Anyway, since we're a blog, I have to point out that while the study found more than half of the journalists surveyed are using blogs (mostly for generating story ideas and spotting trends) in their work, only 1% -- ONE percent -- said that blogs are a credible news source. I will be interested to see how next year's survey compares on that particular finding.

Last point, and just a humorous one. I got a kick out of how distinctly-English journalist Dan Roberts (of the Financial Times) used the phrase "rose-tinted spectacles"; here in the States, more commonly referred to as "rose colored glasses". I think I actually prefer the British style.

The Rubbermaid lesson

2005-07-28T11:35:00.000-04:00

Back in 2003, Fortune magazine published an historical look across nearly two decades of the publication's famous "Most Admired Companies" lists. Since 1983, the survey has tackled a difficult task -- ranking the 10 companies that have those qualities that other companies would practically kill to possess.

We here at Inside Market Research took a few moments to count up those few companies that appeared on the list at least seven times -- the very cream of the cream of the crop. Those companies and their number of appearances in 20 years are listed here for you:

Merck.............15
Coca-Cola.........13
Rubbermaid........11
3M................10
Procter & Gamble..10
Wal-Mart...........9
Johnson & Johnson..8
Microsoft..........8
Boeing.............7
General Electric...7
Intel..............7

Seeing the #3 company on this list -- Rubbermaid -- reminded me of an excellent speech that Dr. Anil Menon (then Associate Professor of Marketing at Emory University, and now IBM's VP of Marketing Strategy & Management) gave at the American Marketing Association's meeting in Atlanta in September 2001.

Menon had an uncanny way of boiling down corporate stories into memorable anecdotes. He asked us all, "What happened to Rubbermaid?" This company that was so respected through the mid-1990's eventually lost much of its traction in 1999 and 2000. (And since 2000, the stock has traded in a range that leaves it no better than 5 years ago.) Menon summarized the reason: Wal-Mart and similar stores came to Rubbermaid, pushing the company to update its inventory delivery and tracking system, so that sales could be managed more efficiently in the retailers' modern systems. Rubbermaid's response was basically, "We're Rubbermaid; don't tell us how to run our business." The retailers duly began to find other providers of similar housewares, to the substantial loss of Rubbermaid -- perhaps $4 billion in market capitalization.

I've created a radio station

2005-07-27T11:30:00.000-04:00

Like dozens (hundreds, maybe?) of other music lovers each day, I have discovered Audioscrobbler.com and its partner service, Last.fm.

It's a revolutionary concept, in my opinion. Up until now, the music industry has "pushed" music at me, the listener, hoping to match their library to my tastes. And I've had to pay for it, either at the record store, or through legal streaming and downloading services like Rhapsody or the new Napster.

On the other hand, the software that powers Audioscrobbler and Last.fm learns its users' musical tastes and can then play a personalized radio program to each listener. Better yet, you can tap into other users' actual playlists or their relationship-modeled "radio" program. It's free for the user, and the service is paying for the royalties, so it's all legal.

If you want to hear a radio feed of my "profiled" musical tastes, click the button in my "Music" sidebar over there. Go ahead, try it. (The model that generates a playlist isn't absolutely perfect, so don't send me comments asking, "Greg, do you really like MC Hammer?" Just because a song shows up on my Last.fm radio station, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a favorite of mine. It just means there's a probability that it's something I might like.)

UPDATE -- UPDATE -- UPDATE
August 10, 2005

Last.fm and Audioscrobbler have re-released their software and sites. It looks like they're even more stylish and functional now, but on the other hand, our radio link is no longer working. Eventually, I'll be looking into this and trying to correct the problem. I don't think anybody was listening to my radio profile, anyway.

Back in business

2005-07-25T13:34:00.000-04:00

I am sure that the dozens (if not hundreds) of you who read this blog have been wondering, "Where the heck are you?" Well, vacation in Virginia Beach was really special -- my first week-long vacation with exclusively my nuclear family (no parents or in-laws allowed on this one). And, of course, when one goes on vacation for a week, there is the inevitable backlog of items to be tended to at the office. Not much time for blogging when there's "real" work to be done.

Today, I am taking this 10-minute break from the CTAM conference in Philadelphia. I am using the Tribune Media Services business center at the conference to post this report. (How cool is that?)

Anyway, I should have some interesting things to say later about some of the speakers and roundtable discussions here at the cable industry's big trade show. For starters, this morning's keynote speaker, Shelly Lazarus, of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide was ... how should I say ... phenomenal. She talked about how companies that want to survive today need to fall in love with their customers, and the love will flow back (in dollars). One amazing but true point she made (and I'll paraphrase):

Back in the early days of television, on a given night, the three major networks were able to capture 80% of the households viewing television. Today, you need to tally the top 57 broadcast and cable channels to capture that same 80% share! It's a diverse world in today's media arena.

Two-Four Tuesday (v.6)

2005-07-12T22:22:00.000-04:00

Last week's list of the "Top Five" American beers generated only 1 comment. Please take the time to comment, visitors! According to a 1997 beer market survey, the #2 beer was Bud Light (12% market share) and the #4 brew was Coors Light (7%).

Speaking of beer, it's summertime, and that also means golf. For the very best website on the fusion of beer and golf, you have to check out the Guzzler.

And now, on to today's game. We hope you'll play along!

I will post the "Top Five" items in a list, except that I'm leaving out the 2nd and the 4th items. Your mission -- comment with your guesses (or "answers", if you're that confident) as to what the missing items are. Don't cheat by looking up the info on the web -- just have fun and take your own guess. I'll give the correct answers the following Tuesday.

Top Five safety upgrades in automobiles that have saved the most American lives since 1960, according to a recent finding of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

1. Seat belts (168,524 lives)
2. ??
3. Better door locks (28,902 lives)
4. ????
5. Side-door beams (14,703 lives)

(Your hints are that #2 and #4 are close to the driver, but neither answer is the air bag -- introduced only in the 1990's, air bags haven't had enough time since 1960 to save more than 12,100 lives.)

Vacation is all I ever wanted!

2005-07-01T16:48:00.000-04:00

I will be on vacation for the week of July 4th through 8th. So, "Inside Market Research" will also be taking a break.

I have plenty to talk about when I return, though -- still need to give you an update on the Media Survey symposium that was held in New York on June 20th, and I have some comments to make about "the Power of Us" concept, as well as continuing installments of your Two-Four Tuesdays!

Two-Four Tuesday (v.5)

2005-06-28T22:44:00.000-04:00

Last week's list of the "Top Five" American industries in the year 1860 generated only 1 comment -- from the indefatigable aloma210. Visitors, if you're reading this sentence, I'd like you to go the extra mile this week and comment, please. According to the 1860 Census, the #2 item was indeed cotton goods ($110 million), and the #4 item was boots and shoes ($90 million).

My reference to #187 on the Fortune 500 (in 2003) was of course Nike. Funny how Nike alone now has the same revenues every 3 days, what the entire American boot and shoe industry collected in a whole year in 1860.

And now, on to today's game. We hope you'll play along again!

I will post the "Top Five" items in a list, except that I'm leaving out the 2nd and the 4th items. Your mission -- comment with your guesses (or "answers", if you're that confident) as to what the missing items are. Don't cheat by looking up the info on the web -- just have fun and take your own guess. I'll give the correct answers the following Tuesday.

Top Five brands of U.S. beer by sales volume, as listed in 1997 on BreweryAge.com.

1. Budweiser (20% market share)
2. ??
3. Miller Lite (9% share)
4. ????
5. Busch (5% share)

(No hints this week, you beer-swilling market analysts.)

Closed on Sundays

2005-06-27T12:08:00.000-04:00

I never realized this, but car dealerships are typically closed on Sundays. I think this is a really bad idea, when many automobile manufacturers are struggling to move their products. Sure, there are positive aspects for the employees of an establishment that closes one or two days a week -- but in any retail trade, isn't it like tying one hand behind your back in a fistfight? Can you imagine an amusement park that closed on Sundays?

I'd be interested to learn if most dealerships that keep closed on the Christian sabbath are doing so because of actual blue laws or because they're simply continuing a time-honored custom. Some market research might show whether dealerships that aren't legally bound to shut their doors might benefit from keeping them open.

What do you think?

Two-Four Tuesday (v.4)

2005-06-21T13:11:00.000-04:00

Last week's "Top Five" list of the worldwide "life years" affected by disability generated 1 comment, 1 e-mail, and 1 co-worker popping in and giving his guess in person. Thank you, visitors! According to the Global Burden of Disease study released by Harvard University, the #2 item was tuberculosis (19.7 million DALYs), and the #4 item was alcohol abuse (14.8 million DALYs).

I think several of us would be surprised that HIV/AIDS would not appear on the list. However, this may be due to the fact that victims of the HIV virus actually become incapacitated by and succumb to other diseases. In fact, I read that someone with HIV stands an 800 times greater chance of contracting tuberculosis than a non-HIV counterpart would. Sad and amazing, and probably explains in part why TB was #2 on Harvard's list.

And now, on to today's game. We hope you'll play along again!

I will post the "Top Five" items in a list, except that I'm leaving out the 2nd and the 4th items. Your mission -- comment with your guesses (or "answers", if you're that confident) as to what the missing items are. Don't cheat by looking up the info on the web -- just have fun and take your own guess. I'll give the correct answers the following Tuesday.

Top Five American industries, as listed in the 1860 "Eighth Census of the United States Manufactures".

1. Flour ($250 million)
2. ??
3. Lumber ($105 million)
4. ????
5. Men's clothing ($75 million)

(Your hint: one answer is something that grows in the ground, the other is a manufacturing industry whose current leader appeared as #187 on the 2003 Fortune 500 list!)

Tonight in New York

2005-06-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

This evening, I will be attending a roundtable discussion presented by Euro RSCG Magnet, regarding the "11th Annual Survey of the Media". This study, co-sponsored by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, was managed by my account group and hosted on ICR's web server. I'll have more to say, obviously, after the event!

Peer Pressure

2005-06-15T13:45:00.000-04:00

I recently read an interesting article called "Peer Pressure" in Forbes magazine. (The April 11, 2005 piece may be read online with a free subscription to Forbes.com. Click here to read the article by Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff.)

The gist of the article is that corporations and governments can and ought to give people good data and use peer pressure to modify behaviors. Yet, we see few examples of this being done.

The authors give one hypothetical example regarding home energy consumption. Imagine if your power company or fuel-oil provider evaluated how many BTU's per square foot per heating degree day (call it a B-Tush) your home was using. In fact, in 1997 the Department of Energy produced a survey finding that the U.S. average was 10. If your home were at 25, then you'd be among the worst 10%. Imagine how this information may induce many homeowners to get better insulation, adjust the thermostat, or dress more appropriately for the season. It would be very easy for a company to provide this information -- after all, they know where you live, and they likely provide the same service to your neighbors who have homes that are likely of a similar size and construction. But does your energy company provide you with this information? Probably not.

A real-life example from "Peer Pressure" is the Center for Environmental Law & Policy's Environmental Sustainability Index, which motivates entire nations to live and work cleaner and more efficiently. Other hypothetical examples included:

The IRS informing taxpayers how their charitable giving ranks versus others in their age and income bracket
Law schools telling admitted students the probability that they will become lawyers (based on demographic and performance measures)
Guiding college students on how many drinks are the norm at a party

A while back, I had a (brilliant, I thought) idea for our company's 401(k) retirement plan provider, T. Rowe Price. I always looked at my quarterly balance statement and wondered, "Is my performance any better than the average participant at ICR, or among workers at my income level and age?" I submitted this suggestion to T. Rowe, but their disappointing response was that implementing my idea would be virtually impossible because of all the variables across plans.

Come on. There are three important variables -- how much money your portfolio is currently worth, how much money you've deposited into the plan, and how long you've been investing. I understand that different people will often change their allocations and proportion of salary invested, and this would complicate the meaningfulness of the formula. But, as a concerned investor, I'd still want to see that comparison on my statement. If my account is performing substantially better than others like me, I'd be inclined not to monkey with it. If I'm lagging, then perhaps I'd need to look more carefully at my asset allocation.

I realize that in any consumer population, there are a percentage who just want to be left alone and have their privacy kept intact. However, I honestly think that more companies and more government agencies could provide these kinds of "peer pressure" indices, so that those of us who do care can benefit from the information.

If you have any ideas for a "peer pressure" index, please comment here!

Tags: 401(k), energy, Forbes, gas, gas heat, oil, oil heat, peer pressure, privacy

Two-Four Tuesday (v.3)

2005-06-14T09:01:00.000-04:00

Last week's "Top Five" list of the names given to male cats generated 2 comments and an e-mail. Thank you, visitors! Seems like the guess for #2 was easier (Tiger) than the guess for #4 -- Shadow. Thank you, Veterinary Pet Insurance, for posting the most popular pet names on your website.

Did you know that (according to Petfinder) while dog households outnumber cat households, there are more cats (64.1 million) than dogs (63.8 million) in America?

And now, on to today's game. We hope you'll play along again!

I will post the "Top Five" items in a list, except that I'm leaving out the 2nd and the 4th items. Your mission -- comment with your guesses (or "answers", if you're that confident) as to what the missing items are. Don't cheat by looking up the info on the web -- just have fun and take your own guess. I'll give the correct answers the following Tuesday.

Top Five leading causes of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) in the world, among 15-44 year olds, according to the Global Burden of Disease study by Harvard University.

1. Unipolar major depression (43 million DALYs)
2. ??
3. Road traffic accidents (19.6 million DALYs)
4. ????
5. Self-inflicted injuries (14.6 million DALYs)

(Your hint: one answer is an infectious disease, and the other is a behaviorial disease. Neither are bipolar disorder -- that's #6 on the list.)

Two-Four Tuesday (v.2)

2005-06-07T08:33:00.000-04:00

Last week's "Top Five" list of the leading recording artists generated 5 comments. Thank you, visitors!

If aloma210 and Daniel Rubin had just gotten together, they could have had the correct combination of Elvis Presley and Garth Brooks as the #2 and #4 musicians in terms of cumulative U.S. album sales. Did you know that Garth Brooks gained a big boost in his measured popularity when Billboard magazine switched its way of measuring record sales in 1991? That's right -- prior to that date, the magazine relied on manually-completed reports submitted by a convenience sample of record store managers. After 1991, Billboard began to install automated bar-code reader software in many more stores. The system tracked each and every sale of a record, rather than relying on a manager to report sales. When the store managers' mistakes and biases were taken out of the equation, Brooks saw his estimated sales figures (and Billboard ranking) jump dramatically.

And now, on to today's game. We hope you'll play along again!

I will post the "Top Five" items in a list, except that I'm leaving out the 2nd and the 4th items. Your mission -- comment with your guesses (or "answers", if you're that confident) as to what the missing items are. Don't cheat by looking up the info on the web -- just have fun and take your own guess. I'll give the correct answers the following Tuesday.

Top Five pet names given to male cats, according to the Veterinary Pet Insurance Company.

1. Max
2. ?? (hint: it's an animal)
3. Oliver
4. ???? (hint: it's a physical phenomenon)
5. Sam

Response rates, according to Wikipedia

2005-06-02T08:15:00.000-04:00

If you go to the Wikipedia entry for Survey research, specifically the part about Survey methods, you see a brief outline of Telephone, Mail, Online, personal in-home, and personal mall intercept methodologies.

I want you to consider the response rates listed for phone (25%-50%), mail (5%-30%), and online (2%-30%). Do they seem reasonable to you? I hope so, because I entered them into that particular article in the Wikipedia. (In case you don't know already, anyone can edit the Wikipedia -- it's an open-code encyclopedia, an amazing living document. If you haven't used and edited Wikipedia yet, do so today.)

Prior to my edits, an earlier author had pegged the response rates at 40%-60% for phone, and 30%-60% for online. I thought those were unreasonably optimistic and/or grossly outdated, so I changed them. To see the specific changes I made in the Wikipedia, check out this link.

I'd be curious to know what others in the field of survey research think, so please comment.

Two-Four Tuesday (v.1)

2005-05-31T11:11:00.000-04:00

Here's a fun activity I'm giving our readers every Tuesday. Hopefully the appealing lure of this game will actually FORCE you to comment on this post! Welcome to the 1st edition of "Two-Four Tuesday"!

I will post the "Top Five" items in a list, except that I'm leaving out the 2nd and the 4th items. Your mission -- comment with your guesses (or "answers", if you're that confident) as to what the missing items are.

Since this is the pilot test of this game, I'm picking a more universal topic -- music. That should make it fairly easy for you to at least attempt some educated guesses. Don't cheat by looking up the info on the web -- just have fun and take your own guess. I'll give the correct answers the following Tuesday.

Top Five music recording artists as measured by cumulative U.S. album sales totals (according to the RIAA Gold & Platinum list).

1. The Beatles (166.5 million sold)
2. ? ? (117.5 M)
3. Led Zeppelin (106 M)
4. ? ? ? ? (105 M)
5. The Eagles (88 M)

Other market research blogs

2005-05-30T08:30:00.000-04:00

Why did I launch Inside Market Research? One of the reasons was because I myself was looking for a blog to subscribe to as a reader, within the general field of marketing research and public opinion polling -- but I couldn't find one!

Granted, once I got underway with my own publication, I began to find more ways to find blogs, and only then did a few germane publications come to light. However, I am still left with the impression that the blog you're currently reading is the only one in the blogosphere that meets all of the following criteria:

Prepared to cover the entire realm of all facets of marketing research and public opinion polling
Written by an individual, independent of his/her corporate affiliation
Allows readers to comment on posts

That said, here is a short list of the most relevant other market research blogs I have found, even if they don't meet all three of the above criteria:

http://weblog.cheskin.net/ -- Obviously endorsed by the corporate sponsor (Cheskin), and they rarely allow readers to comment on posts.

http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/toplevel/ -- Ditto, although readers are encouraged to e-mail the corporate authors of posts.

http://www.perseus.com/weblogs/survey_mentor_posts.html -- Alan Farius answers questions that readers e-mail him about market research surveys. Looks like he posts his comments once per week.

http://www.perseus.com/blogsurvey/blogsurvey.html -- Another offering from Perseus Development Corp., this one by Jeffrey Henning. It's all about the blog phenomenon itself, with a little bit of a market research angle. There's a neat quadrant map that suggests our own BlogSpot is a blogging software leader in both momentum and longevity.

http://perceptionanalyzer.typepad.com/ -- This is a blog that comes awfully close to fulfilling the three criteria I laid out above. Other than a headline graphic similar to an ad banner for the writer's employer, David Paull's blog emphasizes non-partisan wit and commentary. It therefore is hardly an advertisement for MSI and their Perception Analyzer device.

http://www.mysterypollster.com/ -- Mark Blumenthal's noteworthly blog about the tricky specialty of political polling.

http://www.livejournal.com/community/phone_survey/ -- an online community specifically for employees of the phone survey industry. Lots of moaning and complaining here, and all of it justified.

Google Sets

2005-05-26T17:33:00.000-04:00

There's a neat tool that the folks at Google have developed as a product of the "Google Labs". It's called Google Sets. It is a linguistic device that will automatically create larger sets of items from a short list of examples that you provide. For example, if you type in orange, banana, pear . . . it will spit back pear, banana, orange, apple, grapefruit, sweet potato, kiwi fruit, carrots, pineapple, grape, dates, cherries, figs, and strawberries.

You might say, "Nifty, but what's the real-world use of this gizmo?" Indeed, the Google Sets discussion board over at Google Labs is loaded with users complaining that they don't see the actual value of Google Sets, and their level of emotional frustration over this problem is actually kind of entertaining to me. It's a FREE APPLICATION, PEOPLE -- if you don't see a use for it, move on with your life and go outside and play kickball!

I, however, have found a very appropriate use for this tool, in the practice of market research survey design. Oftentimes, a questionnaire will contain a question that, while we don't know the specific answers we're going to get, we can surmise that 90%-95% of all the responses will fall into a set of maybe 5, 6, 7, or 8 predictable answers. The remaining 5%-10% can be captured with an "Other" response code (which may or may not include an interviewer instruction to have the respondent "specify" the response). Setting up a question this way has three main benefits:

By forgoing a fully open-ended question (free response), it reduces the interviewer's time spent typing in the text of the respondent's answer
It reduces the amount of back-end coding effort, because the vast majority of your response data has been captured immediately into 5 to 8 or so numeric punches
It allows the opportunity of basing skip patterns off the coded numeric responses, rather than losing that opportunity due to an open-end not having any programming "intelligence"

So, how might I use Google Sets? Suppose I am writing a questionnaire about overnight cruise lines that travelers may have boarded within the past 2 years. Since I've never been on a cruise, I'm probably not an expert at developing a pre-coded list of cruise lines for my survey -- after all, I can only think (off the top of my head) of Carnival, Holland America, and the Disney Cruise Line. This is hardly a complete list of possible cruise brands that our respondent travelers might mention. Enter Google Sets! By typing in the three brands I know, I get a beautiful automated set of the following brands in return:

Carnival
Disney Cruise Line
Holland America
Royal Caribbean
Celebrity
Norwegian
Cunard Line
Princess
Windjammer Barefoot

Now I have what seems to be a reliable list of 9 major cruise lines that I can be fairly sure will capture at least 90% of the response data for that question. I just need to alphabetize them (to help the interviewers), add my "Other-specify" stub, and we're ready to go on the phones!

Of course, since we're diligent and meticulous market researchers, we will also check our "Other-specifies" after the first night or two of interviewing. If any multiple responses are showing up en masse, we will add them to our pre-listed codes.

Blog statistics

2005-05-25T17:09:00.000-04:00

Now that we're blogging about market research and public opinion polling, we might as well take a look at some recent opinion research survey data about the awareness of blogs and prevalence of participants. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project report released in January 2005:

38 percent of all Internet users in the United States "have a good idea of what the term Internet 'blog' means.
27 percent of Internet users take the time to read blogs.
12 percent have ever posted comments on someone else's blog.
And 7 percent of Internet users said in November 2004 that they create a blog that others can read. That's 8 million Americans!

Stump the PR panel

2005-05-24T23:25:00.000-04:00

I had the pleasure today of attending a networking/workshop hosted by the Public Relations Council of Greater Atlantic City. The gist of the program was to put 4 "experts" in front of the room to field difficult questions related to public relations. In all, I got the sense that the PR quandaries of the Council's members (Atlantic City is only a medium-sized city, and if you take away the casinos, it would be a palpably small-town market) don't stack up to those of my clients at Manning Selvage & Lee, Euro RSCG, Ogilvy, and Ruder Finn.

Nonetheless, I still got a lot out of the dialogues, and I was also able to communicate ICR's own recent internally-funded effort in "research for PR": a regional public opinion poll about the proposed New Jersey Smoke-Free Air Act. ICR has put out its own press release and mini-report on the findings. We are hoping that the study gets picked up by the media and is noticed by the NJ state legislature, the anti-smoking lobby, and by restaurant owners and the casinos (who largely oppose the measure). So far, only one newspaper has carried a story featuring our study -- the Press of Atlantic City.

Anyhow, to summarize some of the interesting points I noted at the "stump the panel" session:

Several of the experts strongly advocate talk radio as an excellent way to get your client's message out to influential people.
Yet, a couple of the attendees noted that a 10-minute interview spot on talk radio will only reach a fraction of the audience that traditional print newspaper and wire services will typically afford.
Getting your client's message encapsulated in a press release is only the easy, partial aspect of the public relations expert's job. The real dirty work comes in following up on that release with editors, newscasters, and key influencers. This also means choosing when to "do battle" with opposing positions that may arise, and when engaging the enemy is the best option -- do it with tact, but with sufficient force.

Audio welcome mat

2005-05-23T18:45:00.000-04:00

What is "Inside Market Research"?

2005-05-23T18:22:00.000-04:00

Inside Market Research is my blog about being a practitioner in the marketing research and/or public opinion polling field. Our business is immanently interesting to me -- mainly because we're exposed (through our clients) to many different industries, many different problem sets, and many different solutions or remedies to those problems . . . all on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. Unless you exclusively work with just one or two clients in one industry, the opportunity for exposure to numerous business arenas is limitless!

I have some experience with writing an online periodical, having authored the American Cynic newsletter for a number of years (1996-2003), before closing shop out of frustration over our stagnant subscriber numbers [we maxed out at about 2,000 valid e-mail addresses]. Then, of course, blogging really took off. Maybe there's a future in the "New" American Cynic one day.

Anyway, we'll see how far this blog goes. I'm looking forward to posting my thoughts-worth-sharing in the field of marketing research!

-- Gregory Kohs

Tags: Greg Kohs, Gregory Kohs, Gregory J. Kohs, Inside Market Research, Kohs, market research, marketing research