This blog post was written by our guest blogger Mark Dengler, President and Owner of Research & Marketing Strategies (RMS) Inc. – a market research vendor in Syracuse, NY. As a small business owner, you may know you should do market research, you may want to do market research, but you think you can’t afford Read more

All businesses engage in some form of market research.  Market research comes in all forms – both formal and informal.  One example of formalized market research would be a Fortune 50 company like Johnson & Johnson conducting a series of 16 different focus groups across the country to test three new varieties of Listerine, followed by Read more

Focus groups are designed as a creative and engaging way to hear feedback from a collection of people.  Having participants discuss topics in a group setting often leads to a more productive exchange of ideas than a traditional survey or a one-on-one conversation such as an IDI (In-Depth Interview).  We always talk about better engagement with Read more

This blog post was written by our guest blogger Mark Dengler, President and Owner of Research & Marketing Strategies (RMS), a market research agency in Upstate NY. Many firms today are grappling with two strategic decisions revolving around market research: 1)  Should we do market research? 2) If we do it, should we commission it through a Read more

A while back, we came across this video about writing a market research RFP: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh7U04rzz8M] Obviously, the video presents a worst-case scenario for comic effect, but frankly every point on there rang true with us and is something we had already encountered or might encounter in the future. The reason for this, we think, is NOT (as Read more

This blog post was written by our guest blogger Mark Dengler, President and Owner of Research & Marketing Strategies (RMS) – a market research agency in Upstate NY.  This article was also featured in a prior edition of the RMS newsletter. Have you ever wondered, “Do I really understand how our customers perceive our company?  Read more

This is a post from our guest blogger Mark Dengler, President and Owner of Research & Marketing Strategies – a market research firm in Syracuse, NY. You’ve invested money into market research and the results are in. What’s the next step? Create a plan to put your results into action! All research is time bound 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 recently read an article in the May 2011 edition of Quirks, which is titled “Marrying Phone and Web” by Tom Donnelly – click here to read it.  The theme of the article is why web-assisted TDIs (tele-depth interviews) are a cost-effective qualitative methodology.  Methodologies like online bulletin boards, virtual focus groups and video chat Read more