If Behavior is the New Target then How do We Keep Score?
We often write about Ron Gailey. Kind of a pioneer in the issue of respondent tenure and the way in which it impacts on purchasing intent. Respondent tenure is a type of behavior. Those who continue to complete our surveys are behaving in a manner which we certainly approve. We have asked previously if tenure should be the new demographic. That is a quota controlled measure that we must target in our studies. It is not the only kind of behavior that we are interested in controlling but certainly it makes a reasonable candidate.
Yes – it should be measured, analyzed and controlled alongside other behavioral patterns.
Unfortunately, most online communities and e-shopping interfaces are built with analytics as an afterthought – I guess the first step would be to redesign online interfaces in a way that improves measurability.
One way of doing this is to assign the starter role of making online connections to machine, not human user – and measure the lifetime and activity of the machine-created connection.
I’ve a couple points to raise here and I may be ignorant on the first.
The first is one of cause and effect. If we see a relationship between purchase intent and respondent tenure then we can either state:
“being on the panel a long time changes you way you look at products and services”
or
“those people who have a certain general disposition towards purchase intent are also more likely to stay on a panel longer”
Only a nice long longitudinal study will prove the case. I have seen Ron Gainey’s work cited as if to prove panel conditioning – so I can only assume many think of the former case not the latter.
The second is more a practical one. If we quota on tenure then we can’t grow our panels without having to over-use our most loyal panelists – possibly to the point that they start to leave in ever greater numbers. Our feasibility on single projects becomes fixed, dependent on how long we can keep enough people going.
And an additional 3rd point: Tenure to what? The market research process presumably…