Michigan State University

Rep Data’s top-notch customer service helps Michigan State University obtain high-quality, trustworthy data for critical academic research

Background

Michigan State University’s (MSU) Eli Broad College of Business is home to some of the nation’s highest-ranked programs for undergraduate and graduate level business-related studies. In addition, it offers the top marketing research master’s degree in the world as part of its Master of Science in Marketing Research (MSMR) program. Students and professors at MSU often conduct primary research to collect data for use in writing papers to publish in peer-reviewed journals, dissertation projects for doctoral students and for grant applications.

The Challenge

To a great extent, the research that faculty and students publish is often new, can be considered ground- breaking, and is focused on significant topics that have not been previously covered. This allows them to show leadership and make unique contributions in their respective fields, so not only are they often seeking niche respondent audiences, but they also must ensure the utmost quality of the data to support the integrity of their work. Their academic work must stand up to scrutiny by peers, by journal publishers and by others in their field.

Often, university faculty will seek data focused on a specific type of business person, such as global sales people, sales managers, sales organizations and even customers of sales people. General population consumer panels can’t provide this type of niche audience. This need, combined with the need for extremely high data quality, means they need an excellent data collection partner.

The Solution

When some recent projects came up in the business school’s marketing department, MSU reached out to several potential vendors, ultimately choosing Rep Data. Not only was Rep Data recommended by colleagues in the MSMR program, but the team working on the research was drawn to the company’s singular focus on customer service.

Rep Data was well-equipped, with its unbiased approach to sample sourcing and custom B2B audience recruitment techniques, to deliver the niche audiences needed for very targeted research projects. At the same time, the team’s hands-on approach in monitoring data quality, screening results and cleaning data throughout the project ensured the delivery of trustworthy data. This saved MSU faculty time, stress and headaches, as the data could be relied upon as a solid basis for academic work such as dissertations, peer-reviewed articles, grant applications and successful journal publication.

“This is what service is really about from a market research provider. I’ve tried other companies to help with data collections, and Rep Data’s customer service stands out from the crowd. I believe that data quality and service go hand-in-hand, and I’ve definitely found this to be true while working with them. Because I know that the Rep Data team is doing good work and I can trust them, I can focus on my own job, and know that the quality will be there in the end.”

Wyatt Schrock, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Michigan State University