Over the past few years, there has been a continuing evolution of the community college’s place in the American higher education landscape. As the economy has declined, community colleges have enjoyed a wider appeal as a more affordable alternative to private and four-year public institutions, to the point where there is actually a “reverse transfer” Read more

Several days ago, I attended a very thought-provoking lecture called “Social Media: Beyond the Hype.” The lecturer was Robert Thompson, a renowned and often-cited professor at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. If you follow stories about media and popular culture in outlets like the New York Times, NPR or CNN, there is Read more

One of the major challenges companies face is gaining an understanding of what drives a consumer to make a particular purchase.  Taking the necessary steps through market research to better understand shopper insights is one of the most important things a growing company (or any company for that matter) can do.  Ultimately the shopper’s decision Read more

What if I could tell you the general consensus of how respondents will answer questions in your survey, before you even fielded it?  It may sound crazy, but it’s true.  At times, the way a survey question is written has more impact on the data than the respondent’s opinion on the topic.  You wouldn’t think Read more

A couple of weeks ago, I was part of a conference call with a potential new client. At one point, one of the people on the other end of the call said, “Tell us why we should hire RMS over another research vendor?”    It’s rare that someone states the point so succinctly, but that Read more

I just wrapped up reading a book titled slide:ology written by Nancy Duarte.  As I’ve mentioned before numerous times on the Bunker Blog, my most enjoyable part of my work is creative design with regards to reporting.  Market research may be viewed as an uncreative and arithmetical career (let’s face it, sometimes it is) and Read more

Adult learners, sometimes called nontraditional students, have long been a part of the market for higher education, but in recent years the segment has grown in importance. In fact, a 2002 special analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics revealed that there were roughly the same number of nontraditional undergraduate students studying at American Read more

Response rates are a commonly explored theme in market research today.  This is especially the case with online surveys where a lot of times it’s counterproductive to put in additional time hounding respondents to complete your survey.  There are few exceptions, but in most cases the vast majority of your online survey completes will come with Read more

You’re conducting a customer survey, and you want to ask your customers about their experiences at your store.  Aside from testing their satisfaction and asking for feedback, you also include questions like: what products they are buying, when did they visit the store, etc.  When developing a survey you might want to reconsider the questions Read more

Imagine you were going to going to open a business. Let’s say it’s a coffee shop that will try to attract college students and hip, young professionals. There’s an available retail space in a neighborhood that appears to have a lot of the target customers in it and the building looks nice enough. Is it Read more