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    Segmentation

    Segmentation - Less Art, More Science, Please

    Published in Sept/Oct 2023 Issue of Quirk's Media. “It’s part science and part art.” I suppose this phrase can be applied to many areas, but within traditional market research, it may as well be the unofficial slogan for segmentation analysi...

    Westley Ritz | Senior Director of Analytics
    Collinearity Machine Learning Typing Tool

    Pricing Research

    April 6th, 2023

    How to Conduct Pricing Research

    “How much should I charge for my product?” This is one of the most important and difficult questions facing a marketer.

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Conjoint Discrete Choice Conjoint Pricing Research Product Development

    General Research

    June 27th, 2022

    A How-to-Guide for Market, Brand and Advertising Tracking Studies - PART 1

    The reasons for conducting tracking research and the types commonly used. Brand health, advertising, and market research tracking are still vital to the success of any business, whether it be a fast-food franchise or a utilities provider. If you don...

    Elliot Savitzky | Senior Vice President
    Tracking Studies

    General Research

    December 2nd, 2021

    Sample Size Matters in Marketing Research

    “Do I really need a sample size of 400? I was told 200 is enough.” Raise your hand if you’ve heard this one before. The Simple answer in marketing research sample size Yes, you do in fact need a sample size of 400 (or possibly more). Two sit...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Sample Size Statistical Sig

    General Research

    October 6th, 2021

    Less like Spock, More like Darwin

    The subtitle of the recent book, The Scout Mindset (by Julia Galef) is “Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t.” It is based on the idea that there is a lot of uncertainty in the world and it is impossible to account for everything...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Hierarchical Bayesian Measuring Bias

    General Research

    August 2nd, 2021

    Understanding, Mapping, and Disrupting the Customer Journey: Journey Mapping in the Digital Age

    Introduction Evolving from traditional journey mapping that we discussed in the first paper on the customer journey, this journey has become more complex as the marketing world changed and as multiple options have emerged for researching options, ...

    Elliot Savitzky | Senior Vice President
    Customer Journey

    General Research

    July 7th, 2021

    Understanding, Mapping, and Disrupting the Customer Journey: Traditional Journey Mapping

    Introduction Today, consumers are asking for highly personalized experiences, which includes specific marketing and customer service efforts. To cite industry stats, according to Salesforce 80% of consumers now consider their experience with a com...

    Elliot Savitzky | Senior Vice President
    Customer Journey

    General Research

    June 8th, 2021

    Lessons from Malcolm Gladwell’s "Talking to Strangers"

    “Malcolm Gladwell could probably make a pencil sharpener interesting…” Imagine what he can do with a topic far more interesting than pencil sharpeners – talking to strangers. Gladwell has made a career (in writing, and now in a podcast) of...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Text Analytics

    Qual & Quant Integration

    April 12th, 2021

    Lessons from The Black Swan - A Follow-up

    But, the problem is in getting to those few outlier needles in a mass of hay. The argument then was that manual coding would likely be inadequate to the task on hand. Primarily, this is because manual coding focuses on categorizing comments into majo...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Qualitative Question Design Text Analytics

    Feature Prioritization

    November 22nd, 2020

    TURF: New Methods for Implementation

    TURF stands for Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency. The analysis runs through every possible combination of products and records for each combination...

    Westley Ritz | Senior Director of Analytics
    Asymmetry Analysis Feature Prioritization TURF

    Satisfaction & Loyalty

    November 21st, 2020

    An Alternative Method of Reporting Customer Satisfaction Scores

    Though customer satisfaction evaluations are widely used, reporting of these scores has varied from one study to another. This is likely the result of each method’s advantages and disadvantages, as well as the personal preferences and habits of the...

    Rajan Sambandam, George  Hausser
    Attribute Evaluation Scale Conversion

    Segmentation

    November 21st, 2020

    Segmentation Success

    Segmentation research can provide your organization with a unique and competitively advantageous perspective on the marketplace. In practice, however, such studies can involve significant time and effort, and what constitutes a “winning” solution...

    Michael Sosnowski | Executive Vice President, TRC
    Market Segments Question Design

    Conjoint Analysis

    October 8th, 2020

    Looking Back vs. Forward: When to Consider Conjoint over Key Driver Analysis

    Collection and analysis of customer satisfaction data is a widespread practice in companies. What purpose does it serve?

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Key Driver Analysis Regression Analysis Satisfaction

    Product Development

    October 7th, 2020

    Conjoint Analysis Primer: Why, What and How

    Let’s say your company wants to launch a new product and your job is to understand how it should be designed – that is, you want to know what consumers will value.

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Feature Prioritization

    General Research

    October 6th, 2020

    You May Get More than You Pay For

    How often have you done surveys where open-ended questions soliciting new product/feature ideas have produced poor response? If your answer is “innumerable times,” then it is time to consider smart incentives.

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Idea Generation Product Development

    Satisfaction & Loyalty

    October 6th, 2020

    Asymmetry Analysis

    Before examining the question of asymmetry, we need to think about symmetry.

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Asymmetry Analysis Key Driver Analysis Regression Analysis

    Segmentation

    October 6th, 2020

    How to Improve Your Segmentation with Max-Diff

    When conducting segmentation analysis there are several issues to consider, not the least of which are the questions used for analysis.

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Max-Diff Self-Organizing Maps Split-Sample Design

    Conjoint Analysis

    October 6th, 2020

    How to Determine Sample Size in Conjoint Studies

    What is the right sample size for a conjoint analysis study? It’s a simple, ubiquitous question that doesn’t seem to have an easy answer.

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Regression Analysis

    Segmentation

    October 5th, 2020

    Cluster Analysis Gets Complicated

    Cluster analysis is widely used in segmentation studies for several reasons. First of all, it’s easy to use.

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Cluster Analysis Collinearity Key Driver Analysis

    General Research

    October 5th, 2020

    Survey of Analysis Methods: Key Driver Analysis

    Key driver analysis is a broad term used to cover a variety of analytical techniques.

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Key Driver Analysis Regression Analysis

    Feature Prioritization

    October 5th, 2020

    Two-Dimensional Max-Diff (2DMD)

    A common problem in research is prioritization of a list of items (features, messages, etc.). With only a handful of items a ranking exercise works nicely, though it doesn’t really provide information on the spacing between the ranks

    Rajan Sambandam, Westley Ritz
    Feature Prioritization Max-Diff Pricing Research Product Development

    General Research

    September 25th, 2020

    Show and Tell: Applying Behavioral Economics to Surveys

    “What impact will this ad have on your purchase likelihood?” “Do you prefer to get a $10 bill credit, or two free movies?” “Do you find the current offer attractive, or this new one we are unveiling?” Have you asked these kinds o...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Monadic Design

    Segmentation

    September 25th, 2020

    7 Steps for Segmentation Success

    You have a major segmentation project to execute and are beginning to panic...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Qualitative Question Design Typing Tool

    Conjoint Analysis

    September 25th, 2020

    Behavioral Conjoint: Measuring Impact of Conscious and Subconscious Factors on Choice

    Imagine that you are a researcher for a coffee brand and you would like to know which of two ad treatments would be more effective for your brand.

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Discrete Choice Conjoint Monadic Design

    Feature Prioritization

    September 25th, 2020

    A Dynamic Approach to Feature Prioritization

    Have you had this problem? You need to measure preference for the features in your product/service but there are just so many of them it seems like an impossible task.

    Rajan Sambandam, Westley Ritz, Pankaj Kumar, PhD
    Feature Prioritization Max-Diff Product Development

    Qualitative

    September 25th, 2020

    Qualitative Data in Surveys: Lessons from The Black Swan

    This essay is about qualitative data obtained from quantitative studies and how to analyze them. The thesis here is that the framework used to analyze such data is different from that used for directly obtained qualitative data from methods such as I...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Qual & Quant Integration

    Segmentation

    September 25th, 2020

    Database Scoring with Object-Based Segmentation

    Segmentation studies in practical market research generally fall into two categories: those that are related to company databases and those that aren’t. The latter are often based on survey data alone and tend to primarily use attitudinal informati...

    Rajan Sambandam, Westley Ritz
    Market Segments

    General Research

    September 25th, 2020

    Situational Use of Data Weighting

    The most important criterion in determining the validity of findings is the extent to which the data collected represents the actual population under study.

    George  Hausser | Senior Analyst
    Data Weighting

    Feature Prioritization

    September 25th, 2020

    Asymmetry in Product Features: Use of the Kano Method

    Research in psychology and practical experience in marketing research suggest that product features are not always perceived to be symmetric.

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Feature Prioritization KANO Method

    Pricing Research

    September 25th, 2020

    Monadic Price Testing vs Price Laddering

    Which should I use, a Monadic design or a Price Laddering technique? It’s a practical question that comes up often in pricing research. With monadic price testing respondents are shown (or read) a single concept, with a single price, and asked abo...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Price Sensitivity Pricing Research

    Product Development

    September 25th, 2020

    New Product Development: Stages and Methods

    The new product development process has the potential to be haphazard because of the inherent uncertainty in the process, as well as the myriad methods available for product development. Setting up an organizing framework to identify the stages in th...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Idea Generation KANO Method Max-Diff

    Pricing Research

    September 25th, 2020

    Product Configurator

    Consider a person who wants to buy a personal computer. A simple way to do it would be to go to the website of a computer manufacturer and essentially "build" a computer. The firm provides the options for various components such as monitor size and C...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Conjoint Pricing Research Product Configurator

    Conjoint Analysis

    September 25th, 2020

    Understanding Choice in Banking: Use of Discrete Choice Conjoint Analysis

    An important consideration for banks is how customers choose them for opening checking accounts. Given that checking accounts can often be the keystone of an entire relationship with a banking customer, the importance of this decision becomes even hi...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Discrete Choice Conjoint Product Development

    General Research

    September 25th, 2020

    Non-Response Bias in Survey Sampling

    As market researchers, we use data gathered from surveys to make informed decisions and give recommendations to clients on ways to improve their sales and standing in the marketplace.

    Westley Ritz | Senior Director of Analytics
    Measuring Bias Survey Design

    Feature Prioritization

    September 25th, 2020

    Identifying Feature Importance: A Comparison of Methods

    Understanding what customers want is fundamental to the new product development process as well as to the process of keeping existing products fresh and relevant. To be successful in this area we need to be able to correctly identify what features ar...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Feature Prioritization Max-Diff Product Development

    Brand Research

    September 25th, 2020

    How to Measure the Value of a Brand

    Two companies offer consumers the same product at the same price and quality, yet one sells a lot better than the other. Why? The answer is the intangible value inherent in the brand name. It could manifest in the form of positive image, higher marke...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Discrete Choice Conjoint Importance Scores

    Product Development

    September 25th, 2020

    Conjoint Analysis vs Self-Explicated Method: A Comparison

    Preference measurement can be approached in two ways: with a compositional approach or a de-compositional approach. The former is a "bottom-up" approach where feature importance is first ascertained and then used to create product attractiveness scor...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Self-Explicated Method

    Segmentation

    September 25th, 2020

    Better Questions for Segmentation: Use of Max-Diff

    When conducting segmentation analysis there are several issues to consider, not the least of which are the questions used for analysis. More than almost any other factor, the questions asked will influence the quality of the segmentation results. The...

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Hierarchical Bayesian Max-Diff Pair-Wise Comparison

    Segmentation

    November 21st, 2016

    Survey of Analysis Method: Segmentation Analysis

    Segmentation analysis has been a part of marketing research for decades. It continues to be useful in a variety of different situations, even when the primary objective of the study is not segmentation.

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Cluster Analysis Collinearity Market Segments Self-Organizing Maps

    Brand Research

    November 21st, 2010

    The Brand Insulation Effect: Toyota Customers Remain Loyal in the Face of a Recall

    Despite its recall trouble since last October, Toyota owners remain loyal to the brand, our authors' research discovered. Toyota steers clear of reputation damage.

    Rajan Sambandam, Utpal Dholakia, Vikas Mittal
    Satisfaction Survey Design

    General Research

    December 21st, 2004

    Scale Conversions

    A considerable amount of customer satisfaction data is collected using tracking studies. While continuity is particularly important in tracking studies, sometimes situations arise where major changes are necessitated.

    Rajan Sambandam | President
    Scale Conversion

    General Research

    November 21st, 1994

    The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Significance

    Researchers often misuse and abuse the concept of significance. They tend to associate statistical significance with the magnitude of the result.

    Vikas Mittal, Patrick Baldasare
    Statistical Sig

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