Your Most Frequently Asked TURF Analysis Questions Answered

TURF Analysis stands for Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency. To break that down word by word, Total means complete or absolute, Unduplicated means it is unique, Reach is the number of people reached at least once and Frequency is the total number of times a person was reached. TURF came originally from the demand from marketing agencies and has since extended to products and service research. It helps you see what is optimal with different market potentials for products, services and content to offer.

The most recent Survey Analytics Webinar was The TURF Analysis Playbook, a 30 minute presentation or "drill" presented by our very own methodology expert and VP of Client Services Esther LaVielle. Over 100 research professionals joined us live for the presentation as Esther presented what TURF Analysis is and when and how you should apply it to your research efforts. In case you missed out, you can get the replay here. Following the presentation, some very great questions were asked by attendees and in case you checked out early, here are the answers! Continue reading to check out our all new guide to TURF Analysis enclosed after the Q&A too!

When Should You Use TURF Analysis?

Again, TURF originally came from marketing agencies to analyze different kinds of media campaigns. But besides that use case, you can use TURF Analysis is anytime you ask the following questions: 1) Are you thinking of selling new lines of products or services? 2) Where do you want to place ads to reach your target consumers within a specific budget? 3) Where do you want to place your products to meet the demand? and 4) Do you have any multi-select question types in your existing surveys? Make sure to include TURF Analysis in any of these scenarios. It doesn't hurt to run TURF Analysis in other scenarios, too.

How do You Program a Survey With TURF Analysis?

There are three steps to programming TURF Analysis. First you must determine what area of your project you would like to run TURF Analysis on. Second, create a multi-select question based on those areas of research. Lastly, we highly recommend programming the survey in Survey Analytics for easy admin and real-time access to the analytics.

How Do You Analyze TURF Analysis Data?

To analyze the TURF data, there are two ways to do this. The first way is through our system. We have an analysis tool that automatically calculates the unduplicated reach and frequency and offers the reach or marketshare percentage. Second, you can run a simulator that runs through every possible combination so the output shows the reach for a limited set of choices. Another way to analyze TURF Analysis data that should not be forgotten is through price modeling. This will allow you to assign a cost or overhead to create each of these items and specify a budget. If you only have a 10$ budget and each item costs you 1$ to make, it will tell you which item will be the best seller based on your budget and overhead costs - along with other options that you can substitute or include as well.

What's the Difference Between TURF Analysis and Conjoint Analysis?

Conjoint will allow you to look at share of preference and it breaks down the relative importance of a particular product or service as well as the importance and parts of each item you are looking at. They don't overlap each other (conjoint and TURF). With TURF there is overlap to mix different items and things that will give you the best possible profile.

Can You Conduct TURF Analysis and Conjoint Analysis in the Same Survey?

It doesn't hurt to run conjoint and TURF at the same time within the same survey to really filter through and find the best combinations of products, services or content to use. And to answer the question, yes. This is very easily possible in the Survey Analytics platform to run both conjoint analysis and TURF analysis in the same survey.

What's the Difference Between TURF Analysis and MaxDiff Scaling?

MaxDiff is a little bit difference in terms of looking at share of preference. This will isolate what is most preferred vs. least preferred. With TURF, we don't ask what their least desirable preferences are, we just ask what their general preferences that they like are. It is not on a spectrum. Based off of MaxDiff, you can look at share of preference analysis and put it all together to determine what item is With TURF, you are really looking at optimum reach and frequency. You are looking at counts and percentages much more than with MaxDiff or even conjoint.

How is TURF Analysis Calculated in Survey Analytics?

The statistics behind TURF Analysis are determined by an algorithm to determine the output. The algorithm is unfortunately proprietary information to Survey Analytics. But we can tell you that we programmed this algorithm with a very highly sought after professional market research agency several years ago that was using this for agency analysis. We have also worked with other customers along the way to improve the tool as well.

Can the TURF Analysis results be sliced by segments in Survey Analytics?

Yes. In Survey Analytics, you can build segments based off of responses based off of your survey or any custom variables that you import into your survey. Based off of that, you can easily analyze the TURF Analysis output from there.

The Survey Analytics Guide to TURF Analysis

As promised earlier, here is also our brand new guide to TURF Analysis for you to check out that explains the methodology further - what it is, why you need it and how you can conduct this type of research in four different ways. 

We would like to thank Esther again for her great presentation and don't forget to access the webinar replay in the event you missed out and still are curious to learn more about the subject.

Let us know if you have any additional questions about TURF Analysis you would like us to address and we would be more than happy to send them Esther's way.

We are also more than happy to personally demonstrate how to work TURF Analysis to suit your current or future needs best.

Contact us at anytime - we are here for you 24/5!

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