Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is a metric that has been growing in use, along with the emergence of Internet companies and web-based advertising campaigns that can be tracked.

It is a tabulation of the outcome of calls made during a computer-aided telephone interview (CATI) survey

A call sheet is a record-keeping form that is used by telephone survey interviewers to keep track of information related to the calls they make to reach survey respondents.

In a general callback, the interviewer learns that the designated respondent is not available at the time of the call but does not learn anything that would help him or her determine the best time to reach the designated respondent.

It is the degree to which increased sales of one brand replace sales of another brand or brands from the same manufacturer.

It is an extension of multiple regression analysis that deals with two dependent variables

It is computer-aided personal interviewing, where the responses in a personal interview are keyed directly into a computer and the administration of the interview is managed by a specifically designed programme. The programme checks for invalid responses and will not accept responses outside prescribed limits, hence subsequent editing and keying in of data is avoided.

A projective technique where participants are presented with one or more pictures or cartoons that depict a situation. They are asked to suggest what will happen or what one character may be saying or thinking in response to another character or a situation.

A technique that allows participants to compose dialogue for a drawn character within a cartoon.

It is a complete record of an interview with a respondent or a data entry record.

It is when an entire questionnaire from a respondent is removed from the analysis because some of the questions have not been completed.

Computer assisted self-interviewing (CASI) is a technique for survey data collection in which the respondent uses a computer to complete the survey questionnaire without an interviewer administering it to the respondent.

The researcher must find more than just a correlation, or an association, among two or more variables.

To establish causal relationships—cause and effect—between two or more variables

Categorical variables are qualitative data in which the values are assigned to a set of distinct groups or categories.

It is a scale that asks respondents to choose from a limited number of alternatives. There are three main types of categorical scale; semantic differential, stapel and Likert.

Certain products or services among a population requiring a study. This is an incident rate for that product or service.

It is computer-aided telephone interviewing where the responses are keyed directly into a computer and administration of the interview is managed by a specifically designed programme. The programme checks for invalid responses and will not accept responses outside prescribed limits, hence subsequent editing and keying in of data is avoided.

It is a type of conclusive research that aims to collect data on causal relationships.

A variable that exerts some influence on another (dependent) variable.

To establish causal relationships—cause and effect—between two or more variables.

It is computer-aided web interviewing, where respondents complete a web site (or HTML) survey and some computer software, presents each question only after the previous question has been completed. Subsequent questions can be tailored to previous question answers, enabling sophisticated routing plans to be used in these surveys.

The United States Census Bureau's computer program to aid in the 1980 census.

The individual elements (cells) that make up a sample.

The number of respondents in a sample cell.

It is the collection of data from all available units in a population of interest.

Areas defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, including four census regions and nine census divisions.

are areas delineated for the purposes of statistical analysis and presentation.

Percentage of People that were not accounted for by the census due to not answering the census.

It is a theorem that states that the sampling distribution curve (for sample sizes of 30 and over) will be centred on the population parameter value and it will have all the properties of a normal distribution.

It is when face-to-face interviews are conducted at one or more specified locations (eg mall intercept interviewing).

Central location testing (CLT) is a qualitative market research approach in which research takes place in a specific, controlled environment. 

A study that takes place at a physical site that is convenient for all participants to access.

It is where the marketing researchers in an organisation are located together in one department.

It is the average value of a group of objects in a cluster.

It is where participants in separate locations are invited to join a virtual group discussion using their PCs and the Internet. The discussion may or may not have a moderator and comments are communicated in writing on members’ screens. Participants in the discussion are usually not screened in the same way as for an online discussion group or a moderated e-mail group.

A list of items to be examined or things to be done. For example, a supervisor may receive a check list with the materials for a job listing the supplies enclosed.

It is a skewed distribution whose shape depends on the number of degrees of freedom. As the number of degrees of freedom increases, the distribution becomes more symmetrical.

The Chi-Square test is a statistical procedure used by researchers to examine the differences between categorical variables in the same population.

It is a non-parametric statistical test that compares research data with the expected results from a hypothesis.

It is the person in the household with the largest income, whether from employment, pensions, state benefits, investments or any other source. Where there are two people with the same income, the researcher should specify who to include in the study.

It is the member of a household who is responsible for the majority of household purchasing decisions

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is a law created to protect the privacy of children under 13.

The rules that outline the regulation used for COPPA. An example is a rule that requires privacy statements to be linked on all websites that children of the United States might visit. See the FTC's COPPA site for more information.

Discrete Choice Modeling is a trade-off and simulation technique useful for studying these types of questions: Product design and pricing issues such as what features maximize share, revenue or profit or whether buyers value features enough to pay their incremental cost.

A choropleth map is a type of thematic map in which a set of pre-defined areas is colored or patterned in proportion to a statistical variable that represents an aggregate summary of a geographic characteristic within each area, such as population density or per-capita income.

It is individuals’ ages in years and months (which may be different to their cognitive age).

is the rate at which customers stop doing business with an entity. It is most commonly expressed as the percentage of service subscribers who discontinue their subscriptions within a given time period.

It is a measure used in advertising surveys that refers to the proportion of respondents who say they saw or heard an advertisement or a particular form of advertising.

It is the repeating or re-phrasing of an existing question to get a further explanation of an answer provided by a respondent.

It involves socio-economic and/or demographic information on participants in a market research study.

are questions that aim to collect classification information and they are usually put at the end of a questionnaire.

A scale where the numbers act only as data labels (e.g. 0=male, 1=female or a social security number). The only analysis that can be performed is to observe how frequently each of the scale members occurs in the survey.

A percentage measuring the amount of people that click on an ad compared to the amount of people that are exposed to the ad.

Click and mortar is a type of business model that has both online and offline operations, which typically include a website and a physical store.

are the ultimate consumers of marketing research, they create the demand for research services and pay for the research that is conducted. Clients can be internal or external. Internal clients are other users of research in the same organisation. External clients are based in other organisations.

are marketing researchers who are the link between research clients and the marketing research department or supplier.

Focus groups that are looking to expose a consumer's behaviors and the moderator uses techniques to explore the participants subconscious motivation. Focus group software can simplify this process for online research.

Close ended questions are defined as question types that ask respondents to choose from a distinct set of pre-defined responses, such as “yes/no” or among set multiple choice questions.

provide respondents with a pre-determined list of possible answers.

Describes a group of homes that are assumed to have similar demographic, social, and economic characteristics as one another within a neighborhood.

It is an analytical technique that arranges research data into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive groups (or clusters) where the contents of each cluster are similar to each other, but different to the other clusters in the analysis.

It is a type of probability sampling where a population of interest is divided into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive sub-groups (or clusters) and a sample of clusters is selected. From the selected clusters, a sample of units is drawn.

are video tapes with a number of TV commercials including the one(s) being tested and they are used to assess a commercial’s ability to stand out from the rest.

Council for Marketing and Opinion Research (CMOR), an umbrella organization dedicated to respondent cooperation and government affairs, which merged into the Marketing Research Association (MRA). 

A reward given to participants or businesses for taking the time and trouble to cooperate in a marketing research study.

Compensation paid to research participants as an incentive for participation in focus groups, interviews, or surveys. 

Tabulating or calculating collected survey responses. The tabulations or calculations are can completed by computer or manually.

It is a plan that details the column and row headings in the cross-tabulations that are produced from the data

It is a set of instructions regarding the allocation of codes to research data. It helps researchers identify and locate the variables to be used in data analysis.

all professional marketing research societies have a code of conduct that details the rights and responsibilities of those involved with marketing and opinion research.

It is the organising of responses into categories and the assignment of a unique numerical code to each response prior to data entry.

A coding frame, code frame, or codebook shows how verbal or visual data have been converted into numeric data for purposes of analysis.

The coefficient of determination is a statistical measurement that examines how differences in one variable can be explained by the difference in a second variable, when predicting the outcome of a given event.

It is the exact percentage of variation shared by two variables, obtained by squaring the product moment correlation coefficient.

It is a measure of variability (or dispersion) of a distribution and it is equal to the standard deviation expressed as a percentage of the mean.

It is an individual’s perceived age, which may be different to their chronological age. For example pre-teens aspire to be older and 40 year olds may well aspire to be younger.

The cognitive component of attitudes refers to the beliefs, thoughts, and attributes that we would associate with an object. It is the opinion or belief segment of an attitude.

A premise that seems to resonate well with audiences exploring true influence marketing is the concept of cognitive dissonance, which social scientists explain as a feeling of discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs.

Those in a study with similar demographic characteristics.

It is a type of multiple cross-sectional design where the population of interest is a cohort whose members have all experienced the same event in the same time period (e.g. birth). The samples are usually drawn at regular time intervals.

Recording and analyzing a cohort's activities for an extended period of time.

A set of alternatives is collectively exhaustive when they include all possibilities.

A bias in statistical procedure due to the correlation of multiple independent variables that influence a single dependent variable. This makes it difficult to recognize which independent variable is really causing the change in the dependent variable.

In factor analysis, this is the amount of variance a variable shares with all the other variables being considered. It is also the proportion of variance explained by the common factors.

It is the extent to which research results can be meaningfully compared.

are a type of scale where one object is compared with another and a relative measure of preference is obtained, eg do respondents prefer one or another soft drink? The main types of comparative scales are: paired comparison, rank order, constant sum and Q sort.

lt is a multi-attribute model in which one attribute compensates for another in the overall preference for an object or idea.

A group containing all events that do not occur in event A.

Interviews that have been completed.

The number of interviews completed per hour of interviewing. Factors influencing completion rate are accuracy of sample, study incidence, interview length, screener length, and cooperation rate (i.e. how many qualified respondents will actually complete the survey).

It is a form of projective technique where participants are asked to complete an incomplete situation.

A form of projective technique where participants are asked to complete an incomplete situation.

are questions containing words that are unfamiliar to respondents.

It is an index that combines a number of separate variables, e.g. education, income and occupation being used to form one overall measure of social class.

It is an approach to attitude measurement where the overall preference for an object is obtained by summing the evaluative rating of each attribute multiplied by the importance of that attribute.

Compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, is the mean annual growth rate of an investment over a specified period of time longer than one year. CAGR is a term used when investment advisors tout their market savvy and funds promote their returns.

Computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) refers to survey data collection by an in-person interviewer (i.e. face-to-face interviewing) who uses a computer to administer the questionnaire to the respondent and captures the answers onto the computer.

Computer assisted self-interviewing (CASI) is a technique for survey data collection in which the respondent uses a computer to complete the survey questionnaire without an interviewer administering it to the respondent.

computer-aided telephone interviewing is interview where the responses are keyed directly into a computer and administration of the interview is managed by a specifically designed programme. The programme checks for invalid responses and will not accept responses outside prescribed limits, hence subsequent editing and keying in of data is avoided.

In Interview where respondents complete a web site (or HTML) survey and some computer software, presents each question only after the previous question has been completed. Subsequent questions can be tailored to previous question answers, enabling sophisticated routing plans to be used in these surveys.

A geometric study area with a common center.

It is a description of a proposed product or service consisting of attributes and benefits.

It is a board with a written description of a product idea or positioning, often accompanied by an illustration that is shown to respondents.

The brief summary to describe a new product or service.

It is a brief written description of a new product or service idea.

Concept testing is defined as a research method that involves asking customers questions about your concepts and ideas for a product or service before actually launching it. 

It is the investigation of potential consumers’ reactions to a proposed product or service.

Presents the concept mapping technique as a tool in marketing research. The advantage of this technique lies in the development of qualitative research techniques like focus groups, by structuring results in an objective form; through representing the ideas expressed on a perceptual map.

are a summary of the research findings.

involves the use of highly structured techniques (such as questionnaires with closed questions) with statistically representative samples in order to prove or disprove hypotheses.

It is when two variables occur or vary together. It is one of the conditions that has to be met in order to infer a causal relationship.

It is the degree to which two different measuring systems produce correlating results. It is often used to determine the validity of new measuring techniques, by comparing them with established techniques.

It is the probability of a research outcome occurring if a state or condition was to exist.

It is the minimum probability of not rejecting a true null hypothesis (committing a Type I error) and is equal to one minus the significance level.

It is a range of values centred on the sample estimate that is known to contain the true value with a given degree of confidence (usually 95%).

A confidence interval is the margin of error that a researcher would experience if they could ask a particular research question, say, of every member of the target population and receive the same answer back that the members of the sample gave in the survey.

It is a percentage (usually 95%) that reflects the degree of certainty that the true value lies within the confidence interval. It is the minimum probability of not rejecting a true null hypothesis (committing a Type I error) and is equal to one minus the significance level.

are the two values from each end of a confidence interval.

refers to the act of not divulging two types of information in a research study. First, confidentiality is maintained when study information such as client name, brand name, purpose of the research, concepts and/or products (except as directed by the study instructions) is only provided to those who have a need to know. Confidentiality also refers to maintaining the privacy of information collected from or about any individual respondent.

The result of an independent and an extraneous variable indistinguishably affecting a dependent variable.

A confounding variable, in simple terms, refers to a variable that is not accounted for in an experiment. It acts as an external influence that can swiftly change the effect of both dependent and independent research variables; often producing results that differ extremely from what is the case.

It is a research technique that aims to describe how consumers make complex decisions by assuming the decisions are based on a number of factors considered jointly (hence the name) and they trade off some factors for others. The technique requires participants to choose a limited number of attributes from a selection, thereby providing an indication of the importance attached to particular attributes.

Conjoint analysis definition: Conjoint analysis is defined as a survey-based advanced market research analysis method that attempts to understand how people make complex choices. ... It evaluates products or services in a way no other method can.

It is the set of alternatives that potential consumers would consider when buying a product or service.

involves identifying completed questionnaires with data that are out of the permissible range, logically inconsistent or have extreme values. Data that is out of the range of the coding scheme is inadmissible.

A group made up of primary metropolitan statistical areas (PMSA), examples include Minneapolis-St. Paul. CMSAs can be subdivided into metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs).

 constant sum scale is a type of question used in a market research survey in which respondents are required to divide a specific number of points or percents as part of a total sum.

A type of comparative scale where respondents are asked to allocate a fixed amount (or constant sum) of points, dollars, or anything among a set of objects according to a criterion.

Constitutive definition: defines a construct with other constructs, e.g. "weight" by saying that it is "heaviness." Operational definition: assigns meaning to a construct or a variable by specifying the activities or "operations" necessary to measure it.

When a concept is created or used for special scientific purposes, concepts are called constructs.

In its simplest conceptualization, construct validity is the extent to which a construct measure (Circle C) accurately measures the construct it is intended to measure (Circle A).

It is the ultimate user of a product or service.

Consumer behavior is the study of customers and organizations to determine how they select and use products and services: How consumers choose from various alternatives.

It is a study that aims to measure the tendency of consumers to confuse the company that makes a particular brand with another company, or to confuse one brand with another.

A qualitative method in which participants are asked to express their feelings or perceptions about a product by drawing it.

Consumer spending is the total money spent on final goods and services by individuals and households for personal use and enjoyment in an economy.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE or CEX) is a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) household survey that collects information on the buying habits of U.S. consumers. The program consists of two components — the Interview Survey and the Diary Survey — each with its own sample.

The consumer orientation is modern marketing philosophy that guides the practicing managers to carry out marketing efforts in a manner that result into maximum consumer satisfaction. 

It is a group of selected research participants who have agreed to provide pre-designated information at regular specified intervals over an extended period of time. The information may be on purchasing, media consumption or life-style activities.

Consumer Price Index is representative of the consumption expenditure within the economy and is the weighted average of the prices of goods and services.

It is a study that aim to determine consumers' opinion of the quality of goods and services offered by a business. They can include qualitative and quantitative research techniques.

It is an investigation of the behaviour, preferences, attitudes or opinions of a target group sample, collected through a questionnaire.

A household represented by an individual, related families, or unrelated roommates that make consumer purchasing decisions together.

It is an interviewer's interaction with a potential respondent to determine eligibility for participation in a marketing research study.

Contact rate measures the proportion of eligible cases in the sampling pool in which a member of a sampled household was contacted.

A sample group that possesses an individual or group that does not represent the population.

It is an analysis technique where written material is broken down into meaningful units using carefully designed rules.

Content integration or content collaboration refers to the process of connecting content within a repository and using in a different way. 

It is the difference between an actual frequency and an expected frequency in a table.

It is a cross-tabulation table that contains a cell for every combination of categories of the two variables.

It is that from a measurement scale where it is permissible to calculate intermediate values.

lt is a consumer panel that involves participation from the same respondents repeatedly over time. This contrasts with an ad hoc panel, where a pre-recruited group of willing respondents are used as and when they are required.

It is a type of non-comparative scale that offers respondents a form of continuum (such as a line) on which to provide a rating of an object according to a criterion.

It is any research that involves the regular, on-going collection of data, e.g. consumer panels and epos data.

Continuous variables are variables that can take on any value within a range.

It is the observation of behaviour in an artificial setting.

Two study groups are comprised of members from a similar population. One study group will interact with a stimulus while the second study group will not receive that stimulus. The first group is the test group, and the second group is the control group.

It is a group of respondents that receives the normal (or no) treatment and provides a basis of comparison to the test or experimental group that receives the test or experimental treatment.

It is a type of research experiment where one group of stores receives a certain treatment (test stores) and another group receives no treatment (control stores). Sales are then measured for each group over an extended period of time to measure the effect of the treatment.

Replacing current subjects in a study with a different subject that is consistent with the parameters of the initial subject.

It is a type of non-probability sample where the units have been selected because they are convenient for the researcher (which may not be the optimum sample for the research project).

It is the ability of a measurement scale to correlate (or converge) with other measures of the same variable.

It is a computer file that is secretly added to the hard disk of someone who visits a web site that sends them. Their purpose is to track web site visitors, however the use of cookies in marketing research is not approved by ESOMAR.

The cooperation rate is the ratio of all cases interviewed out of all eligible units ever contacted.

It is an advertising research measure of a respondent's ability to remember a particular message, slogan or theme, etc from a commercial.

It is a method of determining the degree of understanding, impact, awareness, and believability that an ad may generate. Respondents are shown the ad, then they are questioned about their opinions.

An internal department that conducts research in order to sustain and improve their company's marketing effectiveness.

It is the existence of a relationship between two variables (which may or may not be a causal relationship - correlation on its own does not infer causality).

Correlation analysis is a method of statistical evaluation used to study the strength of a relationship between two, numerically measured, continuous variables (e.g. height and weight).

The correlation coefficient is a statistical measure of the strength of the relationship between the relative movements of two variables. The values range between -1.0 and 1.0. A calculated number is greater than 1.0 or less than -1.0 means that there was an error in the correlation measurement.

It is a perceptual mapping technique that is based on data where respondents are asked to identify only the attributes that relate to (or correspond with) the subject of the study.

The price value of completing an interview in a survey research project. Determined by dividing the total budget for a project by the number of completed interviews.

A trade organisation for those who are actively involved or concerned with marketing and opinion research.

It is a technique that is used to increase respondents’ willingness to answer questions honestly. Questions are prefaced with statements that attempt to justify an answer that may go against social group norms, e.g. “recent surveys have indicated that the majority of people have difficulty saving every month”.

It is the extent of a relationship between two variables, whereby a change in one variable implies a change in the other.

It is a metric independent variable (i.e. based on data that can be analyzed such as that from an interval or a ratio scale).

It is the proportion (usually expressed as a percentage) of a population of interest that has been exposed to a particular advertisement

It is the number of interviews completed per hour of interviewing. Factors influencing CPH are: accuracy of sample, study incidence, interview length, screener length and co-operation rate.

It is a type of qualitative research that is used to formulate advertising. It can work at three stages in the advertising development process (i) Defining the strategy - i.e. what should the advertising be saying? (ii) Defining the execution - i.e. how should it be said? (iii) Testing a chosen execution.

It is the general term to describe how well scores on one measure (i.e., a predictor) predict scores on another measure of interest (i.e., the criterion).

Criterion variables are used in regression analysis. A criterion variable is another name for a dependent variable.

Respondents might be disqualified for the survey research based upon their industry of employment. It is typical that the research study excludes those participants that are employed in the industry related to the research subject matter.

It is the collection and analysis of data from different countries (or cultural units) that compares the findings from different countries.

The cross elasticity of demand is an economic concept that measures the responsiveness in the quantity demanded of one good when the price for another good changes.

It is a research design that involves the collection of data from a sample only once.

It is a table that shows the frequency and/or percentage of respondents who gave various answers to a question in a survey, and which simultaneously shows these answers for various sub-groups of respondents.

It is a test of validity for a regression model that involves using comparable data to check the validity of an original estimation.

It is the total sum of learned beliefs, values and customs that serve to regulate the consumer behaviour of members of a particular society.

The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly survey of households conducted by the U.S. Census regarding employment. The CPS is used to produce monthly statistics on workforce participation, employment, and unemployment that are closely watched by business, investors, and policy makers.

Market research that is tailored to a specific client's needs.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the process of managing interactions with existing as well as past and potential customers. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.

Customer satisfaction research is that area of marketing research, customer intelligence, and customer analytics which focuses on customers' perceptions with their shopping or purchase experience.