by Richard Jenkins | Jun 27, 2011 | Industry News and Trends
At the beginning of the year, I made the decision to not renew my membership in the Marketing Research and Information Association (MRIA). The MRIA is the professional organization in Canada for market researchers and it a typical professional organization. Six months...
by Richard Jenkins | Jan 6, 2011 | Industry News and Trends
Sometimes polls seem to get it wrong. The election result turns out differently than we expected. The product fails at launch despite assurances that it is a winner. The heralded policy proposal is met with scepticism when released publicly. Consider the story that...
by Richard Jenkins | Dec 24, 2010 | Industry News and Trends, Public Opinion, Survey methodology
If you are interested in the evolution of language then Google’s new little tool is a great way to see how the frequency of a word has changed over time. Using the archive of digitized books, it is now possible to see how often we used certain words (at least in the...
by Richard Jenkins | Jul 16, 2010 | Industry News and Trends
We often view the past through rose-coloured glasses, but it does seem like being a market researcher was easier in the past. To put it simply, it is harder to make money. While exacerbated by the global economic downturn in the past several years, the challenge has...
by Richard Jenkins | Jul 7, 2010 | Industry News and Trends
The future of market research will not just be determined by the data collection modes we will use. The future is not about telephone or online. It is about how we work and how we position ourselves. Size will matter but bigger won’t always be better. Several years...