From the arm of my chair I commented on the article:

“One of the first, and definitely not the last example of a pigovian tax. Essentially, an attempt to offset the cost of goods that have negative externalities – with taxes. Unfortunately, this one was poorly marketed but that doesn’t mean it’s any less necessary.”

The responses to which, as you can see on the page itself (link below), were quite negative and riddled with a mixture of political punditry. But what I can say for the responses is that it did get me thinking.

“Wether you pay the tax upfront when you buy the item, or you pay the tax afterwards through your provincial/property taxes when the local municipal dump is overflowing with toxic waste is somewhat less than relevant.

The real cost of some of our purchases, is higher than the price tag we see on the shelf for many of these goods. Sure you’re covering (maybe) some of the true economic cost of production, but what about disposal?

It’s not a socialist experiment. It’s a reality that we all have to come to grips with. Especially in a day and age where environmentalism is fashionable for politicians. Just because the implementation (haha, marketing) was wrong doesn’t mean that taxes like this are going to go away or stop coming.

Actually, I think retailers are doing those who give a damn a favor by showing consumers which products have a cost beyond what they’re paying. Perhaps it could even cause a reduction in toxic waste as consumers turn to substitutes in the face of increasing prices or even simple awareness.

It’s easy to focus on the underlying politics (Lib vs. Con vs. NDP vs. The World) and not the economics (econutics?). But it leaves one ignorant of the the big picture – you pay for it in the end either way wether it’s hidden in your lump of provincial tax payments while you’re unaware or it’s in your face on the bill telling you which products create toxic waste.”

I didn’t realize the national post had such an intensely anti-liberal readership, even the article itself is a bit suggestive with Lisa MacLoed’s statement as a conclusion. Is it that close to election time already?

Note: I bought your book, Greg, and it really is the best economics book out there. A nice balance between Keynesian and Classical

The question posed to the group of 5 Bloggers this month was: “The survey monkey conundrum:  the upsides, downsides and opportunities for researchers that access to self survey tools creates.” Links to my fellow bloggers Annie Pettit¹, Joel Rubinson², Josh Mendelsohn³ and Bernie Malinoff⁴ can be found below.

If a company is using DIY survey tools, I see it as an opportunity. It provides evidence that the company understands the value that market research can bring to an organization. Many market researchers, too quickly, frown upon the use of DIY Survey tools and I feel that they do so simply because it cuts them out of the loop. Survey’s have been around a lot longer than market research professionals. A simple show of hands, for example, has been around longer than the word research. No one has ever argued against a show of hands and it is likely the most frequently run survey on the planet.

Personally, I’ve never walked into a company that is running their own, homegrown, survey(s). What I have run into are a number of companies that I wish had done some kind of rudimentary survey before making a decision. Nevertheless, I do have a few concerns that I would say make hiring a research professional in the best interest of businesses large or small.

Third party impartiality being the first. One of the biggest benefits of using a research supplier is that your customers, employees, stakeholders, potentials, etc. are not talking to you. They are talking about you. Data gathered from individuals when they know the sponsor of the survey is generally very different from data gathered from individuals when they don’t know the sponsor of the survey. A good example would be an employee satisfaction study, where my experience has led me to beleive that most of the real value comes not from the basic benchmarks but from the verbatim data that can be collected. How likely do you think your employees would be to speak or write  their minds if they knew the boss was able to see it associated with their names?

The next concern is related to survey design. If you have not been trained to write surveys you will end up with poorly written questions. Even a poorly written question can provide moderately accurate data for a business decision. But it can be completely in-accurate if it contains biased questions, double-barreled questions, or questions that people won’t want to answer knowing who the information is going back to.

Last on my list of concerns is sampling methodology.  Research professionals have already convinced the biggest companies in the world that sampling methodology doesn’t matter anymore (taking a jab at online panels, I know, they’re already being battered). But that doesn’t mean that a business will be able to get it right without help.

If you are a company planning on using your own DIY survey, I say go ahead. But realize that you are likely to miss out on the expertise and impartiality that research professionals bring to the table.

The question posed to the group of 5 Bloggers this month was: “Mobile surveys – For/Against, Pros/Cons, Right Situations/Wrong Situations?” Links to my fellow bloggers Annie Pettit¹, Joel Rubinson², Josh Mendelsohn³ and Bernie Malinoff⁴ can be found below.

I feel quite strongly that mobile surveys should never attempt to replace conventional survey methodology. The range of device capabilities, penetration of mobile in the population, and the small screen sizes allow only very clear and concise questions – something that researchers aren’t very good at to begin with. The amount of time required to finish a survey and the relatively low penetration makes using a cellphone cost prohibitive for the respondent and a logistical nightmare for researchers to even attempt to compensate them for their time. However, in some countries where cellphone penetration is quite high and “practically free”, as in unlimited, the opportunity to use this method to deliver a survey is perhaps more realistic.

Take South Korea for example, in a recent survey 30 percent of the population reported accessing the internet on a mobile device. A friend of mine who once lived in South Korea, used to get a kick out of watching grandmothers in the subway send txt messages like they were teenagers. Until this kind of saturation occurs and device capabilities streamline I think researchers will do nothing but waste time, money and effort with trying to pull data. However, that does not ignore the opportunity to create a push for information.

Twitter is a great example of consumer push. Consumers update their status with 160 characters and talk about brands they use, movies that they see, and identify what they care about in regards to current events. This is where I feel the future sits at the interface between market research and mobile devices. If we can convince consumers to share their immediate perceptions with us, both positively and negatively it could open up an entire realm of data that could be used in service environments to create valuable feedback loops and with products to understand what consumers despise and are delighted by. Text analysis is a field that has been in the limelight for the last few years and will be for the on-going future as companies try to develop methods for sifting through the wealth of data that is available.

How does this relate to mobile-surveys? There are literally millions of panelists out there, if panel companies could convince their panelists to link mobile devices to their accounts and share 160 characters with them every time they liked or disliked a product or service the data stream could be amazing.

1 topic 5 blogs: On the 15th (or very near to it!) of every month 5 market researchers post a short opinion piece on a predefined topic that is relevant to the market research sphere. The researchers: Annie Pettit¹, Bernie Malinoff², Josh Mendelsohn³, Joel Rubinson⁴ and myself. Links to their posts on the topic follow this article.

The face of research has changed and so must our methodology. We are no longer living in an age where we need to ask questions face to face or fill out paper based surveys. Online surveys have provided us with a fast and somewhat interactive medium to gather opinions. With the advent of new media, survey companies are beginning to jump on the band wagon with all manner of ways for respondents to answer questions through fancy flash applications and virtual environments designed to extract an understanding of respondents preference. With new technology comes the ability to ask questions in a manner that changes not only the dynamic but also the level of engagement that respondents can have with surveys. The danger, is the lack of understanding of how these new media questions change responses in comparison to conventional question types.

My immediate thought is: who cares. I place more value on data received from a respondent that is engaged than I do a respondent who feels like a drone clicking his or her mouse. There is a lot of research out there that speaks to the idea that engagement in a topic leads to higher participation rates and higher quality data. Does it not follow the same logic that even with less engaging topics engaging survey design could lead to increases in participation and data quality? I believe that too many companies hold on to survey questions that don’t get the answers that they’re actually looking for. This is especially true for tracking studies. Granted the idea of a tracking study suggests that all remains equal with the exception of time, however, things change and so should surveys. You can’t continue to ask the question the wrong way just because you’ve always done it that way.

Let’s think about it from the respondents perspective. Would you prefer clicking in a matrix to provide your scaled opinion of a brand or would you prefer to be able to see a picture of a shelf and reach out to grab your product or service of choice? I would choose the later. I believe that future questions about brands and packaging will find a home in the realm of implicit association tests (at least for CPG research). Take the product shelf for example. I would prefer to know how long it took n=1000 to choose different products then I would their rating of the product.

In response to an article on ABC News: The Numbers¹

It’s not a problem that is going away anytime soon. Panel companies have an incentive to continue using less than precise and less than accurate samples, defined by two-words: gross margin.

The shear volume of online research done on 3p panels, relegates any ability to go back to the old methods of random sampling. As the costs associated are ridiculous and the availability of truly random sample scarce.

While I do not agree that all research done on 3p Panels is totally invalidated by this fact, we do think that it carries inherent flaws. The proverb “better, cheaper, faster – choose two” fits quite well here, with “cheaper and faster” being the only options available.

If I were a PnG or a Unilever, I might be willing to accept the value-proposition: it’s less accurate and precise but it’s also significantly less expensive. When you have 1000’s of products to test and track, I imagine that value proposition remains agreeable. Sometimes, being close is enough (don’t quote me on that)

RE: The Stanford Study, 5 years ago, they ran 9 of the same survey, using two separate methodologies (CATI and Online), different incentives, at different times of the year, with different types of sampling methodology, quotas and no quotas, and they received significantly different responses, and response rates.

Amazing, they changed almost everything and almost everything changed.