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White Paper Library

White Paper Library

Feature Prioritization

TURF: Methods for Implementation

TURF stands for Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency. The analysis runs through every possible combination of products and records for each combination...

Westley Ritz, Cory Boyko
Asymmetry Analysis Feature Prioritization TURF

AI Research

The Case for Synthetic Data

This article was published in Quirk's Magazine - Nov/Dec 2025 issue; co-authored by Oded Netzer, Professor of Business at Columbia Business School The use of synthetic data has generated considerable heat (but not as much light) in the consumer insi...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Digital Twins & Personas Synthetic Data

Segmentation

Segmentation - Less Art, More Science, Please

Published in Sept/Oct 2023 Issue of Quirk's Media. “It’s part science and part art.” I suppose this phrase can be applied to many areas, but within traditional market research, it may as well be the unofficial slogan for segmentation analysi...

Westley Ritz | Vice President, Analytics
Collinearity Machine Learning Typing Tool

General Research

A How-to-Guide for Market, Brand and Advertising Tracking Studies

The reasons for conducting tracking research and the types commonly used. Published in May/June 2022 Issue of Quirk's Marketing Research Review Brand health, advertising, and market research tracking are still vital to the success of any business, ...

Elliot Savitzky | Senior Vice President
Tracking Studies

General Research

Sample Size Matters in Marketing Research

“Do I really need a sample size of 400? I was told 200 is enough.” Raise your hand if you’ve heard this one before. The Simple answer in marketing research sample size Yes, you do in fact need a sample size of 400 (or possibly more). Two sit...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Sample Size Statistical Sig

General Research

Less like Spock, More like Darwin

The subtitle of the recent book, The Scout Mindset (by Julia Galef) is “Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t.” It is based on the idea that there is a lot of uncertainty in the world and it is impossible to account for everything...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Hierarchical Bayesian Measuring Bias

General Research

Understanding, Mapping, and Disrupting the Digital Customer Journey

Introduction to Digital Customer Journey Mapping Evolving from traditional journey mapping that we discussed in the first paper on the customer journey, this journey has become more complex as the marketing world changed and as multiple options have...

Elliot Savitzky | Senior Vice President
Customer Journey

General Research

Understanding, Mapping, and Disrupting the Customer Journey: Traditional Journey Mapping

Introduction Today, consumers are asking for highly personalized experiences, which includes specific marketing and customer service efforts. To cite industry stats, according to Salesforce 80% of consumers now consider their experience with a com...

Elliot Savitzky | Senior Vice President
Customer Journey

General Research

Lessons from Malcolm Gladwell’s "Talking to Strangers"

“Malcolm Gladwell could probably make a pencil sharpener interesting…” Imagine what he can do with a topic far more interesting than pencil sharpeners – talking to strangers. Gladwell has made a career (in writing, and now in a podcast) of...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Text Analytics

Qual & Quant Integration

Lessons from The Black Swan - A Follow-up

But, the problem is in getting to those few outlier needles in a mass of hay. The argument then was that manual coding would likely be inadequate to the task on hand. Primarily, this is because manual coding focuses on categorizing comments into majo...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Qualitative Question Design Text Analytics

Satisfaction & Loyalty

An Alternative Method of Reporting Customer Satisfaction Scores

Though customer satisfaction evaluations are widely used, reporting of these scores has varied from one study to another. This is likely the result of each method’s advantages and disadvantages, as well as the personal preferences and habits of the...

Rajan Sambandam, George  Hausser
Attribute Evaluation Scale Conversion

Segmentation

Segmentation Success

Segmentation research can provide your organization with a unique and competitively advantageous perspective on the marketplace. In practice, however, such studies can involve significant time and effort, and what constitutes a “winning” solution...

Michael Sosnowski | Executive Vice President, TRC
Market Segments Question Design

Conjoint Analysis

Looking Back vs. Forward: When to Consider Conjoint over Key Driver Analysis

Collection and analysis of customer satisfaction data is a widespread practice in companies. What purpose does it serve?

Rajan Sambandam | President
Key Driver Analysis Regression Analysis Satisfaction

Product Development

Conjoint Analysis Primer: Why, What and How

Let’s say your company wants to launch a new product and your job is to understand how it should be designed – that is, you want to know what consumers will value.

Rajan Sambandam | President
Feature Prioritization

General Research

You May Get More than You Pay For

How often have you done surveys where open-ended questions soliciting new product/feature ideas have produced poor response? If your answer is “innumerable times,” then it is time to consider smart incentives.

Rajan Sambandam | President
Idea Generation Product Development

Satisfaction & Loyalty

Asymmetry Analysis

Before examining the question of asymmetry, we need to think about symmetry.

Rajan Sambandam | President
Asymmetry Analysis Key Driver Analysis Regression Analysis

Segmentation

How to Improve Your Segmentation with Max-Diff

When conducting segmentation analysis there are several issues to consider, not the least of which are the questions used for analysis.

Rajan Sambandam | President
Max-Diff Self-Organizing Maps Split-Sample Design

Conjoint Analysis

How to Determine Sample Size in Conjoint Studies

What is the right sample size for a conjoint analysis study? It’s a simple, ubiquitous question that doesn’t seem to have an easy answer.

Rajan Sambandam | President
Regression Analysis

Segmentation

Cluster Analysis for Segmentation Gets Complicated

Cluster analysis is widely used in segmentation studies for several reasons. First of all, it’s easy to use.

Rajan Sambandam | President
Cluster Analysis Collinearity Key Driver Analysis

General Research

Survey of Analysis Methods: Key Driver Analysis

Key driver analysis is a broad term used to cover a variety of analytical techniques.

Rajan Sambandam | President
Key Driver Analysis Regression Analysis

Feature Prioritization

Two-Dimensional Max-Diff (2DMD)

A common problem in research is prioritization of a list of items (features, messages, etc.). With only a handful of items a ranking exercise works nicely, though it doesn’t really provide information on the spacing between the ranks

Rajan Sambandam, Westley Ritz
Feature Prioritization Max-Diff Pricing Research Product Development

General Research

Show and Tell: Applying Behavioral Economics to Surveys

“What impact will this ad have on your purchase likelihood?” “Do you prefer to get a $10 bill credit, or two free movies?” “Do you find the current offer attractive, or this new one we are unveiling?” Have you asked these kinds o...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Monadic Design

Segmentation

7 Steps for Segmentation Success

You have a major segmentation project to execute and are beginning to panic...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Qualitative Question Design Typing Tool

Conjoint Analysis

Behavioral Conjoint: Measuring Impact of Conscious and Subconscious Factors on Choice

Imagine that you are a researcher for a coffee brand and you would like to know which of two ad treatments would be more effective for your brand.

Rajan Sambandam | President
Discrete Choice Conjoint Monadic Design

Feature Prioritization

A Dynamic Approach to Feature Prioritization

Have you had this problem? You need to measure preference for the features in your product/service but there are just so many of them it seems like an impossible task.

Rajan Sambandam, Westley Ritz, Pankaj Kumar, PhD
Feature Prioritization Max-Diff Product Development

Qualitative

Qualitative Data in Surveys: Lessons from The Black Swan

This essay is about qualitative data obtained from quantitative studies and how to analyze them. The thesis here is that the framework used to analyze such data is different from that used for directly obtained qualitative data from methods such as I...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Qual & Quant Integration

Segmentation

Database Scoring with Object-Based Segmentation

Segmentation studies in practical market research generally fall into two categories: those that are related to company databases and those that aren’t. The latter are often based on survey data alone and tend to primarily use attitudinal informati...

Rajan Sambandam, Westley Ritz
Market Segments

General Research

Situational Use of Data Weighting

The most important criterion in determining the validity of findings is the extent to which the data collected represents the actual population under study.

George  Hausser | Senior Analyst
Data Weighting

Feature Prioritization

Asymmetry in Product Features: Use of the Kano Method

Research in psychology and practical experience in marketing research suggest that product features are not always perceived to be symmetric.

Rajan Sambandam | President
Feature Prioritization KANO Method

Pricing Research

Monadic Price Testing vs Price Laddering

Which should I use, a Monadic design or a Price Laddering technique? It’s a practical question that comes up often in pricing research. With monadic price testing respondents are shown (or read) a single concept, with a single price, and asked abo...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Price Sensitivity Pricing Research

Product Development

New Product Development: Stages and Methods

The new product development process has the potential to be haphazard because of the inherent uncertainty in the process, as well as the myriad methods available for product development. Setting up an organizing framework to identify the stages in th...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Idea Generation KANO Method Max-Diff

Pricing Research

Product Configurator

Consider a person who wants to buy a personal computer. A simple way to do it would be to go to the website of a computer manufacturer and essentially "build" a computer. The firm provides the options for various components such as monitor size and C...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Conjoint Pricing Research Product Configurator

Conjoint Analysis

Understanding Choice in Banking: Use of Discrete Choice Conjoint Analysis

An important consideration for banks is how customers choose them for opening checking accounts. Given that checking accounts can often be the keystone of an entire relationship with a banking customer, the importance of this decision becomes even hi...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Discrete Choice Conjoint Product Development

General Research

Non-Response Bias in Survey Sampling

As market researchers, we use data gathered from surveys to make informed decisions and give recommendations to clients on ways to improve their sales and standing in the marketplace.

Westley Ritz | Vice President, Analytics
Measuring Bias Survey Design

Feature Prioritization

Identifying Feature Importance: A Comparison of Methods

Understanding what customers want is fundamental to the new product development process as well as to the process of keeping existing products fresh and relevant. To be successful in this area we need to be able to correctly identify what features ar...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Feature Prioritization Max-Diff Product Development

Product Development

Conjoint Analysis vs Self-Explicated Method: A Comparison

Preference measurement can be approached in two ways: with a compositional approach or a de-compositional approach. The former is a "bottom-up" approach where feature importance is first ascertained and then used to create product attractiveness scor...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Self-Explicated Method

Segmentation

Better Questions for Segmentation: Use of Max-Diff

When conducting segmentation analysis there are several issues to consider, not the least of which are the questions used for analysis. More than almost any other factor, the questions asked will influence the quality of the segmentation results. The...

Rajan Sambandam | President
Hierarchical Bayesian Max-Diff Pair-Wise Comparison

Segmentation

Survey of Analysis Method: Segmentation Analysis

Segmentation analysis has been a part of marketing research for decades. It continues to be useful in a variety of different situations, even when the primary objective of the study is not segmentation.

Rajan Sambandam | President
Cluster Analysis Collinearity Market Segments Self-Organizing Maps

Brand Research

The Brand Insulation Effect: Toyota Customers Remain Loyal in the Face of a Recall

Despite its recall trouble since last October, Toyota owners remain loyal to the brand, our authors' research discovered. Toyota steers clear of reputation damage.

Rajan Sambandam, Utpal Dholakia, Vikas Mittal, Oded Netzer
Satisfaction Survey Design

General Research

Scale Conversions

A considerable amount of customer satisfaction data is collected using tracking studies. While continuity is particularly important in tracking studies, sometimes situations arise where major changes are necessitated.

Rajan Sambandam | President
Scale Conversion

General Research

The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Significance

Researchers often misuse and abuse the concept of significance. They tend to associate statistical significance with the magnitude of the result.

Vikas Mittal, Patrick Baldasare
Statistical Sig

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