Market Research Articles

Pity the poor almond. One of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet – heart healthy, protein dense, cholesterol lowering, and it is being sabotaged by its own teammates. Sabotaged? Let me explain. The Almond Board of California (ABC) is the big Kahuna in the Almond world. Why? Because California produces 100% of the U.S. commercial almond crop and 80% of the world production. It is California’s #1 agricultural export – this in a state that produces a third…

I walked out of the entrance to the hotel, down the steps to the stretch limo waiting for me at the curb that Fox had sent. I was in town to appear on Fox and Friends, the highest rated morning cable news station in the country, to promote my book on the Global Financial Crisis. I bent over to get into the back seat of the limo and the seam on the back of my slacks split wide open from…

Listen is a song from the 2006 movie Dreamgirls. It is sung with mesmerizing beauty by Beyoncé—who stars in the film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4gimHC7fKs At one point the lyrics call on Jamie Fox, Beyoncé’s mentor and later controlling husband, to Listen.  She’s had enough. Oh the time has come for my dreams to be heard They will not be pushed aside and turned Into your own, all 'cause you won't listen It may be literary heresy to bridge from the artistic splendor of that song to…

Recently two different clients of mine mentioned that they had previously surveyed a public and had gotten a positive response to a potential new product offering. These were different companies, in wildly different industry sectors, but in each case the owner had come up with an idea for a new product, surveyed his customers who had responded positively—Yes, they wanted such a product. In both cases, the company created the product, offered it for sale, and…customers stayed away in droves.…

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…

“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…