Modern marketing science offers us the chance to see a little more clearly, dig a little deeper, forecast a little more accurately. In some cases, it’s not a little. It’s a lot. We have to understand, however, how the data will be used prior to writing the questionnaire so we can collect data appropriate for the subsequent analysis. Take a…
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…
This paper, to my mind, epitomizes the Sawtooth Software Conference: it has real-world applicability, it is thorough and rigorous in its analysis and it is presented in such a straightforward and clear manner that it is accessible to almost any reader. It is a useful and interesting paper that raises many important issues. The paper discusses two main topics: Sources…
Choice-based Conjoint is the most often used method of conjoint analysis among today’s practitioners. In commercial studies, practitioners frequently find it necessary to design complex choice experiments in order to accurately reflect the marketplace in which the client’s product resides. The purpose of this paper is to compare the performance of several HB models and LCC models in the practical…
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…
Conjoint Studies are renowned for yielding a great deal of strategic insight. In a single conjoint study, one can address price optimized relative to profit, revenues, unit sales or market share, optimal product feature set, cannibalization patterns, market response to competitor actions or new product introductions, dollar value of brand equity and many other issues. However, conjoint studies capable of…
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…
ImageQ© is a unique approach to consumer segmentation which offers several advantages over other methods: Consumers are grouped together based not on how each of them perceive various brands but rather on which brand imagery attributes are most important to their individual purchase decisions The most important brand perceptions (as well as the least important) are clearly identified for each…
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…
Max/Diff has been touted as the savior of ratings data, a miracle cure to the common monadic scale. It’s appealing to our religious belief that all problems will eventually be solved by technology. It’s appealing to our intellectual sense because it’s complicated. And it’s appealing to our sense of justice because we all know that ratings scales simply do a…
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.