Author Archives: Zontziry (Z) Johnson

About Zontziry (Z) Johnson

Z's passion is learning about and sharing best practices and new trends in market research (MR), from writing the best questionnaire possible to crafting a story that will resonate with stakeholders. Follow her musings on the MR industry on Twitter (@zontziry).

Market research tips: topline reports

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I recently had the opportunity to work on and present a topline report. After all my writing and reading about storytelling in the market research field, I found myself really having to reconcile finding and telling a story for a tracker, instead of just presenting data. To add to that, I was doing my best to align with a sister… Read more »

Audience research: some approaches and lessons learned

I had the opportunity to attend a conference where I was tasked with learning about a particular subset of the audience attending said conference. To be fair, I was to gain what I could, not come back with a full audience profile and associated personas. However, it was still a daunting task. I thought I’d try a few approaches to… Read more »

Wait….I thought YOU were the one…?

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I recently learned in a staff meeting that the marketing research team was meeting with a group of their clients, discussing the plans for the coming year. One of the big questions for one of the trackers: are we even measuring the right metric any more? I don’t know the details of what happened, except that, at one point, the… Read more »

Everything is awesome (so use it all)

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Scenario: client is meeting with market research professionals. “I have this website that I think is posing issues to our visitors. I want to figure out what’s working and what isn’t. Can we do a survey? That’s what I have budget for…” Reaction #1: Market research professional grumbles internally about lack of budgets these days and wonders what good a… Read more »

Market research self-reflection

In the past year, two main items have come forward that has caused me, at least, to step back and reflect a bit on the market research industry as a whole. The first item: an article about reproducing psychology studies and how those replicated studies produced different results than the originals. The second item: an article about a bug in… Read more »

Want more innovation? Ask the younger crowd.

One of the topics I’ve seen recently on the market research blogosphere has to do with innovation in our industry. I think this question of how to continue to innovate isn’t a new question, but the answer can often feel elusive. When I worked at a national laboratory years ago, one of the concerns that often surfaced was that of… Read more »

Give them conferences, too!

Last year, Annie Pettit wrote a blog post that, frankly, has been on my mind ever since. The post was titled simply, “Where are the millennials of market research?” Depending on the date range for millennials being used, I’m either GenX or I’m a millennial. I’m also in a somewhat senior role with my company. This has caused me to… Read more »

Market research lessons from cycling

The cyclist journeys home The story begins with a traveler cycling home from work. All the way, the cyclist kept being passed by other cyclists, and couldn’t help but wonder, “I’m exerting so much effort, but I keep getting passed! I know I’m slower than most, but this is starting to feel silly.” The cyclist then did a quick analysis… Read more »

MRBingo!

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I watched a YouTube video recently of business terms that are often heard (and used) in the workplace. They included such classics as, “B to B,” “Is that in your wheelhouse?”, and “Let’s take that offline.” It made me think about some of the terms that one hears during market research meetings. So, I present to you, Market Research Bingo…. Read more »

Changing surveys one step at a time…

The market research industry is faced with a lot of change lately. From more people doing it themselves to increased telemetry availability to the increase in the number of people who are taking (or attempting to take) every survey on mobile, it can sometimes feel overwhelming to keep up. I read an article today about applying the kaizen principle to… Read more »