Sunday's New York Times Magazine has an article about a new program being introduced by the Hyatt hotel chain intended to stimulate real loyalty in the form of future business through gratitude generated by generous acts such as having [...]

A survey should aim to be like a conversation.  Online surveys don’t have humans involved to listen to how someone feels about the survey, to reword for clarity or to encourage, so you have to work harder to generate comfort.  Although you don’t want to take too long (the number one complaint of survey takers is time), it is still better to work up to the key questions gradually if possible.  Even though it might be the burning issue for you, you risk turning someone off if [...]

A couple of interesting studies relating on newspaper issues have recently come across my screen.  Combine with continuing speculation on how long the Seattle Times will last, and the segment on the Daily Show about the New York Times last week, it's time to share.

The Pew Internet and American Life study on online classifieds contains no big surprises.  Use of [...]

I just have to share this in the hope that a reader will be able to enlighten me.  What could this possibly mean?
Not a provider that I would think of at first, but I probably would not consider it
OK, let me give some context. This is from a survey on business internet services. The researcher wants to know what would be my likely consideration for each of several providers if I'm choosing a new one. The choices are as [...]

This is a follow up to classes I taught recently that included a short section on pricing research methodologies. I promised some more details on the Van Westendorp approach, in part because information available online may be confusing, or worse. This article is intended to be a practitioner’s guide for those conducting their own research. First, a refresher. Van Westendorp’s Price Sensitivity Meter is one of a number of direct techniques to research pricing. Direct [...]

The recent comScore presentation on the State of Online Retail in the U.S. contained few surprises, but mainly confirmations together with some interesting perspectives.  For those unfamiliar with this material, comScore creates a quarterly report on Online Retail, combining survey results along with data from comScore's behavioral panel.  The behavioral data covers many aspects of online behavior related to retail, including search, media exposure, and of course actual online transactions.  [...]

SurveyMonkey is being acquired by an investor group.  Dave Goldberg, who previously led Yahoo's music business, will take over as CEO, but founders Ryan (current CEO) and Chris Finley will remain with the company according to the [...]

One of the interesting presentations at yesterday's Puget Sound Research Forum conference was from LinkedIn, covering their recently introduced sample services. Key advantages for sample from LinkedIn as I see it: Profiling information is entered by the LinkedIn user for reasons unconnected with survey taking. Regardless of of how much of a [...]

As a tea-drinking Brit I was fascinated by a study about tea drinking in Northern Iran concluding that drinking very hot tea is strongly associated with higher risk of oesophageal cancer. Digging in further, I was struck by a number of points: The article I first noticed, by Karen Kaplan of the Los Angeles Times, was very clearly written and didn’t mangle the facts or interpretations. Such clarity is unusual and deserves a commendation. [...]