Question

Topic: Research/Metrics

Market Research Question

Posted by Anonymous on 10/11/2006 at 5:55 AM ET 250 Points
If a market researcher conducts an opnion poll for his client, the poll is said to be ineffective.

Can you help me understand why opinion polls are an ineffective measure with respect to market research?
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  • Posted by Levon on 10/11/2006 at 6:07 AM Member
    Maybe because opinion polls don't go to the heart of what the research is suppose to conduct. Usually an opinion poll is a one off question (e.g. USA Today Opinion poll) -- you need multiple variables to look at (e.g. Single working mothers with 2 or more kids who voted Republican last year strongly liked our product).
  • Posted on 10/11/2006 at 6:37 AM Member
    Also typically Opinion Polls do not straddle all demographics. They are typically through mobile sms, internet clicks etc. So the people who respond to these unidirectional questions are also of a certain demographic and psychographic and not across all- which an opinion poll shd reflect.
    Not chosen few- but vast majority.
  • Posted by kannanveeraiah on 10/11/2006 at 7:49 AM Member
    Dear,

    Opinion Polls are conducted to find out people's opinion on a particular issue or to find out which way they are going to vote in an election.

    Generally the market research is helpful and relevant when the methodology is sound, sampling is accurate, well represented and larger enough and there are not great changes in the situation that affects the people's decision and there are no biases.

    Usually, great change in technology and changes in the relevance of the issue would greatly affect the outcome of any research.

    Further, many a so called Opinion Polls were conducted by the relevant interest groups just to influence the voter's decision.

    Further, particularly in between the conduction of such opinion polls and the actual voting, the voters are greatly influenced by parties’ conduct or non-conduct. Further, many a participants in the opinion polls do not participate in actual polls. There are many reasons.

    If only we could have the relevant controls in place on all the influencing factors when data collection occurs and actual happening of the event our prediction would be highly accurate.

    Best Wishes,

    kannan
  • Posted by Frank Hurtte on 10/11/2006 at 10:12 AM Accepted
    often, the people being polled really don't completely understand what they want or need. I have seen this to be particuarly true in the Automation field where the questions are sent to the appliers of technology (ie engineers) rather than the users of technology (ie production managers, quality managers, and plant managers). This creates false information that is biased based on the work load of the responder.
  • Posted by BJC on 10/12/2006 at 4:59 PM Accepted
    To answer your 2nd question, I believe that the information you gather would be enough to get a "temperature" on today's thought but not make a strategic decision. You have to be careful on what you would use the answers for because you don't want to change product direction without a full-blown survey but to add to an existing product line with a similar item, it may help validate other research you've done.

    We utilize a Question of the Day. It is 1 question to get our customers' opinion on a product or service. We try to get about 250 answers to give us an idea of what the customers are thinking at this point in time. We also use it to find out what publications they read so we can determine if we're on the right path in our advertising choices.

    Whatever question you ask or reason for asking it, remember the only that that really tells you what the customer wants is the sale. You listened, they said they wanted it but now are they willing to buy it...? I have not yet found anything that can definitely tell me if a customer will definitely buy an item. If anybody every figures that out, they'd be very wealthy.

    Good luck!
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