Dr. Alex Simonson, founder of
Simonson Associates, has over 15 years’ experience in specializing in survey
research techniques. He has extensive
experience in designing and implementing surveys and consulting in the context
of Lanham Act cases, TTAB, NAD and FTC
proceedings, and network advertising compliance, and for internal corporate
pre-emptive measures.
We provide full service marketing research for surveys from
initial consultation and questionnaire design, through coding, tabulation,
report and testimony. We do not
outsource projects as some do. We also
provide consultations to attorneys on trademark, trade dress, and advertising
deception, with extensive Lanham Act, NAD, and FTC
experience and review studies to determine whether they have followed generally
accepted practices and standards.
Dr. Alex Simonson is one of the
few researchers with both a Ph.D. in marketing (comprising cognitive psychology
and research methods) and a law degree both from top tier institutions. Translating often-vague statutory
definitions into operational marketing research is a difficult task and one
that benefits from both perspectives (training in psychology and research and
training in the law). We will assess
marketing data and strategy and provide survey options available for you and
your client.
We also differ by employing
technology actively while maintaining an awareness of the unique and strict
evidentiary requirements for forensic marketing research. We have extensive experience in designing and
conducting controlled internet surveys and computer-based shelf array or
product package presentation for likelihood of confusion or dilution
studies. For mall intercepts, we
regularly employ CAPI (computer assisted personal
interviewing) that we’ve specially designed to be controlled for collecting
evidence in litigation. The computer manages
and tracks skip patterns as a result of full-filter questions and the
interviewer can focus on what is important - asking
questions and recording responses. The
interviewer reads from the computer and enters data directly into the computer;
the data is centrally collected, eliminating errors, erasures, missed-questions
or even inadvertently showing the wrong stimuli to the wrong
cell-participants. Without such
controls, these errors are all too common in mall intercept pen-paper
work.
Alex Simonson holds a Ph.D. in
marketing with distinction from
Columbia Business School and a J.D. from NYU, and has been a full-time
professor of marketing teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in marketing
research.