Company History

August 2009 - Socratic launches its “Sports and Entertainment Practice,” focusing on a model developed by Dr. Kirk Wakefield for the measurement and tracking of sports and event sponsorship ROI.

February 2009 - Socratic introduces major upgrades to its WebComm Toolset^SM suite of Flash-based interactive tools including menu board simulators, upgraded sort and selection tools, and new interface enhancements for many of existing methods including Te-Scope^SM, ColorModeler^SM, CollageBuilder^SM and VisualDifferentiator^SM. Updated interface enhancements for Socratic Connect^SM, online collaborative chat software and Socratic WebBoards^SM were also launched.

November 2008 - Socratic’s President, Bill MacElroy is awarded Research Business Report’s Executive of the Year, citing, among other things, Socratic’s commitment to data quality monitoring and extensive technology for duplicate respondent detection across multiple sample sources.

June 2008 - Socratic launches new text concept analysis tools (Socratic CopyMarkup^SM) and incorporates new “text dashboard” analysis and simulation functionality.

May 2007 - Socratic partners with Liquid Agency to provide research support for the 2007 Brand Impact Awards. Using the Socratic Brand Power Rating index, the strength of more than 200 technology brands in 22 categories was measured. Winners announced at the Liquid Brand Summit on May 15, 2007 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Palo Alto California.

April 2007 - Socratic is named as a contributing research agency in a 2007 Ogilvy Business Achievement Award in the category of New Product Launches. The award, which went to Bank of America, was for their "Keep the Change" product introduction. Award was given on April 13 by the ARF at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in NYC.

January 2007 - Socratic expands the range of Flash-based visualization tools for use in virtual retail environment testing, including merchandising displays, shelf impact testing for packaging, menu boards and catalog pages.

April 2006 - Socratic publishes the results of a three-year comprehensive study of its standard measure of brand strength: The Socratic Brand Power Rating. This index measures the efficiency by which a brand transforms awareness to purchase intent and, based on more than 30,000 interviews involving more than 100 brands, is highly correlated with market share.

February 2006 - Socratic introduces the reSearch Engine™ product, a content-based search tool for the management of knowledge-based intellectual properties. The tool allows companies to store the results of all data from quantitative research projects (regardless of data collection mode or vendor) within a standard database. These data are then searchable by topic, key words and phrases across the entire enterprise. Data are presented in an easy-to-use online reporting system which can be accessed with filters, simple cross tabulations and frequency diagrams.

June 2005 - Socratic introduces an upgraded series of anti-cheating and “lazy survey behavior” detection protocols. This suite of real-time measurement algorithms can virtually eliminate low quality surveys before they are counted as complete.

February 2005 - Socratic's Configurator Analysis product is featured in a Forbes Magazine article covering technology for new product concept testing.

October 2004 - Socratic announces the expansion of its Chicago-based operations increasing both staff and facility size.

September 2004 - Socratic's Applications Development Group (ADG) released a series of Panel Systems Upgrades this month. These enhancements provide a significant degree of automation to the process of creating and maintaining new Panels for our clients. This implementation reduces the time to delivery of the completed panel site functionality and reporting by over half.

May 2004 - Socratic's Applications Development Group (ADG) releases a series of Online Reporting Tool (ORT) enhancements. Updates to the back end stored procedures that drive Socratic's ORT, most specifically the Filtering and Forced Filtering functions, were updated. Performance against benchmark measures resulted in significant improvements in speed.

February 2004 - Socratic's Application Development Group (ADG) introduces the Data Driven Panel Model. The Data Driven Panel Model provides a quick and efficient way to incorporate standardized content for our new panels. This new system reduces the time to delivery from concept to live panel site by half. Maintaining content updates and changes has also been optimized.

December 2003 - Socratic launches its Chicago-based a Consumer Products practice.

October 2003 - Socratic's Application Development Group (ADG) introduces a set of internal tools, Email Management and Sample Management, designed to enable streamlined communication with our Panelists. The Sample Management tools provide a seamless method of querying our Panel populations for qualified panelists and seeding them into specific surveys that are ready for data collection. The Email Management system allows Project Management staff to easily manage communication to panelists organized by sample subgroup, panel source, and quota completion rates. Managers can send invitations and reminders with real time feedback regarding bounce-backs and other failure to send issues giving them greater insight into true response rates. The system also automatically controls for the number of contacts per panelist so they are not "over contacted" in a given time period for multiple surveys.

September 2003 - Socratic introduces a new methodological approach for assessing the degree to which companies are successfully projecting their brand promise through all customer touch points. The Total Customer Experience Brand Audit^TM (TCEBA) identifies brand touchpoint gaps. Closing gaps leads to improvement in brand satisfaction leads to stronger customer loyalty and retention.

July 2003 - Socratic introduces "Smart Slider Bar" technology to capture modified Van Westendorp pricing data and unveils the technique of calculating real-time "Unique Target Pricing" as a part of its Configurator Analysis^SM methodology.

December 2002 - Socratic's SSD^SM Technology wins first place in the 2002 EXPLOR Awards project analyzing the web site of Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The EXPLOR Award is presented annually by the American Marketing Association for EXemplary Performance and Leadership in Online Research.

October 2002 - Socratic launches its expanded set of tools for setting up and providing online panel management services. Socratic WebPanel Toolset^SM includes advanced profiling tools, member services, member data updates, incentive banking and fulfillment, and multi-language functionality.

September 2002 - Socratic's SSD^SM Technology receives Windows and .NET Magazine's Reader's Choice Award in the Web-based Services category. SSD, remote usability test software, is named one of the "Top 100 Products" for 2002.

July 2002 - The next generation of Socratic's online survey software Socratic Web Survey^SM 2.0 is launched. SWS 2.0 increases the flexibility and speed of programming and dramatically increases productivity. Advanced features include seamless customization and look and feel of client Web identity in survey work, more than 170 languages, rich media stimuli and live embedded Web sites within a guided survey.

In the same month, a new set of interactive and animated tools for print and video advertisement testing, color and package testing, brand assessment and animated product demonstration is introduced. The Socratic WebComm Toolset^SM is fully compatible with SWS 2.0, which makes running animated tests and online surveys seamless. This toolset combines many standalone technologies into an integrated, comprehensive solution.

February 2002 - Socratic introduces a new animated card sort technique for use in online testing. The Socratic CardSort^SM is a fixed-form classification technique for grouping, sorting and ranking test elements. The procedure uses a "drag and drop" mechanism for classifying things in a simple and intuitive way.

October 2001 - Socratic introduces the next generation of remote usability testing software for online tracking and ease-of-use measurement. The Socratic Site Diagnostic^SM technology is fully compatible with the Socratic Web Survey^SM system and allows the research designer to move seamlessly between online task tracking and survey work.

June 1999 - Socratic introduces Configurator Analysis^TM, a more effective method of simulating ideal products than traditional conjoint exercises.

November 1998 - Socratic introduces a Web- and CAPI-compatible technology for packaging design and graphic effectiveness testing.

January 1998 - Socratic Technologies, Inc. creates the Socratic Forum^®, an online community of business and IT-decision makers.

September 1997 - Socratic Technologies, Inc. introduces the Socratic Usability Lab^SM, the first portable laboratory for testing the usability of software and Web sites.

September 1994 - Socratic Technologies, Inc., a California-based C-corporation is established.