We Talk About Transparency in Offshoring But What About Everything Else? #li

Do you disclose to your clients if part of their job gets handled in another country?

Do you disclose to your clients if you get sample from another panel?

Do you disclose to your clients your panel size AND active rules when you say you have ‘the countries largest panel?” And that doesn’t mean making them search for it in your Esomar 26 document. One without the other is simply misleading and NOT transparent. If the discussion is transparency, then let’s be transparent in all aspects.

Annie

Academia vs the Real World: Am I being Sarcastic? #li

Welcome to my quick and easy comparison of Academia and the real world of marketing research. I hope this helps young’uns decide which career path is most suited to them. Let’s begin!

Academia: Precise and perfectly applied statistics down the fourteenth decimal place matter. Multi-collinearity. Bonferroni vs scheffe post hocs.
Real world: Shove in the decimal places. You got 8 minutes.

Academia: Biased sampling of broke college students
Real world: Biased sampling of broke volunteers

Academia: Strive for perfection in all aspects of your question while accounting for four-way interactions
Real world: Strive for Friday while accounting for overtime

Academia: 300 pages, 500 references, 10 peer reviews
Real world: 300 pages, no references, 1 forgotten spell check

Academia: Time, No money
Real world: No time, Money

Academia: No one understands a word you say
Real world: No one believes a word you say

Academia: Multiple test and control groups, balanced and randomized.
Real world: Groups

Suggestions from the peanut gallery?

Your Research Budget Just Went Down the Toilet #li

Ever wondered whether its worthwhile to do market research? Here are some things to think about.

1) Do you plan to make changes as a result of the research results? Are you planning to make a specific change regardless of what the research will tell you? Why take the time and money to run a study if you know you won’t actually do anything as a result of the findings, or if you’re going to do something different anyways. I don’t know how many times I’ve encountered this stumbling block!
2) Do you have a budget to implement potential changes? If your research budget is the entire budget, why waste your time and money. Change your tactic so that whatever you are researching can actually be followed through to completion.
3) Are the higher-ups willing to implement a change that they weren’t already expecting? Are they really open to new ideas? Do they just want you to tell them what they already know? Make them a pie chart. That’ll do.
4) Are you gathering more data than you will actually use? Refer to Q1. If you aren’t using and acting on it, why waste your time and money on it?

Get only the research you need. Everything else is money down the toilet.

Conversation Is Overrated

I don’t know how many times in a day I hear about conversations. Twitter conversations, social media conversations, conversations everywhere. But, what are these conversations and who’s having them?

Twitter abounds with conversations. Or so we think. To me, a conversation is a desired two-way exchange of information. It includes not just from me to you, but also from you to me. I anticipate and wait for information from you so that I can digest it and reply back to you appropriately.

I think there is a small segment of tweeple who do have conversations. They reply, retweet, DM and reply to the same people about the same topics on repeated occasions. Maybe they ask their followers about their favorite brand of cookies, a few folks reply that Peak Freans can’t be beat, you reply why not, they reply that the price and taste combine for good value. It’s a tiny conversation, but a conversation nonetheless.

Then there’s another huge group of people who like reading status updates, writing funny status updates, and leaving quick comments on youtube to one-up the idiot who commented before them. They might occasionally engage in a conversation with a brand when their Peek Frean dollar off coupon gets rejected, but their main reason for being in the social media space is not to have a conversation.

So why do we keep outing people for not having conversations? Social media does not have a rule book. Social media is for sharing and learning and having fun, and conversations are just one of many potential consequences. My advice to those focused on conversations: Give up the rule book and enjoy the ride.

Calling MR Bloggers: One Topic, Five Perspectives

Hey there research blogger,

Wanna play a game? Here’s my proposal. Someone picks a topic and then without any consultation, we each write our own blog on that topic and post it at the same time. Open to suggestions, but let’s say:

• 500 words
• one topic per month
• each person contributes one topic

It would be interesting to see how our perspectives differ. If you’re in, leave me a comment here and we’ll get this started!

 

*** Update: Game is on! We have five bloggers! The first post will appear December 15. Watch for notices!