Mary Beth Merrin, Ph.D.

“I have had the pleasure of working with Mary Beth Merrin a few years ago. She is a consummate professional with high the highest moral and ethical standards. Mary Beth is an excellent communicator and she has the ability to reach, engage and persuade all levels of an organization: the board, upper management, middle management and line staff. Perhaps her greatest skill with regard to communication is her ability to listen. It is this ability which sets her apart and ensures her ability to deliver exactly what the customer wants. Mary Beth seeks to build long-standing partnerships with her clients in an effort to better understand them. She treats every one of her clients as unique entities, tailoring her approach and production to the individual needs of each client. Over the years, Mary Beth has served as a coach, mentor and advisor with regard to research and marketing. Mary Beth is one of the preeminent experts in her field. Initially, we chose her because of her client list and her long track record of delivering with multi-national companies and political organizations. She was hired her to help us see the things we could not, and she did just that. Mary Beth is results driven and on point. We found her services to provide excellent value. Most importantly, the results of her research helped drive revenue. She was on budget, on schedule and delivered exactly what we wanted. Her multitude of contacts within the industry allowed her to reach out and to scale up to meet our individual needs. Mary Beth helped create an in-depth understanding of our customers, their needs, and how they make decisions. This understanding was then shaped into a framework which was used to inform all of our marketing and public relations decisions. This approach allowed us to reach our institutional clients and individual customers in ways that were meaningful to them Mary Beth Merrin is not only an excellent researcher, but a first rate person. Her research and deliverables can help shape a positive future for any organization. ”

“I first worked with Mary Beth more than 30 years ago when we both served on a team of tourism/hospitality researchers recommending to the U.S. Census Bureau distribution strategies for its 1985 American Travel Survey. She stood out in recommending novel approaches subsequently accepted by the Bureau. Over years since, we traded marketing and economic research strategies, and collaborated on a major study for the Arlington Convention and Visitors Bureau. During the last decade, we worked together at George Washington University's School of Business to train MBA's and other graduate students in planning, conducting and analyzing advanced marketing and economic studies to generate valid, actionable recommendations to help achieve corporate and governmental objectives. Throughout our joint efforts, I have always admired Mary Beth's exceptionally high ethical standards, technical proficiency, and communication skills. She draws incisive conclusions from data and communicates them to management as actionable recommendations. When implemented, these have produced positive, measurable outcomes. Any organization seeking to better understand its audiences and their motivations would begin well by discussing their aspirations with Dr. Merrin's Decision Making Research.”