A different way of looking at the data

    Ever get bored of the same old pie chart or graph to represent the data found? While going through my Google Reader today, I found a really cool article about market research companies starting to show data in a unique way! Check out the images below:

Poll results of Danish Opinion about wearing religious symbols in public professional jobs. (38% think its unethical for women to go to work with the head piece, 42.5% think its unethical for school teachers and educators to wear traditional Islamic headpieces at schools, 46% think its unethical for nurses and doctors to wear Islamic headpieces, and 66% think its unethical for judges to wear traditional head pieces.) Flowing Data

     This image represents the amount of changed behavior Danish people have experienced due to gang related crime. For more visual representations check out Behance Network's website

I am more interested in figures that are displayed in a unique way than just the traditional pie chart or graph. Wouldn't you agree?

What Do Consumers Really Think?

 Sentiment Analysis is a tool that allows companies to see what people are saying about them. In the past, they have had to do surveys, polls, and focus groups to understand what people think about their company. The only challenge is, people may be biased or not truthful during the survey/interviews which has skewed the results for companies. With social media and people freely saying what they feel, companies can have a better grasp on what people think about them. 
 Sentiments types can be analyzed automatically by different platforms available, it can be analyzed by humans, or a hybrid of both. Once these are analyzed and documented, the program (or people analyzing) can create a report to share that gives everyone in the company a good understanding about what most people are saying about the company. For more in depth information on the analyzing check out a presentation given at the Text Analysis Summit in Boston.
In most cases, companies can alter their marketing strategies to work on common problems they have found through this information, or use things people love about the company in their marketing campaigns.More and more researchers are using this tool. Not only does it filter through data to help researchers understand all the information, it can take in infinitely more information then traditional routes. Below is an example of the easy to read results sentiment analysis can give you-

Want this software? SAS was recently named best Sentiment Analysis Software! Click here to find out more!

Online Surveys = Best Way to Start Market Research

   Online surveys are easy to make, distribute, and collect data from. On top of all that they are the cheapest form of market research. I believe using online surveys is the best way to start off a research project because you can ask a wide variety of questions. In this exploratory phase they can identify points of interest and focus the rest of their research on those points. So, instead of focusing on economic factors in decision making, they focus in on a social influencer on decision making (ie friends, parents, celebrities influencing a purchase decision). It can also cut down on the amount of research done. It might just take an online survey to determine why everyone has stopped going to a specific store. If everyone said the same thing, then there is no reason to go any further into research than the survey. Which saves money for the company! 

   Greg Timpany of Cvent Survey agrees that online surveys has allowed even the smallest of companies to jump into market research, because it is easy to use and inexpensive. Cvent Survey is a great place to learn about online marketing and how to do it properly (through their blog) as well as they offer a service to companies to do their web surveys for them. Great thing to check out if you are a beginner surveyor!

How to Take Advantage of the Internet!

Web Analytics is the answer for markers to understanding how people navigate the web. This tool is imbedded into the code of every website, blog, and social network page. With Web Analytics, marketers can see what part of a page is attracting people's attention and what areas are scaring people off the website. I love this tool because everyone on the Internet can get Web Analytics for their own website or blog!
 This tool is the most interesting market research tool because the consumers are unaware of the fact that they are being "followed" while they navigate through the different websites. The great thing about people not knowing they are being watched, is they are unbiased in their decision process. The downfall traditional market research such as focus groups and in depth interviews, are that people say what they think the interviewer wants them to say which skews all the data collected. People can't really communicate how they surf the web- so traditional market research would not be an ideal way to understand. Thank goodness for web analytics that has allowed researchers to observe web surfers and figure out what part of the website works and what parts don't.
  Another fantastic part of Web Analytics is the speed at which the marketer get their data. As soon as a person comes in and starts surfing around, the data is collected and entered into the Web Analytics program and decisions can be made very quickly. Just think, a few short years ago, it would take weeks or even months to compile all the data from a survey and draw conclusions from that survey!
   The most challenging part of Web Analytics for me, is figuring out which features are the most important to follow and how to interpret those  data points. For example, number of visits in a day, or number of unique visitors in a day? Luckily for us, there are plenty of websites and bloggers out there to help us out! One of those people would be Eric Peterson from Web Analytics Demystified. He has so much knowledge about the workings of Web Analytics and gives great insights to the ethics involved in web analytics. Another fantastic and well respected Analytics blogger is Avinash Kaushik. He writes weekly about different ways to use web analytics and step by step directions on how to implement those tools. If you are in the least bit curious about web analytics and the powers it can give you as a marketer, or web developer check out these two guys!
     I see Web Analytics being one of the biggest assets to market research as life moves to the world wide web. It can help marketers in so many different capacities- and it does it in real time! 
   Still need to get some web analytics of your own? I would suggest Google Analytics because it is free (which is fantastic) and has an entire online university of videos and articles about how to use analytics! Of course there are other sites out there that do the same, this is simply what I use. So, in a few months when I am getting ready to graduate, I will be writing a post here about my findings from my web analytics on this blog. Stay tuned for that and much more!

Welcome!

Hello! My name is Megan and my greatest passion is market research. This may be strange however I find the psychology behind the decisions we make everyday to be fascinating. Trying to figure out the behaviors of people as they are shopping for different types of products and how they change their behaviors based on the product they are purchasing intrigues me.
As technology boomed, market research morphed into a whole new industry. Now many companies get their information from online polls, web analytics, keyword research, observational research and much more. With this blog my goal is to explore these tools and to see how companies are finding out what their consumer does, wants, needs, etc during the shopping experience.