What is she thinking?

We’d all like to know what others, particularly our prospective customers, are thinking.

And that’s what the discipline of Market Research is intended to do. But how do you conduct research on the web that’s cost-effective, and that produces results?

We’ve all seen them. Those Netflix popups that are generated when you’re leaving a website. They’re annoying and inneffective. The best way to conduct market research on the web is to be honest with people. Let them know up front what they’re getting into, and give them the option to say “Yes”, or “No” upfront.

Best practices require that you ask permission first

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What’s The Four Way Test?

“If you apply The Four Way Test in your professional and personal life, you will be very successful.” ~ My grandfather Charles J. Proctor, Rotarian (in his office at the Travelier Motel in Columbia, Mo, to me when I was 10) 

Rotary International

Herbert J. Taylor (April 18, 1893 – May 1, 1978) was the creator of the “The Four Way Test of the Things We Think, Say or Do” (see below). He wrote this 24-word statement of business ethics in twenty minutes as he set out to save the Club Aluminum Products distribution company from bankruptcy.   

Founded in 1923, Club Aluminum Cookware was sold by door-to-door salesmen until the Great Depression made this method of sales too costly. In 1932, it teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. The then-Vice President of Jewel Tea Company, Herbert J. Taylor, was asked come and help out in the hopes of avoiding insolvency. After he settled the law suits pending against the company, Taylor concluded that Club Aluminum was $400,000 in debt with no chance that existing sales could service even the short-term debt. He was advised to file for bankruptcy. Jewel Tea had concluded that the situation was hopeless and asked Taylor to return full-time.   

Instead, Taylor left his $33,000 salary at Jewel and became President of Club Aluminum, with a salary of $6,000. And, using his Jewel stock as collateral, he purchased the controlling interest in the Club Aluminum for $6,100. When Taylor took over the situation was so desperate. In developing his plan of action, his first priority was to change the ethical climate in the company. “If the people who worked for Club Aluminum were to think right, I knew they would do right,” he affirmed. ”What we needed was a simple, easily remembered guide to right conduct – a sort of ethical yardstick- which all of us in the company could memorize and apply to what we thought, said and did.”   

The Four Way Test Read the rest of this entry