10 Commandments for Market Research

Hello everybody, sorry for the time lapse of silence. The Holidays are very time consuming...but completely worth it.

For those in the Marketing Research obssesion, I found an intersting article by respected researcher Jos Kuper offering some tried and tested commandments for doing market research. Ignore them at your peril.

1. Thou shalt not use market research for the sake of collecting data – thou shalt use market research as data collection for interpreting into wisdom.

2. Thou shalt not overload respondents with fatiguing boring questionnaires or it will be garbage in and garbage out.

3. Thou shalt not apply percentages to small samples or to group discussions.

4. Thou shalt not expect small samples to give insights into sub-sectors with any degree of reliability.

5. Thou shalt not construct the questions to get the answers you want or to confirm your views.

6. Thou shalt not construct questions in researches – use the language spoken and understood by your respondents.

7. Thou shalt not commit the atrocity of an uninsightful report, number after meaningless number.

8. Thou shalt write reports that tell a story based on the findings.

9. Thou shalt not get too dependent on the research – use it as a basis for decision making but make your decisions based on a whole range of relevant factors.

10. Thou shalt not use market research as the gospel.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!