Quester Lore

In 1973, Dr. Charles E. Cleveland founded what would become Quester.

From that moment, our goal was to use people’s language, text, as a form of data. A type of data that was more expressive and insightful than basic quantitative options presented in front of your customers.  We wanted to learn deep, emotional insights and talk to people and learn more about their personal needs. So we created our unique, in-depth style of qualitative interviewing and during more than 30 years built software to reflect our ultimate desire: To expand the reliability and dependability of qualitative research.

In the mid 80s, Charles began building some of the first text processing tools used in the world. The earliest tools were rudimentary, merely counting how frequently certain words were used. But over time these tools were expanded to include several different sets of tools that today can streamline our linguistic text analysis process, using Aristotle.

Expanding the company in the 1990s, following Charles’ vision, we began advising large Fortune 500 companies on not only marketing research problems, but communication issues —using consumer language to create meaningful marketing communications.

By 2001, Socrates and Aristotle were live and in 2007, Quester created Quester Inside and has continued our work in software development. To date we’ve talked to over 3 million respondents. What’s on the horizon is a continued commitment to the improvement of our software and its expansion into the mainstream of marketing research and other fields not yet known today. Come along with us for the journey.