We have resisted the trend toward standardization of analytical approaches. We won’t try to sell you an out-of-the-box research technique that doesn’t fit your problem. And we don’t rely on software to do the thinking for us.

Our central competence is in understanding the specific analytical procedures that underlie popular techniques like conjoint analysis and segmentation research. We apply these basic tools flexibly and appropriately to provide you with the information you need to make your best marketing decisions.

A number of our analysts are trained as social scientists and are, thus, familiar with the basics of quantitative analysis. We maintain competence in these areas through active participation in research conferences and contact with academic researchers.

Most marketing issues can be broken down into a small set of essential problems, each coinciding with a specific set of analytical techniques:

• Classification: classification techniques are used to segment markets, one of the central tasks of marketing. They are also used to make segmentation schemes useful, by allowing you to classify respondents into segments. Classification techniques include clustering, CHAID, CART, and discriminant analysis.
• Prediction: the ability to accurately predict behavior not only makes you more confident about decisions, but also implies an understanding of the processes at work. Regression in all its shapes and forms remains the central workhorse of social science research. It is central to techniques like conjoint and discrete-choice analysis.
• Exploration and data reduction: sometimes we have more information than we know what to do with and need to summarize relationships in data and provide perspective. For this, we use techniques like principal component analysis and discriminant analysis.