The Survey Geek

Category: The MR Business

  • Where is our Copernicus?

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    RegBaker
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    I was at the AAPOR Conference in Chicago most of last week and while I had planned to do some blogging it was hard given the sheer overwhelming amount of information, opinions, and data being shared. (And besides, Jeffry Henning was there pounding out posts on his shiny new iPad so I am confident the…

  • OMG!

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    RegBaker
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    Last week a colleague sent me this ad and suggested that it was the worst MR ad ever.  At least the guy is not in one of those big African cooking pots. Then today I opened up the latest issue of Research and found this: So there is a contender.  But it makes you wonder…

  • Just a little whining

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    RegBaker
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    A couple of weeks back Research asked a number of industry wise men and women to pick one word to sum up MR in 2010.    Jeffrey Henning chose “probability.”  He goes on to say, “What ‘subprime lending’ was to the financial industry, ‘access panel’ was to the market research industry.”   He then references the Yeager…

  • What about B2B?

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    RegBaker
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    Virtually all of the chatter across the industry these last three years or so about panel data quality has been focused on consumer sample.  Those of us who don't do a whole lot of online consumer work have now begun to wonder, what about B2B?  Is there a data quality problem there as well and,…

  • If we knew what we were doing

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    RegBaker
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    At one point yesterday my wife showed me a wall plaque in a Signals catalogue with a quote from Einstein that read, “If we knew what we were doing it wouldn’t be called research.”  For some reason, it struck a chord.  And then this morning I was reading a review of the new Malcolm Gladwell…

  • Clients say the darndest things

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    RegBaker
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    For the past couple of weeks I have been mulling Stan Sthanunathan's remark at the IIR conference in Las Vegas reported as "quality doesn't matter."  I've also been getting reactions from friends and colleagues around the industry.  They vary from "I'm glad we don't work for Coke" to "How should this impact our strategy" with…

  • The third rail of Resarch

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    RegBaker
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    Jeffrey Henning did such a nice job of blogging the ESOMAR Online Research Conference that I recommended his blog in a previous post.  But I've just read his summary piece on communities and worry that he has missed a key point, one that I tried to stress in no uncertain terms in my closing remarks. …

  • Might Web researchers be developing a conscience?

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    RegBaker
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    Amongst all the talk in Montreux about corporate social responsibility was some interesting discussion about how Web survey researchers also might develop a little social responsibility of their own. First, there is Research-Voice.com. This is the brainchild of Kees de Jong (now CEO at SSI) who for the last couple of years has been championing…

  • ESOMAR Congress

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    RegBaker
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    I've just returned from the ESOMAR Congress in Montreux.  This is  a great event to meet up with colleagues and partners, current and hoped for, from around the world.  But in all honesty, the content is not always as great as the networking opportunities.  I'm not going to comment on the overall content this year…

  • Some marching orders from Neils

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    RegBaker
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    Regular readers of this blog (if there are any) know that I have some genuine enthusiasm for Research 2.0 or Connected Research or whatever we call MR in the age of Web 2.0 and social media.  Yet I still find it largely undefined, mostly a collection of buzzwords still awaiting a real definition as a…