Articles

25 Reasons to Carry out Market Research

Here are just some of the ways our clients have used market research...

You may have a different business question or issue to which you need answers – let us know and we will be happy to discuss how market research might be able to help you.

1 Customer database segmentation
2 New product testing – both blind and branded
3 Mystery shopping amongst staff
4 Competitive mystery shopping
5 Concept testing
6 Customer profiling
7 Customer experience / journey
8 Attitudes to service delivery
9 Attitudes to new service opportunities
10 Get feedback from events
11 Pre-test a name change
12 Monitor advertising awareness and communication
13 Find out who reads what in the local press
14 Measure who looks at local websites
15 Look at the effect of adding a new retailer to a retail park
16 Test the effectiveness of advertising in attracting visitors to a retail outlet
17 Find out the impact of a brochure delivered door-to-door and in-store
18 Test reactions to a new flagship store
19 Ease of use testing for self-completion forms
20 Employee research – attitudes and satisfaction
21 Test response to charity’s message to the public
22 Find out what people want from their Primary Care Trust
23 Test reactions to investment products amongst high value investors
24 Check the tourism/visitor experience and potential at venues across the UK
25 Find out how people respond to “healthy living” messages from a charity

Back to the top


Qualities of a good interviewer

Are you thinking of becoming an interviewer?

Interviewers have to be multi-talented. They cannot be fair-weather people, and they have to have a thick skin while at the same time being polite, smart and approachable.

They need the listening skills of a social worker along with the tenacity of a traffic warden! Quite a difficult combination to achieve, but one that most interviewers do as second nature.

Listed below are just some of the key qualities to look for in an interviewer;

Good listener – it is no good asking questions but not fully listening to the answer. They need to portray to the respondent that they are really interested in what they are saying.

Neat handwriting – if an interviewer has extracted from his or her respondents the most interesting answer, but then written it in such a way that it’s difficult to decipher back in the office, it makes life very frustrating.

Polite manner – it may not be easy to stop people on a wet and windy street corner, but the interviewer must remain polite and gracious at all times.

Tidy appearance – the interviewer has to remain smart at all times. He or she must be dressed appropriately for the environment – interviewing in-store will require different attire than interviewing outdoors.

MRS ID Card – anybody can go out onto the street and stop members of the public and ask them questions. Those who are entitled to carry an up-to-date identity card issued by the MRS can work with the confidence that they are recognised as a legitimate researcher.

Well trained – again, the training behind a good interviewer sets them apart in terms of ability to administer questionnaires, collect demographic information, and work professionally.

Able to keep to deadlines – market research surveys often have very tight turnaround times, and therefore the interviewer must be able to keep to deadlines that she has been quoted.

Adaptable – In this day and age of the challenges of new technology, the interviewer must be able to adapt to these, and so whilst using pen and paper one day be just as capable as using a PDA the next and uploading the data to the Research Agency.

Available – interviewers need to be available to be booked out on surveys. Again, difficult to achieve when by the nature of the work they are doing they are often out and about, but they need to have in place different means by which they can be contacted.

Transport – with the variety of work in all different locations, interviewers really do need their own method of transport and not be reliant on public transport, in case a late running train means a late running shift!

Fit and Healthy – interviewing shifts are normally 6 hours long and this means 6 hours on your feet, so the interviewer needs to be able to cope with this.

If you would like further information about our Supervised network of 1200 interviewers, please do contact us.

Back to the top


Designing your Analysis Specification

Here are some key pointers to help design your analysis specification.

1 Define what you want to get out of the data.
2 Decide on key questions to 'cut' the data based on your objectives.
3 Make use of the demographic data collected.
4 Do not be afraid to apply specific top-breaks to specific questions.
5 Make sure that each of your top-breaks has a robust enough sample size.
6 Use weights on all rating questions to calculate mean scores.
7 Use summaries where appropriate e.g. 'Any of these'.
8 Do not 'waste' top-breaks - Only use ones that will give insight.
9 Where relevant, combine data from questions to give an overall view.
10 Do not be scared off by statistical tests - they can help prove a point.
11 Once been through data, if necessary, redefine your spec based on your discoveries.

If you would like further assistance, why not contact us and see what we can do to help?

Back to the top

Frequently Asked Questions

How many interviews do we need to undertake?

For a quantitative survey, one of the most commonly debated questions between clients and agencies is, “What should the sample size be”?

There’s no simple answer to this one. Factors to take into account are:-
What’s the available universe(for sampling from)?

(if there is only a target of 300 people that would qualify for interview, then interviewing 200 would be impractical)
What degree of accuracy is needed – how much error can be tolerated?

(is this a project where a “rough steer” is needed, or is it vital that high reliance can be placed on the accuracy of results?)
How much detail do we need to go into within the sample?

(are there particular sub-segments within the sample where we must have an accurate response, or are you content with an overview from the total sample?)
How important is it to be able to compare across more than one survey?

(if one sample size is much smaller than the other, this will affect the ability to compare across the two surveys)
How certain do we need to be in the results?

(are we happy that 95% of the time, the answers in this survey would be within a certain range, or do we need to be sure that 99% of the time, the answers in this survey would be within a certain range)

Below is a chart, which shows the maximum error margin for a range of sample sizes, assuming a 95% confidence level.

Sample size	Error margin +/-
200	7.1%
500	4.5%
1000	3.2%
2000	2.2%

So – for instance, if you commission a survey of 200 respondents, then you get a steer on responses which could vary by as much as 7.1% in either direction. So a finding of 50% could have been a finding of 42.9% or 57.1%.

A sample size of 2000 respondents brings that down to 2.2% in either direction. So here a finding of 50% could have been a finding of 47.8% or of 52.2%.

Back to the top