Happy New Year! We are excited here at Quirk’s to be ringing in 2008, as we have a lot of plans for the coming year.
Before I get to them, I need to spend a few moments talking about the changes we’ve made over the past several months at quirks.com. Up to and after the site’s relaunch last April, our Webmeister Dan Quirk has worked hard to add new features and capabilities, in addition to freshening up the site’s appearance.
• Subscribers can now access more than 2,000 past articles online, along with articles from the current issue. And, it’s easier than ever to print, e-mail and bookmark articles.
• Our online glossary has doubled in size and now holds over 1,300 terms.
• The online events calendar is more comprehensive and is now searchable by topic.
• Our popular job postings section has new search features, including the ability to search by country, state and metro area.
• We’ve also added a Hot Topics section on the site. By clicking on one of the hot topics (such as ethnographic research or online research) site users can see, at a glance, a wealth of information on the subject, including abstracts of past articles, suppliers who offer the service, discussion threads, glossary terms, recent job postings and related associations and events.
• And, our supplier directories now boast a number of enhanced search features, making it easier than ever to find the ideal vendor for your project among our database of over 7,000 company listings.
Best of all, these features, and many more, are free of charge to subscribers.
Added an issue
On the print magazine side, we have made a number of changes for the coming year. We have added a 12th issue, splitting up the previous July/August issue into separate editions. We have also added several new editorial topics to the calendar: January - packaging research; February - ethnographic research; March - utilities industry research; May - naming research; July - financial services research; August - research education, training and employment; October - automotive research; December - sensory research.
As always, we welcome article submissions from outside sources, so if you would like to submit an article on any of the above topics (or anything else related to marketing research, for that matter!) feel free to contact me at joe@quirks.com.
Later this spring we hope to have an e-newsletter launched. We have also increased our advertising sales force and added two new editorial staff members.
Serve the industry
All of this growth is aimed at improving our products and services and will, we hope, position us to better serve the marketing research industry, both on the client side and on the vendor side. But rest assured, our expansion won’t change who we are. We’ll still continue delivering the same personal service and small-company attention that readers and advertisers have told us they find so welcome and valuable.
It’s an exciting time in the marketing research field and we are proud and happy to be enhancing our offerings to keep pace with the profession’s needs. I welcome any input you may have on our new features, so don’t hesitate to drop me a line with your thoughts or suggestions.