Market Decisions has conducted research on many of the most important public issues facing government and corporate policy makers.

We are often engaged to help government advocacy organizations and corporations understand what the public thinks and more importantly why this is so. This information is then used to create policies or to communicate more effectively.

This focus area has produced some of our most interesting and useful work. For corporate and environmental organizations we have conducted intercepts to test attitudes toward simulations of visual impacts. For advocacy groups we have conducted in-depth/qualitative or executive interviewsthat provided insights to guide efforts on critical public referendums. For corporate clients we have identified true public attitudes and preferences – that often are at odds with positions of public advocacy groups.

We can use advanced statistical methods including cluster analysis to segment the public into groups to better understand values and beliefs. In fact, Market Decisions has been using psychographics (segmenting customers by attitudes, beliefs, interests, and values) to profile groups of customers since the late 1980’s. An example of this approach can be seen in Market Decisions’ report, The People of Maine, where segmentation was used to help leaders fully understand segments of the Maine public.

We also have extensive expertise is in advertising testing and tracking. Market Decisions has provided the insights and strategies for communications that are used to test initial ideas and then we conduct pre and post advertising tests. In Maine, we use our quarterly shared subscriber survey, The Maine Survey, as an economical means to pre and post test advertising awareness. Elsewhere we rely on our own proprietary designed telephone survey.