Jay Scott, Principal Jay is a member of KS&R's Board of Directors as well as the Senior Management Team (where he is responsible for Marketing Oversight and Revenue Planning). With over 20 years of marketing and marketing research experience, Jay held Manager and Director-level positions at BellSouth and FedEx in Strategy Development, Marketing, Enterprise-Wide Planning and Research. Moreover, Jay has extensive experience in Qualitative and Quantitative research designs, Ethnographic Explorations, Advanced Market Simulations, Segmentation and Business Case Development. Jay graduated in 1991 with a Master's of Marketing Research degree from the University of Georgia.

What did you have for breakfast today? In my house, we have a lot of choices for breakfast. There are at least 8 boxes of cereal, multiple flavors of pop tarts, and rice cakes. Not to mention, leftover orange rolls and a bag of mini donuts.

Why do we have so many choices? There aren't many people I know who want the same breakfast food every day – some days we want cereal, some days we want bagels, some days we want steak and eggs. We like the variety… and ultimately allocate our choices for breakfast across many different options.

This principle of allocation holds true for business decisions as well. How many businesses do you know that are using a single agency for all of their advertising? None! Instead, they typically have a basketful of agencies to use, and select the one agency that makes sense for a given business need. Their overall spending is allocated across the suppliers they approve.

But the principle of allocation does not only apply to professional services. Shippers will spread their packages across multiple providers depending on price, size/weight of package, access points and delivery time options. Eye doctors will prescribe different types and brands of contact lenses depending on patient need, timeframe of use and even cosmetic impact. Consumers will pick different brands of greeting cards depending on the creativity of the card, the occasion for the purchase, price and retail convenience (online and offline). In all of these cases, decision makers have multiple options to choose from, and allocate their spending across the options as needed.

So, why aren't we researchers doing a better job of incorporating allocations into our choice modeling efforts? The standard approach when using trade-off and conjoint-based tools is forcing respondents to "pick one" option. While there is a proven track record for this approach, it is not always how the purchase works in the "real world".

At KS&R, we have been using an allocation approach (within Hierarchical Bayes architecture) for many years now. In each case, we establish a framework for the choices within the competitive set. Respondents are then given multiple "test" situations where they are asked to allocate their purchases across the options offered. Each "test" situation provides a full category view – i.e., allocations across the choices will add to 100%. Ultimately, a share of preference model is created based on the allocations, and we are able to simulate category-level situations for business strategy and planning.

Our clients have found this approach to be highly intuitive and appropriate given their business objectives. Over time, we have used the principle of allocation to inform decisions about new product development, features evaluation, service bundles, and pricing/price elasticity measurement. It is not the perfect solution, but it does an effective job of mirroring purchase behaviors, which is especially important in categories where purchases are really an allocation of spending across providers, and not a single choice.

Speaking of choices, I had a low-fat strawberry pop tart today. Tomorrow, I'm going for the orange rolls.

When I was growing up, I always wanted to be an astronaut. I made the mistake of sharing this little known fact with my kids a few months ago. Big mistake! They have hounded me relentlessly ever since. "Why would you want to be an astronaut?" I attribute it to my innate sense of curiosity; they attribute it to Dad being a "nerd".

The discussion usually ends with me lecturing them about how they should appreciate this "nerd" a little more. After their eyes roll back into their heads, we stop the conversation altogether.

It is that same sense of curiosity that ultimately led me to marketing research. Where else can you spend all day asking questions? Oh, and get paid for it, too!

I'll never forget the first time a new product I tested made it to the store shelf. It was blueberry-flavored rice cakes. We had completed a TURF analysis to determine the right mix of flavors for the brand, and blueberry-flavored rice cakes were the next best option. I don't think they are still on the shelf, but I will never forget seeing them there.

Not too long ago, the questions I was asking ended up pushing me out of a job. There was a time when people would use a "payphone" to make calls when they were out of the office or on the road - I was working for one of those payphone providers. Mobile phones were only available for the rich and famous, not average consumers. In the late 1990s, the price of mobile service started decreasing, and decreasing fast. I was asked to figure out what the inflection price would be when mobile service would overtake the use of payphones. After designing and executing marketing research, I learned, much to my chagrin, that the industry had already reached that point. Within months, the company was disbanding its payphone unit altogether.

More recently, these questions have become even more complex, focusing on the customer experience and business landscape. Who is my customer? How do I make them loyal? How can I improve the experience? What is the return on investment for making these changes?

To answer these questions, I have been forced to stretch my brain and become more creative... more observant... more analytic... more global... and more consultative. Ultimately, I find myself even more curious.

I have had the privilege of asking and answering many questions over the last 20+ years. It's this same sense of curiosity that keeps me excited about marketing research after all this time. I am always wondering what the next questions (and answers to them) might be.

I may have never made it to the moon, but I guess the "nerd" in me never really let go... Please don't tell my kids, they'll never let me live it down.