Independent consultant in marketing research
My interests and strengths lie in research design (including sampling), SPSS programming, data management, statistics and multivariate data analysis.
American Airlines (AA)—Fort Worth, Texas
Customer Research Department—Senior Analyst
Collected, analyzed, reported and presented AA and competitive customer satisfaction data derived from surveys, focus groups and special and strategic research projects. Designed and updated reporting tools and pushed customer research results to the AA corporate intranet.
- Greatly improved service to internal clients through leading the team that designed and executed the Customer Research web site on Jetnet (the American Airlines corporate intranet portal) on which are published timely and easily-accessible reports, data and competitive information.
- Dramatically increased departmental productivity (over fourfold) and responsiveness to internal clients by building a local data warehouse and introducing SPSS, enabling data analysis previously available only via mainframe programming.
- Following the tragedy of 9/11/201, there was an immediate need to measure where American Airlines stood price-wise vis-à-vis the competition in every market for every possible itinerary—an impossible task without the use of careful sampling and inferential statistics. Designed a methodology that included “screen scraping” thousands of sampled itineraries from online air fare sources such as Orbitz and independent airline sites and merging them into an SPSS data base to enable a comprehensive analysis of markets and itineraries, revealing where AA was competitive and where it was not. This information was used to swiftly change the AA pricing structure system-wide and to appropriate marketing dollars to take advantage of new and previously unavailable information on a broad scale.
- Member of the original team of industry representatives who met in Switzerland in 1998 to design the very successful and essential competitive information-gathering instrument, the Global Airline Performance (GAP) Survey. The GAP survey was superseded by Airs@t, an online survey.
- Designed and led research to measure passenger responses to test rides in regional passenger jets manufactured by two different companies. Essential in the research design were measures to counter-balance order effects (e.g., first impressions). Both jets were under consideration for a multi-million-dollar purchase by American Eagle Airlines. Report was instrumental in the final selection decision.
- Using a structured interview approach at various Admirals Clubs at domestic airports, measured and evaluated customer attitudes and ideas regarding most-desired improvements to the facilities, features and services. Results helped the Admirals Clubs make the best use, from a customer perspective, of allocated upgrade and maintenance dollars.
Bertram, McKee & Associates—[A Dallas-based management consulting firm specializing in marketing research, marketing communications and direct marketing. Clients ranged from Fortune 100 companies to national manufacturing, retail and technology companies.]
Director, Marketing Research
Directed a staff of project managers, analysts and writers in all phases of quantitative and qualitative research projects, managed research budget, wrote and edited research proposals, presented hi-level research results to clients, negotiated vendor contracts and managed vendor relationships
King Douglas Studios, Inc.
President and Owner
Managed a team of photographers, stylists and designers to produce high-quality photographic images for local, national and international print advertising for leading corporations.
American Society of Magazine Photographers
Chapter President and member of National Board of Governors
Represented the Dallas advertising photography community in efforts to promote high standards in business ethics, to initiate career development and leadership programs and to establish cooperation and community spirit among members.
Education
M.A. in Experimental Psychology, Southern Methodist University, 2002
- In addition, completed all coursework toward Ph.D.
B.A. in Psychology, Southern Methodist University, 1992
- Graduated magna cum laude
- Elected to Phi Beta Kappa
- Emphasis on research design, data analysis, statistics and computer applications
- Minor in Statistics, including numerous graduate courses and a teaching assistantship in the SMU Statistics Department