A RESEARCH RANT.
From AdAge:
"The "road show," as Gateway refers to its roving interviewers, is the basis for a real-time focus-group campaign born out of research done by Gateway's strategy and research agency of four years, OBI Industries. Each interview is recorded digitally in black and white for a documentary-like feeling and uploaded onto a microsite, www.AskandDeliver.com, which launches today. With each interview upload, the website will not only track the percentage of people who want specific options for their computers, but the company also will measure how many "asks" they are able to deliver. "
Sorry to get off on a rant here, but...
Focus groups are qualitative, not quantitative. They answer questions of WHY and HOW not "how many" and "percentages."
To say nothing of the kind of quantitative certainty that comes from treating respondents who are willing to submit data in this way as some sort of projectable sample. Enough.
It is just this kind of imprecise BS that makes me hoppin' mad -- I'm so sick of people using data in ways that it CAN'T be used - this kind of crap makes my day-to-day work too hard.
I guess this kind of thing explains why Gateway has disappeared off the face of the earth.
Ok (whew!) - I'm done. Thanks for listening.