Marketers and researchers make a fundamental error almost universally when developing and testing marketing communications. This error is particularly common and particularly serious when inflicted upon advertising and packaging. We all do it. And we all do it almost all the time. The error isn’t to believe that the medium is the message. The error is to believe the message…
Trade-off Analysis is no panacea. It can’t correct basic errors in judgement. But it can provide an amazingly rich information source that the intelligent product developer, marketer, strategic planner and VC investor can use to profitable benefit. Trade-off Analysis is no panacea. But it can be a crystal ball. How would you like to have a crystal ball that would…
Do you find this issue’s column title impressive? Ostentatious? Incomprehensible? Your answers (multiple responses allowed) will indicate which conferences you should, and should not, attend. I’ll explain further down. Marketing research conferences can be divided into two broad classes: Vacuous and Substantive. Please note I’ve excluded invitation-only conferences from this taxonomy. I’ve also excluded seminars and workshops. Almost all marketing…
I imagine that, as dinosaurs slowly slipped into extinction, they were the last ones to notice. It might be the same with marketing research methodologists today. Being a methodologist of sorts myself, it took an unfortunate and seemingly unrelated event to bring the possibility of my professional demise into focus. Recently, the AMA in a rather clumsy way, purged Marketing…
Take a questionnaire written last week and place it side by side with one written 20, 30 years ago. Chances are they will look identical. Same logic. Same skip patterns. Same batteries and scales. Same limitations. Even though today’s questionnaire is most likely being programmed on the web, with all the new question formats and controls web surveys offer. Yet…
Honesty, loyalty and responsibility are passé (where you been, man?). The latest and greatest are selfishness, convenience and bending the truth like it was Gumby in a microwave. But just like the Emperor’s new clothes, and for the same reasons, these trendy traits may eventually leave you hanging. I work in marketing. Even worse, I’m also a writer. So it…
Want to sell tons of your high-tech new product or service? Want to make tons and tons of money? Then learn what your brethren (and sistren, too, for that matter) from other more mature industries learned long ago. People do not buy products and services. People buy potions to make themselves feel better, even if temporarily. If you try to…
Take a questionnaire written last week and place it side by side with one written 20, 30 years ago. Chances are they will look identical – same logic; same skip patterns; same batteries and scales; same limitations – even though today’s questionnaire is most likely being programmed on the Web, with all the new question formats and controls Web surveys…
Focus groups are ubiquitous. In many marketers’ minds the phrase “focus group” is synonymous with the phrase “market research”. Why? Focus groups are easy to understand, easy to set up, fairly quick to turn around and, best of all, the results are almost always, if the moderator has any skills whatsoever, sufficiently vague to support any conclusion the client wants…
The Web is altering the landscape of business in many ways. One of those ways is in marketing research. Marketing research is a tool for businesses to gather vital information on which to base sometimes critical business decisions. One complaint with traditional marketing research is that the value of the information often isn’t worth what the research cost. Another complaint,…
Prior to founding MACRO, Mr. McCullough was the senior vice president for a leading international strategic consulting and design research firm. Before that, he was market research manager for a $300 million division of Levi Strauss & Company.
Mr. McCullough has spoken before the American Marketing Association, the Marketing Research Association and various universities on a wide range of marketing topics. He is a past board member of the American Marketing Association, San Francisco chapter, and has been quoted in Canadian Packaging Magazine. He has chaired and lectured at applied multivariate statistics seminars for several years and is a member of numerous professional associations.