The fine points of feelings: Why discrete emotions matter and how to reveal them
By Paul Conner
Imagine asking 1,000 people, "Are you feeling good right now or bad?" A certain percentage will say good and a certain percentage bad - probably more good than bad. Interpreting this, would you say that all those who said good were feeling the same way and all those who said bad were feeling the same way? Probably not. So let's get more specific and imagine asking these 1,000 people, "Are you feeling happy right now or not?" Again, a certain percentage will say yes; but would you say all these happy people were feeling the same way? Probably not.
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Losing its polish? Samsung takes on Apple with more than just price
By Robert Passikoff
Apple enjoyed a long and fruitful reign at the top of the smartphone brand heap for many years but its No. 1 position has been compromised thanks to some seismic shifts in how consumers are coming to view categories and brands. Before diving into how Apple's brand has lost a bit of its luster, consider two trends that emerged from the Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (CLEI).
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Beware of big egos and agency killers
By Jerry W. Thomas
The March issue of Quirk's features a focus on advertising research. From our archives, this article provides nine ways to overcome barriers that stand in the way of effective advertising, including developing a sound strategy, using the same pre-testing system consistently and striving for continuous improvement.
As a whole, the advertising industry has the poorest quality-assurance systems and turns out the most inconsistent product (ads and commercials) of any industry in the world. This might seem like an overly harsh assessment, but it is based on testing thousands of ads over several decades. In our experience, only about half of all commercials actually work; that is, have any positive effect on a consumer's purchasing behavior or brand choice. Moreover, some ads actually produce negative effects on sales. How could these assertions possibly be true? Don't advertising agencies want to produce great ads, and don't clients want great advertising? Yes, they do, but they face formidable barriers.
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Bigger (data) isn't always better
By Michelle Finzel
Market research is one of many industries currently abuzz over the latest hot topic: big data. In fact, big data has become an industry unto itself, receiving a great deal of attention - and funding - by both the government and private sectors.
According to IBM, "Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data - so much that 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records and cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is big data."
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Research War Stories: They eat dog food 'all the time'...
Arnie Fishman recalls designing a study for a pet food company interested in determining how many people ate dog food. Early on, the astute Fishman recognized that you can't just come out and ask people if they eat dog food. Who would admit to it? So his questionnaire started out by informing consumers that the survey concerned consumption of "exotic foods." Consumers were then asked if or how often they ate a variety of foods such as rattlesnake meat, gopher brains, chocolate-covered ants, frog kidneys and, of course, dog food.
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*** segmentation
Diving deeper
New methodology to help profile consumers and target products 
Quester, a Windsor Heights, Iowa, research company, has debuted Quester Segmentation, a segmentation and customer-profiling methodology designed to dive deeper into consumer segments. The methodology uses Quester's multilingual, software-based interviewing and text analytics platform to capture feedback from thousands of consumers within specific or all consumer segments.
Quester Segmentation aims to enable users to develop products/innovations to satisfy current/future needs of specific consumer segments; increase the depth and understanding of customer segments for defined and targeted marketing; and expand the reach into their consumer base and amplify their stories, ideas, emotions and more.
www.quester.com
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| In the March issue... | 
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