No big deal, I don’t mind doing surveys – I used to conduct these myself, so I know how it can be hard to get someone to agree to do it. It’s not as hard as sales, but it’s no walk in the park, either. Anyway, I accompanied this guy back to the survey office and into a cubicle where he proceeded to show me some boxes of frozen dinners, and asked me questions about what I thought of them: Which of these two dinners is more appealing? Why is that? Which dinner would you be more likely to purchase? Why is that? And so on.
Those are the kinds of questions you expect to get (it’s like a script they have to follow), but my answer to that “more likely to purchase” question completely stumped the guy conducting the survey. I said I wouldn’t buy either of them. So he went back to a previous question – where I said Dinner B was more appealing. I pointed out that yes, the box showing Dinner B looked more appealing, but that didn’t matter to me when it came time to buy anything; I still wouldn’t buy either one of them.
After going back and forth on this a couple of times, he finally asked me why. My answer was pretty straightforward: I didn’t like the product. It wasn’t the brand, and it wasn’t the packaging. It was the item INSIDE THE BOX. The frozen meal he was showing me was something I’d never buy in a million years – like eggplant parmesan or something equally gross. I simply wouldn’t buy that particular meal, EVER, no matter how appealing the packaging was.
I must have been this poor guy’s worst nightmare come true, because the interview went even further downhill after that. Clearly frustrated, he continued to try and figure out why the Dinner B wasn’t appealing enough to make me want to buy it. At one point I told him flat out that differences in packaging didn’t matter to me, even if the item was one I had bought before – price was actually more important. He didn’t like that answer at all.
It got really uncomfortable when he practically asked me straight out to just pick one and SAY I’d buy it, even if I really wouldn’t. It was just a survey; it was not like the world was going to come to an end if I agreed to this little white lie. Unfortunately I have this “honest” streak in me and that suggestion gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. I’ve also conducted these things myself and what he suggested went against the idea of holding surveys in the first place. The whole point of market research is to get honest opinions so the product can be improved. Finding out what is good or bad about the packaging is just one aspect. If the public doesn’t like the product itself then the manufacturer needs to know that, too. Saying I’d buy it even if I never would… well, I just couldn’t do it.
Needless to say our time together didn’t last long after that. I felt bad for the guy; he was just trying to do his job, and I wasn’t making it easy for him. It wasn’t like I was deliberately trying to make it difficult; I was just offering my honest opinion. But my answers were outside of what he was used to, and he didn’t know how to deal with it. Unfortunately, that’s exactly the response that some companies have to the data that market research provides.