Analyzing customer opinions can provide valuable insights. This knowledge, however, is not easily gained. Knowing how to collect this information without biasing it, and aggregating qualitative — non-numeric — data can be daunting. Chris Cottle, executive vice president of marketing and products for Allegiance, offers thoughts on best practices in aggregating and using customer opinions.

comScore reports that consumers have spent $30.9 billion online so far in November-December, a 15% increase over the same period in 2010. While Cyber Monday still holds the record for the heaviest online spending day of the year for the second ...