Some are born to research, others have it thrust upon them. That's one of the reasons Quirk's Marketing Research Review exists. People come to the research field from many backgrounds - our goal is to offer readers advice and instruction on the use of various research techniques, in hopes of making them better-educated buyers. When a supplier starts talking about multivariate analysis, for example, you'll have some idea of what they mean. And while you may not be able to define conjoint, at least you'll know it when you see it.

Rich Vondruska's interest in educating research buyers inspired his decision to start a new consulting firm in Chicago, Research Mentors. Vondruska, who has a Ph.D. in educational and cognitive psychology, has worked in research for a number of years, most recently as vice president, client services, at Kapuler Marketing Research in Arlington Heights, Ill. Before joining Kapuler, he was director of research and consulting at Dimension Research, Lombard, Ill. Research Mentors is a subsidiary of Vondruska Associates. (You may remember "Secrets of Effective Data Use," his contribution to the April 1992 QMRR "Data Use" section.)

Vondruska's aim is to be a teacher to those who need one, offering help in understanding quantitative techniques. "Corporations are demanding greater impact from marketing research on their bottom line. In many cases, people on the client side are either unsophisticated in regard to what they' re purchasing or they simply don' t have the budgets to purchase what they need. It's a double bind," Vondruska says.

"The only solution, as I see it, is education. The idea is to put an emphasis on the more pedagogical elements, as opposed to the simple delivery of a mountain of crosstabs; rather than providing data, providing information."

Mismatch in perceptions

Vondruska started the firm after an enlightening trip to January's AMA Attitude Research Conference. Blair Peters, vice president of A.C. Nielsen, gave a talk called, "What the charts tell us: 1993 AMA and ARF Marketing Research Industry Study," which looked at perceptions of satisfaction with marketing research. "It showed there was a mismatch between the perceptions of the consumers of marketing research and the deliverers of marketing research," Vondruska says. "Ninety percent of the marketing researchers say they're delivering quality data, while 60 percent of clients say they are getting quality data. The interpretation of that at the conference was that marketing researchers are living in a fool's paradise. They're not delivering what they think they're delivering. Well, it's been my experience that in many cases the client is not appropriately experienced to use the data in a way that will help them make actionable decisions."

Vondruska knows that many firms offer consulting services, but he says few teach clients how to use marketing research. His approach parallels the proverb: Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for the rest of his life. "A major utility called me and said, 'We're a little unsophisticated with regard to some of the advanced statistical analyses that vendors are providing to us. We'd like to learn more about them so we can be better judges of the information that they're giving us, rather than taking it on faith.' I'm going to give them a four-day tutorial on things like factor and cluster analysis. That fit perfectly with my initial idea in founding the company," he says.

Vondruska is trying to bridge the gap between the realities of business and the research process. "There are lots of folks out there who are business consultants, but they aren't sensitive to research. And there are lots of people out there who are great researchers, who aren't sensitive to the business aspect. That's where the breakdown can occur. One needs to have a foot in both camps."

Offer perspective

Beyond education, Vondruska intends to offer clients perspective, and make it clear that research results have to be looked at in a competitive context. He recounts the story of a car maker which found that 60 percent of its customers were completely satisfied. "They started raving about that finding, until they found out that it put them dead last in the automotive environment. You can't simply look at your own progress, you have to compare it to your competitors. And oftentimes that costs more, and people are unwilling to do that, but they're putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage."

Vondruska has talked to a number of potential clients already, and "all signs seem to point in the right direction," he says. "We think there's a need out there and we'll be a force to be reckoned with."

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After my March column on the earthquake in Los Angeles came out, I received a call from Adrienne Goldbaum, president of L.A. Research, whose offices sit right at the quake's epicenter in Northridge. (In putting the story together I called several L.A.-area firms; hers I missed. Unfortunately it was one closest to the epicenter! Oh, well...)

Goldbaum had some amazing stories to tell, about her husband being thrown across a room in their home by the quake, the damage to the L.A. Research offices - which were quickly back in working order, thanks to a conscientious landlord - and the devastation of the local mall, which lost six anchor stores and its roof.

Goldbaum did have some happier consequences to relay. One of the first calls L.A. Research got after the disaster came from a company hiring the firm to do some focus groups - with earthquake victims! And from the "research must go on" department, Goldbaum said that on the day of the quake, with chaos reigning, all but one of the company's mystery shoppers did their shops and called in their reports to the clients. The one who didn't make it had a pretty good excuse: Her car was crushed.