Organizational History

Sterling Research Group, Inc. was founded in 1987 by a team of 4 professors from the University of South Florida's marketing department. This team included Dr. William "Bill" D. Haueisen, current Chairman of Sterling. This group of academics founded Sterling with the philosophy of providing high quality custom market research to a diverse group of clients.

Bill and the rest of the founding team developed what was then a unique technology for market research: the scannable survey form. Although it had been used for years in education for standardized testing, Bill was one of the first people to develop the technology for market research. The creative application of new and existing technology has been a hallmark of Sterling's competitive advantage ever since.

As the company grew, it began to specialize in customer satisfaction tracking studies with its biggest clients being in the lodging, gaming, and financial service industries. Over the years, Sterling has become an expert in large scale data collection and analysis and has won several awards, including Vendor of the Year from Promus Corporation (now part of Hilton) and membership in the Fast 50, a Deloitte and Touche survey of the Tampa Bay area's fastest growing businesses. In our 21-year history, Sterling has mailed over 50 million customer satisfaction surveys.