Marketing in Real Life

Our friends at Greenfield Online (Keith Price specifically) start to examine the issue of data quality in their latest newsletter. Two key things: The first is that it seems that Keith believes as the issues around cheating respondents has been a bit overstated (I agree). The second is that a bad survey will always deliver bad results. That's the issue that drives us at Invoke - creating a participant experience that delivers great insights. A simple rule: Never write or test a survey that ends with you asking "who would take this?" Here's a snippet of the article ( click to read the whole thing): Enter 2007. In the US, online surveys have reached high market penetration, and for most survey respondents, taking an online survey is no longer a "new" activity. As an industry we've gone from questioning under-participation of respondents, to questioning over-participation. We continue to look into respondents that attempt to cheat or game the system to p...

Last week Invoke Solutions, with help from their partners Added-Value and Greenfield Online, conducted an interactive quali-quant research session with over 250 adults about “ethical marketing,” green consumption, and its actual impact on purchase decisions. This 60-minute session is part of Invoke’s monthly Invoke Live research program. Invoke found that over 87% of participants claimed that it was very or somewhat important to purchase from brands that are committed to acting socially and/or environmentally responsible. 78% claimed to have taken active steps to change their behavior to be “a more responsible consumer.” Still, there was a dose of reality to the responses. “My primary responsibility is to my family,” said one participant. “I have always tried to find the best cost value and best nutritional value of whatever I purchase. If it happens to also be a "green" company or container or whatever, then all the better. But my primary responsibility is to my family, beca...

Last week Invoke Solutions engaged participants in a discussion of green issues and their role in the upcoming election. The group was split politically between Democrats (43%), Republicans (34%) and Independents (23%). Across the board people agreed that environmental issues were important but that they would not be the driving force in who they vote for. In fact only 34% would definitely not vote for a candidate that they disagreed with on environmental issues. In the words of one participant, “There are other issues that I find more important, but environmental issues could get my vote if two candidates were the same on everything else.” Participants named the three most important issues to them in the upcoming election with the economy being by far the most important (50% ranked it first). The full rankings were 1) Economy; 2) Healthcare; 3) Foreign policy; 4) Immigration; 5) Homeland security; 6) Taxes; 7) Education; 8) Social Security; 9) Climate change; 10) Energy policy; 11) Cu...