Cooperation with the VU University on Survey Research Methods

At DVJ Insights we value academic research and therefore, also cooperate in various ways with academia. For example, we regularly provide master students or academic researchers with data that they can work with and write their thesis or academic articles about. Starting in February 2023, we also cooperated with Dennis Herhausen from the VU University of Amsterdam on a master’s course on Survey Research Methods. As survey research is a method that is often applied in social research, it is an important method to master. The students learn about questionnaire design, sampling, data collection, and also how to analyse the obtained data.

On February 6, at the start of the course, I gave an introduction to actual marketing research, namely, how we conduct marketing research at DVJ Insights where we mainly use online surveys, to collect our data. I explained the ideas behind our pre-testing methodology where natural environments and unforced exposure play a large role. Then, I paid specific focus to our Out Of Home (OOH) and social reel (TikTok) pre-testing solutions, as the students were going to work with data from those specific tests. As for the OOH data, students received data from 1800 Dutch respondents who evaluated in total 36 OOH ads. And for the TikTok data, students received data from 1600 Dutch respondents who evaluated 32 TikTok ads. For both datasets, data included information on engagement, brand recall, as well as associations and evaluation for the ads, and some background characteristics of the respondents. The students coded the OOH and TikTok ads on different elements and subsequently examined whether those elements are critical for the ads’ success. This way, the students were able to work with real data and apply techniques learned during the course, such as multiple regression analysis and moderation analysis. For many students, data preparation and analyses are just something they have to do for their masters, however, by providing them with real data on advertising that they can see also on the streets or in their TikTok feeds, working with data becomes sort of more tangible.

“For the students at VU University, it is so nice to be able to work with real data; in that way, working with data comes much more to life!” – Dennis Herhausen

On March 13, the students pitched their final ideas and findings to three representatives of DVJ Insights, namely me, Mark Vroegrijk and Nicole Engels. Five groups worked on the OOH data and five groups worked on the TikTok data. Each group of students from VU University had the task to pitch their ideas, and what they had done and found in five minutes to DVJ and convince them that their idea was the best. We were highly impressed by the high quality and amount of work the students did in this short period. We saw very interesting presentations and creative coding of the ads. Subsequently, this allowed students to draw relations between the elements that were present in the ads and the success of the ads (that also had to be defined by themselves). Finally, some of the groups also presented their ideal version of an ad, based on the ads they received and their findings.

These cooperations are very valuable to us, as we can contribute to academia by providing data and input to students that they can learn from. At the same time, we receive coded ads and data and fresh new ideas on how to code the ads.

Figure 1: Screenshots of some of the pitches