Polaris Marketing Research recently introduced a new service to help marketers and marketing researchers alike: Research LifeLine™. Today, with the proliferation of online surveying tools and tighter than ever research budgets, businesses large and small have jumped on the DIY marketing research opportunity. But they don’t necessarily have the time, the expertise and the experience to complete high quality, unbiased, statistically accurate marketing research, and often can be misled by the information they get back.

We have all had those experiences where we needed a little help to get our marketing research projects done, whether because we stumbled into an area where we didn’t know what to do or whether we just were completely overloaded and did not have the time. Now, when that happens, you have someone to call for help.

Research LifeLine™ provides information resources, and live consulting with experienced researchers at little or no cost. Additionally, we can take over one or more of the individual steps in the research process (e.g, design the questionnaire, analyze the data, write the report). That way, businesses can save money on many aspects of marketing research projects (such as collecting the data), but still get affordable assistance with the areas that are most critical.

Here are a few recent examples how marketers used their Research LifeLine™ to complete high quality marketing research projects (and get out of trouble):

1. Polaris had conducted a customer satisfaction survey for a company in the produce packaging industry. Due to budget cuts, the company decided to bring the survey in-house, using the questionnaire Polaris had helped them design. About six months later, with the data aging on her desk, the client called to see if we could do the analysis and write the report for her. Research LifeLine™ to the rescue!
2. A leading home appliance manufacturer had 20 of their dealers and contractors in a training session and so took the time to do some focus groups about their attitudes and opinions of advertising content. The groups were moderated by members of the marketing team. Then to ensure objectivity, they asked us to review the recordings and write a report for them. Again, grab that Research LifeLine™!
3. The executive director of a newly founded nonprofit organization to improve a local neighborhood attended a class on Marketing Research where she learned about Research LifeLine™. She called and said she wanted to do some marketing research, but how could she find respondents? With extremely limited resources, we brainstormed some options for her: snowball sampling to the email list she already had, asking a local merchant to let her talk to people as they left the store (or better yet, having local merchants collect the email addresses for her, since they would also benefit from the success of her organization), asking local churches if they would let their parishioners know about her organization by putting her website in their programs/newsletters, etc.
4. A medical laboratory decided to do customer satisfaction research by themselves, to save money. However, in designing the questionnaire, there were too many conflicting opinions about question wording and scales. The internal team agreed to ask the experts at Research LifeLine™ to look over the questionnaire, and to abide by our recommendations. In bringing in a third party, the team saved time in fruitless discussion and ensured a better questionnaire. Research LifeLine™ saves the day!

Research LifeLine™ is a division of Polaris Marketing Research and provides the same level of superior customer service, expert advice and high-quality marketing research customers have come to expect from Polaris since 1989. While Polaris will continue providing full-service support for marketing research projects, we know marketers and marketing researchers have to stretch their budgets by using all of the many cost-saving, do-it-yourself marketing research tools now available.

So when you need a little help to get by, call your friends at Research LifeLine™!

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