Vista Research specializes in the execution of market research studies. The company provides services and deliverables to large organizations as well as SMBs. Primary offerings include data editing/cleaning, cross-tabulations, weighting, visualizations/dashboards, data integration, and databases. Vista is “platform agnostic” and supports a variety of data collection platforms. Additional details about Quantum, one of our primary software tools, are provided below by Unicom Systems, the software’s current owner and developer - Quantum is a highly sophisticated and flexible toolset designed to simplify the process of obtaining useful information from a set of questionnaires. Quantum offers a very flexible programming language that performs a variety of tasks including, but not limited to, the following:▪check and validate your data▪edit and correct your data▪produce different types of lists and reports of data▪produce new data files▪recode data and produce new variables▪generate tables ▪perform statistical calculations.

provided Quantum data processing services and deliverables to various clients in the insights industry

Only a few years after the Gordon Black Corporation acquired Louis Harris and Associates (1996), the company was renamed Harris Interactive (1998). The Harris Poll was already well known for the public tracking of political and societal issues. When Harris Interactive opened a new Chicago office to support the nascent use of the Internet for survey research, I was brought in to manage the 4 front end, data collection scripters and 6 back end, spec-writers. Nielsen Holdings acquired Harris Interactive in 2013.

NFO Research was among the largest custom market research companies in the world. They maintained a pre-recruited consumer panel which was used for both custom and syndicated research. This panel consisted of over 550,000 US households and about 100,000 households in Europe. In 1997, NFO formed alliances with both Yahoo! and Jupiter Communications as a way to increase the amount of research they conducted online via the Internet. Also in 1997, NFO changed its name from NFO Research to NFO Worldwide. This was done to reflect both its increased presence outside of the US as well its growing number of service offerings.As a Data Processing Project Director (DPPD), I supported NFO’s client groups by editing & cleaning their survey data, formatting and populating cross tabulations per their instructions and handling follow-up requests needed for our clients. All of the data processing was handled on a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX computer. As was the case at Market Facts, NFO used market research software from the Quantime Corporation. Quantum software was used for all activities relating to cross tabulations.

After completing my M.B.A., I went to work for Market Facts’ BrandVision Group. At the time, Market Facts (now part of IPSOS), processed survey research data using SPSS MR Quantum and related software

member of New Products Planning Group in the Research Department

My first position after graduating from the University of Illinois’ College of Business with a B.S. degree in Marketing was with the A.C. Nielsen Company. Among my primary responsibilities at A.C. Nielsen was collecting audit, scanner and custom data for their Retail Measurement Services. I was also involved in collecting data for the growing Scantrack service which consisted of checkout scanner data at the store level. To this day, these services give valuable insights to manufacturers and retailers of consumer packaged goods (CPG) products. Among the types of data obtained are market share, pricing, promotional and sales.