AboutChris Hawkes Expertise I can help people to understand whether or not market research might help them address the
business decisions that they are facing. I can also help them consider the different types of
research that might be appropriate in their situation, and can help them estimate the costs of
the different methdologies, and the pros and cons of each approach.
Experience I've worked in a Fortune 500 company, as a market researcher for the last 8 years. I've managed dozens of qualitative and quantitative market research. I've conducted extensive market research in the US, and in over 20 other countries around the world as well.
Organizations American Marketing Association
Publications MarketResearch101.com and EzineArticles.
Education/Credentials I have a degree in Finance, which I realy haven't ever used, except to try to understand how my mortgage payments were calculated.
Expert: Chris Hawkes Date: 5/6/2008 Subject: Marketing data analyzing
Question QUESTION: Hi
I have a questionnaire with demographic data to study the customer behavior, but now I feel so confused to summarize and analysis those data, can you please give me a hint?!
ANSWER: Hello Sara,
I should first mention that I'm still a little bit jet-lagged from a difficult research study that I conducted in Europe last week - so if I'm unclear on any of this, I apologize. I'd be happy to explain something again, as I'm getting back to normal quickly now.
Would I be correct to assume that you have a statistical software package such as SAS or SPSS? That's the place to begin your analysis (not the only option - but the easiest way to get it started).
Not knowing what questions you've asked, what your theories were going into this (or if it was truly a first pass exploration of a new market) and what you're looking for specifically, it's a little bit hard to answer, so I'll give you some tips on the general approach.
The first thing that I do when analyzing a data set is to look for anything that stands out as being especially unique about your customers (or the customers in a general market if that's how you set up the study). I look for things like company sizes, vertical or horizontal markets that they might belong to, any attitudinal questions that you might have asked. In general I go through the question set that has been asked and look for anything that might stick out as being unique, uncommon in some way, or that might call for some deeper analysis because it's confusing to me, or stands out at being an uncommon response from the population at large.
Then I start to put together some theories and go back to the original team and run my theories by them to see if they mesh with the common wisdom about that group (or maybe just the theories that they had going into the study. I also like to ask what caused them to include certain questions and exclude other potential questions that I might have included - just to drill more deeply into the mindset going into the study - to see if there is information to prove or disprove any of the original theories (this portion is a little bit different if it was truly exploratory.
Then I'll ask a number of questions about how the study was conducted, when it was conducted, what the screening criteria were, and where the sample was obtained and what we know about that process. (again looking for clues to what sorts of biases are probably built into the study (there is no research without bias - it's simply important to understand those biases and include them in the report where appropriate.
Then I ask about the audience who ultimately needs to see the results and ask about their expectation for how they'd like to see the results and how they might want them presented, and I start formulating theories and matching them with the theories of the person/people who orignally commissioned the study.
Let me know how much help this is, and if you would like to have a live discussion about it. Or if you can give me more details that would help me understand any of the points that I've covered above.
Regards,
Chris Hawkes
MarketResearch101.com
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Dear Chris
Thanks for your information, I guess I should explain more about my current status.
I am working on different retailing system in two different countries and the impact of these different retailing system in purchasing behavior of the customers. I am also studying some factors like sex, age, education and income to know about customer perception of the food that they are usually taking. I have prepared a questionnaire and I am collecting the data, now that I have receive some information I got confused to summarize those data in a software like SPSS and the good method to analysis them and find the relation between those data. (regression,...)
in this stage I need help. Now I have started reviewing SPSS because it has been a long time since I haven't work with that. Can you please help me in this issue?!
Cheers
Sara
Sarahjelveh@gmail.com
Answer Hell Sara,
Data analysis is a skill that is not always straight-forward. Depending on what types of questions were asked it may require higher level analysis. There are times when basic research can be analyzed by Excel also (SPSS is a complex software and you need to know what type of analysis needs to be done or you can get answers that don't make any sense.
If you want me to take a look at your research results you can send me the data-set and I can give you an estimate of how much it would cost for me to perform the analysis.
Chris Hawkes
chawkes@marketresearch101.com
www.MarketResearch101.com
