This article compares the different types of market research software available and their strengths and weaknesses. It stresses the need to consider data mobility.

The importance of being able to move market research data easily between different systems has never been greater. If a software supplier tells you that their platform does everything you will ever need, be very suspicious.

Market research tracking studies are a valuable source of revenue for many research agencies. However, most of the software used in market research struggles with the practicalities that face researchers and data analysts when analysing tracking data.

This article compares the different types of market research software available and their strengths and weaknesses. It stresses the need to consider data mobility.

The software you use for producing tables needs to analyse data in any standard data format used in market research. I am sometimes surprised at the limitations of many tabulation software packages and the time staff spend to prepare data before you can even produce one table.

Many only view MRDCL as a tool for producing crosstabs (or tables) using its powerful scripting language. That is not unreasonable, but we are in an era of sharing data, and MRDCL now offers a great deal more choice..

For many years, I could not help wondering why the Quantum tabulation software for market research was still in use. Most of us consider IT and software to be fast-moving industries, yet SPSS bought Quantime, the developers of Quantum, in 1997…

The use of scripting to process market research questionnaires and surveys has grown in rece nt years. But, first, what is scripting? It means using a programming language to prepare a questionnaire, to process data or to produce tabulations.