How to tell snake oil from white elephants from real innovation in market research
Ray PoynterVirtual Surveys, United Kingdom
INTRODUCTION
History is littered with examples of wonderful innovations side-by-side with mistakes, white elephants and frauds. In other disciplines the frauds, mistakes, and white elephants range from phrenology to the South Sea Bubble and are well understood. But, do we pay enough attention to our own mistakes in market research?
In opinion research, the 1930s saw the Literary Digestcrash in embarrassment when it got the Roosevelt/Landon election wrong, despite using a sample size of around two million –...