A core piece of market research reporting over the past few decades has been the inclusion of banner runs. Banner runs or banner tables are large data sets showing percentage results from survey questions broken down by splits of categories. An example of a banner run would be: "Q3 - Would you recommend Company XYZ to a friend or family member?" - broken down by categories such as gender, age, region, household income, etc.
Essentially what a banner run looks like is a large table or data set of cross-tabulations. For example, let's say 80% of respondents stated they would recommend Company XYZ to a friend or family member but looking at banner runs, 70% of males would recommend it while 90% of females would recommend it equaling an average of 80%. Interpretations can then be drawn from the difference of opinion between genders. Similar banner runs would show breaks for other categories as well. The number of banner runs on questions can be limitless and it really depends on which categories are most important to management or your client.
In olden days (and even in today's world for some more-archaic research firms) these banner runs were all printed in binders running upwards of hundreds of pages or more. Many survey software systems allow for automation of cross-tabs and banner runs which can be viewed electronically with special attention called to statistics which are significant. This saves analysts lots of time sifting through a binder of paper banner runs page by page.
I would also argue unless requested, market research firms should not dump banner runs on a client. The best market research companies spend the time on their own synthesizing the data and pulling out major themes or nuggets of interest. Firms who boast their client will receive a banner book of tables and graphs essentially means the same firm is putting the work on you to analyze the data. You are paying your market research firm and consultant to do this work for you, not the other way around.
Drive Research is a market research company located in Rochester, NY. Sitting on a database of survey responses or data but do not have the resources in-house to analyze? Drive can assist you with putting together reports and creating recommendations based on the data. Contact us at [email protected] or call us at 315-303-2040.