The Marketing Dialog forwards the conversation between marketing research and marketing with the purpose of enhancing and strengthening the industry.

I have blogged a few times about the opportunity to use your marketing research dollars to support causes while also getting your project done. It's an idea that especially intrigues me now, when so many non-profit organizations are struggling to find new sources of revenue and to increase donations. And it's a bad new double whammy, as non-profit organizations are also finding demand for their services skyrocketing from Americans who are also struggling with the economy.  

As we discussed earlier this month, there is great value in taking time-out for a long, hard look at your business. From a marketing research perspective, this also gives you the opportunity to pull together all the data and insight you've collected - hopefully being able to create some over-arching insight that will guide strategy development.  In this second part, guest blogger Ron Strauss lays out a plan to increase competitiveness.

In today's unprecedentedly rapidly changing world, where technology and the economy force companies to focus on the short-term, day-to-day adjustments that must be made to keep ahead, it is more valuable than ever to take a time-out to look for the long-view.  Instead of focusing on the trees, take a look at the forest, for it is only this type of strategic analysis and review that will allow us to create the innovative and game-changing initiatives that will make it possible not only to survive, but to thrive.  This month's guest blogger Ron Strauss talks about the importance of this activity and of taking a marketing perspective.  Here's part one:

It is helpful to think of the stages of a performance when you are putting together an online survey. For example, you would never launch a performance without a rehearsal, but there are many online surveys launched without testing!  So whether your musical performance tastes are rock and roll, classical, or country and western, take a look at how The Sample Network recommends you prepare for your online survey performance!

In this guest blog, Terry Vavra and Doug Pruden partners at research firm Customer Experience Partners explains why customer satisfaction research is everywhere, but still nowhere.

Social Media marketing research - four words that strike terror into the hearts of even the  most intrepid marketing researchers.  This new area of research opens new and very different opportunities to gather insights from customers. However, most of the marketing researchers that I come into contact with have not ventured into this brave new world, but are taking a "wait-and-see" approach.  So, thank goodness for the social media research pioneers for sharing their experiences and beginning to adopt best practices for those of us who will be using these methods in the future.

Much has been written about the future of marketing research, I think reflecting the unprecedented change in this industry and the anxiety that change is causing.  So when a visionary (and industry heavyweight) like Coca-Cola's VP of marketing strategy and insights, Stan Sthanunathan, wants to weigh in on the topic, we tend to listen.

Anecdotally, it seems that one of the victims of the great recession of 2008 and beyond may be employee surveys.  Whether this is because, in a time of limited budgets, employee surveys simply are not top priority or because, in a time of low employment, businesses worry less about their employees leaving, it seems that businesses have been doing fewer employee surveys in the last four years than they did in the years pre-recession.

The rise in mobile apps - especially among younger adults - gives rise to questions about the future of Facebook, Google and even Amazon.  Additionally, it has huge implications for marketers, even as we marketing researchers begin to find respondents using mobile technology.