There are only two informative open-end questions in product testing projects; i.e., spontaneous likes and dislikes.
You must really think way out of the box to design a brand health check study covering 4 different categories in 7 different cities with a budget of only IDR 100 million.
Sample size determination is in the end a function of research budget or stimulus availability.
Brand Managers, research will be just a waste of valuable resources if you, yourselves, are not sure what you're trying to sell to consumers.
Online or offline is only a data collection strategy. In the end, research objectives should dictate which one is better suited.
Survey length should be determined by the number of questions asked, not the length of interview.
In the restaurant business, ingredients determine the quality of the foods served. In MR, field quality is the key success factor.
Quantitative research tries hard to shorten the length of interview to under 30 minutes while a focus group discussion can easily last for 3 hours.
It's more important to reach the right target respondents than to be fast.
When commissioning a large scale quantitative project to a fieldwork supplier directly, make sure your supplier has a strong enough financial resource to be able to complete the project.
Before discussing sample size requirement, check first the size of the universe population.
Think of sample size as a magnifying glass. You need a bigger sample size to detect a smaller difference.
Market research agencies can launch standard projects in a short time. Usually, it's the brand team who's having problem finalizing the stimulus in time.
To obtain the most cost-efficient proposal from a research agency, you must provide a concise specification including your detailed expected deliverables.
Consumers are not brand managers. It doesn't make sense to expect them to think like a brand manager in a survey or focus group.
No matter how big or small your data are, the appropriate research design and methodology will always depend on your objectives.
Every question in the questionnaire must have one and only one meaning.
Research is valuable if it can be translated into tangible marketing actions (in Steven A. Silbiger. The Ten-Day MBA 4th Ed. 2012).
In the self-completion mode of data collection, each question must be very precise without any double interpretation.
When doing data collection via an online or mobile panel, you need to let go imposing various quotas on your sample to be able to complete fieldwork within a reasonable time frame unless your panel database is extremely huge.
In a self-completion mode of data collection, researchers should from time to time try out the questionnaires themselves to empathize with the respondents.
Big data project can be considered as providing the "inside view" while marketing research provides the "outside view".
Marketing research can't perform witchcraft. You can't just ask respondents directly & then come up with a new positioning concept.
Qualitative researchers must also understand the principles of experimentation like randomization and rotation to minimize bias.
Marketing research can help business owners to identify potential consumers.
Fieldwork cost can be reduced by hiring inexperienced interviewers and letting go the proper field training and the various standard quality control checks at the expense of quality.
Behavioral economics covers a lot of topics; e.g., judgments, heuristics, biases, and choices.
It's surprising that a test market is still being considered instead of a proper marketing research initiative in the 21st century.
It's futile to ask respondents what they want directly in a marketing research project.
Business insight is only as good as the quality of data it's based on.
Each tool / technique has its own strengths and weaknesses. There's no perfect tool / technique.
Preventing a disease is much better than treating it. Conducting a concept product test must precede launching a new product.
Qualitative research asks "why" while quantitative research asks "what".
It must be made a standard operating procedure that the R&D team must attend every product testing marketing research presentation.
It's just an overkill to invite 6 research agencies to pitch for a standard concept-product test project.
The huge amount & different types of data in your disposal are relevant only if they help you achieve your business objectives.
Churn is a good example where data mining and marketing research can complement each other.
The acceptance of a product should be based on the evaluation by common consumers, not an expert panel.
In every research project, it's of the utmost importance to define very clearly in advance the expected outputs.
When testing your new product in a marketing research project, make sure you benchmark it against an existing product in the same class.
The conclusions are only as good as the data they're based on.
If a particular brand image is problematic within an organization, then it'd be better to exclude in from the survey questionnaire.
To be able to extract some consumer insights for decision making purposes, you need to conduct some research. Doing a consumer research does require some investment.
Completing a 60-question mobile survey is an experience you don't want to repeat.
When your Discussion Guide covers everything from A to Z, it indicates that you have no clue what you want to get out of the research and you are just on a big fishing expedition.
Marketing research can't guarantee any sales increase; probably only a price discount can.
Very small businesses can also benefit from market research by asking for a simple feedback from their customers before launching a new promotion.
It's almost impossible to try to understand the market, the category, your brands, and users of your brands from just one marketing research project only.
A good branded evaluation should take into account the competition.
A CEO should understand well and fully what marketing research is all about before condemning it useless.
Performance of a recently launched product should always be evaluated via a post launch check survey.
An "evidence-based decision making" process would rely on the solid data sensemaking skills of the analysts to be able to be completed successfully.
When writing a survey questionnaire, avoid creating an imagery attribute in two sentences joined by the conjunction 'or'.
All specific research questions must be specified by all stakeholders before embarking on a marketing research project.
Creating a rate card is a futile exercise if the project specifications are vague.
A census will collect information from all relevant participants in the population, not just from a subset of the population.
Qualitative research is useful in an exploratory study since the moderator has the flexibility to change the flow of questioning and the questions during a focus group discussion
In a quantitative research, diagnostics would cause the questionnaire to be longer and the project cost to increase due to the additional analyses incurred.
Changing the layout and planogram of a store without any proper research could run the risk of alienating the loyal shoppers.
Research design determines the analytics that can be applied, and vice versa.
In an online survey, use a grid question sparingly since it actually counts as multiple questions.
You must not use marketing research to try to elicit confidential information from respondents.
The proposal writer(s) must get involved in executing the project to ensure common sense is upheld in designing the study.
Small businesses can conduct a simple market research just by interviewing their own employees who may already know customers' likes, dislikes, and preferences.
Volume forecast in the FMCG world requires that we talk to all potential buyers to obtain the most accurate number.
Unless the questionnaire is very simple and short, interviewing by street intercept is to be avoided.
It's a cardinal sin to tweak your data to fit your story.
Is there any correlation between the involvement of Procurement and the decline in the quality in the marketing research world?
A quick reminder. Changing the methodology slightly might change the end results significantly.
In the end, comparing the quality of field service providers is like comparing SQ to Air Asia.
An "evidence-based decision making" process should be augmented by good technologies to run smoothly and efficiently.
Conducting a proper product testing project takes time since we need to give enough time to the consumers we've recruited as respondents to experience the product and form their opinion.
A tool should be selected not due to its sexiness but due to its ability to answer the research objective.
Garbage in, garbage out. Fancy analysis and graphics can't cover up poorly executed field operations
Data collection strategy depends strongly on the research objectives and project constraints like time and cost.
It shouldn't come as a surprise to see a difference in awareness level when comparing two tracking waves with a one year gap.
Faster, better, cheaper is a myth! (Robert G. Cooper, in Winning at New Products: Creating Value Through Innovation, 5th Ed., 2017)
A new method takes time to create, develop, evaluate, test in a real situation, and implement commercially.
It's critical that the different panels in product testing projects are matched as closely as possible in all aspects.
The proliferation of small research agencies, originated from fieldwork suppliers, with only barely minimum technical competencies but offering a full marketing research service might deteriorate the quality of research in general.
If you can't accept the findings, then you'd better not conduct any marketing research in the first place.
Before adopting a cheaper ingredient in a product, test it among the loyal users to avoid alienation.
Marketers who don't fully understand their own business issues can't write accurate research briefs.
It's a wishful thinking to expect fieldwork to be 100% efficient. Even machinery can't be 100% efficient.
A questionnaire administered face-to-face by an interviewer must be designed differently from a self-completion one.
A little knowledge is indeed dangerous. However, it's even more dangerous if you ignore experts' advice.
Sometimes, the best way to understand why customers did what they did is to ask them directly instead of trying to model it.
Always prepare a proper table specs before you start your data analysis.
When you've got a predetermined bias favoring a particular research method, you just can't see that another research method would be more suitable to achieve your objectives.
You must have a clear definition for every possible answers in each question in your questionnaire.
It's surprising that some researchers still don't understand that different data collection methods could yield different results.
Ignoring light and non-buyers of a brand is no recipe for growth (Byron Sharp).
Calculating a rate card makes sense only if the specs are clearly defined & the variation from project to project is very small.
A Usage & Attitude study is intended to capture a snapshot of the current market condition.
Forcing customers to voice their opinion is not a good way to conduct a customer experience survey.
Statistics can help in providing guidance to assess if the observed difference between two scores really matters.
A new product launch shouldn't be left to an inexperienced brand team with only a limited knowledge about marketing research.
Without access to retail audit and consumer panel data, it's just extremely difficult to monitor the market movement and develop the appropriate growth strategy for the brand.
Beware of the few outspoken respondents representing only the minority in the actual population when conducting Qual Research.
Watch out for the order bias in the long list of responses when designing an offline pen-paper diary.
Sampling theory makes it possible for us not to collect data from every location / area.
Research agencies, don't ignore the intangible high mental cost dealing with poor operations when calculating your gross margin.
Research objectives determine the data collection strategy, not the other way around.
A "sexy" method should be selected because it can answer the business objectives well, not because of its "sexiness" only.
When you're creating a new product or service and want to test it on your prospects, make sure you set aside a big enough budget to finance the research.
Members of Consumer Insight Department should master Marketing Research principles to collaborate well with research agencies.
If an initiative is important enough, then there should be a proper written research brief.
Plan the analysis early, even at the proposal stage. Envision the end results as early as possible.
A customer experience survey must be conducted not too long from the actual event for customers to recall the experience well.
Business objectives in a marketing research project must come from the brand team.
Once the data and tables from the Data Processing Department are ready, always check & recheck for errors.
Marketing is not an exact science. A proper scientific experiment, if possible, would help supporting or refuting a marketing theory.
Marketing research can help business owners to identify potential consumers.
Brand managers should have a mastery of marketing research principles to be able to write a proper research brief.
Having more participants in one focus group discussion doesn't necessarily yield better insights.
Software and tools can't replace the skills possessed by a well trained Statistician.
All people involved in the business of consumer insights must really master the fundamental of marketing research.
In an unbranded product test, it's just too good to be true if respondents can guess the flavor or fragrance perfectly.
In this environmentally friendly era, it's just a shame to demand research agencies to submit a hard copy of the proposal.
Randomness shouldn't be a determining factor when deciding to conduct mobile surveys.
You need to put yourself in your respondent's shoes when asking him/her to fill in a diary you've created.
Qualitative research results in general are not supposed to be generalized to the wider population.
Technology still can't replace basic marketing research skills like designing and writing a good questionnaire.
The number of questions in a mobile survey via a smartphone must be really limited to get good quality data.
Cost Per Interview is a function of many factors; e.g., project type, sample size, respondent's criteria, no. of visits, interview length, and data collection method.
It's just unfortunate when research is used only to support an argument in an internal political debate within a company.
When business is good, you don't value research and data. When business is poor, you suddenly realize that you've got no data to guide you in the right direction.
Research proposals are supposed to be evaluated comprehensively, not only the investment section.
A New Year wish: leave managing research to the research professionals.
An "evidence-based decision making" process must start with a clearly defined business objective.
Marketing research should be indispensable in an "evidence-based decision making" process.
A better way to measure the length of interview in a survey is to count the number of questions.
Avoid asking two questions with highly correlated answers.
Users of marketing research services must acknowledge that each analytical solution has its own limitation.
Marketing research can help business owners to understand their current consumers.
A good research would provide a guidance in your company intentional growth plan.
Marketeers must master the market research principles to be able to collaborate well with MR agencies to solve business issues.
In this digital age, marketing research is still all about excellent operations.
In a volumetric exercise, it's implicitly assumed that the concept & product are already optimized in the previous research stage.
To date, 2017 was the peak of the marketing research business in Indonesia. Hopefully the positive trend would continue in 2018, the "election year" (Tahun Pilkada).
R&D should also understand well the basics of marketing & marketing research to be able to support the business effectively.
Variance of measurements from regular respondents can't be expected to be as low as that from trained panelists.
There're several variants of the implicit association research method. Beware of what you're buying from research agencies.
We should wait for all data to be collected and tabulated before studying the summary statistics to get a more reliable estimate. This is a practical application of the Law of Large Numbers.
Always focus on the research and business objectives when analyzing your data.
Testing a new product branded but unpriced is dangerous since in the end price does matter.
A well executed segmentation exercise will depend heavily on pre-determined crystal clear business objectives.
Don't confuse research methodology with operations excellence.
Newness of a methodology doesn't guarantee its validity and usefulness. Older methods have their own merits to be able to survive the test of time.
Without explicitly written criteria in the research brief, no marketing research agency can prepare a complete questionnaire.
It's just discouraging that some business folks still don't understand that marketing research must go through a proper process to extract good insights from the respondents.
In marketing research, the devil is also in the detail as well.
It's a bad practice to cover many different topics in one research project.
In an online or mobile survey, the layout of a grid question must be designed well to avoid confusing & tiring respondents.
A poorly designed research is worse than no research at all.
When designing a face-to-face interviewer administered questionnaire, try to put yourself in interviewers' shoes.
"If you don't have a point of difference, you'd better have a low price." (Jack Trout)
It's expected that branded and unbranded product tests may yield different results.
Even in data mining projects, the data in the customers database can still contain errors.
"Faster, cheaper, better" must be compensated by a very focused, short, and to-the-point questionnaire.
Product performance must be evaluated in a proper context. A concept & product test methodology provides it.
A mobile panel can provide a quick, simple, and cheap solution to screen out non-critical options.
It's just a waste of resource when clients rush you for a proposal but at the end the initiative gets postponed indefinitely since the brand team can't produce the stimulus.
Like Christmas which gives hope, market research casts light on the right direction businesses have to take.
In this digital age, it's unfortunate that some clients still consider doing a 3 to 4-hour usage & attitude study.
Procuring market research services is not the same as procuring tangible goods.
Before conducting a post launch check, you need to wait and give enough time to the consumers to be aware of your brand and buy it.
If a research project is unplanned and there is only a limited budget, don't expect a comprehensive research design.
A good researcher must act as a trusted advisor for the client, not as a slave.
Data collection method depends on the research objectives, analytics, cost & time constraints, and country specific limitation.
A boutique research agency doesn't mean a cheap research agency.
The validity of the result of a marketing research project depends on the unbiased research design, not on the size of the sample.
Marketing research can only provide a prediction via a simulation. The actual results must be confirmed via an experimentation.
Software package is only a tool to help you solve business problems.
A quality research proposal can be written if clients can provide agencies with a quality research brief.
Asking too detailed purchase habit in a survey is really problematic since memory fades very quickly.
Questionnaire design & writing should really be left to professional marketing researchers.
Excellent fieldwork execution is a must in every marketing research projects, and also in Sea Games 2017.
It's just insane if you choose a particular software tool to boast only.
Respondents' fatigue must be taken into account seriously when designing a questionnaire.
"It is worth repeating the truism that research methods should be chosen based on the specific task at hand." (in Doing Qualitative Research by David Silverman, 5th Ed., 2018)
Principles of behavioral economics can help designing a survey questionnaire which minimizes the inherent biases of respondents. They can also be used to nudge consumers to prefer your brands.
Manipulating fixed format ASCII data is a dying skill in marketing research.
You must not mislead respondents by providing a wrong description about your competitor's product in an unbranded product test.
Volume forecast follows a branded test like a concept test or a concept-product test, and not an unbranded one.
When developing close-ended questions in your questionnaire, make sure to include "Not Applicable" as one of the possible answers.
Think of market research as your payment for relevant information to reduce risks in new product management.
