Market Research Articles

I’m a history guy. At 22, I was teaching Western American history at San Jose State University. I read voraciously about the westward movement of the American frontier. I was fascinated following Lewis and Clark as they hiked across the United States to the Pacific Ocean after Thomas Jefferson pulled off the best real estate deal in America History – buying the 530,000,000 million acres of the American Midwest from France for $15,000,000 in 1803. Let me save you the…

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“It’s the economy stupid.” The iconic campaign slogan was created by James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign chairman in his successful ousting of George H. W. Bush in the 1992 presidential election. Bush’s popularity had soared to 90% in March of 1991, shortly after the invasion of Iraq. But by the Summer of 1992, with the country trying to emerge from a post war recession, a stunning reversal had taken place with a whopping 64% of the country disapproving of the…

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The definition of aficionado is: a person who is very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about an activity, subject, or pastime: aficionados of the finest wines. Synonyms include: connoisseur, expert, authority, specialist, pundit, enthusiast, devotee. There are pizza aficionados, hand gun aficionados, aficionados of bourbon, bottled water, daffodils, fine writing instruments, NFL quarterbacks, and just about any category or commodity you can think of. Me? I’m a fan of hand guns, daffodils and high-end roller ball pens. But as the definition includes someone who is “very knowledgeable” I couldn’t really call myself…

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  The Information Age has created its share of billionaires: Jeff Bezos ($130 B), Bill Gates ($90 B), Mark Zuckerberg ($71 B), Larry Ellison ($58.5B), Michael Dell ($22.7B,) to name a handful. And why not. They created a historic revolution in global communication and a titanic shift in commerce. I mean it wasn’t that long ago that the Pony Express, was carrying mail from St. Joseph Missouri to Sacramento (about 1,800 miles) at the blistering pace of 10 days from start…

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There is marketing magic in harnessing the power of a negative mindset. It was just such a mindset that Unilever (owner of the Dove brand) found when they conducted an enormous survey of 3,000 women in 10 countries and discovered that only 4% of those surveyed considered themselves beautiful. Those survey results became the basis for one of the most successful advertising campaigns in history and changed the social construct of what is considered beautiful. ‘By leveraging market research to…

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  The odds were 3 to 1 that Britain would remain in the EU before the Brexit vote: Odds makers showed 75% to stay, 25% to leave. The world was stunned with the outcome. But if the 3:1 odds for Brexit were stunning, consider the odds in August of 2015 that Donald Trump would become President of the United States - 25:1. I confess, I considered his candidacy a virtual impossibility when he first announced. The outcome of the 2016…

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