10/25/13

The Art of Asking WHY in Marketing Research: Three Principles Underlying the Formulation of Questionnaires

(Lazarsfeld, 1935) discusses an interesting topic: How to ask why in marketing research. It is surprising that marketing research was point of interest and was deeply researched into back in 1935.  The author terms three important factor in marketing research: The principle of specification, the principle of division and the principle of tacit assumption.



Throughout the paper, the author explains clearly the three principles by giving examples and convincing explanations. The language he uses is simple, making this paper easy to read by both normal readers and researchers. The sub-topics covers the most important points in asking “why”, from specifying three general purposes of marketing research, to lessons about how to weight different reasons of an action and how to adapt questionnaire to each respondent and how to avoid/address their tacit assumptions.

These lessons are of great practical value and of some level of detail, but not detailed enough to be considered a guideline for asking why in marketing research. At the end of this paper, the author describing some related work by Carl Bueler and Madison Bently about determinants of actions. However, the link between his research and their research was not clearly clarified. Furthermore, it seems that this paper tell too little about literature review, but given that marketing research had only evolved for several decades since Arthur Nielsen established it as a viable industry (by founded the ACNielsen company in 1923), the amount of work on literature can be considered sufficient. 
REFERENCE

LAZARSFELD, P. F. 1935. The Art of Asking why in Marketing Research: Three Principles Underlying the Formulation of Questionnaires. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4291274
 

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I am a Master student in UCD Michael Smurfit School. With broad experience in start-up, research, software industry and sale, I am actively seeking employment in consulting industry.