Isn't it time we stopped treating our customers like numbers?

Philip Talmage

Argues that market research, with the technology now at its disposal, should look at the methods of `relationship marketing' as practised increasingly in retailing, and apply these ideas to respondents.

Isn't it time we stopped treating our customers like numbers?

Philip Talmage, Commercial Union, suggests that market research should learn some lessons from relationship marketing, and vice versa

Philip Talmage

Quantitative researchers have always been proud of their ability to reduce everything to numbers, whether straightforward behavioural data, or attitudes, feelings and opinions. We do not ask people to tell us in their own words what they think. Instead, we present batteries of attitudinal scales or multiple-choice associative questions - techniques developed before 1960 so that large-scale surveys could be carried out economically using punched-card data processing.

Within the market...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands