Peter Van Brunt writes in his article Attention Researchers: Lets Make Market Research Fun that researchers need to focus on the experience of the respondent when designing surveys and need to make an effort to make the research process more enjoyable.

The research industry has been facing public backlash for a number of years and telephone polling seems largely to blame. Talk to nearly anyone with a publicly listed telephone number and I am certain they will be able to recount a survey horror story having spoken to someone whose telephone manner suggests that there is clearly somewhere else’s they would rather be than having to ask 300 people they will never meet the same mundane questions.

No matter how much time or effort you put into designing your survey script to be a entertaining diddle, haphazard delivery by an exam stressed student on twelve dollars an hour is not going to help your cause.

Stage right, enters a short and snappy well written online survey to your rescue. As far as I see it online surveys beat telephone interviewers hands-down and have the potential to spice up any interview.

10 11 Reasons why online surveys beat telephone interviews:

1. An online survey will not interrupt your dinner time.
2. An online survey will not call interrupt you while you are on the toilet.
3. An online survey will not call you masquerading as that important call you have been waiting for all day.
4. An online survey will not sound bored or disinterested when you give your heartfelt opinion to a question it just asked.
5. An online survey will not hang up on you.
6. An online survey will not remind you of your ex-girlfriend.
7. An online survey will not interrupt you while you are on another call.
8. An online survey will not speak to you an in an accent that is impossible to understand.
9. An online survey will not ask you to speak slowly or repeat what you have just said.
10. An online survey will not have a bad attitude.
11. An online survey will not yawn.

I am sure there are more reasons why online surveys are better than phone surveys, please feel free to add some more below in the comments

Not a day goes past without someone releasing results of their survey into the media as news.

Surveys done well can make interesting news and develop a good public profile for your organisation. Case in point is the research completed by recruitment company Hudson released today and picked up by the mainstream media. The research results highlight that more than half of New Zealander’s are considering changing their jobs. While this is unlikely to come as any surprise to most people it is an interesting thought piece and can only help Hudson to develop themselves as a thought leader in their industry.

It is important to follow this process with some caution though as research poorly undertaken or poorly communicated can just as easily leave you with egg on your face. Case in point is a press release from uSwitch in the UK who stated that 9 million (35%) will go without a pay rise.” The release was timed to coincide with the run-up to Wednesday’s UK Budget, designed to get maximum publicity for the company.

Yet as Sam Coates highlights in Dodgy uSwitch surveys do nobody any favours the findings were from a YouGov survey “revealed” that 29% of teachers and a quarter of civil servants will not be receiving pay rises. It appears then that the statement made in the press release was based on a manipulation of a consumer confidence question, and therefore deeply flawed.

In situations like this more harm than good can be achieved with your research results and it is imperative that any results you release into the public domain are effectivly bullet proof to any serious criticism.

In the Marketing Science article“The Impact of Survey Participation on Subsequent Customer Behavior: An Empirical Investigation” a causal link is made between customers satisfaction surveys and an increase in an organisations revenue.

The findings from this research are important because they suggest that survey-based marketing research projects do not simply incur costs for the sake of gaining insights into customer perceptions as is conventionally believed, but they may also bring in additional revenues through such avenues as increased sales, reduced customer defection, and other positive behaviors by the respondents.

The research found that that customers who completed a customer satisfaction survey were more likely to become more engaged customers and more responsive to a firms promotional materials. It would seem then that the traditional marketing view of the marketing research as a cost centre may be misplaced as customer satisfaction surveys appear to have a key role in the generation of revenue.

The authors acknowledge the recent concerns that have been raised over the growing resistance of consumers to participation in commercial surveys yet found that, for the satisfaction surveys studied customers did not appear to be so negatively disposed, at least as reflected by their subsequent behaviors.

It is likely that organisations that conduct regular customer satisfaction surveys may already be aware of these additional benefits and this research presents an opportunity to refine their survey process. For those organisations that do not currently survey their customers the findings provide some sound financial justification. Not only will you retain your customers, they will buy more from you.

After recently re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I thought it might be useful to take a similar approach to marketing research. Marketing research is like a lot of disciplines, part art, part science. It is the practitioners experience and knowledge that combines the two elements into workable solutions.

As a practitioner I am busy working away and rarely have the time to stop and reflect why a particular practice is important and why it really matters. I see the new category Zen and the Art of Marketing Research as an opportunity for myself to revisit some of the theories underlying the research practices. Hopefully they also form a useful resource for other research practitioners and interested parties.

Survey Response Rates

A survey response rate can be broadly defined as the percentage of total attempted interviews that are completed. The general rule of thumb is the bigger the response rate the better. Why? – the main purpose is to reduce non-response bias (which I’ll talk about in my next posting).

It makes perfect sense that the response rate to your survey is critical. i.e. if no one answers your survey you will have no responses to analyse.  What is a good response rate you ask?, Well ideally a 100% response rate to your survey would be preferable although unlikely.  For the sake of surveying we Sheldon’t lose sight of the ideal 100% because it does give us something to aim for. As the environment for each survey it is impossible to determine an optimum response rate.  Variable factors such as the survey content and the survey respondents mean there are far too many possible factors to create a hard and fast rule. The best piece of advice I can offer is the only way to reduce your non-response bias is to increase your response rate.

MarketingProfs have published an article titled Seven Rules for Achieving Higher Online Survey Response Rates

In essence the rules mentioned are;

1. Make a good first impression
2. Do not assume that people will want to answer your survey and will respond just because you send an invitation.
3. Avoid biased questions
4. Do not ask too many questions, focus on the aim of your survey
5. Don’t spam your audience
6. Spend some time developing your survey
7. Share the wealth

What is not explicitly said but does come through loud and clear to me is if you wish to get a good response rate you need to sell your online survey. Whether it be for customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction or any other type of feedback you need to be able to clearly communicate to your respondents why they should answer your survey.

Your respondents are busy people and if you can clearly communicate why they should answer your survey and what will be done with the results, the more likely your sample group will buy into the concept and provide you with quality feedback.

Remember you do not just want people to complete your survey, a room full of monkeys could do that for you (while they are taking a rest from writing Shakespeare). The ability of your online survey being able to meet it’s goals is the honest and well thought responses from your respondents.

A recent Harris poll that nearly four in every five U.S. adults access the Internet at home, in the office or at other locations.

The 79 percent July-October figure compares with 77 percent in February-April 2006, 74 percent in February-April 2005, 66 percent in spring 2002, 64 percent in 2001 and 57 percent in spring 2000, poll producer Harris Interactive said. It is interesting to note that n 1995, 9 percent of adults reported they went online.

Harris would not give a margin of sampling error because it said such a characterization is misleading.

The most recent New Zealand stats I could find show that in the 12 months to the December 2006 quarter, 69.0 percent (2.2 million) of New Zealander’s used the Internet. Over 900,000 people made an online purchase, with those aged 25 to 44 years being the most likely to do so (38.9 percent).

It would be interesting to see what the New Zealand 2007 stats look like but I am sure they will show an increase similar to that seen in the US.

For anyone that has made the move from Office 2003 to Office 2007 you will be aware of the mind shift the 2007 interface requires. While it took me a good month to find my way around Excel 2007 what I did find handy was this little tip card.

What the tip card does is make finding yourself around the ribbon that much easier. Personally I love the new office look. I spend a large amount of time working with Excel and have found that Excel 2007 has made my life a lot easier.  There are some great new functions and the pivot tables are fantastic.

I was surprised to find that MS Query has not been updated and the pre-existing bugs from 2003 are still there. I suppose not many people use MS Query but for those that don’t know MS Query and Excel and create some pretty cool database and reporting functions.

Questions are the life and soul of any survey, without questions there is no survey. Good questions are essential to the success of any survey while poorly written questions can condemn your survey to failure.

I have put together some ideas and considerations on how to write well structured questions.

In this article I focus on:

1. Social Desirability
2. Non-attitudes
3. Inaccurate Estimates

Social Desirability

Social desirability bias is the inclination to present oneself in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others. It is commonly accepted that people are generally inclined to seek some degree of social acceptance and it is not uncommon for survey results to be skewed by people choosing the more desirable answer.

The great thing about online surveys is that people generally give more honest answers when answering questions on a computer where the feeling of anonymity is increased. This is opposed to face-face interviews or telephone interviews where anonymity may be guaranteed but it is obvious that at least the interviewer will be able to associate the answer to the respondent. Read the rest of this entry »

Marketing Sherpa in their case study How To Qualify Leads with Targeted Online Surveys highlight how online surveys can prove an extremely successful way to build qualified leads for your sales team.

While the marketer in me is instantly excited by this idea it is the researcher in me that says caution must be taken when choosing this method of driving sales. Read the rest of this entry »

In Trade Show Basics, David Daniels high lights some good advice for planning and building a stand at a trade show/expo. David identifies that one of the most overlooked opportunities of a trade show is to conduct market research. It’s cost-effective and can yield answers to questions that can drive product innovation, and validate assumptions about the market. It’s also a great way to get an insight into new trends and directions.

I can’t agree more with this statement and having supported a clients survey at an expo last week I have some additional insights into how to take full advantage of the opportunity.

We ran an online survey on a laptop that was available for participants to fill in. As we had developed the survey for the show, the online platform allowed us to make any changes to the survey should they be required. In addition, many visitors to the show were too busy to fill in the survey at the time. In this instance we were able to take their contact details down and then email an invitation to the survey to them. It was also a great way to add people to the clients regular newsletter. In some cases respondents indicated that they would willing to receive further information regarding the clients product. The beauty here is not only does the client have the respondents permission to contact them to discuss their product in greater detail, they also have the respondents attitudes, behaviour and opinions on the product the client is selling.

A great incentive to encourage participation is to give respondents the option to receive a copy of the final research report. Not only does this increase active participation but it has the additional benefit of building and strengthening the relationship between your organisations and the respondent. Read the rest of this entry »