Both principals of our Madison marketing agency have graduate training in statistics and research, and so our methodologies are based upon mainstream psychosocial and anthropological1 theories that are supported by university research.
Primary methodologies include:
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Secondary methodologies include:
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1Be wary of depending too much on focus groups
Controlled experiments and anecdotal data show that how people say they act in a particular situation is very often different from the way they actually behave. This is because people habituate behavior so that it becomes automatic.
For example, ask a sample of technicians how they go about their work, and they can only tell you what they think they do. But upon observation, it is unlikely that their actual time-motion behaviors will resemble what they report.
Thus, designing a product or process for the technicians merely around their self-reported behavior is dangerous, because what they think they want might not be what they actually need—and thus something that will fail in the marketplace.