I didn’t plan to have a career in market research when I completed my honours degree in Psychology back in 1988. In fact, I rather fancied myself as a Clinical Psychologist and this certainly was where my interest and direction lay. I knew of market and social research, but didn’t really have it connected to the study of psychology.
Then following an arduous research year that was honours, I decided to have a 12-month break in the workforce and found myself employed in public policy as a research officer. It was here that I found myself on a collision course with the market research industry that would change my career direction forever.
To cut a long story short, I was working on a white paper for the NSW Government at the time, part of which involved “Community Consultation” in the shape of research – market research. Without much experience with the industry, we decided to commission the rather well-known polling company, Newspoll Market Research, for the project. We worked well together and I really enjoyed the pace of the research and being exposed to all the industry knowledge regarding data collection and analysis.
One thing that immediately stuck in my mind was the volume of data. As psychologists we were always data poor, so much so that we had to rely on first-year university students’ “mandatory” volunteering as respondents to get any data at all. Suddenly I was looking at a data set of over n=1,000 respondents across a number of areas of interest.
Following this project, Newspoll offered me a job as an analyst and the rest is history – four years with Newspoll before opening my own start-up, D&M Research, which will be celebrating its 28th year in business in 2022.
So what of that Psychology degree? Where does it fit into the role of market and social researcher? Is it useful and how do I use it? As it turns out, although I didn’t plan to use my Psychology degree to be a market researcher, it actually turned out to be very useful and, in many ways, makes me a much better researcher.
Although the theory of psychology is useful, it is the toolbox my study of psychology provided me that proved to be essential. Learning to be a psychologist has as its foundation the teaching and mastering of the research technique. Every psychology graduate can tell you a story or two about “rats and stats”. Although there is a particular emphasis on the “experimental method” as a way of advancing knowledge – state a null hypothesis, have an alternate hypothesis and prove one right or wrong via the use or an experimental and control group – the basics of good research method are unavoidably obtained and, in my case at least, retained.
My psychology toolbox
I see my psychology training as the genesis of a toolbox that has served me well for over 25 years as a practitioner. Let’s look at some of these tools below.
Sampling theory
People talk about random samples but do they really understand the difference between a true probability sample (random) and a purposive sample (convenience)? More importantly, do they really know how central limit theorem makes it possible to infer the results from a probability sample to an entire population? Well, thanks to psychology, I do, and I think this makes psychology-trained researchers better researchers.
For example, I also know that for large populations (over 10,000) there is not real direct link between sample size and population size, despite what you would intuitively think. That is, a sample of n=1,000 is about the same accuracy for a population of 20,000 as it is for 200,000. (It’s actually the number of random points and the sample frame that’s matters – not the population size.)
Order effects
Psychology tells us that the order that things are presented to us can affect how we respond to them. Take the primacy/recency effect (or serial position effect) which shows that we are more likely to remember the first and last things presented from a list of many. As a result, it’s important to distribute the bias evenly over every possible response option. Psychology gave us the common practice of rotating and randomising responses. We don’t eliminate the bias; we just distribute it more evenly.
Inferential statistics
A strong understanding of how inferential statistics work and how statistical differences are borne from samples is crucial to being an effective market researcher. It’s unusual to be in a debrief presentation without a client asking, “Is that significant?” To really answer this question accurately requires not only an understanding of central limit theorem, but also the assumptions associated with “type I” error rates and how these can be easily violated in an analysis. Again, psychology provides a sound grounding in both of these areas and better equips a researcher to understand whether a finding is real (and therefore should be acted on) versus a statistical aberration. Unfortunately, we see too often these abused by some operators who can easily access the software to run analytical procedures, but may not understand the assumptions that are being violated in the process.
Questionnaire and research design
And, of course, psychology has its roots in good research and questionnaire design techniques. Knowing how to structure a questionnaire, knowing about quotas and stratified samples, data weighting, avoiding leading questions, having balanced scales, unfolding responses, masked questions, then techniques such as cognitive response analysis… the list goes on and on.
There is much more I owe as a market research practitioner to my Psychology training, much more than could be articulated in a short-form article such as this, but it’s a great reminder of the importance of mastering the fundamentals to be an accomplished expert in any field.
Psychology in practice
Finally, I would like to leave you with perhaps one of my own favourite projects which used a classic psychology method of experimental design. The study was a runner-up in the Research Effectiveness Awards of 2010 and has been extensively used by the client company as sales collateral of all things.
Client: Phone Names (now 1300 Australia)
The need for research
Phone Names claimed that a phone name was easier to remember than a phone number because a customer simply dialled the name of the company they were looking for using the letter on their telephone keypad, e.g. 1300 FOXTEL, instead of 1300 349 835. Although this claim appeared to have face validity, it had never really been tested and quantified in a controlled research environment.
The method
Phone Names commissioned us to test the veracity of this central claim, using an experimental matched-sample approach in an advertising setting. One sample saw the phone name, and the other the phone number, in a clutter reel from which they were later tested for “number” recall.
The result
We ultimately demonstrated consumer preference for phone names over phone numbers, with research finding phone names to be at least 5 times more memorable than phone numbers. After incorporating the results into sales presentations, sales conversion rates increased from 8 per cent to over 20 per cent.
“The best ad for our company’s product and services is the D&M Research report. Rather than pull out the graph and stats that serve us best and put them in a fancy brochures – we simply hand the entire D&M report to potential client: the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Unusual concept for advertising but we find it works.” – Jack Singleton of Phone Names
Wrapping it up
Unlike many degrees, not a day goes by where I don’t draw on the fundamentals learned in those 5 years of study towards my honours degree in Psychology. I consider myself lucky in that I found the perfect home to use and build on that knowledge and to ultimately bring better decision making to our clients – thanks to psychology.