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26 Jun

Posted at 09:57h in Business, Research
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You could be doing research for your small business Getting the chance to ask research questions for your business is often thought to be beyond the ability of most small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). Market research, while desperately needed for SMB, can be considered a lower priority when determining what an SMB should or should not spend money. With the constant need to probe, learn and collect intelligence for businesses – in an economy where everyone is trying to market their product effectively – research should not be the first budget item on the chopping block. Especially when market research companies offer cost-saving alternatives to custom research projects like omnibus research. Not only is market research a necessity for all levels and types of business – it could also save further investment down the road and have a major impact on the brand. Getting actionable insights from asking the right research questions can be both affordable and accessible to all businesses who need a pulse check.  The question is, what are some best practices to employ to create good research questions that yield actionable results? Actionable market research needs to start out right It isn’t always easy to find the right place to start a market research project. It may be there are many ideas for research that come to mind. But a good place to get rolling is to decide the exact research questions you would like to have answers for. Market research isn’t always about uncovering the hidden insights that you never knew before you started – it is also to help clarify or validate what you already knew.     Think about it this way… As an SMB, start by asking, “What kind of market intelligence is it that I want or need for my business?” or “What evidence am I after to clarify my business or marketing strategy?” Let’s say you are a business developer or a marketing specialist for a tech company. You are ready to start concept testing on a new feature of the product but do not know if your customers are interested or ready in such a feature. You may rely on your general understanding of how the product works to prepare the lot of questions in ways that make sense to you - but will that yield actionable results? You may come up with questions like… -or- But take a minute. Are these questions going to yield actionable results for the business or marketing strategy?   Think about the answers when reading the question; will it help you define if your customers like the new feature(s)? Sure. Will it help determine if the new feature is right for your customers? Perhaps not. Questions, questions… Formulating questions that need to be answered, based on the research topic, is a problem waiting to be solved. As an insights agency, we encourage our clients to deliver us their questions monthly to be included in our omnibus. And our omnibus functions as a lean research tool for businesses that need quick results. Whether it is pre-determined market intelligence that requires questions developed to explore, or if you already have research questions that need answering, our consultants can help in the formulation and fielding of omnibus research that will yield relevant and actionable information.  But before you contact your market research provider, we’ve provided some hints you can use when coming up with your own research questions. Ask research questions that can be answered. Before starting to try to answer a question, it must first be determined whether there is the time or resources available to conduct the research in the first place. Let’s go back to our first example… Finding out which age groups engage with your product or what your customers want from the new features are questions that can be easily answered! But determining the factors of influence that led your customers to be interested in your product in the first place may not be (with this level of research, at least!). Ask one question at a time. Compound questions should be avoided. Asking questions around “if they use your product” and “at what times” may seem like a good place to start the survey, but asking questions like these at the same time or all at once will result in answers that are confusing and uninformative. It is always better to ask single, succinct questions to avoid confusing your customers. Review the research questions thoroughly. Before consulting your research provider, make sure to investigate with your developers to know how your product works, and with sales managers to know its selling points. While you consult your pros, you will still need to develop your own perspective that will help validate the need for your questions.   Be straightforward. If your responding customers do not know what the research question is asking, the response given won’t be of any use to inform the insights gathered at the end of research. Avoid the use of confusing words or language – keep questions as simple and as short as possible, and try to be specific about what it is that is being asked. Avoid research questions like, “Do you like to eat a lot?” Instead, stick to questions like, “At what times of day do you usually eat?” Being specific like this will lead to less confusion for customers, providing actionable market intelligence that relates directly to the research at hand. Provide restrictive and extensive response options. When setting up multiple choice research questions, be sure to make choices exhaustive (they cover all possible choices to the question asked) and restrictive (one answer cannot be mistaken for another by the respondent). In a question like, “What is your annual net income after taxes?”, an example of a restrictive and extensive series of responses could be: In a series of responses like this, virtually all possible options are covered and none of the answer categories can be said to overlap with the others. Setting up research questions so they are restrictive and extensive will not only provide a wide range of detailed data to work with, it will avoid biasing, or presupposing the answers respondents will provide before they are asked. Give your respondents an out. Some respondents may not feel comfortable answering all research questions. If inquiring about demographic information like household income, gender, etc., or looking to gather other sensitive information, it is often a good idea to provide a “Prefer not to answer” option to respondents. Giving responding customers an opportunity to opt out of questions will keep more of them answering (instead of dropping out entirely) and will limit them giving inaccurate responses only to proceed in the survey (resulting in unreliable data). On top of this, the number of those who preferred not to answer questions is still valuable data that can used in finding insight into the research topic. Balance the scale of available responses. Think long and hard about the scale upon which responding customers will answer survey questions. Points on scales should be equally distant from one another in concept or number from one another. Meaning - always avoid response scales that do not measure the same thing. If the question were to be asked, “How would you rate your experience with my company’s product?”, it doesn’t make sense to ask customers to rate their experience on a scale of 1 – Excellent. The first response is a number; the second is a feeling. Both are much different in concept, and using them both in the same scale would not just confuse responding customers, but it would also confuse the data gathered from their responses. If the research question requires a scaled response, stick to easy-to-use scales of one to ten, or scales that involve concepts that are very easily understood at first reading. Pitch your questions to a market research firm for consultation.  Now that you know what you want to research, and you have some great research questions ready to ask, it never hurts to call in a pro to validate the direction and scope of the research before committing to the investment of time and resources to the project. Market research firms like Insightrix are experts in their field and are both accessible and affordable to all levels of business. Whether to validate a specific project, or to inform a project from its beginning, engaging a market research firm at the outset for a consultation will result in more focused research (saving your business both time and money), and will provide more actionable data when the research is done.  What's more, when you access the experience of a market research firm, you'll be sure your research project is overseen by a third party, ensuring the project design and the data it produces are free from any bias - either real or imagined by others.  Doing good research is within reach Creating market research, formulating research topics, deciding on methodologies, crafting the perfect research questions, etc. can all be heavy lifting at first, but if you stick to the tips above, the process can be made much less arduous. Do you have a question or an idea for a research topic for your business? Insightrix OnTopic omnibus surveys allow any size or type of business to ask a research question affordably. Using either the SaskWatch or ManitobaWatch online research panels, the OnTopic service can ask your question or questions for you and provide you the intelligence your business needs at a fraction of the cost of undertaking a research project yourself – and benefit from the insight and survey design experience of seasoned pros. ...
 

28 May

Posted at 13:51h in Business, Research, Syndicated
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  Trended data specific to Saskatchewan Since 2016, Insightrix has been tracking the use of social media by Saskatchewan residents and their social lives online to understand how they engage with one another and with brands and businesses, and to find out their preferences and the ways they use the platforms themselves. When the Saskatchewan Social Media Report (2016) was published – it was presented at workshops and conferences across Western Canada, and more than 200 marketers, business consultants, policy makers and advertisers downloaded the report or benefited from its insight. Many of those who accessed the report say they have used it to validate their marketing initiatives, and as a valuable tool for planning and strategizing.   For the first time, it was possible examine the ways Saskatchewan consumers (aged fourteen years old and older) interact with social media over mobile technologies and the internet, their attitudes toward social networks and their behaviours while using them - and what their preferences might be in the future. And even more important, it became possible to compare those statistics with trended data specific to Saskatchewan social media users. A useful narrative that you can understand  Now, those with interests in the province are able to examine Saskatchewan-specific usage data that have been trended over time and make comparisons to the historical story.  The value of this trended data is obvious when comparing Saskatchewan-specific social media usage data over time. In Saskatchewan, social media use has clearly increased since 2015. Back then, 83% of Saskatchewan residents said they used social networking sites - now, that number has increased to 90% of the people in the province over the age of 14! With evidence like this, it doesn’t take a genius to see that untrended data do not give the whole picture when it comes to social media usage statistics. New to the 2018 Saskatchewan Social Media Report The 2018 Saskatchewan Social Media Report has been slimmed down in terms of raw data and beefed up with digestible and thoughtful insight - and it's been repriced to be accessible to all levels of business in Saskatchewan. Dive into this rich, trended data and actionable insight to learn how the Saskatchewan digital landscape has changed over the years with visualized reporting and a clear narrative that you can understand and use right away. The 2018 Saskatchewan Social Media Report has also added a local chapter dedicated to Saskatchewan brands and how Saskatchewan social media users engage with them. Use the report to find out why residents are following local brands, which industries they are engaged in and what they are looking for in terms of advertisement and brand engagement.  ...
 

20 Apr

Posted at 12:17h in Corporate, News
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Corrin will be presenting a recent study by Insightrix that profiled the non-profit sector in Saskatchewan on behalf of the Saskatchewan Nonprofit Partnership – the first ever of its kind.   The study that will be discussed provided a richly detailed profile of the non-profit sector, identified top challenges in the sector and examined finance and grant application efforts while providing an idea of the differences (and similarities) of the research requirements that exist in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. The presentation will be held at 6:00 PM at the University of Regina – Administration Humanities Bldg, in the AH 527 Boardroom. For more information, check out the Data for Good Regina website.   Data for Good Data for Good is a Canadian organization that gives back by volunteering their data science expertise to help non-profits and not-for-profits. They organize statisticians and analysts, marketers and market researchers and developers and data scientists of all kinds to lend their data acumen to help out by providing services like sector profiling, employee engagement studies, data gathering, data cleaning and interpretation, website and dashboard construction and a host of other necessary functions. They regularly host meetups, presentations and datathons presented by their regional chapters.  If you’d like to learn more about this organization and how Insightrix is involved, check out the Data for Good episode of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast, where we speak to co-founders Joy Robson and Jeff Zakaib to get the scoop on how the movement of volunteering in data science is helping non-profits, not-for-profits and NGOs in Canada.    ...
 

28 Mar

Posted at 11:01h in Corporate, News Release, OnTopic, Saskatchewan
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Seven in ten social media users in Saskatchewan have witnessed racial/ethnic bigotry on social media. In a new independent poll conducted by Insightrix Research Inc., Saskatchewan residents were asked how social media has impacted their lives. Sixty percent (60%) of Saskatchewan social media users indicated it had both a positive and negative impact on their lives. Another 14% felt it didn’t change their lives, 11% indicated it had positively impacted their lives, 6% indicated it had negatively impacted their lives, 4% said they never use social media, 2% were unsure and 3% have quit using social media altogether. Despite indicating social media has had some positive impact on their lives, more than one third (34%) feel the behaviour of others on social media has negatively impacted their lives. In fact, 59% of Saskatchewan social media users feel social media has led them to have a more negative view of society. Another 22% indicate it has had no impact on how they view society while only 7% thought it has led to a more positive view of society. Another 12% indicate they are not sure.  In what way has social media changed the way you view society as a whole? (% of SK Social Media Users) Men (65%), compared to women (53%), are more likely to indicate social media has led them to have a more negative view of society, as are those aged 18 to 34  (64%) and 35 to 54 (63%). Older Saskatchewan social media users aged 55 or older were more likely to indicate social media has no impact on how they view society (30%). Witnessing Online Harassment These negative perceptions are likely influenced by having witnessed someone being harassed on social media. Overall, more than half (55%) of Saskatchewan social media users indicate they have seen someone, other than themselves, harassed on social media. This number is higher among those aged 18 to 34 years old (76%) and 35 to 54 years old (59%). When asked what types of harassment they have witnessed others experience on social media, more than two thirds (70%) report witnessing racial harassment, 59% report harassment based on political affiliation, 59% report sexist/gender-based harassment, 57% report body shaming, 56% report religious intolerance, 55% report threats or intimidation and more than one half (51%) report witnessing homophobic/sexuality-based harassment on social media.* What forms of harassment have you witnessed  while you have been on social media? (% of SK Social Media Users) Those Saskatchewan social media users aged 18-34 years old are more likely to report having witnessed revenge porn (15%), harassment of disabled persons (40%), impersonation/catfishing (36%) and sexist/gender-based harassment (68%). Those with children in the household are more likely to indicate they have witnessed threats and intimidation (61%) on social media. Victims of Harassment Two in ten (21%) Saskatchewan social media users report having once been a victim of harassment on social media. Those aged 18 to 34 years old (36%) and those of indigenous ancestry (32%) are more likely to indicate they have been a victim of harassment on social media.  When asked what types of harassment they have experienced, 47% of Saskatchewan social media users indicate threats and intimidation, 34% indicate body shaming, 28% indicate sexist/gender-based harassment and 24% indicate harassment based on political affiliation.* *Respondents were given the option to make multiple selections; therefore, percentages total more than 100%. Potential for Discontinuation The negative impact of social media appears to be taking a toll on Saskatchewan social media users, with one third (34%) indicating harassment on social media has made them at one time want to discontinue the use of one or more forms of social media altogether. Another 9% of Saskatchewan users indicate they have already discontinued at least one form, and 57% indicate they do not plan discontinue. Research Details A total of 804 randomly selected SaskWatch Research® panel members participated in the online research study between February 5 to February 8, 2018. Quotas were set by age, gender and region to match the general population of the province; therefore, the data did not need to be weighted.  Since the research is conducted online, it is considered to be a non-probability proportion sample; therefore, margins of error are not applicable. However, the margin of error can be estimated to be ±3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20 for questions answered by all respondents (n=804). Detailed information on this release is available upon request.  About SaskWatch Research® Insightrix began developing its SaskWatch Research online market research panel in October 2007, using high quality techniques including telephone recruitment and referrals from existing panel members. Presently, there are over 18,000 active panel members representing all regions of the province and distributions of the general population. Panel membership closely matches the 2016 Census, based on age, gender, household composition, household income and education. For more information, please visit http://saskwatch.ca.  ...
 

01 Mar

Posted at 13:23h in Business, Insights
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Customer experience programs are not a new concept It has been pretty much established that in any line of business, while your product or service may be what gets them in the door, what keeps your customers coming back again and again is the experience.  The customer experience landscape has shifted the way all B2C organizations manage their brand. This can include impeccable front-line customer service, ease of navigating your facilities (or digital assets), the user design of those facilities, etc. - and how that all ultimately ties back into your customer journey.  In fact, customer experience is not only the responsibility of one business area; it's something that should be managed across all levels of business.  In the beginning… Weirdly enough, customer experience measurement (or management programs) have existed in many forms over the years. From the first bazaar merchant who asked a customer if they could do better, to customer comment cards and the old school variant - the customer satisfaction survey - most of these older methodologies revolved almost exclusively around identifying customer touchpoints, or moments of contact between the business and the customer before and after their purchase. But, focusing almost entirely on increasing satisfaction at these points is a slippery slope, as it can lead to a distortion effect – data like this can lead companies to believe their customers are happier with the company than they really are.    It also takes emphasis away from the customer’s actual journey with the company, and magnifies the need to act on specific touchpoints.   For example, if your customer service representative asked one of your customers during a service call how satisfied she or he was with their interaction on a Likert Scale, the number your company would get back may not accurately represent the reality of the interaction. Say the customer gave a rating of 3 out of a possible 7 – was this dissatisfaction due to the interaction the customer had with the customer service representative? Or was the frustration due to waiting too long to talk to that representative, or was the hold music not to her or his liking, or was there something else entirely that led to the customer’s dissatisfaction? In these older customer satisfaction methodologies, who knows? There just isn’t enough qualitative data to find out what led the customer to be dissatisfied – the company just knows something is wrong. Today’s customer experience measurement programs go beyond simple quantitative assessment and look to develop answers to WHY the customer is satisfied or dissatisfied. This gives a much more holistic view of what’s actually going on in these customer interactions.   Rather than trying to make sense of numbers with no meaning, today’s CX methodologies allow organizations to worry more about managing the store than managing their score.   In other words, customer experience programs allows businesses to become more customer-centric as a whole. In fact, on a recent episode of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast we interviewed Voice of Customer consultant, John Morton, to dig into the most common and critical issues many organizations have encountered in managing their customer journey, as well as some of the customer experience best practices successful companies share.  Identify stakeholders, not just shareholders… Building a customer-centric organization is about building relationships – and building relationships is done by showing customers you are listening.  Creating a customer-centric organization involves talking to stakeholders – those people, like your customers, who rely on the company, and not just its c-suite executives and board members.   This is why employee engagement surveys are one of the crucial elements in any CX program.   To get to the bottom of a customer’s journey, you must involve front-line staff who are a major part of that journey. It’s the front-line staff of the company who are in the closest relationship with the customer. Therefore, their input to the process isn’t just important, it is critical. Without direct lines of communication between the front-line and the boardroom, divisions and disconnects across business silos occur – often resulting in a less than optimal customer experience. According to the Harvard Business Review, “Even if a fix appears obvious from the outside, the root causes of poor customer experience always stem from the inside, often from cross-functional disconnects. Only by getting cross-functional teams together to see problems for themselves and design solutions as a group can companies hope to make fixes that stick.” Customer experience programs tie the front-line and the boardroom together, creating an organization that not only understands the touch points in their customer’s journey, but also understands what’s happening in the organization on the ground level and all other points along that customer’s journey, before, during and after purchase.   Go beyond customer service and extend to all levels and all areas of a business and focus on creating customer relationships, not just sales.   Address not just the shareholders of a company, but also that company’s stakeholders – bridge the gap between the boardroom and the point of sale. Ultimately, CX programs address your customer’s entire journey with the company, resulting in someone who is willing to come back, again and again… and again. Do you want to know more about customer experience programs? You can download this whitepaper – it describes the Insightrix Customer-Centric Experience Program (Insightrix CX). ...
 

28 Feb

Posted at 13:38h in Corporate, Infographic, Manitoba, OnTopic
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Winter in Winnipeg is no joke. You don’t earn the nickname, Winterpeg, for nothing after all. Around this time of year, it’s not uncommon to hear friends and family complain about the winter taking a toll both physically and mentally. To combat these winter blahs, many cities and their residents work hard to create a positive winter culture. Insightrix wanted to know how the City of Winnipeg and its residents created a winter culture all their own - like how do they spend their time outdoors during the winter, how cold is just too darned cold and what else could be done to promote a positive winter culture in Winnipeg. We surveyed 360 residents of Winnipeg between February 12 and 15 using ManitobaWatch®  - the Insightrix online research panel in Manitoba. ManitobaWatch sample quotas are set by age, gender and region to match the general population of the province, and since the research is conducted online, it is considered to be a non-probability proportion sample. Therefore, margins of error are not applicable. This is what we learned...
 

19 Jan

Posted at 11:13h in Business, Marketing, Research
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Ad testing isn’t a thing of the past It seems like every time forward-thinking marketers bring up ad testing these days, they are dismissed by their older, set-in-their-ways colleagues.  Concerns of cost and timeliness, as well as the idea that ad testing (in nebulously described ways) diminishes the creativity of your advertising efforts are usually at the root of criticism of the practice. While it may have been true at one point – before strides in technology and methodologies were made – practical application has lifted the practice of ad testing out of focus group rooms of the nineties and back into common practice for forward-thinking marketers. This is because ad testing has evolved. While today’s innovating front-line marketers are fixated on the metrics to help justify their advertisement choices, their executives and stakeholders simply want results. Marketers believe ad results should be inherently data driven, but businesses are starting to see the need for their brands to be more daring and better represented in the media, so the expectation is much bigger than a marketer’s projected ROI.   New quantitative techniques and methodologies have been developed to create faster, more credible and more actionable quantitative testing protocols and to build and access deeper, more robust norms - making those criticisms mentioned earlier more than a little invalid and out of date. But is advertisement research really worth the effort? The short answer is...
 

10 Jan

Posted at 12:30h in Corporate, News
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***UPDATE*** The final three members of the Insightrix 10 have found forever homes! As of February 1, the final member of the group, Darlene, was adopted - meaning that all of the kitties Insightrix sponsored over the holidays have found homes. We at Insightrix would like to thank not only those who took these cats home, but also all of those who liked, shared and retweeted our messages to help get them adopted.  Operation Cat Adoption has been a success – but three feline friends still need a forever home. Over the holidays, because our animal friends are often forgotten around this time of year, Insightrix sponsored 10 cats from the Saskatoon SPCA – paying their adoption fees for whomever could give them a home for the holidays. We’d like to give a short update on how those cats are doing. We’re very happy to say that seven of the cats we’ve come to affectionately call “The Insightrix 10” have already been saved from the big house, and are now happy in their new adopted homes. Thank you to all of the people who gave these cats a home. One of the cats, Darlene, has fallen under the weather over the holidays and is recuperating at the Saskatoon SPCA Animal Care Centre. She should make a complete recovery, though, and will be available to adopt soon. Stay tuned to Saskatoon SPCA and Insightrix social media for updates on her condition. The two remaining members of The Insightrix Ten are still at large and are still looking for a forever home. Both Chestnut and Rachel are currently waiting at the Stonegate Petland in Saskatoon, SK for a new friend to help them by bringing them home. Through Insightrix sponsorship, the adoption fees for these cats have been prepaid and they are ready to take home. If you could welcome one or both of these fine feline fellows into your home, or know someone who could provide a safe and stable forever home, please head to the Stonegate Petland in Saskatoon and take them home. You know they would appreciate it, and you’ll gain a friend for life. Insightrix would like to again thank the Saskatoon SPCA for making this possible, and for their continued work here in Saskatoon, as well as all SPCA locations, for the great work they are doing. If you’d like to contact the Stonegate Petland for more information or to arrange adoption, please call them at (306)934-3920....
 

21 Dec

Posted at 13:30h in Corporate, Manitoba, OnTopic
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Most Manitoba residents (88%) intend to buy gifts during the 2017 holiday shopping season.   FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 21, 2017   In a recent independent poll by Insightrix Research Inc., 88% of Manitoba residents reported they intend to purchase gifts this holiday season. During this holiday season, 90% of women polled state they intend to purchase gifts, as do 87% of men. Ninety-seven percent (97%) of Manitobans with one or more children stated they intend to purchase gifts this holiday season, as do 82% of those polled with no children.   When will Manitobans be doing most of their holiday shopping?   When it comes to when Manitobans intend to do most of their holiday shopping, almost half (47%) of those polled stated they had already completed their shopping. Almost 2 in 10 (19%) state they plan on doing their shopping between December 16-20, while 13% plan on getting it done by the middle of the month (December 1-15). More than one in ten (11%) of those polled plan on putting it off until the last minute, doing their shopping in the last week before Christmas, and 7% state they plan on doing their holiday shopping after Christmas, during Boxing Week. Another 4% said they were unsure when they’d do their holiday shopping. How much will Manitobans spend over the holidays? When asked how much they plan on spending over the holiday season compared to last year, almost half (49%) of those polled report they plan on spending about the same amount as last year. One quarter (25%) state they plan on spending less than last year, and more than one quarter (27%) state they plan on spending more. How will they pay for it all?   How Manitobans plan on paying for their holiday purchases was another question we asked. A larger proportion of those polled (50%) reported they plan on making their holiday purchases with a major credit card, and almost four in ten (37%) state they will be relying on cash put aside specifically to pay for holiday shopping. Two in ten (20%) of those we polled state they plan on using discretionary income to shop over the holidays, while 16% report they will dip into their savings. Nearly 1 in 10 (8%) state they plan on delaying payment of bills, and another 8% plan on using gift cards. Seven percent (7%) of polled residents state they intend to use a store credit card, and 4% will be relying on other means to make their holiday purchases. *Note that respondents could have provided more than one response which is why the following numbers add to more than 100%. Research Details A total of 603 randomly selected Manitoba Watch Research® panel members participated in the online research study on December 12 through December 14, 2017. Quotas were set by age, gender and region to match the general population of the province. Since the research is conducted online, it is considered to be a non-probability proportion sample; therefore, margins of error are not applicable. About Insightrix Founded in 2001, Insightrix Research Inc. is a full-service market research firm that helps clients develop, administer, and manage data collection and information strategies. From its office in Saskatoon, Insightrix offers a comprehensive range of research services. For more information, please visit our website. For more information, please contact: Duncan McGregor, Marketing & Communications Coordinator Insightrix Research Inc. Tel: 306.657.5640 ext. 240...
 

21 Dec

Posted at 12:16h in News Release, OnTopic, Saskatchewan
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Most Saskatchewan residents (93%) intend to buy gifts during the 2017 holiday shopping season. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 21, 2017   In a recent independent poll by Insightrix Research Inc., 93% of Saskatchewan residents reported they intend to purchase gifts this holiday season. During this holiday season, 95% of women polled state they intend to purchase gifts, as do 90% of men. Ninety-five percent (95%) of residents between the age of 35-54 years state they intend to buy gifts, while a lower number (89%) of those over the age of 55 years report the same.   When will Sask. residents be doing most of their holiday shopping?   When it comes to when residents of Saskatchewan intend to do most of their holiday shopping, half the respondents (50%) had already purchased most of their gifts, and other 14% planned to do by middle of December (1st to the 15th). Almost a quarter (22%) plan to purchase most of their gifts in the latter half of December (16th to 20th) and 10% plan to do so in the last few days before Christmas (21st to 24th). Another 2% of residents plan to purchase most of their gifts during boxing week and 2% were not sure when they would get most of their gifts.   How much will residents spend over the holidays? When asked how much they plan on spending over the holiday season compared to last year, more than half (56%) of those polled report they plan on spending about the same amount as last year. Almost one quarter (24%) state they plan on spending less than last year, and two in ten (20%) state they plan on spending more. How will they pay for it all?   How Saskatchewan residents plan on paying for their holiday purchases was another question we asked. A larger proportion of those polled (46%) reported they plan on making their holiday purchases with a major credit card, and almost four in ten (37%) state they will be relying on cash put aside specifically to pay for holiday shopping. Nearly one quarter (24%) of those we polled state they plan on using discretionary income to shop over the holidays, while 17% report they will dip into their savings. Nearly 1 in 10 (8%) state they plan on delaying payment of bills, and 4% plan on using gift cards. Three percent (3%) of polled residents state they intend to use a store credit card, and 7% will be relying on other means to make their holiday purchases. *Note that respondents could have provided more than one response which is why the following numbers add to more than 100%. Research Details A total of 801 randomly selected SaskWatch Research® panel members participated in the online research study on December 12 through December 14, 2017. Quotas were set by age, gender and region to match the general population of the province. Since the research is conducted online, it is considered to be a non-probability proportion sample: therefore, margins of error are not applicable.  About SaskWatch Research Insightrix began developing its SaskWatch Research® online market research panel in October 2007, using high quality techniques, including telephone recruitment and referrals from existing panel members. Presently, there are over 15,500 active panel members representing all regions of the province and distributions of the general population. The panel membership closely matches the 2011 Census based on age, gender, household composition, household income and education. For more information, please visit SaskWatch.ca.  About Insightrix Insightrix is a dynamic, Western Canadian, full-service market research company. It exists to serve businesses and government entities with insights-driven research solutions, and interpretive analysis through leading-edge tools and senior-level expertise across a broad range of industries. Insightrix is based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. For more information, please visit our website. For more information, please contact Duncan McGregor, Marketing & Communications Coordinator Insightrix Research Inc. Tel: 306.657.5640 ext. 240...