up vote 3 down vote favorite

What should be our policy regarding very specific market research questions?

I think general questions on how to conduct market research are fine, and on-topic. However, I have a hard time justifying specific market research questions for a particular startup.

Some examples:

I would consider these questions to be off-topic. At best, I see them as "too localized". Do you agree? Disagree? I'd like to get community consensus on how we should handle these questions.

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This answer by Joel Spolsky, co-founder and CEO of Stack Exchange, might help answer your question about What questions should be closed with reason “too localized”? – blunders Mar 14 '12 at 1:04
@blunders Thanks for the link, but again, that is not my question. I'm not asking which questions should be closed as "too localized", or what "too localized" means. My question is "What should be our policy regarding very specific market research questions?". I simply want to know if the community does or does not support allowing specific market research questions. The comment in my question about "too localized" was just in passing, and isn't really the issue here. Take a look at Tim's answer below. He does a good job of answering my question without mentioning "too localized". – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 14 '12 at 5:56
I think all but the last should be closed and even that one is a stretch. – TimJ♦ Mar 14 '12 at 21:11
@Zuly Gonzalez: Here's a question: what're the risks of allowing the questions, and is there a reason that in the future, if based on the results of allowing the questions that the questions as a type just can't at that point be closed? Point is that the questions are in my opinion constructive questions that are coming from startups, appear in most cases to be of value to more than just the person asking the question, and have good answers. I guess I just don't get why there's an issue beyond "feelings" that are just feelings, and do not appear to be based on measurable facts or policy. – blunders Mar 16 '12 at 2:58
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@blunders We always have the option of changing our policies in the future. But, saying "let's just do what we want and not put any thought into establishing our current polices, because we can change our minds later" is not a smart strategy. There's a big risk with taking that approach. A few weeks ago SO had a huge uprising where several longtime users threatened to stop participating because of this reason. After some policy changes, certain Qs that were at one point allowed became off-topic. Some of these Qs had been around for years and had gathered hundreds of upvotes and many answers. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 16 '12 at 22:48
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(Cont.) When the Qs were removed from SO, all hell broke loose. We would be foolish to ignore that. Removing content is controversial, so it's always best to try to get it right the first time around. It's our duty to take our policies seriously, and make a good faith effort to come to a solution that is in the best interest of the community based on the information we currently have available. At times we'll make mistakes, and we'll refine our policies as the site evolves, but that doesn't excuse carelessness. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 16 '12 at 22:50
@blunders As far as this being an issue based on feelings only, well that is not true. This is a site policy issue. People will have different opinions on what should be on-topic. Our job is to decide where we draw the line. "Anything that happens to vaguely come up during the course of doing business" is not an appropriate scope for this site. Otherwise questions like what is the best toilet paper to buy for my startup, or finding a hotel for business travel, would also be on-topic. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 16 '12 at 22:50
@TimJ I happen to agree with you, but I'm open to changing my mind if there is a strong case for allowing them. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 16 '12 at 23:14
@Zuly Gonzalez: "specific market research questions for a particular startup" vs "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face" -- what is the difference? – blunders Mar 16 '12 at 23:45
@Zuly - I am open too - if it is good for the site. I have no agenda other than improving the quality of Q&A. I realize that my reputation on here is one of a snarky, crotchety old man, and that is justified, but I am pretty frustrated by what I see after all this time. If market research are on-topic I am fine with that and will leave them alone. Frankly some of them are interesting - some. (most are not, and and many show a lack of initiative and ability to work in the space the people have identified to work in. ) – TimJ♦ Mar 17 '12 at 23:31
Again, I think that if people are coming here to find market research it could be a red flag. There are cases where that is clearly not true - but many of them exhibit a lack of understanding of their market and business in general and to help them is beyond the scope of this site. – TimJ♦ Mar 17 '12 at 23:31
@Zuly Gonzalez: Still unaware of any valid facts/logic that have been presented to say why questions of this type are not valid questions for SE. Logic related to if the questions cover startup/newbiz/general-business apply to all questions on the site, not just questions of this type. – blunders Mar 19 '12 at 13:39
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I'm in favor of closing those questions. Unless the question has redeeming educational value (can be reused for more than one narrow niche), I don't want to be swamped with such questions. If someone asks a specific question, citing his case an example, but contains lessons that apply to many startups, then I wouldn't close it. – Alain Raynaud Mar 19 '12 at 18:02
@blunders Please re-read all the comments. It is all there. Choosing to ignore facts is not indicative of absence of facts. I am more than happy to clarify any issues, however I cannot help you if you are unwilling to think of it objectively. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 19 '12 at 18:25

5 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

I think they have a place as long as they aren't too localized. Sometimes you hit the wall in research because you just don't know of the correct terms. So even if answers will have outdated info, they still are valuable because of the terms they will mention.

In this case, a "too localized" would be a question asking for statistics on the number of people who use Google Calendar to plan their meals for the week.

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To be sure I understand your position, do you think the 5 examples I provided should all remain open? – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 13 '12 at 23:31
@ZulyGonzalez: All except for the one about people posting opinions online. – dnbrv Mar 13 '12 at 23:42
OK, thanks. That's helpful. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 13 '12 at 23:45
up vote 1 down vote

Right now I vote to close market research questions (that are not about how to conduct market research). I do this because the current policy is that they are off-topic.

If we do change the policy that is fine.

I don't think it is worthwhile to allow them.

Generally speaking there is such a wide variety of possible market research and so few users of this site that the usefulness for the poster will be marginal. It will likely lead to to discussions and likely will lead to more people posting yet more questions for requests of market research.

I think we can agree that a single forum like this is NOT the best place to do unrestricted market research - we should be encouraging people to get out and talk to customers or potential customers - not pretend that this site is suitable for data for deciding whether to pursue a product or business. Given that, market research on startups might be considered ON-TOPIC - or at least have a meta-site of its own. Perhaps it is for this site or a new area 51?

I am open to arguments to keep them - as they seem to be popular subjects here.

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Please provide a source for where it is stated the market research is not a purpose of this site; I've reviewed the FAQs, and not seeing anything. Also, please provide examples of market research questions where a meaningful answer was not provided given the question was asked in a meaningful way. – blunders Mar 14 '12 at 10:46
As for Area51, if such a proposal existed, my suggestion would be to allow the questions here and port them once the beta on Area51 is live. Telling people to "go to Area51" is not a good solution in my opinion if there's a current user base with site that might account for a type of questions being asked; personally after trying Area51, I've found it a little to hardcore for my likely, meaning it's a very long-term investment. – blunders Mar 14 '12 at 10:47
If after reading the entire page here, answers.onstartups.com/faq, you still think market research is appropriate on this site including the, "... if you want feedback on your business, ask your friends and colleagues, and, even better, ask some people who might be your customers." then we disagree significantly. – TimJ♦ Mar 14 '12 at 16:49
I can understand if people want them, and that's fine. This site is going downhill enough. I don't participate much anymore. With more people asking for market research help I would probably spend even less time here. Essentially, if you have to come here to do market research then you're in bad shape. – TimJ♦ Mar 14 '12 at 16:51
"if you want feedback on your [market research], ask your friends and colleagues, and, even better, ask some people who might be your customers"; notice that it's not the same sentence, nor does it have the same meaning. Though "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face" does in fact apply to this meta question. Based on your lack of reply to my other question, I'll assume you were unable to find examples of market research questions where a meaningful answer was not provided given the question was asked in a meaningful way. – blunders Mar 14 '12 at 19:15
@blunders - my lack of response was because I do not want to waste even more time finding these. Frankly, I really don't care. If people want the silly useless questions they can stay. But I won't participate. – TimJ♦ Mar 14 '12 at 19:42
Understand your feelings, but to me, the review of if these types of questions meet SE standards and are questions that a startup would ask is what I'm attempt to help figure out. I'll just leave it as you believe allowing these types of questions would not benefit the community, and as a member of the community you feel they may even effect your desire to take part in the site. It's a fair opinion, and understand, maybe even agree with you, though I was attempting to be more objective about the subject, though that's just me. Cheers! – blunders Mar 14 '12 at 20:48
I am being objective as well. There are tons of "where do I find a technical cofounder" and "where do I find a business guy" questions. These are useful for the asker - but in general not useful for the site. – TimJ♦ Mar 14 '12 at 21:06
Objective is saying that if a question gets upvotes then it was of value to someone beyond the person asking the question; also, there is no requirement on SE that a question be of general use, which is to say the majority of users would find the question and it's answer of use. – blunders Mar 14 '12 at 21:18
I disagree with your use of objective. What you describe is "popular", not objective. Take a look at the goal of the site - to make the internet better and to answer questions about startups. The class of questions you are talking about MAY be marginally argued - they do not clearly meet the goals of the site(s). – TimJ♦ Mar 15 '12 at 1:01
Your responses make no sense to me. If a question is on-topic is unrelated to if it's of use. My reference to upvotes was proof that a question was of value to more than the person asking the question. And I've provided proof via the qoute from the FAQs that shows these questions are ontopic, and contested your qoute as being flawed and showed why. This exchange is not productive in my opinion as you do not appear to be reading my replies. – blunders Mar 15 '12 at 21:29
@blunders Re Tim finding examples of bad market research threads, bad threads are usually deleted. Those with 2K rep can view deleted posts, but one cannot search for them on the site, so they're really hard to find. And even if Tim went through the trouble of finding them, it would be useless because you cannot view them. Re Qs getting upvotes, although we should consider it, voting is a rough measure. We've removed Qs with more upvotes than the ones we're discussing. You only need 15 rep to upvote, so users will vote w/o knowing our policies. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 16 '12 at 23:40
@Zuly Gonzalez: The upvotes are unrelated to if a question is on-topic, and simply address the concern that the question is only of use for the person asking the question. In regards to finding examples of questions that didn't find good answers, if it's not possible to find examples, then the concern that the questions will not find good answers should not be identified as a valid concern. At this point, I am not seeing a clear reason for why these questions are believed to be off-topic. – blunders Mar 17 '12 at 12:48
up vote 1 down vote

In your question you state:

I think general questions on how to conduct market research are fine, and on-topic.

and I would like to understand why you feel this way?

To my way of thinking, a question should be startup appropriate and not at a level for a large established company.

There is already a site, stats.stackexchange.com where someone can ask about the vast majority of statistical and practical aspects of survey design and interpretation. Among the specific topics they cover are:

designing experiments, collecting data & statistical analysis, applied or theoretical

Why would we want a market research question here that overlaps with (or is perhaps more appropriately on) stats.stackexchange?

expanded answer:

I undoubtedly did not make clear the first time which aspects of marketing research I was referring to.

Personally I would consider a marketing research question that is in some way unique to a startup to be on topic.

I would not consider a general marketing research question applicable to any organization to be on topic.

In this respect I believe my opinion is counter to Zuly's to the extent that she considers all "general" marketing research questions to be appropriate.

I would agree with blunders comment:

To me covers the real issue, how do you know if a question is for a startup (new type of business), a new business (the execution of existing known type of business by a new entity), or general business (the enhancement of an existing business). My understanding is the site is just for startups.

Perhaps it would be appropriate to consider an analogy to an accounting question:

I would consider on topic:

I am starting a small business, what low cost software is available to do accounting on my PC?

I am starting a business and buying a new PC, do I need to capitalize it of can I expense it?

and off topic (although) great accounting questions:

Which accounting software is best for handling inter-company eliminations and consolidation? (If you are managing a conglomerate you are not a startup)

How do I insure my accounting conforms to Sarbanes-Oxley? (SOX applies to public companies, once you've gone public you are no longer a startup)

What is the difference between single-entry and double entry bookkeeping? (nothing unique to a startup)

Marketing research in particular: The particular issue with marketing research is that to be of value it needs to be done properly and does involve a bunch of math and statistics. consider a question as simple as:

I am trying to decide whether I should sell Coke or Pepsi in my new store, how do I do market research to determine what my customers prefer?

or

I'm building a website for my new on-line business to sell widgets, how do I conduct market research to select colors and fonts for the website to optimize sales?

These type of questions on how to conduct research, while clearly startup related, do not permit simple yes/no answers. In fact a complete answer to either of these questions would probably run to several pages and include terms like "double-blind study", "confidence intervals", "sample size" etc.

Viewed from the point of view of which marketing research questions permit simple answers, they pretty much boil down to the type referenced by Zuly in her question. While the referenced question are far from examples of great questions, they definitely could be edited and improved. Personaly I like questions like:

Where can I get population data for US counties? (census bureau for free)

I want to sell coffee beans online, is there any data on which countries buy the most coffee per-capita?

In the US who spends more on books, men or women?

but that's just my opinion.

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To me covers the real issue, how do you know if a question is for a startup (new type of business), a new business (the execution of existing known type of business by a new entity), or general business (the enhancement of an existing business). My understanding is the site is just for startups. – blunders Mar 17 '12 at 16:05
+1 @JonnyBoats: Excellent points regarding why general market research questions are okay, though do you have examples of such questions on stats.stackexchange.com? I did a quick search based on tags related to marketing and found no pattern of questions of that type. Also, stats.SE appears to be on stats, which is only one aspect of doing market research in my opinion. – blunders Mar 17 '12 at 16:08
@blunders - here are two examples from stats: stats.stackexchange.com/questions/641/… & stats.stackexchange.com/questions/11048/… – JonnyBoats Mar 17 '12 at 17:08
@blunders - you say "stats.SE appears to be on stats" which is only partially true. From the FAQ: CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a question about statistical analysis, applied or theoretical designing experiments collecting data data mining machine learning visualizing data probability theory mathematical statistics statistical and data-driven computing then you're in the right place to ask your question. – JonnyBoats Mar 17 '12 at 17:14
I would see all the topics you listed as being inclusive of the topic of stats, but believe the topic of market research would have aspects, or to be more clear, the aspects of stats, that would be covered by that site. The sourcing of research within a given domain, how to correctly phrase market within a given domain, etc in my opinion would be off-topic on that site. – blunders Mar 17 '12 at 17:30
Notice that in the second example you linked to that the answer appears to state that part of the question is about stats, and part of the question is about domain knowledge; believe the answerer was attempting to be nice about saying domain knowledge questions are not related to stats questions. Also, that question appears to related to general business, not startups, though I might be wrong. – blunders Mar 17 '12 at 17:33
The first example does not appear to be related to startups, and stats people like to find data sources to practice analysis on, so I can see how that'd be on-topic. – blunders Mar 17 '12 at 17:36
@JonnyBoats Are you implying that market research is only conducted by "large established companies"? I completely agree with you that for a Q to be appropriate for this site it "should be startup appropriate and not at a level for a large established company". However, I disagree that market research is only relevant to large established companies. I think it's important for startups to conduct market research to determine whether an idea is worth pursuing. That's basically why I think general market research questions are fine. By general I mean Qs that are helpful to a large audience. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 17 '12 at 17:50
What I gather from your answer is that you think all market research questions should be deemed off-topic for this site, even general market research questions. Is that correct? – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 17 '12 at 17:57
@JonnyBoats Re overlapping Qs, I think that's inevitable. As SE grows, we will find more Qs that overlap in scope with other SE sites. It behooves the asker to find the best site to post the question on - the one with the most experts on the topic. But, if the Q is asked on a less optimum site, yet it's still on-topic for that site, it shouldn't be closed as off-topic. We can migrate it to the more appropriate site, but I've found that some people are so stubborn that they'd rather keep it on the original site, despite the fact that migrating it will result in better answers for them. (Cont.) – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 17 '12 at 18:38
(Cont.) It's ridiculous and makes no sense to a logical person, but it happens. As for stats.SE, I don't think we can say that all market research Qs will be appropriate for them, but we can judge them on a case by case basis. I've asked the stats mods if a couple of our questions would be acceptable on their site to get a better understanding of their scope. I'll report back here when I get an answer. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 17 '12 at 18:38
up vote 0 down vote

I looked at the list of questions/links Zuly posted (again) and only the last one seems to be useful to me.

All the others are just "do my homework for me" or similar nature of - "I am in this domain space but know so little about it that I have no idea about the market size" - or the market size is so ridiculous as to be useless.

The last one is phrased better and useful.

Perhaps this indicates that it is a case-by-case basis as to allow these types of questions.

Again - some of the questions are so open and have nothing to do with startups - it is just an attempt to offload work to others.

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up vote -1 down vote

First let me say that while one of the questions you list is mine, that's not a big deal to me, though after reading your questions, I thought I'd share my take on the concept of being too local.

Questions that are too local based on my experience are based on the estimated number of people the question is likely to help. By help, that might mean directly, indirectly, or the viewer simply enjoyed the question and related answers. While I've never seen firm numbers, I'd guess given the long-tail approach of SE take too local would mean the question only helps the person asking the question. Normally, questions that are too local are also almost impossible to answer, or could easily be rephrase to ask the question in a way that covers the first question, but opens the question up.

After reviewing the questions you linked to, I thought they were both interesting and I would have a hard time believing they only helped the person asking the question.

That said, it's very possible I've misunderstood the concept of being too local, but thought I'd attempt to post a reply, since you went to the effort to ask about the topic of market research questions.

UPDATE: Thought more about your question/comment -- and have more feedback. First, just to be clear, in my opinion any user that upvotes a question is saying the question was of value to them. The questions you linked to in all but the case of one question had at least 2+ upvotes; which means that including the person asking the question that at least 3 users found the question of value. To me, three of more users saying the question is of value means the question is not too local. If the questions are off=topic is another matter, but unrelated to if a question is too local in my opinion.

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts. My interpretation of "too localized" is a bit different from yours. I could be mistaken, but it seems like you see it in terms of the Internet audience as a whole. I take it to be specific to the audience of the particular SE site. So, of all the Internet users, is it too localized for the very small subset of people that have a reason to be on OnStartups Answers? Will many other people on this site find the question to be of value? That's the measure I use. I'll search around to see if I can find a better definition of too local, preferably from an SE source. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 13 '12 at 2:37
Ok, please comment below my answer if you're able to post an update to your answer and I'll take a look at the update. Cheers! – blunders Mar 13 '12 at 11:22
@Zuly Gonzalez: Just a heads up that I've posted an update to my answer in response to your comment. – blunders Mar 13 '12 at 16:10
Thanks for the additional thoughts. I looked for a definitive definition for "too localized", but did not find one. However, I think we're getting off on a tangent, and losing sight of the real question. The question is, should we permit these market research questions on the site? And why, or why not? Not, are they "too localized"? I added the bit about the questions being off-topic, or possibly "too localized", to share my thoughts on the matter, but I can see how that can steer the conversation in the wrong direction. Maybe I should remove that from the question and formulate my own answer. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 13 '12 at 23:03
I lean on the side of thinking they are off-topic, but I see "too localized" as a nicer way of closing these questions since closing as off-topic gives the question an automatic downvote. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 13 '12 at 23:07
To summarize your answer, you are on the side of allowing these questions on the site, because you think they are interesting. Is that correct? – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Mar 13 '12 at 23:10
@Zuly Gonzalez: If you want to be nice, close the question as off-topic, comment why it's off-topic, and upvote the question to remove the auto-down vote placed by the system. I'm not saying that any question that's interesting should be ok. What I'm saying is questions in my opinion with 2 or more upvotes are clearly not too local. Not every question will help everyone, and if a question is helping more than one person, it's likely not too local. – blunders Mar 14 '12 at 0:53
@Zuly Gonzalez: As for if market research questions are off-topic -- no, I don't believe they are. In part because while one question might be in a market that the average user may never venture into, the general practices of profiling a market, ways of thinking about markets, etc -- are skills that every entrepreneur should be able to do, and in my opinion one way to learn to do this is my reading how a random market was profiled. In fact, I believe there's a huge market for just this sort of Q&A online, and believe allowing these types of questions will benefit the site and it's community. – blunders Mar 14 '12 at 0:57
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I agree with your assessment of on-topic, but believe you are mis-assessing localization. Upvotes do not mean "this helped me" they mean "this i a good question" (or "this is a good answer"). And answers don't mean it helped either, they mean "Here's how to solve this problem". Upvotes might even mean "I thought this was interesting" or "I'm having a good day". Overlocalization, upvotes, and helpfulness are orthogonal. Lots of page views is a better indicator of helpfulness, but even that's not a great metric. – Ben Lee Mar 17 '12 at 18:02
In my opinion, without a lot of page views to back you up you have to argue generic helpfulness of your question from a theoretical standpoint. – Ben Lee Mar 17 '12 at 18:03
@BenLee: My reference to upvotes has nothing to do with "generic helpfulness", but simply that the question asked was of value to more that the person asking the questions. Being of value to a viewer in such a way that results in an upvote does not require anything more than "it was of value". Going back to "generic helpfulness", there is no requirement that a question provide "generic helpfulness", just that it's of use to more than just the asker of the question. – blunders Mar 19 '12 at 13:27
@BenLee: (continued) Not sure what your reference to answers was meant to cover, though my reference to answers was to the concern questions of this type how not receive any good answers. I contested this claim, asked for proof of it, and my understanding is that I was told there is no proof that questions of this type are not getting good answers. More to the point, to my knowledge I have never said that answers are related to if a question is of use to more than the person asking the question. – blunders Mar 19 '12 at 13:29
@blunders, "generic helpfulness" in my mind is synonymous with "of value to more than just the asker". – Ben Lee Mar 19 '12 at 15:12
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@blunders, then forgot my use of that phrase. What I meant to say is "I don't believe upvotes are a reliable indicator of value; just because someone upvoted your post does not mean it was valuable to them". – Ben Lee Mar 19 '12 at 18:15
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@blunders, let's agree to disagree then. No point in dragging this out in this comment thread anymore. – Ben Lee Mar 19 '12 at 21:16
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