We live in a world of data. Everything from the prices on financial markets to our weights can be measured and tracked very easily. Even an average person can use easily accessible online tools to fake being a “data scientist.” But what about data that isn’t obviously data? I’m talking about stuff that isn’t neatly sorted into rows and columns–the kind of stuff that you’d have to painstakingly tabulate by hand. We now have technology that can do the hard work for us, and one of the companies behind such technology is ListenLogic. They are a Conshohocken, PA based company that extracts “insights from unstructured big data to drive business outcomes.” Their “big data” technology allows clients to act on information that they never before could have acted on.
Internships in Market Research
Looking for more internships in Market Research? Check out the most recent internship postings in Market Research.
Below you'll find all of the companies that we've covered that may offer internships in Market Research. You can also look at entry level jobs in Market Research.
In the world of advertising and marketing, creative seems to get all of the credit. We idolize the people who came up with the idea for a memorable campaign, but we don’t think of all the work that led to that idea. Whether you’re developing products, communications, strategy, or anything else that relates to your customers, you have to start with research. That’s where Kelton comes in. They are a New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA based consulting firm that is “passionate about listening to your customers and translating their stories into innovative solutions.” They start with research, then build a strategy, and use that to create design.
I’ve suffered through many meals where I’ve convinced myself that I could run the restaurant better than the current management–even if I was blindfolded and had my arms tied behind my back. There are probably a few cases where that’s true, but for the most part regular people with no industry experience have no business running restaurants (just watch Kitchen Nightmares if you’re not convinced). The truth is that running a profitable restaurant is a huge accomplishment. The Culinary Edge is a San Francisco, CA based consulting firm that specializes in helping restaurants and other food-related businesses strengthen their brands, extend their reach, and increase their profitability. While it would be nice if they did work for small mom and pop type restaurants, the reality is that this kind of consulting is geared towards much bigger clients.
We live in a strange time. The stats tell us that investing in higher education is one of the best investments that an individual can make, yet so many young people are saddled by student loans and under or unemployment. Something is going to have to change, and I’m not sure what it will be. American Student Assistance is an organization that will likely play a role in the change. They’re a Boston, MA based “private nonprofit whose public purpose mission is to empower students and alumni to successfully manage and repay their college loan debt.” ASA was founded in 1956 as the Massachusetts Higher Education Assistance Corporation and has served as a loan guarantor for much of its history. That ended in 2008 with a change in Federal law, but it hasn’t stopped American Student Assistance from offering SALT, its “innovative financial literacy and default prevention program.”
I’m really into fly fishing. So beyond going fishing as often as I can, I like to keep up with what’s going on in the industry. One of the latest trends is that a lot of the manufacturers are starting to sell direct to consumer over the Internet. The independent retailers who have helped these brands grow are not happy. Their toes are getting stepped on big time. This phenomenon isn’t exclusive to the fly fishing industry–it’s happening all over the place. So how does a branded manufacturer grow its business through e-commerce without losing the trust of its retailers? Shopatron is the answer. They’re a San Luis Obispo, CA based company that offers a “retail-integrated eCommerce solution for branded manufacturers, distributors and multi-channel retailers.” What does that mean? The manufacturer still sells their products online, but fulfillment is done by the retailers who can ship the product or offer it for in-store pickup.
One of the hardest parts about starting a business is finding product-market fit (in other words developing a product or service that customers will pay for). It’s usually a big mistake to invest in a product without having validated the market. This is true whether you’re a first time entrepreneur or one of the biggest companies in the world. Affinnova typically works with the latter. They’re a Waltham, MA based “high-growth software and services company that enables innovative organizations to drive better ideas to market faster.” Affinnova has developed a technology platform that helps their clients do everything from generate new concepts to testing them with potential customers. This isn’t your typical market research company–Affinnova’s solutions are based on an algorithm that “mimics evolutionary principles to create a survival-of-the-fittest vetting process.”
A lot of people bounce their business or product ideas off of me. It’s fun, but it can also be frustrating because most people can’t see the obvious holes in their thinking. The one thing that I push everybody to do is to validate their ideas. That means talking to customers and getting them to either tell you what they think or, preferably, to actually commit to buying your product. Validation isn’t an easy process whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a billion dollar brand. Finding potential customers and getting them to give honest feedback is almost never easy. Qualvu is a Lakewood, CO based company that solves this problem (I found out about them from a reader who landed a job with them). They connect “you with your truth, anywhere, at any time, through the power of web and mobile video.” In other words, they’ve developed an online platform that makes the focus group way more flexible, powerful, and affordable.
My dad always tells people that he loves shopping malls because they are full of people who aren’t doing the things that he wants to do (namely fishing). My views aren’t quite so negative, but when I do visit a mall, my goal is to be in and out as quickly as possible. Luckily for General Growth Properties there are millions of people for whom malls are a destination. GGP is a Chicago, IL based real estate trust that owns and operates shopping centers across the U.S. Some of their most notable properties include: Ala Moana Center (Honolulu), Tysons Galleria (D.C.), Glendale Galleria (Los Angeles), and Water Tower Place (Chicago). That’s just the tip of the iceberg though–General Growth Properties owns more than 135 mall properties that combine for more than 140 million square feet of space.
Yesterday we talked about filling your head with all kinds of useless pop culture. I don’t recommend it, but I guess you can make a career out of it if you really want to. Why not spend your time on more useful trivia like food industry facts and insights? That’s what the people at Technomic do. It’s a Chicago, IL based consulting company that has been serving the food industry since 1966. They offer “proprietary research, trend analysis, forecasts, common-interest studies and state-of-the-industry reports” to clients in every part of the food industry. Their clients range from supermarkets to chain restaurants to financial institutions that serve the industry. If it has anything at all to do with food, there’s a good chance that Technomic is on top of it.
If you’ve watched Mad Men from the beginning, you’ve probably noticed that research goes from completely irrelevant to getting marginal respect over just a few years. The progression has continued, and research has become a huge part of marketing and advertising. While Millward Brown hasn’t been around since the Mad Men days, the New York, NY based research agency has been “specializing in advertising, marketing communications, media and brand equity research” for the last 35 years. All of Millward Brown’s research is focused on building stronger brands, which is why their 82 offices across 52 countries are able to work with 90% of the world’s top 100 brands (not sure whose list they’re using).
In case you haven’t noticed, we always feature non-profits on weekend. The vast majority of the non-profits that we profile are 501(c)(3)–organizations defined as “Religious, Educational, Charitable, Scientific, Literary, Testing for Public Safety, to Foster National or International Amateur Sports Competition, or Prevention of Cruelty to Children or Animals.” But there are actually 28 types of 501(c) tax-exempt non-profit organizations. Today we’re going to look at the Consumer Electronics Association, which is 501(c)(6) “business league” based in Arlington, VA. They have a simple mission of working with their 2,000+ industry members to “grow the consumer electronics industry.”
Do You Consume Electronics?
You’ve probably heard of the Consumer Electronics Show (if not, it’s a massive electronics show), it’s put on by the CEA. It’s a way for all of their members (pretty much every major brand in the industry) to show off the latest and greatest. The show is probably the most public thing that the CEA does, but they also have a number of other initiatives. These include Market Research, Networking Events, Policy Advocacy, Technical Training, Technology Standards, and Member to Member Promotion. It’s interesting to see many of the CEA’s members fighting tooth and nail against each other in the marketplace, and then seeing them work together for the betterment of the industry. There’s obviously a careful balance. If you love consumer electronics and want to work for the CEA, check out their Internships page. Right now they’re looking for paid interns in:
- Market Research
- Economic Analysis
- Member Relations
- Research and Standards
- CES Marketing
- Sales
- CEA/CES Registration
- Legal
- Event PR
- Social Media
- CEA Marketing
- Office of the President
- Human Resources
These look like really amazing internship opportunities, so check them out.
Links to Help You Begin Your Research
- CE.org
- Internships at the Consumer Electronics Association
- About the Consumer Electronics Association
- Consumer Electronics Association’s Members
- Consumer Electronics Association News
What’s your favorite consumer electronic?
Because I’m a tech savvy kind of guy, I often get asked a lot of computer and Internet related questions. One of the most common questions that I get is: “How do I see how much traffic a website gets?” This is useful information whether you want to check to see if a startup is really as popular as they claim or if you want to size a market, but it’s not easy information to come by. The best answer is get the login and password to the site’s Google Analytics account. Considering that’s difficult and likely illegal, your next best bet is to you use some of the competitive research tools that are available. The free ones include Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, and Google Trends for Websites. Unfortunately, none of these are particularly reliable or accurate, and they’re especially bad for sites that get less than hundreds of thousands of visitors a month. The gold standard for this kind of information is offered comScore, but it comes with a hefty subscription fee. The Reston, VA calls itself “a global leader in measuring the digital world and the preferred source of digital marketing intelligence,” so paying those fees will get you a lot more than just traffic estimates for websites.
It’s been a while since I did a survey of One Day, One Job readers. There’s really no excuse for that considering how useful survey data can be and how easy it is to run a survey online. (So watch out for a survey sometime in the next month or two.) When I see online surveys, they’re usually run on SurveyMonkey or Google Docs, but I’ve also seen a few surveys driven by SurveyGizmo. They’re based in Boulder, CO, and they offer “a web-based software company giving researchers, and small and enterprise companies powerful tools to create online surveys, questionnaires and forms – allowing capture and analysis of virtually any type of data essential for business.” It’s working for them. SurveyGizmo came in at #144 on the Inc. 5000 with 1,940% three-year growth to $3.3 million in revenue.
One of my favorite daily activities during college was doing the crossword puzzle in The Cornell Daily Sun. It was a nice diversion during lunch (or an especially boring class). One of the best things that you can do while working on a crossword puzzle is to get one of the large horizontal words in the middle of the puzzle. These words are often 32 or 33 across, which is where 33Across got their name. They’re a company that “uses social graph data to dramatically improve online marketing” and “unlock the puzzle of social connections.” In other words, they have built a platform that targets advertising to people whose online connections already use the products or services that are being advertised. 33Across is based in New York, NY, and they have another major office in Sunnyvale, CA. Social advertising really is a lot like 33 across on a crossword puzzle–it’s really tough to solve, but when you do it opens a world of opportunities.
I can’t remember the last time that I bought a greeting card, but I can remember the last time that I was part of the purchasing process. A good friend of mine was getting married, and he needed a card for his soon to be wife. Because of the dearth of cards for brides from their grooms, I made it my job to suggest alternatives. Trying to convince a stressed out groom to give his new wife a condolences card probably isn’t the nicest thing to do, but it’s certainly entertaining. Yes, greeting cards can be funny, but there’s more to them than that. That’s why American Greetings calls themselves the “leading manufacturer of innovative social expression products that assist consumers in enhancing their relationships.” The Cleveland, OH based company is the largest publicly-traded greeting card company in the world, and their brands include American Greetings, Carlton Cards, Gibson, Recycled Paper Greetings, and Papyrus along with a number of other paper products and online brands.
Because I started my business without any post-graduation work experience, I’ve had to rely on free resources to learn the tricks of the trade. Sites like Hacker News, SEOmoz, Mixergy have been unbelievably valuable to me. But you can only get so much for free. Fortune 500 companies budget millions and millions of dollars to ensure that their leadership teams are well informed and well advised. One place that 80% of Fortune 500 companies go for advice is The Corporate Executive Board. They are an Arlington, VA based company that helps “senior executives at the world’s leading organizations… and their teams with actionable insights, analytic tools, and advisory support to quickly and confidently focus efforts on what they need to know, and do, next.” The Corporate Executive Board spun off from The Advisory Board Company (they focus only on healthcare and higher education) in the late 90’s, and that was later followed up with an initial public offering.
You’d be amazed if you knew how much research went into every little thing that you buy, consume, watch, and wear. Many companies can predict exactly how you will respond to a given marketing message (and I’m not talking about Hunch), and if they can’t, they’ll find a way to find out. Market research has been around for a long time, but the Internet has really changed the way its done.
Now you can reach nearly any person or any group of people with a survey nearly instantly—and at an extremely low cost. The problem is that online surveys and polls can be plagued by low quality results (think about how tv news Internet polls get hijacked by online groups). We’ve seen some big social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook start moving into online market research, but there are some companies that have been doing it a lot longer. E-Poll Market Research is a perfect example. They’re a Los Angeles, CA based market research firm that has been around since 1997, and they’re experts at helping clients meet “extremely tight deadlines” and overcome “research challenges that demand non-traditional approaches.”
Did you know that you can get Amazon Prime for free if you’re a college student? That means unlimited, free two-day shipping on everything you buy.
For the past couple of months we’ve been including more numbers than usual in our daily posts—things like three-year growth rates and annual revenues. Since we’ve been looking mostly at companies on the Inc. 500, we figure that it’s useful information. If simple numbers like those intimidate you, then today’s company is definitely not for you. However, if your response to our daily posts is to seek out more numbers and dig into annual reports and other similar documents, then you’re in luck. MCG is a Providence, RI based company that does mathematical, statistical, and strategic consulting. Their motto is “Nothing is too complex.” The first person listed on their Management Team page is their Chief Analytics Officer, so that should tell you a lot about MCG’s focus. And I almost forgot—MCG has grown at an 834.4% rate over the past three years to $2.2 million in revenue (they were only founded in 2006).