PSBlog

Press Contact: Colleen McCauley (Email) [email protected] (phone) (+1) 610 613 4754

South African Youth on the Brink: Survey Shows Growing Concern and Desire for Change

As South Africa moves toward the upcoming election, the youth will be watching closely. Younger South African adults are increasingly concerned – but not yet pessimistic – about the future of their country. PSB Insights recently conducted a comprehensive study into the perceptions, aspirations, hopes, and dreams of South Africa’s youth on behalf of the Ichikowitz Family Foundation. This research, tracking trends since 2020, provides timely insight into the mindset of young South Africans as they prepare to cast their votes in the upcoming elections and mark 30 years since the end of Apartheid.

How to Have a Meaningful Global Research Study

Want to know a dirty little secret from the market research industry? Most global studies are useless. The truth is, people from different countries and cultures perceive and respond to scales differently, and simply comparing them side-by-side is missing half the picture. PSB Insights solves for this by disrupting the very psychology of rating scale, eliminating biases and setting the stage for meaningful cross-country and within company comparisons.

PSB Appoints Colleen McCauley as Senior VP of Marketing

WASHINGTON, DC, April 8, 2024 – Global market research consultancy PSB Insights has appointed Colleen McCauley as Senior Vice President of Marketing. She will serve on PSB’s Executive Team, working directly with Dave Gordon, PSB’s Chief Executive Officer. With over a decade at PSB, McCauley brings a deep understanding of the company’s capabilities and first-hand

Workplace flexibility and its impact on the housing market

The pandemic impacted people’s lives in many ways and three years after the pandemic, one of the most lasting impacts continue to be greater access to workplace flexibility. How has access to workplace flexibility affected preferences of where people choose to work and live? PSB Insights, in collaboration with Fannie Mae, explored how housing preferences changed in an in-depth special topic report prepared earlier this year.

Stop taking international research results with a “grain of salt” – PSB’s solution for dealing with differences in response tendencies across markets

Are cultural response styles in international research confounding your business decisions? Multi-dimensional Item Response Theory (IRT) from PSB Insights levels the playing field by allowing adjustments for regional and cross-cultural response style differences. The result: more comparable responses and “truer” differentiated data.

PSB’s Duo MaxDiff – A Look at the 2022 Election

PSB conducted research in conjunction with the Nov 2022 elections using the typical scaled and ranked approaches, as well as using our Duo MaxDiff. The Duo MaxDiff gives us a much more nuanced story, and shows that the near exclusive focus on the economy is misguided. These results would certainly give one pause in placing a bet on the ‘red wave’ that was predicted in fall of 2022. See the lead researchers, Rob Kaiser and David James, discuss the findings!

PSB Insights and Fannie Mae successfully transition the widely used National Housing Survey from phone to web

Since 2010, Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey® has provided real-time insights on US consumers’ views about the housing market and research partner PSB Insights has been there from the beginning. We recently tackled the challenge of transitioning survey modes from Random Digit Dialing (RDD) by phone to the AmeriSpeak® online panel solution while maintaining survey quality and trendability.

American Parents’ Views on Movie Ratings

PSB Insights partnered with the Motion Picture Association (MPA) to examine American parents’ views on the accuracy and helpfulness of film ratings from the MPA’s Classification and Rating Administration (CARA). Nearly all American parents agree that film ratings help them make better movie choices for their families.

PSB Insights Acquires Stratesci to Amplify Its Advanced Analytics Capabilities

PSB Insights, a global research and analytics consultancy, announced today that its long-time partner, Stratesci, Inc., will join PSB to form the company’s dedicated Advanced Analytics team. Rob Kaiser, PhD, Stratesci’s Founder, will take on the role of Executive Vice President, Advanced Analytics, and report directly to Dave Gordon, PSB’s Chief Executive Officer.

Researching Hard-to-Reach Audiences

Researchers are being asked, and are asking themselves, to provide representation across race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity in our studies. PSB started exploring this issue in 2017 with our work on the US Census Campaign. More recently, PSB Insights partnered with the Pew Research Center to conduct a large-scale qualitative study with Asian Americans from 18 origin groups to understand their experiences and perspectives. From these research initiatives, several key lessons emerged about conducting research with smaller, under-represented, and hard-to-reach audiences.

PSB’S AdLab: Six automakers pitch their electric vehicle to America

Battery-powered cars appear to be having a “breakthrough moment” in 2022 and may finally be moving into the mainstream. Six automakers – BMW, Kia, Hyundai, Polestar, GM, and Chevrolet – used the biggest advertising event of the year, the Super Bowl, to talk to America about electric vehicles. Using PSB’s AdLab copy testing system, we analyzed the six ads, exploring what they said and who did it best.

DAVE GORDON NAMED CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF PSB

PSB, a global research-based consultancy that is part of BCW Group, announced today that Dave Gordon has assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer, succeeding Peter Horst, who will remain with the firm in a consultative role through his retirement at the end of this year. Gordon, who is based in Boston, will be responsible for leading PSB’s global business expansion through engagements with major corporate brands as well as, advocacy, government, political entities.

Generations Research: Are You Looking at Generations Incorrectly?

Generations offer a lens through which to view the world. Each generation has a “personality” and understanding them helps to inform better product/service development, advertising, messaging, and engagement. However, traditional definitions who is in what generation are too broad missing nuances on which brands can act.

A Brief History of Women in Advertising

The portrayal of women in advertising has gone through a dramatic shift across the last 70 years. Join us for a review of how women’s roles have evolved, from being shown almost exclusively as homemakers, to more independent beings, to ‘gender defying’ and lead roles in campaigns. Using our AdLab copy testing system, we analyzed the impact of women and gender roles in several current ads – P&G, Nike, and Amazon.

Advertising in a New Reality

Amidst the change and disruption of the pandemic and racial justice, brands are being forced to reconsider how they speak with consumers and are asking a new set of questions: Is the campaign appropriate given current events? Whether and how do we address these issues? PSB tested 30 ads to see how they align with evolving expectations for brands in our new reality.

Understanding and Researching Hispanic Communities

The 2020 U.S. Election put a spotlight on the Hispanic vote, highlighting the reality that the Hispanic community is far from monolithic with great diversity in people, language, and heritage. As the lead research firm for the 2020 Census Communications Campaign, PSB spent several years immersed in exploring, talking with, researching, and better understanding an array of audiences in the U.S. – including various groups within the Hispanic world. Here we highlight the history of and distinctions, and some best practices for conducting research with Hispanic communities.

PSB POV – A market researcher’s musings on political polling

Ahead of the 2020 Presidential Election, PSB conducted an autopsy of political polling from the 2016 election to understand why and how the pollsters missed the mark so dramatically. We focused the analysis on polling techniques and improvements in 2018 poling to see what market researchers could learn and three key themes emerged from PSB’s research: manage expectations, sample size matters, and be representative in more than just a couple of ways.

Climate Change versus Climate Crisis?

Climate change has been called the biggest threat to our planet, yet more and more Americans are skeptical of its impact, or even its existence. Would simply changing the words we use have an impact in changing perceptions and driving action? PSB conducted research to understand this.

Generations Strategy Program – Plurals

The success equation for American business is changing. For years, the most important consumer input into the success equation was the consumer behavior of Baby Boomers. But at around the turn of the century, the equation shifted.

The Normalization of Cannabis

The rise of cannabis as a “legal” consumer product can be felt across the United States and Canada. From medical marijuana to recreational consumption, the taboo around cannabis is receding rapidly.

Shifting the Political Narrative

PSB joins youth-led non-profit to help register as many young voters as possible before the 2018 Midterm Elections. Ahead of 2020, we’re re-tooling and gearing up for a series of national town hall debates.

Qual For Meetings

Leveraging qualitative best practices for a different purpose: to achieve more engaging, collaborative, impactful and, gasp! – FUN – meetings with colleagues and clients.

FaceApp

It’s free to download, social by design and the technology is novel and insanely cool. What’s surprising and far more interesting is that the app went nearly twice as viral this past week as it did two years ago.

Corporate CSR Priorities

PSB Research conducted an online survey of a representative sample of 1,000 adults nationwide from April 5-12, 2019. The survey tested the importance of a set of causes the United Nations has established as priorities for global development and the extent to which Americans believe it is the responsibility of corporations to address them.

Our Award-Winning AdLab

Our award-winning AdLab provides the data and predictive analysis to provide speed, deep insight and customization. Our research tools…