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

Data weighting is a technique that is commonly used in market research. Many people reading this will already know what the concept means. If you’re not one of them, it refers to the practice of adjusting data results to either overcome sampling bias or to give more or less significance to factors based on their estimated Read more

Here in the Bunker, we believe market research is for everybody and can apply to just about every situation. To prove our point, and to continue our annual tradition of celebrating the Fourth of July holiday with a snarky blog post, we have come up with a list of significant figures from American history and 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

One thing you must always think about when developing a survey is to encompass all possible responses; this means conducting secondary research (even some qualitative research) to ensure that you are covering everything.  This is more commonly referred to as collectively exhaustive in market research terms, part of the MECE principle.  The results of not 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

With Mother’s Day coming up this Sunday, the day after Saturday (yes, it’s this Sunday, May 8th – yet another reminder!), we put together a few things we have heard our mothers say.  Although they probably didn’t have market research in mind as they were trying to teach us valuable life lessons, we always have market research on the Read more

Consumer opinion – we all know how important it is, but how much weight does it carry when we compare it to things like advertising and other forms of direct marketing?  The answer is: a lot.  A detailed report by Alterian titled “Your Brand: At Risk or Ready for Growth” shows that only 6 percent of U.S. consumers Read more

Have you ever heard of the term crowdsourcing? If not, you may not be aware of the term, but you are probably very familiar with the process behind the idea. With the emergence of social media and the reinvention of traditional marketing, marketers are turning to new practices to drive strategic brand development. One of these trendy Read more

About 10 or 12 years ago, I was in a shopping mall and got approached by a surveyor with a clipboard. She asked if I would be interested in participating in some taste test research involving some sort of food product. I agreed, but strongly suspected that I would be rejected after the researcher ran through the Read more