The order in which one authors survey questions has long been a topic of debate. Today’s best practice was yesterday’s heresy. In this brief we will examine the use of an inverted pyramid approach.

Screeners have long been used to keep certain groups out of a survey. The alternative to this approach is to use screeners to re-route respondents to another survey. If they have gone as far as to click on your invitation why not capture that interest! This practice minimizes the potential for respondents to feel as if their input is not valued.

Open-end questions allow researchers of all stripes to capture the raw feelings of their audience. This slot is best reserved for essay-style questions such as “What, if anything, do you dislike about Acme?” or “If there were one area we should focus on, what would that be?” This allows respondents to speak their peace before potentially biasing them with subsequent questions. Not long ago, conventional wisdom suggested it was best to leave open-ended questions for the end of the survey, in order not to overtax respondents.

General questions form the meat of the survey. These should be used as a stepping stone to branch respondents to specific questions. Online survey tools, such as Cvent, allow survey authors to use advanced logic to direct respondents to questions that are relevant to them. An example would be “Have you purchased from Acme during the last six months?” If a respondent answered ‘no’ then they would be sent down one branch, while if they answered ‘yes’ they would follow another branch. This allows the author to probe deeper with questions tailored for specific responses. These specific questions can be fixed, open, or a combination of styles.

Profile questions, either demographics or firmagraphics, are useful for identifying sub-groups and for facilitating comparisons across these groups. They are often considered to be intrusive and raise respondent questions such as, “Why do they need to know my age or income?” If possible append this data from an existing CRM system.

Closing the gap is a crucial, but often overlooked, step in market research. This is the place where researchers can ask for feedback on the survey itself, and obtain permission to follow-up with the respondent to discuss their responses, if they desire.

Via | Cvent Survey

The latest Facebook usage statistics by country show some interesting changes, particularly the growth in Asia with extraordinary increases recorded in places like Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia. There has also been strong growth in Eastern Europe and both India and Germany have grown from less than 1 million users to well over 10 million Facebook users across the 2 year time scale.

Rank	Country	Number of Facebook users Sep 2008	Number of Facebook users Sep 2009	Number of Facebook users Sep 2010	12 month growth %	24 month growth %
1	USA	32,931,680	84,596,240	138,660,280	64%	321.1%
2	UK	12,637,540	20,228,480	27,279,920	34.9%	115.9%
3	Indonesia	322,840	8,786,920	26,870,640	205.8%	8223.2%
4	Turkey	4,566,660	13,996,380	22,689,280	62.1%	396.9%
5	France	3,381,220	12,032,020	18,875,380	56.9%	458.2%
6	Canada	9,991,260	12,667,220	17,050,280	34.6%	70.7%
7	Italy	1,035,920	10,903,620	16,589,460	52.1%	1501.4%
8	Philippines	233,020	4,832,040	16,492,880	241.3%	6977.8%
9	Mexico	1,174,920	4,731,700	15,132,080	219.8%	1187.9%
10	India	806,680	3,980,260	13,612,360	242%	1587.5%
11	Germany	815,840	3,875,800	11,119,240	186.9%	1262.9%
12	Argentina	939,080	6,036,060	11,118,120	84.2%	1083.9%
13	Spain	1,076,740	6,314,220	10,908,540	72.6%	913.1%
14	Colombia	3,227,760	6,488,200	10,725,740	65.3%	232.3%
15	Australia	3,655,680	6,591,640	9,169,220	39.1%	150.8%
16	Malaysia	592,740	2,619,040	8,187,460	212.6%	1281.3%
17	Taiwan	90,140	2,257,340	7,109,140	214.9%	7786.8%
18	Chile	3,491,200	5,465,740	7,060,020	29.2%	102.2%
19	Venezuela	1,462,500	4,223,740	6,857,980	62.4%	368.9%
20	Brazil	155,400	1,541,380	5,860,740	280.2%	3671.4%
21	Egypt	836,440	1,896,120	4,025,280	112.3%	381.2%
22	Sweden	1,358,460	2,587,300	3,835,160	48.2%	182.3%
23	Belgium	833,620	2,557,000	3,553,600	39%	326.3%
24	Hong Kong	1,109,200	2,350,460	3,383,440	44%	205%
25	Poland	113,920	732,000	3,348,980	357.5%	2839.8%
26	South Africa	1,022,000	1,899,600	3,123,260	64.4%	205.6%
27	Peru	208,200	1,206,620	3,089,100	156%	1383.7%
28	Israel	661,460	1,782,700	2,965,000	66.3%	348.3%
29	Greece	641,260	1,858,620	2,898,180	55.9%	352%
30	Netherlands	283,900	1,362,420	2,863,540	110.2%	908.6%

As always, if you want to know the latest Facebook usage statistics for another country (and data is now published for almost every country in the world), leave a comment in the post below and I will post the relevant Facebook user statistics data.

Via | Nick Burker's blog

Sales territory planning: An essential business practice
In our role as sales territory planning experts, we exam-ined current planning practices in Germany.*

The overwhelming majority of German companies (98%) regularly carry out sales territory planning, but many only do so every two years. "This is too infrequently to effectively react to market changes," warns sales territory planning expert Michael Büttcher. "We recommend that companies routinely examine at least once a year whether adjustments are necessary - this should be done even more frequently in periods of rapid market- or company changes!" 

The external sales force is usually very fragmented, often organized into multi-level hierarchies (54%). Parallel sales distribution channels are also very common (53%), which makes sales territory planning and external sales force management particularly complex and in need of regular monitoring.

Surprisingly, responsibility for spearheading planning initiatives is often not overseen by management: In the overwhelming majority of companies, this role is played by heads of sales or marketing (63%). Even so, the controlling division has authority over every fourth sales territory planning initiative. This makes communication among those concerned all the more important, because the blessing of all areas of the company must be obtained. This means sales territory planning must be as transparent as possible. The geomarketing software RegioGraph helps by precisely documenting the current state of things, planning goals and alternative scenarios.

The most common planning criteriom is the optimization of territories according to the fair distribution of workload (75%). But planning according to balanced potential is clearly becoming more popular (38%). Michael Büttcher considers this latter approach the best, because only this method lets a company be sure that it is fully and efficiently exploiting its market. Planning based on the current level of turnover is still fairly common, which is not a good thing, according to Büttcher. "Planning goals accord-ing to past values is not optimal. This always results in untapped potential, which is something no company can afford!" Given this, it's a positive sign that already more than half of all companies evaluated (54%) are using external data on potential in the planning process. "Many companies shy away from the cost of external data, but knowing precisely how high potential is and where it's located is an indispensable investment that pays for itself two and three times over. "Sales territory planning is just a guessing game if the market potential is not known!"

The climate of crisis has not really impacted current external sales force planning approaches: In fact, more companies are expanding their sales force teams (30%) than reducing them (28%). However, most companies are optimizing the existing sales territory structure rather than investing in a completely new one. "This is understandable, because change entails a certain amount of risk," says Büttcher. "However, one has to accept that things can't get better without change. For that reason, we recommend mustering up the courage to proceed and then making use of objective data and well thought-out alternative scenarios."

The study also shows that thanks to modern planning tools like RegioGraph Planning, sales territory planning is typically accomplished in just several weeks rather than months. The software makes it possible to plan new territories in just several hours - in fact, the most time-intensive aspect of sales territory planning involves getting all relevant areas of the company prepared for and onboard with the changes. It's essential not to neglect this process, says Büttcher, because otherwise the entire planning initiative can suffer (see interview on p. 8). For this reason, companies should draw on expert advice and support if they are contemplating making large changes or completely restructuring their territory structures. An external consultant brings an immense amount of experience as well as an objective perspective. He or she can also moderate discussions and emphasize the changes that are truly necessary.

*Study basis: 76 representative companies in Germany with external sales forces

Via | gfk Geomarketing

Everybody is talking about facebook (By the way, I feel like watching the movie soon!! ). It is curious but, only 3 years ago, web was just GOOGLE.

Nowadays, Facebook is becoming a own search engine and people are getting used to inform theirselves through their friends instead using Google. It seems that, today, Internet is more about Facebook than Google.

Let’s see this battle in a cool infographic…

Hi to all marketing passionated…

Source: Allfacebook

Bajo el lema “Desarmemos a los que desarman ilegalmente", la Asociación de Fábricas de Componentes (AFAC) en conjunto con la Asociación de Concesionarios (ACARA) y la Federación Argentina de Cámaras de Comerciantes en Repuestos Automotor (FACCERA) puso en marcha esta nueva campaña con el fin de generar una mayor concientización en la sociedad sobre la compra de autopartes robadas.

“Desarmar a los que desarman ilegalmente, de eso se trata, y el consumidor debe entender que comprando repuestos lícitos dejará de ser cómplice de este sistema”, agregó Norberto Taranto, vicepresidente de la entidad que nuclear a los autopartistas quién señaló que se puso en marcha la iniciativa por la inseguridad que se vive a diario. “El incremento de los delitos y su asociación con la violencia y muerte es el tema mismo de los desarmaderos ilegales. Lo que se compra a bajo precio está fomentando al robo”, dijo el empresario.

Esta campaña –la tercera que se pone en marcha- se dividió en dos etapas: la primera está dirigida contra los desarmaderos ilegales; y la segunda contra repuestos de origen dudoso y garantía desconocida que se lanzará durante el desarrollo de Automechanika del 17 al 20 de noviembre en La Rural.

Además como parte de la concientización y el trabajo encarado para desarmar lo ilegal se habilitó una página de Internet para que los ciudadanos puedan denunciar casos de robos, desarmaderos, etc. para promover el compromiso y la responsabilidad que debemos asumir todos como sociedad.

 “El plan es trasladar a las autoridades correspondientes estas denuncias que se pueden realizar en la página”, destacaron las integrantes de las cámaras que ya han solicitado diversas audiencias con el Ministerio del Interior Nacional y bonaerense (ya que es el territorio en donde la ilegalidad reina en la materia).

Vía | Prensa AFAC