Many companies have a set of loyal, primary customers who give most or all of their business to that company. This can be true for small businesses, such as a dry cleaner or design firm as well as large corporations operating across the world. Not surprisingly, these “big fish” usually command the highest level of […]

I recently had the opportunity to speak to some middle school girls about my job through the Open Minds, Open Doors initiative. Sponsored by our local area education agency, this innovative program invites young girls interested in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) to learn about STEM career opportunities from people employed in potential career […]

As those eager students head back to school to build their skills in reading, (w)riting and (a)rithmetic, it may be a good time for you to review your own branding 3 Rs.  For many organizations, those key metrics are Recognition, Reputation and Recall.  While these are often critical goals from a brand’s perspective and excellent […]

Whenever we engage our panel to ask what improvements we—as the panel management team—could make to improve their experience, one of the suggestions we nearly always receive is, “Stop asking me for the same information on every survey.” If you maintain your own customer panels or have conducted panel-based research in the past, you’ll likely […]

As the rate of mobile customer engagement increases, staying on top of effective mobile research techniques becomes more important. One way we stay on top is by asking our research panel participants what works well and what does not. For instance, we recently conducted an internal study with our panel to get feedback about certain […]

For Midwesterners, spring is often the time we start thinking about improvements to our homes. So we recently polled our Iowa Opinion Panel to see what changes or repairs they were considering this year and discovered several interesting findings. First off, a whopping 90% of those who report being able to make improvements to their […]

Nearly all market research firms perform business to business (B2B) as well as business to consumer (B2C) research studies, and—unfortunately—far too many approach these distinctly different study types identically. Choosing a market research firm that recognizes and understands the key differences between B2B and B2C studies positively impacts your study’s validity. Let’s look at four […]

Whether you are new to writing survey questions or you have lots of experience, it’s always good to review some common pitfalls in survey design. Below are our final five tips on survey design best practices when doing your own research and reviewing someone else’s surveys. When you use a scale for your questions’ options, […]

In my first post in our three-part series on Survey Design Best Practices, I listed five mistakes those of us writing survey questions need to watch out for. In this post, I have five more tips to consider that continue where the last post left off. If you didn’t read that post, you can access it […]

On the radio, it may be “all about the bass,” but in businesses and organizations everywhere today it is “all about the customer experience.” After you get beyond the expectation of offering a quality product or service at a fair value, consumers are judging you mostly on how they feel as they progress through their […]