Taking a stand for quality

In 2022, CASE4Quality presented eye-opening findings from a study on fraud showing that respondents were completing more surveys than is humanly possible and were circumventing fraud detection. Industry associations and research professionals have come together globally on data quality but have yet to investigate this alarming issue. There are now Eight Defendants Indicted in International Conspiracy to Bill $10 Million for Fraudulent Market Survey Data. We invite brand leaders and research buyers to unite with this independent and unbiased coalition to create one voice that demands transparency and accountability across the research supply chain.

Mary Beth Weber, founder of CASE, has been in the research industry for more than 3 decades assisting insights leaders at such companies as Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, PepsiCo, Kraft-Heinz, Mondelez, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Estee Lauder, L’Oreal, and Hershey to ensure supplier compliance to research standards.

During her first decade in the industry, Mary Beth worked on the supplier-side of data intelligence and realized that potentially data-corrupting issues were rarely being disclosed to the consumer. She also recognized that users of data seldom asked questions about the accuracy or quality of the underlying information -- they blindly trusted the veracity and integrity of the data intelligence and the related supplier.

Based on a request by Allen Whitehouse, head of insights at Kraft Heinz who was frustrated with his inability to receive valid and reliable findings, Mary Beth worked with industry thought-leaders to create the "Coalition for Advancing Sampling Excellence" (CASE) in 2018. CASE is an independent and unbiased coalition of brands and research experts that advocate for transparency and accountability across the research supply chain.

The key to ensuring quality is for client-side researchers and consumers of data intelligence to ask questions and require transparency and accountability. In addition, we, as an industry, need to develop objective and auditable measures of data quality to help buyers differentiate between vendor offerings and understand the trade-offs being made between price, timing and quality.

Join the Effort

The case for CASE

Fraud was taboo in the market research industry prior to 2022. So that's exactly what Efrain Ribiero, the godfather of online sampling, recommended that CASE investigate as part of our groundbreaking study conducted in collaboration with the Insights Association and the Adverstising Research Foundation. Our findings were quite eye-opening to the entire industry -- respondents are completing more surveys than is humanly possible and circumventing fraud detection. Respondents entered an average of 21 surveys in a 24 hour period with some entering more than 100 and even 1000 different studies during that same time frame.

This study was sponsored by executive-level researchers at Procter & Gamble, Colgate Palmolive, PepsiCo, Ferrero, L'Oreal, Flowers Foods, Pernod Ricard and CVS Aetna. In response to the findings, as well as to CASE's continuing advocacy and pressure from brand leaders, industry associations and researchers across the globe came together to create the Global Data Quality initiative. This collaboration was formed "to address ongoing and emerging risks to data quality in the market and social research, consumer insights and analytics industry."

CASE is working with brand leaders to create a unified voice that will help drive the initiative and address the elephant in the room: Are there enough real, unique and engaged respondents to meet industry demand and provide a foundation of quality for research findings?