“All models are wrong, some models are useful.”  - George Box

The flaw of averages

Market research reports are generally packed full of average scores and comparisons of means, and not often enough with distributions and extremes.  In the real (business) world this is a mistake as, in the words of Sam Savage’s (f)law of averages, ‘plans based on average assumptions are wrong on average’.  To put this another way, errors occur in the real world when we replace uncertain numbers by single (or simple) averages. Read more »

“There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.”  - W.C. Fields

Fundamentally flawed

In What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the effects of the fundamental attribution error (FAE) in several different articles.  For example, in one chapter he discusses the Challenger disaster and the impossibility of having complete control of complex technologies and systems, arguing that attempts to find causes and scapegoats in such situations are futile.  Without acknowledging the FAE, his argument in the chapter touches on the desire of all of us to attribute outcomes, and especially bad outcomes, to specific traits of the people involved rather than the situation they are in. Read more »

The transformation of market research

Last week I spent a great two days taking part in the MRSS Asia Research Conference (declaration: I had also been involved in it’s organisation).  On the first day, more than twenty young (and occasionally old) researchers took part in two stimulating workshops exploring research in the facebook age, and the busy executive’s guide to social media.  On the second day of the conference, 10 world class speakers spoke on a range of topics connected to the future of research in Asia.

My key take aways fall into four areas: the importance of emotions, the power of measuring real behaviours, the value of contextualising survey questions and the reality of Asia’s ageing population (surprisingly I’ve come back to affect, behaviour and context again!). Read more »

Learning the research alphabet

There are clear lessons for market research (and marketing which I will explore in separate posts) from the importance of affect, behaviour and context in understanding ourselves and our customers.  I am writing this listening to Bill Evans and Tony Bennett, so it seems appropriate to argue that research needs to become more VOCAL. Read more »