Thursday, August 28, 2008

People Trust Extreme Positions More

Extreme Appeal: Voters Trust Extreme Positions More Than Moderate Ones, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (2008-08-08) -- Trying to appear moderate is not always the best strategy for capturing votes during an election, reveals a new study. Extreme positions can build trust among an electorate, who value ideological commitment in times of uncertainty. "A rational electorate is reluctant to support someone who does not exhibit commitment to some ideology," says USC economist Juan Carrillo. "Voters rightly perceive that someone without ideological commitment cannot have developed a valuable political program." ... > read full article

Advertising Strategy varies based on Purchase Timing

Timing Of Political Messages Influences Voter Preferences, Researcher Finds


ScienceDaily (2008-08-15) -- In political campaigns, timing is almost everything. Candidates communicate with voters over a long period of time before voters actually vote. What candidates say to these voters is, of course, important, but it turns out that when they say it also influences voter preferences. ... > read full article

Saturday, August 9, 2008

We're Only Human...: Polling the Crowd Within

The article below shows how our minds respond to questions that we don't know the definitive answers to. Basically, when allowed to return to the question and re-answer it at a later time, the "average" of our answers tends to be more accurate than our initial response.

How could knowledge of this tendency be better utilized in market research?


We're Only Human...: Polling the Crowd Within: "www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman."

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Market Research from the respondent's perspective

The following unsolicited account demonstrates how respondents often easily see the purpose of research. Humans' natural instinct to scan for, and assign, causation and intent to interpersonal events most certainly influences the survey responses they give to market researchers.

The account also reveals the issue facing market researchers on almost every project: Very few business people are interested in research, as much as they are interested in validation. New and unsolicited information is a risk, until it can communaly seen as an opportunity. The amount of effort needed to convert new information into an acknowledged opportunity leads to most research findings being discarded, discredited or dismissed (as below).


"Okay, so I am paid to participate in online surveys for the construction industry. (I was nominated to be on this panel by inadvertently impressing people with my knowledge and desire to increase my knowledge of the technical component of a building and how we describe and detail it. I am a rare and treasured bird in the architectural industry. I digress. The first several pages are general and anonymous and then the last pages are specific to the manufacturer who is eliciting feedback for specific products and their reception as a new product or image of a current product. Obviously you understand better than most people. So I take a survey and I felt that they were asking the wrong questions, even though it became evident what they wanted. But how do you get that feedback when all the Q’s are rate with a number strongly agree or disagree. I get paid $20 because they know how difficult it is to get an Architect to do something that isn’t an immediate task for an impending deadline. However, I felt some obligation since they a re a good company and I am favorably oriented to the majority of the products so I sent them an email of interesting and unexpected feedback for one of their products in the Chicago Market. It is unheard of for companies to get unsolicited feedback from Architects. I didn’t expect any response, but I was surprised by the dismissive response. She must be crazy to think I am have time to pursue this with a rep.

Is this a common scenario with US corps or corps in general that they seek market feedback from the people who will select and use their product, but when these receive it unfiltered by marketing analysis they don’t know what to do with it?"