Expert: Chris Hawkes - 8/12/2008

Question
Research also excludes unlisted firms.
1 How the exclusion of unlisted companies will have impact on the nature of their research sample?
2 or would the exclusion of unlisted firms will have "NO" impact on the nature of their research sample?


Answer
Hello John,

There's no such thing as market research that doesn't have some sort of bias, and most market research methodologies would be affected if they only include companies that are listed in some sort of list.   The best way to understand how significant this bias would be to understand how many companies choose not to be listed in whatever source you intend to use.    If the number is 5% then it may not be a big deal, if the number is 50% then it could be significant.   It would also be helpful to know why companies choose to be unlisted - are they in a certain industry, or are they smaller companies, or larger companies.

Does that help at all?   If not, send me another message with some more details and I'll try again.

Chris