Back in the day, quantitative market research meant cross-tab decks with 20-point banners. Problem is, people are no longer back in the day. Back in the day, corporate main frames didn't have the computing power of today's smallest laptops. Marketing scientists and other brainiacs have had the last 30 years to develop new analytic techniques to take advantage of all this computing power. These new and not-so-new-anymore methodologies are designed to eliminate many of the biases and inaccuracies of traditional surveys. Modern marketing science offers marketers the chance to see a little more clearly, dig a little deeper, forecast a little more accurately. In some cases, it's not a little. Even without fully understanding the analytic plan, following these simple guidelines will vastly improve the quality of your data and subsequent analysis: 1. Avoid missing values by eliminating skip patterns and don't knows. 2. Prevent collinearity by mixing things up: item order, polarity. 3. Derive importances; don't ask directly.