Worm (marketing)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The "worm" is a market research analysis tool developed by Roy Morgan Research (who called it The Reactor), with the purpose of gauging an audience's reaction to some visual stimuli over some time period. The name "worm" describes its visual appearance - as a line graph snaking up or down.

Each member of the audience firstly fills out a questionnaire, used to describe the composition of the audience, and then each member has a dial, to which they select their feelings towards the vision or stimuli. This dial is checked centrally three times per second, and as the audience reacts differently over time, the collective feelings of the audience are gathered.

A recent example of the use of the "worm" is the televised debate for the Australian federal election between the Australian prime minister John Howard and the leader of the opposition Kevin Rudd.^[1]