Research: 98% of all statistics are made up - Author Unknown
November 4, 2007 – 11:23 am
I’m a big fan of research and numbers. External sources and research helps validate your opinion.
Of course, there will always be cases (no pun intended), such as Crystal Pepsi that tend to test well, but flop when rolled out to the masses. Research will only take you so far.
But, the presentation of the information can make or break a campaign.
There was a good article on the Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog called Why Percentages Don’t Add Up that stresses how important the positioning of numbers can be.
Which is scarier - undergoing a potentially fatal surgical procedure that has a 95% survival rate, or one that causes death in 1 out of 20 patients? If you are like most people, you would find the latter statistic far more worrisome, even though mathematically the two statements are the same. A variety of research shows that marketers should choose carefully when throwing numbers at their customers.
In summary, if there is a small chance of something happening (such as getting burned by an exploding laptop battery), it is better to use percentages. If you are looking to stress the positive, focus on numbers.
Good: 90% of our customers rate our service as “excellent”
Better: 9 out of 10 customers rate our service as “excellent”
Technorati Tags: research, statistics, number, chance, psychology
