When you want to use research to support a strategic decision or marketing claim, remember a few things:
– What people do is more important than what people believe. What they say they believe isn’t always a reflection of their full reality. Data about actions is more valid than data about survey responses and intentions.
– Find out everything you can about how the research was conducted. Population, sampling strategy and sample size, research design, research instruments (surveys, questionnaires, etc.) and methods.
– Spend some time looking for research with different conclusions about the same or similar topics. Then try to figure out why the conclusions differ.
– Think long and hard about whether the survey population is truly representative of the environment in which you’re deciding or marketing.
Unless you are careful, using research can lock in bias and preconceptions that can be quite damaging, dragging you off-course, or warping your marketing messages. It has the aura of factuality, which blinds you to relevance.
